Muse

I'm a model train enthusiast.

Oh, that's great.

Yes, I've got a whole layout in my basement. It's very much a big passion for me.

Yeah, thank God for model trains.

Oh, absolutely.

You know, if they didn't have the model train, they wouldn't have gotten the idea for the big trains.

TBTL! I came here to do two things, eat eggs and nothing, and I'm not out of either. He's a hot tomato.

Well, you could say that. I mean, I think he, I don't know what a hot tomato is.

Do you have any idea who I am? I'm a verified Yelp complainer.

Is there, I'm just guessing here, some kind of medication that you maybe need a lot of and have taken none of, or maybe too much of today?

and uh uh right on you midnight cowboy that's not a thing

well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheets my name is luke burbank i am your host and boom goes the dynamite coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where it is really really really cold in here in a case gone cold could a podcast bring the heat so cold that it's actually endangered the broadcast today i'll explain how and why in a moment by the way we're at episode 4086 in a collector series let the fun begin lots to talk about today including the fact that google maps has apologized for recently sending hundreds of cars just straight up into the desert, just into like a, basically like a weird desert wash where they were all sort of trapped.

Where we're going, we don't need roads.

And my thorough investigation of the story has led me to another sort of piece of audio tape that the young people seem to be using online, on TikTok. Kids and fantasy. As you know, this is the number one show hosted by two middle-aged dudes where we pride ourselves on playing you only the freshest, the freshest beats of TikTok music that the young people are listening to. But let me tell you, this one, I don't know if this one's going to work. Hey, want to hear the most annoying sound in the world? It's either going to become another TBTL staple or it is going to be the end of the program. One of the two things will happen today, and that's going to happen with the help of this young man, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Oh, yeah, buddy. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I have various notions of things to bring up with you right now.

Did you have your mic on, by the way, slightly during the intro? Did I just hear things?

Oh, I don't think so. What did you hear? Did you hear me mumbling something about killing them all? That's why I have a leveler mic on you at all times. No, for real. Was I clearing my throat and stuff, and my mic was open?

Okay, well, first of all, I want to go back to the tape. I know. This is one of those moments where the listeners know more about the show than we do.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? It's one of those weird things where I could absolutely have imagined it, but somewhere around where I was playing this audio drop. Let the fun begin. When I was announcing the episode number, I thought I just heard a little bit of noise of you talking, but here's what I would say. You're very, very kind of, what's the word I'm looking for? You're very on it when it comes to your mic muting, and you have systems in place. Because when I'm doing the show with you at your house and stuff, it's actually fun. It's like being in a real broadcast, Andrew, where you're like, okay, I'm opening our mics. So you're not loosey-goosey with it. So if your mic was open, you would have noticed it, and you would have started your part of the show by saying, my mic was open. So I'm going to officially, I'm going to squash this rumor, Andrew, that your mic was open and say it wasn't.

Don't squash it yet, because I find this too fascinating. And I'm trying to figure out here whether or not this is worth me stopping my backup recording and listening to it. But if we do that.

Potentially risking the very future of this episode.

We really would, because then I'd have to load the audio onto the machine that is now recording the only version of the show. But hold on, hold on, hold on.

But you said you thought you heard me talking like I, Andrew, I know that I'm wrong about this, so I don't want to take this any further. But it sounded like you mumbling to me, but I might have been. I'm so fascinated by this. There's no way you unmuted your mic, mumbled something, re-muted it. I mean, I might have, though. It didn't happen. I think this should be a forward pro to tomorrow's episode.

All right. I won't risk the broadcast for this, but I continue the safe recording of the episode. And I want to just be I want to get way in front of this, Andrew. I'm wrong. I've I've I'm on so much flipping coffee today. Like I stayed at Becca's last night down in Portland and I got up very early this morning because I had some appointments in town up here. And so I got up way early with the help of bubbles. God, what a helpful alarm clock. Thank God they built you. Just 5.45 in the morning, just right at the door. And so I did something that's unusual for me, which is there's a coffee shop at the ground floor of Becca's apartment. And I stopped in there and got like an extra large coffee. They do something that I really like, by the way. They will do Moroccan spice in the coffee. So it's just like, imagine a black coffee or if you want to throw some Splenda in as I do. But then it's just got all this other really delicious. It's like it feels like a treat. It feels like more of a treat than regular coffee. So I got like a herk in one of those and drank it as I was driving back up here. And then I did my stuff. And then I made an entire new giant pot of coffee here at my place. And I'm now most of the way through that pot of coffee. So I'm kind of in, as we say, a bit of a fugue state. And I am thinking I just, I'm hearing things, Andrew. I think it was the caffeine. I want to be on the record as saying I don't think you actually opened your microphone.

Well, here's why I think this is maybe slightly interesting. First of all, I think it's interesting if you're hallucinating because of caffeine.

I know, and it's worrisome, to be honest with you.

But Genevieve, on Mike recently, and I don't know if this was on After These Messages or when we were doing the show on Monday, but Genevieve was talking about hearing me talk to myself a lot. Like when I'm, you know, when I'm in my studio here and if she's working from home on any given day, her desk is kind of, you know, out outside my office and around the corner a bit a ways. It's not like we're on top of each other down here. And she says, I don't think you know how much you talk to yourself. And I said, oh, I do. I know how much I talk to myself. I talk to myself constantly. I'm especially aware of it when I'm working around you or you and John, like when we're all kind of living and working together during the TBTL-a-thon. I realize I'm the type of person who to stay focused on my task when I'm doing editing and, you know, processing and posting the show, I'll I'll kind of like mutter what I'm doing. I will say numbers out loud if I'm tracking time codes. Like, I just I know that I do that. But then after we had that conversation on air, I've had this worrying suspicion that when Genevieve says, I don't think you realize how much you talk to yourself, that I don't. In other words, I know I do talk to myself, but it might be at a level that I'm not even familiar with. And so if there's a chance that I was mumbling during the intro of your show, it's kind of like chilling to me because I know I talk to myself a lot. But maybe I do it even more than I realize is my point.

Remember, this happened, I think, when I was still back at my place in Portland, at the Hollywood Broadcast Center, where I was mumbling to myself, and it was being picked up, or you were hearing it. You were writing. You were writing, I think.

Yes. Wait, wait, don't tell me.

Yes, and I had zero awareness that I was making audible noises as I was, in my mind, just composing something on the screen. And that was a real mind bleep because of what exactly what you're describing, like when you have one sort of sense of yourself and kind of what you're doing. And I will say this. You're very open and honest, Andrew, about your affliction of talking yourself through things. And it's your process. And you're you're you're well aware of it. For me, that was truly shocking when I did that, because I had no idea that I talk while I'm composing like a bluff, the listener or whatever the heck I was doing.

so um that i talk aloud so um maybe i mean again allow me this well allow me this i know we might

be a little bit tight on time today but well it just depends on when uh what are they called again let me try to get the uh my tracking information up here it's whenever rxo shows up with my serenity pellet stove god grant me the serenity to use this pellet stove to warm my house because God, dang, it's cold out here, Andrew.

Giot. Okay, so here's what I want to propose here. When we do a brief stop down for a break, which listeners don't even hear breaks, but we still kind of do these little moments in the show where we stop in case we need to promo. You can't wait until tomorrow. No, no. You're like a kid at Christmas. I want to hear. We need to solve this today. First of all, we never follow up on things. We always forget, and we always say, oh, we'll do it later. That's my undiagnosed ADHD. And so... Which you think everyone has.

