Muse

I stayed at a hotel in Los Angeles, and when I got back, I realized I left my toiletry bag at the hotel in Los Angeles, and it was a really nice one, sent to me by the Cartoon Network, had cartoons all over it. I wanted it back, I called up the hotel, I go, I was in room 318, I left my toiletry bag, it's got cartoons all over it. Guy's like, oh yeah, we found that. I was like, great, can I get it back? He's like, can you describe the cartoons? Did you think I was calling you on the off chance? That someone left behind the toiletry bag with cartoons on it? Like I'm in the market for one, don't know where to find one, so I'm calling hotels all day long, hoping for a miracle. Maybe I got an anonymous tip. Some guy comes up to me in an alley. Don't ask who I am, but if you're in the market for half a bottle of dandruff shampoo and five dusty Viagras. Call this hotel, Tummy Room 318. You left your toiletry bag. It's got cartoons all over it. What kind of cartoons? They'll never ask you that.

TBTL. Guess what day it is. Guess what day it is.

It's Friday. Friday. Gonna get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend. Hey, it's Adrian. Making another joke for you today. So, I always knock on the refrigerator door before I open it. You know why? There might be salad dressing.

All I know is this violates every canon of respectable broadcasting.

I don't know, man. Have a good show, dummy. It's what you do is so important.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

I say, I say, what's up, dog?

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. You're still doing a pod cart? Coming to you once again from beautiful Chicago, Illinois, the Windy City.

Let us throw Gaussian to the wind.

Where we have arrived at episode 4093 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

On yesterday's episode, I believe I read that same number with a question mark. I said 4,093, and I was right to trust my fears because I was incorrect yesterday. Yesterday would have been 4,092. Not to brag, I did that math just like right in my head. I did today, 4,093, and then I took away one. It's like Godzilla minus one, but it's TBTL minus one. So here we are, episode 4093 in a collector's series. I am trying to stifle the sort of urge, if you will, the reflex to cough a little bit. Yesterday's show, you heard me talking about how I'm developing a little bit of a scratchy throat, a little bit of a cough. I went to the pharmacy here, the CVS here in Chicago, and got my hands on some Ricola, and my goodness gracious, the Swiss herb-flavored sugar-free Ricola, great tasting, effective relief. I mean, where have these been all my life? I'm hooked. Right before Showtime, I was, and I'm not kidding, I was gorgling, I was going on Google and asking if you can eat too many Ricola sugar-free Swiss-flavored herb drops. And what the internet said was, technically yes, but it'd be really hard to eat enough of them that you could do yourself any harm. So I'm going to trust the Internet, and I'm going to be eating a lot of sugar-free Swiss herb-flavored Ricola today. Hey, speaking of things that you put in your mouth, chips, crunchy, salty, delicious chips. Maybe you're eating them while you're playing a video game. Maybe you're a gamer, and you got one of those headsets on, and there's other people on the line, other people that are part of your team, maybe your opponents. I'm not really familiar with how that world works, but I think I can picture it. Sometimes the eating of snacks can be kind of annoying to other people. Too loud and too specific. So Doritos came out with this thing we talked about last week that's supposed to basically kind of erase the sound of you eating chips for other people to hear it.

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

We're going to try to test that with our good friend, TBTL employee numero uno and senior vice president of both marketing, branding, operations, and finance, John Sklaroff, We'll be standing by. with the Doritos app and a buttload of Doritos to test this out to coming up in a bit. In the meantime, though, we gotta say hi to the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. The guy is a nut bar. A nut bar. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning. Are you joining us, Luke, with a big, shiny, waxy beard right now? I did.

I had the transplant, and it's actually healing very nicely.

It has not rejected its host yet? Host v. beard.

I'm on a ton of prednisone, so my immune system is just absolutely shot, but the beard looks incredible.

Well, that's the important thing. No, for real, how did your experience at the haircuttery go yesterday?

It went really well, Andrew. It was not what I was worried it was going to be. If you listened to yesterday's show, you heard that I was going to be getting a haircut here in Chicago. It's always a little nerve-wracking when you get, well, for me anyway, if I get my hair cut in a different city at a different place I've never been to before. I don't know what I'm afraid of because I complain about almost every haircut that I get at Rudy's. It's not like the place I'm using in the Portland area is without any issues. And yet it's still, it's the devil I know, Andrew. And so I was a little bit nervous because the website for this place that I was going to here in Chicago that's just like near my hotel, the website had lots of photos of a certain kind of haircut that a certain kind of, I don't know, kind of youngish guy, possibly Jack Harlow fan, gets. and I thought I don't really want that haircut but I you know any port in the storm so I went over there and I will tell you it's actually a very great kind of it's in between like an old school barbershop with the barber pole where it's like a dude like in Rushmore it isn't Jason Schwartzman's dad in there cutting my hair but it also wasn't fully like it wasn't a lifestyle brand if that makes any sense like they didn't have a bunch of their own like shampoo and things that were like named like elegant gentlemen or something or i don't know you know like it it wasn't like like they didn't have a cigar room in the back it wasn't like a thing where these guys you know guys in their late 20s who were just sort of coming into a certain kind of adulthood here in chicago were like that's my place it was just a place to get your hair cut there was one dude in there his name was joe he had a shaved head he uh gave me a nice a nice haircut it was very straightforward you know what he did though and this was more of a barbershop touch that I am all about I don't think I've ever had this before he applied a lot of baby powder to the back of my neck oh okay have you gotten that treat I think

I've gotten I mean I don't know about a lot but I think I've gotten a touch of it before

it's a nice little feel I think it's an anti-itch uh-huh approach and it's working because you know usually here's what I say when I'm getting my hair cut and I try to be uh I try to be careful that this doesn't come off as quasi-sexual to the person cutting my hair particularly if there may be a woman but I will say kiss me right on the lips before you cut my hair um yes but not if it's a woman i am i am much more happy to have the you know the the smock they put on you whatever the whatever the thing is that they kind of snap around your the cape what do you call that i think i think you had it with smock but i don't know i i will say to them i'll say hey um please uh could you they'll snap it and they're usually like trying to not uh snap it so tightly that it you know is making me feel uncomfortable and i will usually say if you don't mind could you actually snap it one one snap uh you know more clothes like could you make it very tight so that no hair is going down the back of my neck i would rather and what i usually say is i'd rather sort of pass out from this than have hair down the back of my shirt all day what i'm trying to be careful is that it doesn't sound like i'm making some vague allusion to some sort of auto erotic

asphyxiation type situation oh my gosh i just don't i don't think anybody would if you said go ahead and make it extra tight i want to make sure i don't think anybody i mean i don't think anybody would be like wow this guy is really trying to i'm also but you didn't let me finish i'm blasting

the music of in excess okay okay dark deep cut okay deep cut oh right right right ripped from

the headlines of 25 years ago but anyway um not to make light of people passing away but all i'm trying to say is I'm always asking for them to make that smock area very tight or whatever because

because nobody out there in the non-barbershop space that I've noticed is using baby powder. And this is an absolute game changer. I just feel, so my plan was to definitely take another shower after the haircut just to get rid of that itchy hair. But, Andrew, there was no itch. I'm feeling very, very good. So it was a big success all around. And I will tell you one other thing, though, that happened that was kind of, it was just me and Joe in this barbershop. And I don't want to say that Joe was looking for someone to talk to, but I did get him on the topic of how life is going in Chicago as a I don't think he's a business owner, but he's worked at this particular shop for a long time. And I could just tell that he was one of those folks, and I would say he comes by his opinions honestly in that it's really how he feels, but it's one of those folks that kind of operates and lives or at least works in a kind of a big urban center in America, in this case Chicago, who probably has a bit of a more, let's say, Fox News-influenced take on life in a major urban center, if that makes any sense.

Basically, I was like local news. I feel like local news kind of devolves into some pretty quick, lowest common denominator stereotypes as well.

Maybe I asked him, I was like, I really love Chicago. Are you from here? And he goes, well, lived here a long time. My dad came for a job that never materialized and been here ever since. And I was like, so it sounds like you're ready for a change of scenery. He's like, I'm ready to be anywhere that's not Chicago. And he was like, our mayor is just absolutely worthless I go, what did you think of Lori Lightfoot? He goes, she was worse And then he started in on the governor And then it was like I think this might have been some stuff Joe was dealing with Because then I was like Well, you know, there are lots of great places to live Maybe it's time for you to explore things Well, my buddy was suggesting Indiana But I said, that's worse And I thought, well, it doesn't sound like there's a lot of things

That are

like it sounds like your top five currently is empty for suggestions it was like i feel like that was kind of the and by the way i had a very pleasant time chatting with joe but as he was kind of unburdening himself around some of the policies in chicago he's not a fan of he just kept going back and kind of slightly tweaking the haircut at the base of my neck and then repowdering me and then talking a little bit more and then organizing all of his barber tools and then picking up a little razor or a little scissors and then like cutting like one hair and then repowdering it this went on for a good 20 minutes like the haircut it took as far as i could tell the haircut had ended but the discussion of civic life in chicago had not ended and so it was like like i was like uh i wonder what the impact on the haircut will be because Because this felt like maybe somebody who was, like, every time there was a new haircut, then there needed to be a new application of the powder, which then extended the conversation a little bit further. Finally, I did manage to achieve escape velocity from the barbershop and be on my way. But I'm very happy with the haircut. It was, again, it was not the scene that I was worried about. I do not feel an overwhelming urge to listen to the music of Jack Harlow. So I think it was a successful mission, Andrew.

Do you know what I got with my haircut last week that I had not had? And I didn't realize I was missing this. And I had not had this in years and years and years. I don't know if I've ever gotten this treatment at Rudy's before, but more at a traditional barbershop. But I was talking yesterday on the show about the haircut I got last week because I'm an interesting person. And the barber, when she was done and then she was going to clean up the back of my neck a little bit. Remember you asked me, like, do they ever ask me if I want it rounded or squared off? They never asked me that. I think they just go with round for me because everything is round with me. But she used a little dispenser underneath her counter to get some hot shaving cream and applied the hot shaving cream to the back of my neck and then used that with a straight razor. I hadn't had that in forever. It is wonderful. Oh, my goodness. Absolutely. Do you get that at Rudy's ever?