I think we should. That was buried at the end of yesterday's show. Don't put it on Front Street now. Nobody listens to that part of the show. But so when we come back, like maybe after the donors, we will review the beginning tape of today's show. That way I won't worry about sort of stopping my backup and potentially losing the entire show.

I just want to be very much on the record as saying I think I was just hearing things. I think we're going to find that there is no there there. Maybe. Um, and if it's because of coffee consumption, excessive coffee consumption, I would just tell you part of, I mean, I'm, this is not an exaggeration. Part of why I'm drinking so much coffee is I'm trying to stay warm out here, Andrew. I'm going to fight for my life. And you know how we connected on the internet, you and I this morning, and, and then all of a sudden we weren't connected on the internet because the internet was broken. Oh yeah.

You said there's a reason.

I blew a fuse. I flipped the switch. The heater. not intentionally because i had two andrew count them two different heaters going trying to stay warm out here and that was simply too much for this i mean i have new electrical run out just to this building like i'm not daisy chaining off of the house i mean that was a whole situation they had to run new power down from the pole i got two power bills not to brag but um apparently apparently running my delonghi space heater and then this um vornado by the way none of these are ads but i would accept free products from any heating company out there running this kind of like um sort of smallish fan the vornado and running the space heater at the same time uh flip the switch blew the fuse whatever you want to say and you didn't actually blow a fuse

right like i wanted to ask about that you don't have to read i don't even think do we even have fuses anymore i i thought you blew it in like an old panel up at the house but no this would be a

breaker situation breaker breaker breaker breaker breaker one niner um yeah this was just the breaker um which by the way i don't know props to whoever did this i don't know if it was the guy that i hired to run the wires or was my dad but i just went over there i opened the panel there was a little thing that said studio flipped it yeah and it threw everything back on but the internet my whatever you want to call it modem is also on this quadrant so the power wasn't out to the entire joint the lights were still on I have some sconces that I'm very proud of Andrew that I ordered probably from far away China but they're here, we put them up I want to send you a picture of these sconces, you'd really get a kick out of them they're kind of, I think stylistically something you'd like but the lights were still on, the sconces were still working so it was just this corner of the building if you will But yeah, that's kind of where we're at with the heat situation right now And I'm sort of okay I think the better choice, I'm not running the space heater I'm only running the fan That's not overly loud, is it? No, no, I can't hear it at all Excellent I'm just running it directly against my shins And it seems to be keeping me in okay shape right now I've finally become one of those people You know about this This is a long-running And I don't want to pick sides here Although as I describe it, you'll just you'll understand what side I'm sort of instinctively on. But if you've ever worked in an office environment where it's kept oddly cold, there's always this kind of long running, almost like the coyote and the sheepdog who, you know, clock in and then try to kill each other all day. And then they clock out right at the end of the day between the people who are cold and want a some kind of heater at their feet while they're working and whoever is in charge of the facility stuff. Have you ever observed this? These are nature's enemies. Whoever's in charge of the, like, office furniture and the, you know, what goes into the physical building and the people who are very cold sitting at their desks.

Yes. Now, I'm going to take it to a place that you're going to like even less, I think. Because it's often brought up in terms of sort of like women in the workplace because traditionally men.

You'll note that I did not assign a gender to this.

I know. But traditionally, like men's apparel as as is kind of standard. And I think maybe in 2023 with work from home. And I don't know what people are wearing to the offices these days. But generally speaking, especially traditionally speaking. So men might be wearing jackets and ties and shirts and basically wearing layers while women often will maybe be wearing dresses or skirts or things that don't cover their arms as much. So it tends to because society has set us up to wear these certain uniforms to work and then men traditionally control the temperature. It's too cold for women. That's the way I've heard it sort of.

Interesting. I never even thought about that specific side of the gender politics. But, you know, that kind of checks out based on my experience. What I would like to say is people of the working world, whatever your outfit slash gender identity might be, folks who have been cold at their desks. I want to just

tell you i hear you and i see you and i feel you and i feel bad about not giving i would hear people complaining at various workplaces i'm thinking of one in particular andrew where you and i both uh kind of uh spent time uh at different times i'm not talking about cairo so now we're really kind of narrowing it down in the minds of the listeners but there was a real sort of dictatorial vibe around a lot of the office furniture and equipment stuff that i was never a particular fan of or adherent to well yes that's how i showed i wasn't a fan of it by strictly not adhering to it and um and the uh i actually have more like cubicle stories than you'd think so one of them well one of them is that you know famously when i was working at this particular radio station my the the the host that i worked for as a producer and the host that i worked for was just on the other side of like a barrier that was just too high that meant if we wanted to talk to each other we had to stand up and you know all day you're relating back and forth with this person and the office furniture at this radio station was modular in such a way or you know swappable that all we needed was the like lower you know the lower wall which existed some people had it we were just like can we get the lower wall and it somehow messed up the symmetry or aesthetic vibe for the person who was in charge of that and then I said to them well maybe I can just take your office and my uh direct supervisor who was uh my direct supervisor eventually um uh asked me to apologize to that person I had to apologize publicly to this person and so when that person's house fell into the ocean Andrew I didn't feel sad I mean you can't get a better you can't get a better bit of sort of revenge fantasy then that person's house literally fell into the ocean yes and i now the other the other cubicle story i have and this is the other side of so that to me was

did it fall directly in the black rock city yes but then that dried it out and then it was fine then they could live there again

but see this is the funny part so i'm like annoyed that this person who was like way and to my mind way too persnickety about they they didn't see this in my experience they this person did not see this office area as a place where we all worked and needed it to be functional they saw it as their domain and the the the sort of uh their vision for what it was going to look like and me wanting a lower wall so i could talk to my boss was not in the vision they had of this thing that was i thought much more about them than us so that's one end of that sort of spectrum as As far as like office furniture and cubicle culture, somebody who's like very, very precious about every little thing. And now the other end of the spectrum I experienced when I worked at NPR West in LA and I had kind of a similar thing, which was like my direct boss was this dude named John Buckley, this British ex cop who was now like, and he was the most British dude you'd ever met. He would be just like Bobby. He was a Bobby in his previous life. Now he was an editor and was like he would literally just be like making tea and like I mean it was like as if he was like cheerio each morning I was like all right Mr. Belvedere but same thing I every time we needed to talk and we talked a lot in the morning I would have to like stand up or he'd have to stand up so I asked hey could somebody would it be possible to swap this out. Now, mind you, this is happening after the whole incident at the other radio station. So I've already been kind of shot down on this modifying the office furniture thing. And I don't know who did this, Andrew, but when I came in to work on some Monday, you know, after just asking, like, would it be possible to switch this out? I come in and somebody has clearly just taken a sawzall and friggin just roughly chopped down the top of this brand new. When I got to NPR West, it had been in existence for like six months. I mean, this was like a multi-million dollar build out of this broadcast facility. Everything was brand new, including the cubicles or whatever you want to call those. And like somebody had just, they hadn't like moved, like replaced it or taken it out or swapped. They had just straight up gone into it with a sawzall and just went. and cut out this incredibly rough shape which had me kind of wishing for the guy from the other place because now i was like i have this gaping maw of like roughly cut particle board that's just sitting here you know like there's still sawdust down on the carpet or whatever so