No, never. They will offer me a hot towel and I will avail myself of it because I do like that. Oh, I never get that feeling. Maybe it's a maybe this is one of these many Portland, Seattle divides. I don't know. But like but like, yeah, I am. I do enjoy that hot towel. I guess the older I get and this is not, I guess, shocking, but the older I get, the more that I think I'm starting to lean towards the the kind of barbershop experience with the liniment oil and the such and the hand slapping the guy, you know, with a kind of rotund. belly and the like barber kind of thing on and he's got some sort of liniment oil that he's smacking on his hands before he goes in for some kind of frank sinatra-esque massage i feel like this was something i feel like frank sinatra spent a significant portion of every day having a guy like this do some sort of massage on him that they've largely stopped doing after 1960 it was like it was like a certain it's interesting how that whole you know we've got like massage envy in every strip mall in America, and there's, you know, high-end fancy places, but everything I thought I knew about the massage practice when I was a kid was based on movies where Frank Sinatra was getting a massage, and it was always from a dude older than him who was sort of, if I, I don't know if we use this term in this way, but my memory was a sort of karate chopping his upper back.

Oh, sure, yeah, just kind of real manhandling. That whole move. Yeah, yeah.

And I'm saying, I really want more of that in my life.

Yeah, no, I want like the, this is more of a class thing, but also I think sort of an era thing as well. Like my dream has always been to be able to actually afford a gym where the locker room is like the locker room. Full of naked old men. Just full of naked old men. Just doing their taxes, nude. I don't even care what the room is like. No, but, like, I've never had the opportunity to really use a really nice locker room with, like, nice clean showers and maybe even, like, lockers that have, you know, wooden veneer or actually wooden lockers or anything like that. I remember being in one like that one time. I was at, like, some either relative or I think friend of a relative had some sort of a soiree. It was like a – can you have a soiree in the middle of the day? It was like kind of a big, fancy brunch for somebody. It's called a Sour Day. It was a Sour Day. Were you there? And it was at this country club somewhere, you know, like in some wealthy part of the Cleveland suburbs. Right. And I remember like it was very nice. And I was pretty young. Maybe I was probably high school, maybe early college. But then I get up to use the restroom and I ask somebody, where's the restroom? They're like right through there. And it turns out the restaurant for this banquet hall was actually just the fancy locker room that these men used. The rest room. The rest. Yeah. Like you're truly right.

Like it had like I think you said restaurant. Oh, did I say that? Oh, I'm sorry. I wanted to make sure I had this place right in my mind.

Yes. Sorry. This is a so this is like a country club and we're in some sort of a big banquet part of the country club. But the rest room that I'm directed towards is actually like the locker room. But it's the type of thing you'd seen in like an old Woody Allen film or something like that. where the men would just kind of hang around for a long time with hot towels, shaving. And again, it's just like I'm not somebody who loves hanging around with a bunch of naked bodies. Anybody would tell you that. But like just the luxury of a nice locker room like that, as opposed to like I'm currently dealing with the opposite of that at 24 Hour Fitness. I'm like leapfrogging old Band-Aids on the floor from God knows whom. Like, yeah, that's my dream to belong to a really nice club like that.

It's funny that you bring that up because for many years when we were here in Chicago doing, wait, wait, don't tell me, my first association with the program, they used to have a stay at the Hyatt over on Wacker Drive. And then for, I don't know, a few years, they moved us to, I think it was called like the Chicago Club. and it was like they must must have just been some deal i guess but it was basically one of those super high-end kind of like membership clubs that also had a gym and racquetball but i think it was one of those places that you know all of the let's be honest mostly white male kind of powerful people in the development of chicago post 1920 were members of this place you know what I mean but they also had rooms like it had they had there was a lodging and so we would just stay in the rooms at this place which was also where many and let's be honest older white man would just come in to like sauna or do his play his you know play racquetball against some other equally privileged old white man I always joked that it I at some point expected to come around a corner and see Dick Cheney reenacting that one scene from The Shining where you got the guy on the bed and the other person dressed up like a bear oh sure or a dog a dog yeah sorry it just seemed like it felt like the that kind of place like there was this was where some sort of you know monetary policy was big this was just sort of where the haves were really plotting to make sure they didn't ever cede any sort of power to the have

nots yeah no that's a really good point as i'm describing i mean no no i'm not the warning side is I said when I said the type you see in a Woody Allen film should have been the red flag that I should have been looking but I wasn't I'm not trying to that's not even where I'm

trying to take it but but I just remember

One time, this probably even came out on TBTL back in those long years ago, but I believe I was asked to leave the bar at this place because I had jeans on.

Oh, wow.

Was that kind of a jerk?

I don't know if I can picture or I'm scared to picture how you react to something like that.