like when me and my friend don mora were playing with legos at his house and when one of the legos was too long for his needs he said follow me and we went out to his garage slash barn and he took a hatchet i believe it was a hatchet maybe it was a saw that makes more sense and just cut the goddamn thing in half yeah i i am so prone to that kind of stuff to this day as a 47 year old person like i have to really around this house and around this the projects that we're doing particularly when i'm left to my own devices i think about that story andrew yeah it also sounds like it kind of worked so maybe that's a bad uh sort of a comparison but i am so prone to just like trying something the right way the way that maybe my dad or youtube or other professionals have told me to do it try it it doesn't quite work and i get frustrated like so quickly i think it's my undiagnosed adhd um that i will then try to do some work around and it's always a mistake always a mistake because you know of like well why don't i just snip this like this is you know this bracket is whatever the dimensions are but it doesn't really want to fit so what if i just cut this you know and like then it's like oh the reason it's that long is because this other thing needs to click on you know so i have to really like try to control myself from taking what was that kid's name again don don i gotta really try to like not take the dawn road on a lot of the things around here because it's getting expensive yeah the sad part

of that story is i don't know if you remember this part because i i don't you said it worked i don't even know if it worked i don't even know if we went back inside to play legos you know like Once you're a kid, you're doing this, and then you go outside, you're like, well, let's cut this Lego in half. Next thing you know, you're messing around in the garage or the barn. You're digging in the backyard. You're building traps. God knows what. But I remember him doing that, and I was just – I grew up in the opposite-style household. My parents were very strict, but I also adhered to their – am I saying adhered a lot today? I also adhered to their rules. Do I say adhered funny? Do I say adhered funny? Anyway, whereas Don had a different sort of relationship, and this is what always saddens me. I always knew his dad to be a very kind of gruff person. He was one of the dads in the neighborhood that you would, I don't know if fear is the right word. Oh, I bet it is. Yeah. Yeah. You know what?

I know those kind of dads. Fear is the right word.

Yeah. And you definitely respect his word. Vietnam vet. Tough guy. And I remember- Probably didn't like beer, though, right? I hated beer. Yeah, I'm guessing. He was Cali sober. I remember saying to Don, and again, I think I said hatchet, but he must have been sawing this little Lego in half, you know, turning it from a four bumper to a two bumper. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Don't you remember as a kid just the magic, like this can cut metal?

Yeah, hacksaws are good for one thing, which is breaking out of prison. I mean, you bake that shit into a cake.

i was just like i did is there anything the hacksaw can't cut through right but anyway um i just

remember saying to don like aren't you gonna get in trouble for doing this to your toys and he's like ah my dad's gonna kick my ass no matter what i do and i remember to be like oh shit that's a that's a bleak thing yeah i know i mean i don't know we don't need to so i'm glad i used first

and last name there as i'm calling somebody out for bleep it all out potential abuse but i mean yeah i we don't have to go too far down this road but definitely navigating the landscape of like friends you know growing up it was like you had the friends where it was like you kind of you didn't feel fully comfortable around you know around the like being at their house or with their or like just there were just grumpy parents that were just always mad or there was for for me a lot of it was there were the parents who were working oftentimes single you know single parent households um and the rule would be no friends inside the house so like I remember there was this kid named Sam and he had a basketball hoop so we would go down and play basketball a lot at his house but he had I think he had like a single mom and he had a couple siblings and the rule was no nobody inside the house when his mom was at work so we'd be out playing basketball it'd be like freezing cold it'd be like this practically and it'd be like you would just be playing for hours and our hands would be all like covered in dirt from the basketball picking up the dirt off of the little driveway and and then he would just be like he just like go into his house and he just like cook an entire sheet of totino pizza rolls and just eat them and we'd be like can we get somebody's like sorry nobody's allowed in the house what a dick move sam gillette and i will

use first and last names like just eating them in the doorway just past the barrier never breaking

eye contact i spent so much time for i don't know probably a few a few years of my life it was kind of again we was very much about playing we called it booties which was a style of basketball where it's like everybody against everybody so it was like three kids and or it's sometimes called 21 where you get the rebound and it's... your ball you have to go out past the three-point line and then come back in and and like anyway it's just a way that you can play basketball competitively but you don't have like enough people for teams and we were there all the time playing 21 or playing booties and like never once did we ever go inside that house and again there's no way his mom would have known I think he was more into the rules than she was and I resent that to this day can we get her on the

show like let's ask her if that was ever even a rule that might not have even Andrew did you just

drop a coffee cup in a police station it never even occurred i never i never ran this by the alleged source of the rule she was kind of a she wasn't a scary mom there weren't that many scary moms but she was like a serious mom like she was the kind of mom that like didn't do a lot she didn't like come home and go like how are all of you kids you know how are you urchins that are in my side driveway playing basketball it was like you know and it's all one last thing and then we should thank some donors and figure out if you've been mumbling or not but like here's the craziest thing for me to think about with that story is that the great likelihood is that my memory of sam's mom coming home is that she had those kind of sleeves on that were the kind of like 80s puffed sleeves that if we take it back to the like apparel in the workplace there was a certain kind of look of puffed sleeves that was a woman who often worked in an office yeah sometimes in a secretarial capacity yeah yeah yeah i don't i don't know anything about what about what her job was but like i just remember a few glimpses of her and her just being very kind of serious and i mean probably just flipping worn out from life right a couple of kids single mom working and um and and like she's probably 32 yeah i know you know like she was probably 32 years old you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off like i am so much older than this person who i was kind of mildly i don't know terrified is not the right word but just kind of like just i i had no ability to even possibly imagine what the life scenario was of this person who was to me now a child this

This is taking us in a different direction, and I'll try to keep this short. But something kind of – this is related to puffed shoulders.

Okay, good.

Pardon me. Was my mic open for that?

We'll have to go back to the tape.

Sorry. So you know that – I think I even mentioned this on yesterday's show when we were talking about Steve Poole. Of course, I have this sort of ongoing project of finding old VHS tapes around town and then digitizing them, bringing them into my studio here, right? and I post them to YouTube, just the commercials. And I saw a commercial. This happened probably about a year ago. I can't believe I never told you this, for Pedigree Dog Food. And it featured a dog, I'm going to say aficionado. I can't remember if she was like, she might have been a groomer at the time, but she definitely had show dogs. And it was one of those sort of testimonial commercials about how good Pedigree is.

Who could have played this? Did we talk about this? I don't remember what the end of it is, but what you're saying so far is stirring memories in this old, sad, brittle brain of mine.

The reason it pops to mind now is because it was notable that she was a young woman, but she sort of had that 80s – no, I'm sorry. This would have been probably early 90s, but sort of that – she sort of fashioned herself in a way that actually I think made her look more mature and older than she really was. It was one of those things where as a 47-year-old, I was watching this thing and I had to remind myself, oh, this woman is probably like a very young woman at the time. It was just sort of the fashion of the time or her fashion of the time.

Possibly those kind of biggish glasses.

Very big glasses, yes. But I sometimes do something with commercials where when it's a testimonial commercial or a focus on somebody who's supposed to be real, I will Google them and see if there's – like there was another commercial for some kid who – I do remember this now. Who, like, I think was a dressage champion or something, and the commercial was for coffee, and I looked it up. I'm like, I don't think that person was a real dressage champion. They were so specific in what she won that I actually was digging into old records to see if this person – Like, we need to run this by Ann Romney. I don't know. Yeah. We need to get some confirmation on this. So, anyway, every now and then I'll just sort of rabbit hole on that. Didn't you email this woman? I did. So, I didn't realize I told you this, so we can end this now. No, no, no. I like being reminded of it. Googled this woman and I'm like, oh, she really is somebody who, you know, works with dogs specifically a lot. She is now a veterinarian or had been for a long time in not just the Cleveland area, but the rural Cleveland area that I grew up in, like south of Cleveland. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it might have literally been Medina County, which is like very specifically where I grew up. And she was still practicing.

And so I sent an email actually using the online form. I sent a note saying, hey, this is for, you know, Dr. So-and-so. I don't know if this will ever reach you, but I found this old commercial that you were featured in back in the early 90s. And I think maybe here's a link. Yeah, I think I said here's a link to it on YouTube if you want. And she wrote back.

I was trying to get those views.

Get those clicks. And, yeah, within a couple of hours. And I felt a little bit, you know, maybe slightly creepy. Or I definitely didn't feel optimistic that I would get a response. But she wrote back. She was so kind, so enthusiastic. She said that she had these on tapes somewhere, but they were long gone and thought she'd never see them again. And I just thought it was so cool. And she was like practically in the backyard of where I grew up.

And also, what a nice I mean, I know you didn't realize you were doing this when you were digitizing this, but like it's so much better for her to have it on YouTube. Yeah. Now it's just like, oh, hey, this is a weird story. but like i was in this pet food commercial here's the link like that's just i bet you the number of people in her life who have now seen this commercial and enjoyed it is has gone up like you know by a factor of a hundred or something because see how clicks it has yeah exactly i guess that's a very knowable thing because other than you that's just going to be people in her

life who have now clicked on it here let's see here i'll just play it for you here pedigree

little champions is perfect for my little champions all the beef and little champions has gone through the USDA inspection process. The proteins contained are high quality and they're the building blocks for good nutrition.

Pedigree, developed with Vets. You know what? I accidentally clicked on the one that I didn't upload. That was uploaded by Analog Memories, but that's the same person. Her name is Dr. Dresser, and I can't find mine. But she was in a series of these ads. She even told me in her email, they came and they rattled off a few different versions of the commercial in one day with her. Really? Oh, like they recorded a few different versions of the spot. They just recorded a bunch of, here's the one, like how many views. Basically, she said they chopped it into a whole bunch of different. How many views does this have?

New dog food made specially for my little champions and anybody else who has small dogs. Dr. Christine Dresser, veterinarian and top breeder of champion pugs.

See, with the full name like that, it was easy to kind of Google her. Champion pugs. It has. Oh, that's right. She wrote to me all about her.

We've bred some that can actually breed.

I forgot. she went into detail about the dogs that she has now um and uh i'm making it sound like she wrote a novel back to me it was just very uh it was just very sweet and personal but um it has uh 54 million views wow that's pretty good okay now honestly she's being a little thirsty it's six

it's 262 views okay but 262 views the great likelihood is what would you say 250 of those have to be friends of hers right unless people are googling that commercial which they might be But, like, that's – I think that we can fairly safely assume that a couple of hundred times she's now been able to refer people to this helpfully digitized thing that you did.

I like to think so, but I also like to think that she had puffy sleeves in this. She doesn't.

Oh, no.

So what was I doing there? Big glasses. What was I doing? Any of it? Feathered hair? Big glasses for sure. Bags. And just sort of like a – how do you describe this? I'm so, you know, I don't know the words to describe style, but like almost like a prairie core sort of dress, you know, like I don't know how to describe that.

You know what comes to my mind, and this is now actually, I'm just mixing so many different kind of eras together, but sort of the look that they have Dustin Hoffman in in the movie Tootsie.

Yeah, yeah.

Kind of like those glasses, that kind of feathered hair, but like with more with puffier sleeves. I feel like that's more like solidly middle 80s. But as you get later in the 80s and just a little bit into the early 90s, there's this kind of particular look that I do think has had a lot of a lot of women who were, you know, maybe in their 20s at first glance, appearing like they might be in their 30s or 40s. And certainly to my, you know, 13 or 14 year old brain, they all look like they were in their 70s.

Yes, exactly.

Because they were all older than me, and they were all Sam's mom, and they were all not letting us in the house.

Or were they? Or were they as Sam walks away and his limp becomes less and less pronounced.

Hey, let's thank some of our donors who are supporting TBTL generously on a monthly basis. and it is the way that we are able to do this for a job five days a week, 4,086 episodes in. Folks like Jeremy Jewell, who's in Leawood, Arkansas.

Oh, wow. Thank you, Jeremy. That's cool.

Yeah. I'll be totally honest with you. Out of the corner of my little eye, I thought we were looking at maybe Lakewood, Washington, just because that's something that comes up. But no, it's Leawood, Arkansas, where Jeremy is. Thanks, Jeremy. And congratulations on not saying Arizona, because it gets confusing when you see a big AR in front of you there.

Yeah, but I'm familiar with Arkansas. You know that I've, oddly enough, flown into the Bentonville, Arkansas airport two times in my life, which is a lot for someone who lives in the greater Portland area. And doesn't have, like, family. Or business at Walmart. Yes. Is that where they're based? I am a fan. Yeah, it is. That's the, I mean, the short story on Bentonville, I think it's, I really actually think it's one of the more interesting kind of little cities in America because, and I know that's not Leawood and Bentonville are different places, but Bentonville is where Walmart was started and they have an amazing art museum called Crystal Bridges because one of the, one of Sam Walton's children, his daughter, I believe is a real fan and patron of the arts. so they have this incredible art museum there they have there's just a lot of like infrastructure and interesting stuff that's happening in this city that might not be happening if it didn't happen to be the place where walmart started like for a while there was i the rumor was there was a rule that if your company did a lot of business with walmart like if you they sold your you know product you needed to have an executive level person living within like 40 minutes of the corporate headquarters so if they needed to call like a all hands you'd have someone there just

if you're just somebody who has products sold at Walmart yes so if you're Mr. Kleenex you have to

have one of your top executives this was what Andrew somebody told me okay now remember I stood outside of a kid's house freezing for three years from based on something someone told me so I don't i can't say this is officially the rule somebody out there knows but the rumor was that benton because there are these very beautiful neighborhoods in bentonville and this like these big developments of these you know really gorgeous homes and the word was these are all the people that are like basically like high up at various companies that do a ton of business with walmart and they all live here or at least maintain homes here because part of the rule was if you wanted to and me i don't know if it was every product or just products that did a certain volume but like the it had attracted a lot of people to the city of bentonville who were not walmart employees necessarily but but like you know people that sold things at walmart or companies so um but the main thing is that the hotel which i think is called museum 21 that's in bentonville arkansas is the edgiest hotel i've ever stayed in from an art standpoint well i remember going in there they had huge blown up photographs on all the walls or a lot of the walls of people having dental work done whoa like yeah like up like somebody going into someone's mouth with tools this was on the walls

of this and the photos were of like the scene they weren't close-ups of the mouth they weren't

they were close-ups they were close-ups of relative my memory is they were relative they look at this way it was closer up than i've ever seen in a hilton garden express interest like and and what i what i put together was this was art and when you went into the gym hanging above the treadmill was suspended a huge fiberglass rendering of um batman but let's just say a much more rotund version of batman hanging over the treadmill was and i use this term advisedly some people like like it some people don't a fat Batman yeah was hanging over the treadmill when I was a kid Tony

my friend Tony and I used to make a lot of movies and we tried to make a movie called Fat Man which was about a fat Batman it was the 80s the funniest part about it was the bat symbol if you can picture the bat symbol Tony was very good at all kinds of well especially illustration but all kinds of like kind of creative endeavors but he drew the bat symbol which was exactly the same Except the middle part of the bat on the bottom, instead of coming down to a point, was like a big belly. It was like round. It was like the bat symbol, but round at the bottom.