I want to say that I took it okay because it was, you know, I was on Wait, Wait, Wait, its dime and also their reputation so i don't think i i wanted to get into it but it was yeah that i but i'm with you that like and again it might be just like the sort of pop culture that you and i grew up with the 1980s movie where there'd be you know again racquetball seems to play a big role in this these are a lot of movies that are set in new york city and it's you know it's elliot gould presumably and woody allen and they're having some conversation we just had this you and I just literally had this conversation about these racquetball scenes I don't know a few months ago on this program but there's something very comforting about it to me as an idea like a life I could have where basically I'm a person who writes one article a year for the New Yorker and also I'm working on my book and I'm friends with Elliot Gould and also somehow Carrie Fisher and and I'm I'm not happy with my career but I live in a palatial apartment in

manhattan and you're disappointed in your friends who moved to la exactly and but mostly what i do

is play racquetball and have lunch like the economics none of the economics of this work out but man it sort of seems like a nice place to live and be yeah and you watch art films at night yep precisely and you've got someone 20 to 30 years your junior who finds you for some reason very attractive i'll sign up for that life oh yeah send him over here in uh in chicago just trying to stifle a cough with a truly shocking amount of recola by the way andrew seriously do you when you go for cough drops what do you go for that's an interest believe it or not let's let's not get carried away i caught myself that's a question that's a sound you made

with your mouth i think i was just trying to think about it because okay uh standard issue if i'm just going into a store kind of quickly grab some cough drops i think i lean towards a bag of halls i think that's what i tend to have around the welcome to the halls of medicine exactly but you're right that it's kind of if you have the time to like really think about it it can be fun i remember as a kid like luden's was the deal right wasn't that the one that teachers banned because they believed kids were just eating them like candy is do i have that or is that sucret's

i i think i get those confused oh sucret's those had like those had three times whatever the doctor recommended amount of whatever is in a cough drop i felt like sucret's were like so those were

They were the medicine-y, not candy-like.

They were the hardcore version of, which is why as a kid you loved them. And they came in that, didn't they come in some kind of a tin?

I feel like it, yeah. But see, here's where we're at odds, and this could be my bad memory. But I thought there was, and I don't know if this was just my parents being strict or also the teachers at the time. I feel like it was both. There was some cough drop that was so un-medicine-y and so cherry candy-y that the kids would just try to bring them in because you're allowed to have that. But then the teachers were like no more of this like you guys are just eating candy You guys don't need a cough drop right now, and I remember those ones were like oval

Oh, so the halls of medicine if you remember halls were square and they would be in like a you know They'd be wrapped in a the ones that I remember get the ones that you forget the small pack of them You get the pack that you put in your pocket Yeah, that was how one would take a halls, but there was a cherry flavored something and maybe it was luden

I think it might have been Luden's.

But they were sort of in, what's the shape I'm trying to explain here? They were sort of long ovals, and I feel like they were so delicious.

Oh, the candy itself was an oval. Yes, yes, yes, not the packaging, right?

The alleged cough drop that was a candy that we figured out at some, it's crazy.

It was Luden's, yeah.

You knew about this in Ohio, and I knew about it in Seattle. There was a period of time in the 80s where teachers across America were like, We're on to you. All right. This is bullshit.

I like to think of like the National Teachers Conference where, you know, several teachers from each school go and they meet. Where do you think? That's probably in Indiana somewhere, right?

Definitely feels Midwest. It feels like it might have been in like Menominee or Muskogee or somewhere.

And on day two of the conference, there was definitely, if nothing more than a breakout session about the Ludens issue.

It feels to me like it was similar to the law enforcement conference that Hunter S. Thompson goes to in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, where Michael Jeter from Evening Shade, by the way, this is another whole. this is another whole tangent that we've been on not that long ago so i'll keep it brief but i just imagine all the teachers of america gathering to talk about the scourge that was luden's cherry cough drops hold the line hold the line folks i understand though i understand uh why kids would be obsessed because so i went into a cvs on the way back from my haircut and i grabbed a a thing of and they they only had a i didn't here's what i was trying to i was actually adult me andrew was trying to buy something that wasn't just candy right yep because as much as i love candy i needed i wanted something that had packed a small amount of medicinal kind of help and but then i also know myself and i was like if these are a sweet treat i'm gonna eat like a hundred of them and or i wouldn't let myself eat a hundred pieces of candy so let me try to find something that's not each one isn't 80 calories of sugar and so of course ricola has a sugar-free option and as i was leaving the cvs and listening to my slaughter beach dog in my headphones and it was a beautiful day here in chicago it was warm the blue sky it had none of the weather patterns that i had escaped from the pacific northwest and i'm just walking and the l is going over what do they call it the l no they call it the cta here the cta is just going right over my head andrew and i got my music on wait

it's not the l in chicago it's the elevated line it's the l no well i think it maybe the cta runs Oh, okay, yeah, but they call it the L, though, I think.

Well, all I know is, listen, I answer to a higher power ranger. His name is Jeff Tweedy. I could, yeah. And in the song Far, Far Away, he says, I long to hold you in my arms and sway, kiss and ride on the CTA. Now, maybe he called it the CTA because it rhymed. But in my mind, I always go back and forth between the L and the CTA. Because they also call it the L in Philadelphia.

Oh, I didn't know that, but yeah, and I've confirmed it here. It's definitely called the L in Chicago for the elevated.

So the L was going right over me and it was just like I had my music going and everything in the world was perfect. And I popped in one of these recalls and it was so good that I immediately thought I got a new problem. And it's called recall addiction. Like how these are zero calories and they're tasty and they do some amount of cough suppression. How why am I not? Why am I not eating 20 of these a day as a snack?

And the fact that they're sugar free. If you said that at the top of the show, I wasn't paying attention, because right before you mentioned it again right now, I was going to say, oh, and what I learned from, and of course, everybody's going to know this reference, what I learned from Tony Miner is to get the sugar-free Ricolas. Oh, my good friend, Tony Miner. If you're doing, he was a broadcaster at Cairo Radio, where we worked for a long time. He was a news guy.