How did you even – I hesitate to make this joke because if I got you into all of the things Peter Williams and I did, this will fall apart. But, I mean, how did you get there? Fat man from Batman?

Yeah, no. That's crazy. Yeah, no. I think that was – well, here, do you want to know the really – the irony of this whole thing is I believe it was Tony's idea. I was the fat one. like i was no but i was like i just was and he and he was like a very like kind of skinny kind

of rangy guy and yet he played fat man oh geez well because he you know that was also weird about those things in those days was who got to be the sort of quote-unquote star yeah right it was like probably the kid whose house you were at maybe the kid who had the camera like it felt like I remember Peter and I were all

negotiating that out unfortunately I probably won more of those arguments of being kind of like who's gonna be the the protagonist I do remember he got to be our whole move was just reenacting sketches from Almost Live I mean you want to talk about the we didn't even have the creativity to go from Batman to Fat Man we just would be like we love this it turns out now possibly racist sketch that they used to play on Almost Live which was called Billy Kwan and What it was was a parody of like a martial arts film. Oh, okay. And you know, I don't know, and I don't think I'm really the person to weigh in on it. I guess I would say I wouldn't make the video now where we were just obsessed with martial arts films and with the bad like overdub. You know, we just thought that was the most hilarious thing. And so we thought that the Billy Kwan sketches on Almost Live were really, really funny. I will give them credit in that the character of Billy Kwan was played by a person who appeared to be an Asian American man it was not played by a white guy that was doing some kind of yellow face so I guess maybe we'll give it that but we would just like reenact sketches that we had seen on almost live so that was our level of creativity and there was always like I said a negotiation about who got to be what character in the sketch all I know is that I sent you this Batman and it's

blowing your mind oh no you sent me no I've been clicking around on all these hotels in Bentonville, Arkansas, to see if I can see any of the art in the lobby. Was it art in the lobby?

My memory was it was kind of in the lobby as you were checking in and maybe in some of the halls, but I have sent you a photograph of the Batman. Oh, okay. So I did not hallucinate that, thank God. Alright, I'm not seeing... Let's get back to thinking of donors today, Andrew. Don't you think we've... I've gone on long enough about the magical place that is Bentonville, Arkansas. How about we talk about the magical place that is Bothell, Washington, where Bettina Mackey is. I like this Batman. That's all I'll say. I mean, it's a cool looking Batman. And again, the placement of it, I mean, just think about, and who knows what's there now. It's very shiny. It's giving.

Oh, goodness. Oh, wait till I play this tape later. It's giving S&M, I feel like, a little bit.

It's giving latex Batman. It really is. I don't know how Bettina Mackey feels about hearing us say, it's giving latex Batman, but too late. You paid for it, Bettina. Thank you. Also, Laura Hahn is in Kenoki, Michigan.

Oh, sounds very wholesome.

Is that where we're going? Is that how we're going to say that? Kenoki? Yeah, I think so. Kenoki. Or Kenneki? Oh, shoot. No, but there's Kenkini, but Kenkini is not Kenoki. I'm guessing. I'm going with Kenoki.

Do you want me to call a business in Kenoki?

Yes, could you? To find out Please, call a Duncan in Kenoki, Michigan Thank you, Laura Thanks also to Jamie Bever in Seattle, Washington Thank you, Jamie Thanks, Jamie Appreciate you Lindsay Slaker is in Madison, Wisconsin We're getting a pretty strong Midwest representation Between Kenoki and Madison

We need like a real kind of coastal city here Like a big metropolis I have amazing news for you. To balance the Midwest.

Would you take Los Angeles, California? I certainly would. Would you accept Los Angeles where Abigail Sherlock is? Thank you, Abigail. Thanks, Abigail. I will be down in L.A. in a couple of weeks. I'm going to be doing that profile of the comedian Taylor Tomlinson, who's going to be hosting the new late-night game show after midnight. So maybe I'll run into Abigail. If you're over on the west side, Abigail, if you're jogging around the Playa del Rey area, You may see a heavyset podcaster huffing and puffing up a hill, and that's me.

Dressed like Batman.

Give a wave, please. Thank you to all of our donors. Thanks for making TV Chill possible. We couldn't do this without you. Thank you, baby.

Thank you, baby.

Hello, and welcome to Top Story. I don't know if this fully qualifies as a top story, but it took me on a little journey, Andrew, that I again I'm very big are we going to check

the tape oh my goodness gracious yes and you thought we were going to remember it tomorrow oh my goodness gracious all right let's do it okay my one problem here after being so cocky about this is I saved this tape and now I why am I not

seeing it day another victory for the OG taking down the sweats the impostors among

us this is funny i saved this file in fact i better have this file somewhere because i am not finding it anywhere remember i said out loud that shocked me i said out loud to you what i was naming it as i was naming it and now i'm not seeing it on my desktop anywhere so my apologies for interrupting you wait let me check Check one more place. It's always in the last place you look, Andrew. Yeah, because you stop looking. Here it is. I accidentally saved this in last night's podcast folder. My apologies. That's on me. I'm ready to go here. I do not have the ability to really needle drop well, but this was the beginning of the show here.

Now, what I don't like is having to hear myself here. Oh, but this isn't like old-time Luke from way back in the day. I'm sure there are at least four drops that I'm using in this intro that were used within the first week of the show's existence. That's true. So I'm going to skip ahead a little bit here.

I can't be super precise, but let's... Oh, wait. When I just said in a collector's series, it's got to be before... Okay, let's do that. Okay, I'm going to go back a little bit more. I'm just going to hear your entire intro. I'm just guessing here some kind of medication that you maybe... That's not you. ...and have taken none of, or maybe too much of today.

And, uh... This is Veronique. Right on. Listener Veronique. Midnight, cowboy. That's not a thing. Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheets? My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. And boom goes the dynamite. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it is really, really, really cold in here. In a case gone cold, could a podcast bring the heat? So cold that it's actually endangered the broadcast today. I'll explain how and why in a moment. By the way, we're at episode 4086 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Lots to talk about today, including the fact that Google Maps has apologized. That's it. That was it. It was around where the fun began. Case closed. That was where I thought I heard something, but I was just listening intently, Andrew, and I did not hear it. So it was in my head. And I'm sorry that I've, I'm sorry I scared you. I'm a little disappointed. I thought.

You wanted to be mumbling Durst-like into the microphone? How do I feel about this? I think it would have made for better podcasting if I had been mumbling to myself there. I don't know. I can't see how that could have been any better. But yeah, I guess you were right.