Proud resident of LeConnor, Washington. That's right.

I forgot.

You're right. Anyway, I remember he always had a drawer full of sugar-free Ricolas because he would use them all the time, and he also offered anybody else to use them if need be because also sugar-free, aside from just not wanting all that sugar in your life, I think it will sort of help. If you're eating a lot of them, you don't want a real sugary mouth while you're talking into a microphone.

And also, yeah, you get kind of burned out on the candiness of it, I would imagine, maybe as a grown-up.

I would guess.

So, but I'm, I really, I really am wondering if, like, if having, let's, let's just, let's be realistic. If I were to, even when I didn't have a cough, if I were to have, let's say, four Ricolas a day as just kind of like a little, like a little treat, a little nice something in the afternoon, it's, you know, it's, we're past lunch, it's not dinner time. i want a little just something tasty and maybe normally you might pop in a jolly rancher or a dum-dum or a werther's or whatever your thing might be if instead it was just a ricola in like july is that unhinged behavior is that my toxic trait that i eat a ricola july 12th no i don't

have a cold i've noticed something lately is we should probably i'm saying this to myself i apologize for for taking us into a different direction here but um lately i have found myself sort of when i get into the back of a lift or something having to stifle a cough quite a bit and i don't think that i can't tell if i'm just have a low grade little dry cough that i'm carrying around everywhere with me i don't think that's the case and that i'm just noticing it when i get in the

back of a car but i still of course because you don't want them to think that you've got the rona

exactly i mean maybe i'm clearing my throat around the house all day but i don't really think I don't think so. I think it might be like a dry air kind of situation, you know, if it's a rainy day like today or an evening and I get in the back of a lift and maybe they got the heater going or something. I don't know what it is, but I found myself several times in the last couple of months in the back of a lift and really stifling a cough. Now, I have not had cough drops on me. I used to carry them around with me all the time. A little bit of gum will sort of do for me because it'll just sort of get things a little bit lubricated in there. Sorry, everybody, but I'll do that. But the thing about a cough drop is I used to carry around. them around all the time but since the pandemic i'm so paranoid about some stranger thinking they're stuck in a car with a sick person that i almost don't want them to smell the telltale signs of a cough drop because sometimes you know you can really smell a cough drop from from far away

just get in it's just like you just smell of iodine and cough drop you've got various

situations going on speaking of the halls of medicine what is it they used to advertise all the time the the the ingredient in halls is something specific that they would they would call out of this or something yeah maybe it was yeah maybe i'm thinking of eucalyptus um but uh you know that smell and now i'm just kind of like well maybe i should just stick with gum because i don't want them to think that they're carrying around a tb patient back here i want you to just

i want you to lube all your joints up with ben gay yeah and then rub a bunch of tussin on your

chest i want you to have every vaseline under my nose i want you i want you to smell like

every over-the-counter remedy that anyone has ever availed themselves of wait no see what the

reaction is i said uh vaseline under the nose that's not a thing actually i'm thinking of what is it that we used to put on i don't know if i ever did it but the thing that they would put on kids chests and then the vapo rub vapo rub yeah vix vapo rub but you know what's funny is i grew

up calling it vix or vix vapo rub but then i think chris rock has a bit about calling it tussin well I think he grew up where they would they would call it rub some tussin on your chest. And the joke being that was the cure for everything.

And even though I didn't grow, but us know that was he wasn't there wasn't that whole bit about drinking Robitussin.

And then I thought it I could be wrong. I thought it was about I thought it was put some Tussin. He was calling it Tussin. And I thought it was related to rubbing some Tussin on your chest. That was literally. And I thought because I know what you mean. Robitussin makes more sense. But I've now started calling Vic's VapoRub a Tussin because of what I interpreted Chris Rock to be talking about. And I could be loud wrong on all of that, but that's now why I've started to call it Tussin, even though what I'm really thinking of is Vic's VapoRub.

I could be wrong. I remember that bit. That's a really famous bit. And again, I'm wrong on this show more than I'm right, so I'm not just saying this to cover my ass. But my memory and understanding of that was that you you have a parent in that situation who uses Tussin for everything. And so then it becomes just like instead of just drinking it, just rub some Tussin on it. Not a replacement of it's like your elbow hurts. Rub some Tussin on it. But that it was a reference to Robitussin.

I believe that. I totally believe that. But I'm just also, by the way, I'm high. What are you on number three now? I'm high as balls on Ricola as we speak. So I'll agree to anything. I'm like Mr. Burns in that episode of The Simpsons I come I come in love

Is that your third one that you popped since you've been doing the show?

Since I've been doing the show But not today This is probably number seven for today Well when you start crushing them up I know that's exactly I'm like I have the If you were doing the What's that sort of little Not experiment but it's the delayed gratification test That they'll do with young kids where they're like in a room with a marshmallow and then you're like but if you wait you get three marshmallows that's me with these recalls it's like yeah I could just suck on this for the next hour I could just crunch it up and now it's time to have another one I picture you as a kid

if you were a kid in that experiment you would like take the immediate gratification but then when they come to like with their clipboards to take notes your chair would be empty and you'd be in the back somewhere like negotiating with the other scientists on how to get more marshmallow. You'd be having like a marshmallow party with other researchers in the back while the officious one with the clipboard comes in. Ideally.

Where's patient X? I think my first move would be to try to question if there had ever been a marshmallow. Yeah. I'd try to really put the system on trial and be like, you know, let me tell you, the craziest thing happened. You thought you left a marshmallow here, but there was no marshmallow. So first of all, I don't have to report that, But I do need another marshmallow if we want to do the test for real. Like I would be working, as you like to say, I'd be working the refs on that marshmallow. Although this whole story really falls apart because I don't even like marshmallows. Oh. That is not, I have never, I will accept a marshmallow in a s'more, but to be honest with you, really I'm there for the chocolate and the graham cracker. Like a big old giant marshmallow to me, that is a very, do you enjoy, like when's the last time you bit into a marshmallow?

It would I'm I'm in lockstep with you on this. It would have been on a s'more at some point. They don't let me around fire anymore. So I'm guessing that was at least 20 years ago. But I'm not I've never had like what is the liquid marshmallow stuff? Fluff, I think it's called. I've literally never had that before. You know, as a kid, it maybe would be a treat to have those mini marshmallows in your hot chocolate. But honestly, I still like hot chocolate.

but I think I would skip the marshmallows. I feel like they would just be slimy now. I'm not a marshmallow guy.

I am very, I say into, I haven't had it in a long time, but I would not be mad at what we call marshmallow in various cold cereal, but it's sort of not. It's kind of a slightly different product. But, you know, like if you eat a Lucky Charm, if you eat Lucky Charms, there's the, you know, there's the purple horseshoes and whatever it is. Is it green, blue diamonds, green something and purple horseshoes like the stuff that we call marshmallows in most cold cereal is kind of a little bit different but I love that stuff whatever that is I'm very into it but that's because it's not like the the the stay puffed stuff the stuff that you break out at a campfire that's just never been I don't really know who even likes that stuff it just just seems like it's too I don't know

sweet weird and synthetic yeah I'm with you yet as a kid I don't remember like having an aversion towards them I don't remember like really seeking them out but I guess as a kid it's just like if you can get your hands on sugar you're getting your hands on sugar you know and i'm sure i chomped

into those big boys well speaking of chomping into big boys andrew uh we got to thank some donors and then we are going to try to actually test out this doritos bullshit i don't want no i don't listen i don't want to i don't want to give any kind of early indication as to what my expectations are for the dorito silencer but um we're going to try to see if this works with our own John Sklaroff right after we thank some donors hang on please while I get one more recola that's good when your tongue goes numb in the middle of wait wait don't tell me tonight oh boy look who just gave away the fact that we're recording this on a Thursday oh I mean

when your tongue goes numb yesterday when you were doing wait wait don't tell me

I was following your lead on that whole situation I was trying to do

I just I slipped I slipped I gave away the game

sink podcasts my friend

numb tongues sink tums let's go let's get me out of this get me out of this I'm failing

let's thank Julie Kumasaka in Marysville Washington Julie, thank you. Julie, thank you for keeping me in Ricola money here as a staff member on TBTL. Could not do it without you. By the way, we're thanking some of the generous folks who are keeping TBTL in business on yesterday's episode, which was recorded a minimum of 24 hours ago. We talked about the fact that some really great podcasts are kind of looking for a new home to go to, including Heavyweight, which we all love and adore. And those conversations make me especially grateful for getting to do this and for folks like Alice and Gabe Weimers-Claire in Davidson, North Carolina. Thank you. You know what I'm realizing? University, Andrew.

Davidson, North Carolina?

Yeah, home of? Oh, come on, man. Everybody knows that. Davidson. Davidson University. That's what I was going to say. Which is where what beloved basketball player played their college ball? David Davidson Tom Chambers

That's what I said Steph Curry Steph Oh is that a fact

Yeah Steph Curry Davidson Davidson guy

I did not know that I think by the way It's probably Alice Weimers And Gabe Claire I'm guessing

It's not Alice and Gabe Weimers Claire

I could be wrong about that I'm not sure But I wanted to do it both ways Just in case To get credit where credit's due Thanks for supporting the show

Thank you Alice and Gabe Thanks also to Alan Bartels Of Rancho Cordova california yes that was me trying to roll an r um i want to blame some of it on the ricola but it's also something that i'm famously bad at cannot do it can you roll your r andrew you mean i mean i think i can i think the pride and i don't want to do corinthian leather like ricardo montalban

please on the spot like now i'm immediately like my face is tensing up i can't do it i feel like i have the ability to do it but it probably sounds a bit clunky or or maybe because i you know it probably sounds maybe like i'm scared it sounds like an affectation or something i i so i don't i don't do it often i feel like i could though given the right opportunity that's such a long

boring answer how's your australian accent because next up it's david alsop of narrabeen new south wales australia you call that a donor i'm telling you andrew i mean maybe it's a handful of folks maybe it's under 10 but the fact that we have as many listeners checking in from australia as we do is quite it's it's it's quite encouraging it makes me feel very very happy me too absolutely so thank you david um thanks also to Carrie Maloney who's in Seattle Washington the fact that we have as many listeners in Seattle Washington Andrew as we do that also makes me very happy because that's kind of our home turf and if we had no listeners in Seattle it would tell us this is really not working or that we're

doing such a good job of of amping up Australia that everybody in Seattle is moving there