Not worth the journey. No, no, no, no. I'm saying I think you should take this as a W. Yeah, I guess so. It means that you're not muttering. Yeah, it's true. You're not muttering as mindlessly as you maybe were worried you were. Or if I am, at least I got that mic closed down. Yes. Well, that's the thing. That's why I knew early on. That's why my suspicion was that I was wrong because, again, you're very systematic about it is, I guess, the word I'm looking for.

It's happened before, though. Like, I remember there have been times where I've coughed or sneezed or something, and then I've had to apologize. So, anyway, there we go. I will not belabor it any longer.

I saw this story about Google Maps sending a bunch of people who were driving from Vegas back to Los Angeles after the F1 Grand Prix. By the way, did you see any of that? Did you hear about any of that? That was a wild thing in Las Vegas. No, I didn't. So they turned the Las Vegas Strip into a Formula One track. I'm talking like the road you drive on down the Strip in Vegas. and i'm assuming some kind of loop or whatever into an f1 track they built all these crazy they drained the fountains in front of the venice um the venice casino they they covered up all of the walk they built all these walkways over the strip and then they covered them all up so you couldn't see the cars when you're walking on them so you so you couldn't get any free looks and they just basically the word on the street was completely destroyed las vegas for like the last six months they cut down all the trees in front of the bellagio fountain like actual living trees all of this so they could race these cars on the strip no i this is all news to me yeah i mean i don't like look las vegas is not necessarily known for its verdant nature like on the strip but there was something about the trees at the bellagio just literally being cut down i mean i'm sure they'll just replant them now through some unholy you know BS they'll go like buy another tree that's mature and put it in but anyway there was something about hearing that they were cutting the trees down that kind of I was really feeling my Joni Mitchell you guys are paving paradise aka Las Vegas okay so a lot of people went out for this formula one thing and when some of them were trying to drive back to Los Angeles including a woman named Shelby Easler and her family They were heading back between Nevada and Southern California, and I guess there was a series of dust storms on whatever the main road that they had taken to get in to Vegas. And so Google Maps was trying to get them away from where the dust storms were and sent them on basically some kind of a detour that took them on a gravel road that eventually disappeared.

into a bumpy dirt trail and what was wild was there was like hundreds of cars doing this and I can totally identify with this feeling of being like this doesn't seem right but so many other people are on this same thing so maybe it is right and eventually like the very front car just realized that this like gravel road into a bumpy dirt road just was no more road it was just like a scrub brush and then they had to do like a 25 point turn and then tell the car behind them there's no more road and then that car did a 25 point turn and then they told the car behind them there's no more road and this went all the way back to wherever the beginning of this or i should say actually the back of this nightmare was like it was so narrow i've seen video of this including on this woman shelby easler's tick tock page that you couldn't it wasn't like you could turn your car around and just drive out and tell everyone on your way out like hey y'all this is a problem the road was so narrow or what you want to call the road that the the last person in had to be the first person out and there were like teslas dying left and right and then blocking the road welcome to joe biden's america by the way yeah right oh that's right oh tesla's not because they couldn't handle the terrain but because they just ran out of their they ran out of juice their juice um but uh and so so this uh this really came to everyone's attention because um shelby easler put a video up on tiktok of her experience and it's kind of showing um them getting you know increasingly more suspicious about this road they're on i think it's her brother who's maybe driving and and she's kind of like it's showing her texting her work saying we're lost in the desert i'm gonna miss my 6 p.m call and then like just kind of a series of little pictures of different things, but she's put this music underneath it, Andrew, which I keep hearing and seeing on TikTok. And this has kind of become the music that you play when things are not going great. I'm going to play you a little bit from Shelby Easler's TikTok. There's no talking on this video, right? But this is the audio backdrop to all of her images of how bad this trip was. is this ringing any bells for you my friend no this song because i went to the original source and this was created by somebody on tiktok who's under the handle Origineal Gelud Like the word original But misspelled And then I don't know what G-E-L-U-I-D And this is the full version Which is basically A lot of the same thing Let me see I'm going to get to the good part

this has millions and millions of views on tiktok this has been used so many times everybody who is so mad at you for playing the sitting song and the every day i have a worse song and then they have to revise their judgment of my previous song it's almost done the only way past it is through it andrew and we're done the worst is over uh did any of that uh jog your memory i'm sure there might be a couple of listeners who figured out what the song actually is no and i gotta say i wasn't focusing on that as much as i probably should have been like trying to recognize it i was just like trying to survive it just trying to survive thinking about our listeners trying to come up with a new catchphrase for tbtl like trying to think about if you can monetize after these messages we dare you to listen um uh what uh what is it it is the theme song from the movie home alone oh i don't think i'd ever recommend somewhere in my memory the version by original Gilud. It's called Shitty Fluted. The Shitty Fluted version of Somewhere in My Memory, the theme from the Home Alone movies. Okay. See, I don't think I would have recognized that even if you played the original for me. Do you have the original there? You know what? That would have been one more production step. Here, I'll get it. What is it actually called? It's called Somewhere in My Memory. Okay. Somewhere in My Memory and the photo and this is just how out of touch I am with the internet. The photo on original Geludes or however you say this user's name the photo is just like a Macaulay Culkin doing the like classic hands-on his face and then just like a very bad photoshopped recorder uh-huh like under his mouth uh-huh yeah and that's the yeah so this is the what you're playing is the real one john williams i didn't know he made oh that makes sense i didn't know he made movie music

yeah but i would have never identified that

People often forget that Catherine O'Hara is the mom in that movie. I know. On the subject of how unbelievably varied and interesting her career has been.

Veeves and I were just talking about that. I don't know why after these messages is coming up so much today, but we did a show that you were

assuming that the this whole thing is ending pretty soon after me playing that music i wondered why

you said monetizing yeah you're trying to build a life trying to build a life raft i didn't know what you meant before but genevieve put together a show several weeks ago that i think would have been up your alley luke um at least in concept if i i probably ruined the show in some way but it was all commercials that use people who star in christopher guest movies and so we went on this Oh, what a great episode. There are so many great commercials. There were these commercials for, was it the Dish Network, where they were trying to get people off of cable, so they were portraying a bunch of cable executives, and it had so many people that we love. It was basically the series of commercials. I remember, though, I think they had this guy. Is his name John Michael Higgins? It had him in it, and Jennifer Coolidge ends up making an appearance. They're like in a boardroom, right? In a boardroom, and there's a whole series of them. I tell you, it's as good as some television. And when you watch a whole bunch of them in a row, you're like, wait, this is like a Christopher Guest movie. Can we just like can we string these together into a series? So good.

Speaking of things in that universe, I don't have any more information on this than a headline that I saw this morning. But I guess they're making a Spinal Tap prequel. Oh. Christopher Guest, Michael McKeon and Harry Shearer. And I think Elton John is in it and maybe Paul McCartney, your favorite Paul McCartney is in it. Um, and you know, uh, I mean, to me, like the, the, you know, Spinal Tap, the original Spinal Tap is a, is a pretty, uh, is sort of high up in my, in, in the, the, the, the list of, of comedies that I really, really love. I don't know if a reboot of it or if a prequel with them all obviously like much, much older, um, but still in the wigs. I don't know if it'll work or not, but I'll give it as our friend Camaro Kev says a day in court because of how much I love the original Spinal Tap. And to me, some of that humor is basically timeless. Like, I don't know. I feel like, you know, a lot of the reboots and the re-releases of things, it feels like everything's moved on from those characters. But these characters are so ludicrous in the first place, I could see a world in which I'd still find some humor in it.