right uh and then that could possibly happen we don't know if Jaron Schneider will decamp from Seattle to Australia but we know that for right now Jaron is supporting TBTL now Andrew did you

notice something senpai notice it let me see let me see related to the names that are the locations

of everybody we just thanked we thanked not we we thanked seven people today now part of that was because we have Alice and Gabe checking in as a dynamic duo but don't we usually do one two three four five don't we usually do five folks or has it always been six always six it's always it's

been six this whole time and this time alice and gabe would kind of donate it together so that's

seven i'm looking at the spreadsheet here because i send these you know that i've never i've this whole time andrew i have been if you would have asked me um how many people do we thank a day i would have always said five this is the first i'm noticing that we've got that we're are we

thanking six people a day Andrew yeah I'm looking at the show sheet because you wouldn't you will not be surprised to hear that I have a color-coded system every day I come into this um daily donors sheet and it's a spreadsheet and I grab the next six and I email them to you yeah it is for techno geeks yeah um yeah so I've been grabbing six I do some math at the beginning of the thank you year we call it the thank you year um to sort of see how things will time out so that we can get everybody in hopefully buy the the next tbtl-a-thon well um that's news to me i've always

been thinking it was when i saw this today i was like well andrew threw a little extra dollop a little line up of jaron schneider on there but nope that's how the uh that's how this thing has been going so thank you to all of our donors for making tbtl possible we could not do this without Gotcha. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right. We got really into this. Well, I don't know. I'd say really into it, but somewhat intrigued with this Doritos publicity stunt, which was that they supposedly made a piece of software that can kind of sort of, you know, what's the word I'm looking for, noise cancel your chip eating or your crunchy food eating through your headset if you're gaming. And we were wondering if it could actually work and how we might test it. And then we had the thought, well, why not actually assign this to our colleague and one of the co-founders of Too Beautiful, Too Biz, our good friend, Mr. John Sklaroff, who's joining us now.

Cup of coffee in the big time.

Hey, buddy.

Hey, good afternoon, good morning, whatever time it is, wherever we are. It's Friday morning, John.

Yeah, it's Friday morning before we do weight gain. Yeah, right, sure.

I'm trying to remember the exact timeline of when you actually got your hands on some Doritos, John, because I feel like it may have been before we assigned this to you.

You guys made a joke about it on air, and I think that afternoon I went to the gas station down the road and picked up several bags of chips because, you know, like any good scientific experiment, we need to account for variables. It's like different flavors.

Right. You need to eat some Doritos with the system on, with the system off. yeah with your wife at home with your wife not like you're just we we have to make sure that we've eliminated all of the different kind of like you know noise that could come through in

the data and if we really wanted to kick the tires we could have started with like a softer chip like a funyun i don't know if you consider a funyun to be a chip and then sort of amp our way like a

substrate like what's the bait what's the baseline for this what about like a popcorn or something

like a bag of like smart food with that like talking softness pirate booty so what flavors

do you have i know that doesn't affect what did you go with for the doritos so and i should say

before i tell you the varieties um these were all paid for out pocket i i for a moment i'm like oh i'm gonna buy these with a company credit card this is a company thing and i was like you know what i'm gonna enjoy this more than luke and andrew probably more than the tens so i'll pay

for this out pocket so wait is that the is that the sort of standard for when we buy things with the tbtb card if i'm going to enjoy it more than you all i'm not supposed to do it i mean well what you're you're gonna need you guys to not check the tbtb bank account for like

a couple weeks i've got a few which you're using your card for luke we they're definitely not okay but that's okay it's mostly we we got i'm very concerned about your addiction um so we got the two classics the red chip the red bag nacho cheese the blue cool ranch which is highly underrated but but I think- people find it divisive divisive what's funny is that i'm old enough that cool ranch was the big innovation in the doritos space when i was a kid like there was just regular doritos as we called them and then cool ranch came along and it was mind-blowing it was like a flavor you know journey had been opened to all of us and we were talking about it at school we were like do you know there is a new flavor of doritos and it's called cool ranch yeah it's what crystal

pepsi wishes it was basically right oh yeah exactly so i got those two and then i have a third bag and i should say bags they are like you know snack size i'm not full you know family packs or whatever uh although i regret that now um the third one is my personal favorite this the it's the purple bag it's a spicy sweet chili so you get a little heat a little sweetness to them

they are phenomenal huh i never heard of that but i'm not a big i'm not a doritos person so really not even the classics no because i know this is ridiculous this does not make sense but please let's not drill down too much on it let's not start now because i don't eat cheese i you know i've never really liked cheese flavored things even though

i know but like yeah you know you admit it he admit it that's like yeah but there's nothing

that i don't eat onions so i don't like funions well i mean you don't think you don't think well I mean, I would assume that. Yeah. I mean, if somebody doesn't like that flavor, I do see that. But yeah, there's nothing about I don't really like flavored chips that much, with the exception of a barbecue flavored chip. I think that's maybe it for me. I'm pretty much just down the down the line, non cheesy kind of non flavor.