And it's still in the hands of the original creators. So that helps. And also, Guest has—although Guest did not direct that, of course. So I don't know why Rob Reiner did A.K.A. Marty DeBerge But it doesn't sound like he's going to be attached to this Or did you say that

No I have only I literally saw like a headline On my phone by way of the internet So as much as I I just saw a picture of the Three main guys from Spinal Tap The original and then I saw that They're making a Spinal Tap Prequel with and I saw the names Elton John and Paul McCartney So that's as much as I know about it

Can I ask you a question that is not related to this at all? Please. When you were in Bentonville, Arkansas, is there a chance you were in a hotel slash modern art museum called 21C? Yeah, that's where I was staying. Oh, that is where you were staying. Okay, yeah, so it's actually, it's not just, maybe you said this and I didn't understand that it was actually attached to an art museum. It's a combo art museum, modern art museum and hotel. I thought it was just a regular hotel that had Benonkers art in the lobby.

To be honest with you, I don't know, because there's this other really big museum or art gallery called Crystal Bridges, which is not the thing that's attached to the hotel. No. So I don't know if I fully grasp that I was both in a hotel and a gallery or a museum slash hotel, even though the name is, what is it called again, 21?

21C. But, yeah, it says it's a short walk from the Crystal Bridges. 21c museum hotel bentonville is a boutique hotel contemporary art museum cultural center and uh

home to the hive restaurant so and place you can see someone getting dental work done in large

large photographs and so i'm looking for those photos but i'll bet you that was just probably an exhibit that is like yeah i think it was just a show i see interesting i mean i give them credit

though yeah this looks awesome that's like you know you're really committing to this idea on Because you're going to get some complaints. I mean, you're going to get some people coming through being like, why is there a giant latex Batman over my treadmill? Why am I looking at?

Yes, there's a better photo of that that shows all the treadmills. Like now that I see the context of what this Batman is hanging over, I'm way more impressed. And I was impressed to begin with, to be clear. But, yeah, it's like it's very – it would be kind of close to your head as you kind of walk in and get on one of these machines. And you're kind of getting into a –

I mean, I don't know what the messaging is there. I don't even want to try to unpack it as far as, like, what, you know, are you, what are you telling the people that are in there working out? But I just like that it's thought-provoking and, again, weird.

This place is amazing.

You want to go to Bentonville sometime?

I certainly do. Can we do the TV television from Bentonville just because I want to check this place out?

Well, I mean, I'll tell you something else. And, you know, there's, remember when Walmart was the enemy, Andrew? Remember before Amazon? Isn't that funny that Walmart now seems brick and mortar? Yeah. Like Walmart was destroying all of the small businesses, but now it's like, well, God, I'll take a Walmart over a Jeff Buff Bezos project or whatever. But in downtown Bentonville, there's the original office, or I think it's maybe the original, it's a recreation of the office that the guy, Sam Walton, was working at. i mean he had like a just a little store on this like little main street like in main street usa he had a little store and just grew and grew and grew and you know but they have a they have his office like perfectly preserved or a recreation of his office and it's so cool i so want it for my office it's like that perfect like wood paneling 70s like a leather chair he was a little more into hunting than i would be into but he really loved these particular kind of dogs i think they were like some kind of irish wolf houndy thing or something but like just like the basically like the walmart museum which is kind of in the back of like where the original little soda fountain of walmart or whatever was again for a company that's taken on this whole other cultural kind of meaning and and it's uh something that's been really uh you know criticized over the years and probably rightfully so to be in the cradle of its creation and actually be like well this is at this moment it's kind of a cool store like when when it's this guy and his family and some employees and this is what he's doing you know it's it was it's weird to see it's like it's like seeing the death star when it was just a little baby no i remember looking at that office you've

told me about that and i think there's like a website dedicated to that museum or whatever and i remember looking at it and having the same feelings you did although i only saw it online but um you get to see it in person when we go to benton oh my god can how are we gonna justify that please donate to the well listen we can live in a museum we have to just well we have to hope

that uh john sklaroff doesn't hear this uh-huh and then we have to cook up a plan we have to cook up some kind of a boondoggle yes that'll get us to bentonville how do we trick him into getting

us to bentonville so i do want to go back though i'm going to go way back and i realize i'm whip sawing this show all the freak over the place but um this google story about the drivers going down the dirt road and having to turn around i wanted to ask you a question about los angeles um when Genevieve and I were living in Los Angeles we went on just like these weird as you know my time there was strange right like I was most of my time before I quit my KCRW job and was working you know full-time on TBTL like that changed everything for me but when I had that job and I was still doing TBTL as you know and as has been well covered on the show I was very stressed out I was working very long hours but also just kind of like very stressed and kind of unhappy and probably not in the in the right place for where I wanted to be in my career at that moment And so that really weighed on me. And my first year there was not the happiest of times. But Vives and I would like, because of that, like carve out these little adventures for ourselves. I mean, very local adventures, sometimes around finding a laundromat and then seeing what would be in any particular neighborhood. And sort of having this sort of weird feeling of trying to escape the stresses, the daily stresses of the week or whatever. And I just have this memory of being in that sort of mindset on like a Saturday or a Sunday. I feel like it was a Sunday because I was starting to get those, as the kids now call or the kids used to call Sunday scaries. I remember sort of having that pit in my stomach on the Sunday results. And and these and I just being on Ventura Boulevard and just being like, you know, you always hear about this, this road Ventura Boulevard. Of course, it's, you know, crystallized in songs like I think Free Fall in by Tom Petty and other things that you always hear is a Sheryl Crow song or whatever. and I think we were both like still pretty impressed with the fact that like so many things in Los Angeles you've heard about your whole life and they're just like regular daily things here we're like what if you know we're on Ventura right now what if we just keep driving we'll just drive to the end of it or whatever let's just keep going and have you ever done that because it ends up being a dirt path in the

Thank you.

hills wow you must have gone on it for a long time we did i don't know why i had to give you i don't know why i had to give you that whole setup for it but it's just such a weird memory of me like almost literally trying to outrun the scaries yeah sort of i can imagine so we had to like turn the car around and just be like i guess we can't go any further on this it's just i'm pretty i mean yeah it's ventura right it's a very long it would go through the i assume the hollywood

hills but then just keep going i think it goes up through like calabasas and stuff i mean it goes it goes i've actually got a map out now so you probably jumped on you know uh let's see if i

can actually find it i'll be honest with you i'll go with whatever you say here because i don't remember finally you've just beat me i'm exhausted no i just don't remember you know i'm really bad with geography anyway and it's been a while since i lived there and i never knew it that well to begin with but i just remember being like well let's just keep driving like what do we have to lose we might have been somewhere pretty far east anyway yeah and the map was saying to take the highway but we were just like no what if we just sort of take it and we i think we're trying to

head back west maybe yeah and i think you probably took it until it looks like it hits something called valley circle boulevard which is out at lake calabasas okay that's what and then you probably jumped on some ancillary thing where i think it kind of ends in calabasas but if you were just driving and driving i bet you you just kept getting on increasingly smaller roads yeah yeah i guess it was just a nothing um that late calabasas you know who used to live out there maybe still does i hope uh is roger lowell the owner of roger's exciting tattletale interesting yeah um and i don't know why i needed to throw that in there but i did no i can see exactly i can see exactly where it probably started to get um very very um uh sort of un not uninhabited because it's not an unbusy part of california but like so different than the ventura boulevard you started on right right and shockingly so because you're like well this is just going to be a big wide road forever and then all of a sudden you're like on some little weird dirt thing you're like what even is happening yeah am i actually have i done it have i fully entered a david lynch film and that's more mulholland i know but still go with me oh was it mulholland oh no i think it might have been mulholland don't let's not make this an l i think it was please don't cut this out i beg of you yeah that actually makes way more sense now i'm looking at it i'm looking at it

oh my god let's go back to the beginning of the show and listen to see if my mic was open oh my god no no no but like yeah oh yeah no no this is yeah no no that makes so much more sense

it wasn't this is getting it was we so mahal and drive and i'm looking at it and i can see oh my god dude it's like it gets so in the like mountains yes yes yes crazy it's like in western

malibu and everything's just like completely like rural this is what it is this is what it is so anyways this is what it means now i know where roger from roger's tattletown if you ever need

to stop by roger's house but roger used to tell this story and i feel like i i'm gonna we should do the emails and v-mails and i should be careful because i you know i again i surely hope that my friend Roger is alive he was certainly not young back when I used to see him on the regular but let me just put it this way he used to tell a story about living out there uh out there in Calabasas and one of his neighbors it turns out let's just say was a player for the Los Angeles Dodgers and let's just say that by by Roger's telling he may or may not have started a little bit of an assignation with the wife of said Dodgers player and there may or may not have in the case that roger would say he would be spending some time with this person that you know probably was not not on the up and up let's just say but would be listening to the dodger game to figure out when the dodger would be home and and that would be this timing and you know this guy's full of stories this could be totally apocryphal sure i want to i want to offer that in case there's any kind of lawsuit uh associated with this but i will when for some reason when i think of calabasas i think not of the kardashians who also famously live out there not of of jessica simpson and nicholas shea who also kind of made calabasas a known place in those reality shows but i think of roger maybe or maybe not hooking up with a dodger player's wife and listening to the game to hear when that person would be heading back towards lake calabasas Maybe on Ventura Boulevard

And it wasn't Cal Ripken Jr.

year? No, it was not. There's echoes of that story, though, right? Yes, yes. I'm trying to remember who the star was that the rumor Kevin Costner, of course.

This is all detailed in Sam Dingman's really great podcast about the topic, The Rumor, I think it's called.

Oh, good call. Yeah, I was blanking on the name of that. I listened to that all the way through. I loved it. Also, congrats to Dingman, by the way. I don't know if he's still listening to us fool around about and confuse Mulholland Drive. Oh, stop it. He's on and he's producing and hosting a new I believe Meadowlark Media podcast. That sounds really interesting about stories related to sports. I listened to the first one. It's very good. Congratulations. Sam Dingman just keeps a rising star that keeps

rising. Here I go once again with the email. Every week I hope that it's from a female. Oh man, it's not from a female.

Alright, we're going to have to keep this a little brief today because Andrew, this coffee is running through me. Not in a number two way.

i don't want to be that's funny that you say that i don't i mean i know that that can happen but um we're talking the other day and when you you assumed that i meant or you meant i don't remember exactly what it was but coffee making you go i always think number one first and foremost because

that will that will run through you i will here's the thing i remember watching one of those like a and e used to have maybe they still do all these shows about people in jail like called like lock up and i don't know what i forget all the names but i used to watch them with great fascination and i remember and i was probably like in my 20s or something and i just remember this one episode where they were interviewing a woman who was incarcerated and she was kind of taking the filmmakers through her day in jail and she was like you know i i get up you know whatever and then i have my coffee and that gets everything going and then i go and i use the restroom and i had never first of all i wasn't a coffee drinker really in my 20s i had no idea the association for some people between you get your coffee and then it gets things moving for you but that was so that was the first i ever thought of it so forever in my brain having coffee and needing to use a restroom equals just what that lady said on that a and e lockup documentary even though it may play out differently for different people and right now it's playing out for me in needing to

go number one so well then let's uh keep this very short here um you know what i have some uh i Remember I told you there are some voicemails that I found from way back this summer that I'd accidentally missed? Our friend Langley called in with some. Well, apparently. That's our gut expert. Exactly. And Langley, I think, maybe recently turned 10 and was feeling a bit more, you know, worldly and mature when she left these.

Hi, this is Langley. And now that I'm 10, I had to ask my dad a question. and it was if you had ever used pick-up lines gone wrong on my mom.

Now, were you able to hear that? Pick-up lines gone wrong. Yeah, Langley's now 10, and so she's like, okay, I'm going to start asking my dad about pick-up lines and if he's used any pick-up lines gone wrong on my mom.

I asked him if he used one, like, hi, you smell like trash, can I take you out? I just wanted to tell you that. Bye.

You smell like trash, can I take you out, is the pick-up line suggested there. by Langley. Gone wrong. Gone wrong. We had, I think, some follow-ups.

Hi, it's Langley, and I called like a few seconds ago, and I decided that instead of jokes, I'm probably going to be sending you like take-up lines a lot. So I have two lines.

Easy, Langley. I'm taken.

The first one is, is your name Google? You have everything I'm looking for.

Okay, so that's a good one. That's pretty good here.

And the second one is, are you from Tennessee? Because we're doing only 10 ICs. Bye.

Ooh, that's very relevant to our interests.

Are you Bing? Because you want sponsored TBTL. That word?

I don't know.

I remember. Obviously, I'm not the type of person who uses pickup lines. But in, well, Langley, obviously, please close your ears. Earmuffs on this one. But my favorite pickup line that we used to joke around about was, are those astronaut pants because your ass is out of this world. Oh, man. I always liked, do you believe in love at first sight

or should I walk by again? Oh, yeah. That was a strong one. Sure, yeah. Of course, did it hurt? What, did it hurt when you fell out of heaven? Very swingers vibes, yeah. That's a one. Yeah. Okay, well, there we go. Wow, I love, you know what's great about us doing this show for roughly 800 years like we have? the the listeners who are younger are growing up before our very years and I love I really do I love the kind of like progression for for Langley of kind of like how she relates to comedy and kind of like going from you know just These are all the phases of comedy that that I remember going through and I'm still going through, but like getting really into different formats for jokes and stuff. And like I loved calling into radio shows like it's really fun that we've been around long enough to actually kind of go on this ride with the listeners of all ages.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I will. First of all, I apologize for missing those when they were left way back this summer. I mean, now it sounds like we're a summer away from Langley and becoming 11, and I don't know what we're going to move on from pick up lines from there.

Yeah, well, we'll all be listening with great interest. Keep leaving the messages, Langley, and other kids. I will tell you this. We don't pick favorites, but if you're a kid and you leave us a message, it's probably moving to the top of the list. Unless it's bad, and then way at the bottom. In which case, unless it's bad, and then you're bad. Yeah, exactly. That's all. What a way to end the program. In a case gone cold, could a podcast bring the heat? Why won't anybody let me babysit? I don't get it. All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. We will be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Hi, guys. It's Danny from Arizona, and I was just making my lunch, and I'm on my diet grind, and then all of a sudden, this song came to me, and now I can't get it out of my head. So here you go.

Tuna. Tuna is the opposite of fattening. So long as you don't use a lot of mayo. Tuna is a wonderful thing to eat. Love you guys. Power out. Power out.

You