blasted things. I thought your pushback on cheese stuff was more about the texture of it

than the flavor of it. It's just about like growing up not liking cheese or thinking I don't like cheese and yeah, just not eating that kind of stuff. I mean, the funny thing is when I was a kid I feel like I had the occasional Cheetos and Doritos and I didn't dislike it as much as I do or feel like I would now, but certainly like the idea of something being like ranch flavored sort of turns my

stomach. I will say, Andrew, give a try the spicy sweet chili if you're in the chip aisle looking for something salty and savory because they're not really cheese flavor it's more of a chili a sweet chili flavor is what it is and so they are i mean you know i say this as somebody who loves cheese but i don't you don't really get a cheese punch from it so i would recommend if you're looking if you're looking to branch out at all which i know that's you you're mr classic yeah trying new things yeah he's dying to try new

things then i'm gonna go skydiving john none of this will none of this will sway andrew in fact It will probably sound especially unappetizing to you. But something that I was turned on to when I was engaged to somebody who was pretty well known on the show and who came from a Mexican-American background, when I would go to family events with her, it was a given that if you had Doritos, you also dipped them in sour cream, which is incredible. Like, I had always thought, well, Doritos, that's enough. A Dorito is enough. But actually what's great about the sour cream is you can have many more Doritos because the sour cream is kind of a creamy, moderating factor. Because I can't get through too many Doritos because there's so much dust and flavor blasting on them that it kind of burns out my taste buds pretty quickly. But if you add in the sour cream, I could really do some damage. If you give me a thing of sour cream and a bag of regular Doritos, I could really go to town on that.

Luke, on more than one occasion, I've definitely, like, made a plate of nachos with Doritos. So, like, rather than just, like, plain tortilla chips, you use the Doritos as your base, throw on some, like, shredded cheese, melt it, you know, sour cream, salsa, you know, pickled jalapenos, like, all the stuffed olives.

Also, as we're recording this on Friday morning and definitely not Thursday afternoon in Chicago, definitely not a day where all I've eaten are, like, nine Ricolas. I want to crawl through the Source Connect connection, John, and burglar your kitchen and make those nachos right now.

I'll overnight you some Doritos. How's that? Please do. Okay.

So how is this going to exactly work? Now, you know, it's going to be sort of a technical feat, but the idea is to have you, John, turn on the Doritos dampening system. system crunch cancellation and then you call it and then you eat a dorito and then ideally me and andrew can't hear it right that's that's what the promise is of this device of this software of this

app right so should i just get right into it should we just dive right into the science i would i would

like to do that i mean i think can i yeah go ahead can i preface this with my very boring i'll try to do the abbreviated version but my very boring kind of hesitation or suspicion around a lot of the way that noise cancellation technology is presented in the wider pop culture which is that it's a magic thing whereas if you put out where if you put on something noise cancelling or you activate a Dorito silencer all sounds that you don't want to hear are eliminated but not all sound not everything but just that specific sound I think that's a very difficult thing to realistically achieve because of how sound you know cancelling technology really works this was something that was being promoted as like they put a bunch of ai on the case and people ate a bunch of different kinds of chips and a bunch of different kinds of doritos and that supposedly trained the ai how to block the sound i that all just sounds like utter bull roar to me um but i guess we won't know until we try it can i can i kind of talk about

walking through the planner can i offer a couple ideas for science so the first thing you'll hear is like the bag rustling as i open it up i expect you'll hear that because that's not a crunch right can i should i then just eat a chip right to see if you're hearing anything and then also for variables again science and while this might sound gross in a non-scientific uh way also talk like chew with my mouth open and try to talk while i chew to see if the crunch

do we want hold on that's kind of my move with the ricola that's i kind of i sort of call dibs

on that today let's start let's start simple because um okay you know but andrew yeah the the

i i do think what john raises is a for a reasonable question because the real world application of this if we're believing the frito-lay company or whoever makes doritos is that we're playing fortnight with john and he's eating his chips and talking to us right isn't that isn't that the

baseline for what's supposed to be getting fixed yeah i was just gonna say let's just start simple bite into a chip and let's see if we can hear it now there's some question about whether or not we've effectively turned this on or not too so if you bite into a chip and we hear a very clear crunch then i don't think we need to hear you talk with your mouth full because we already know that we've heard that but then and but if we do hear the crunch then we might have to switch to the plan b that we had talked about but the first thing i want to hear is crunch do we hear a crunch my guess is i'm kind of with you luke this is a piece of marketing bullshit i don't think this is going to work either but i'm but i am curious though and i'm intrigued and to hear if there's

any mitigation at all okay from a marketing standpoint it worked i bought three bags of

doritos yeah right exactly i mean that's all they care about all right so i got that's the bag i'm

opening one of my recalls smells great we're all getting our bags spicy chili sweet spicy chili Okay. Here we go. Dorito test one.

Yeah. Okay. So that sounded like a really good sound effect of somebody biting into a chip and then chewing it. So there was actually. Yeah. So my guess is that the version that we're using right now is not turned on for what you're sending down the line. Captain Crunch. Right. You are.

Ooh. Even in milk. You are Captain Crunch. So I have to say, John, that was a very satisfying crunch.

It was ASMR. Yeah. Oh, man.

There's somebody. Somebody had to pull their car over is all I'm going to say about that.

Benny, the puppy, just crawled under the desk. And he's like, is that for me? It's like, no, sir. No, sir.

I realize that this might cause some production issues on your end. But could you try switching that switch we talked about on your end? And we might lose you for a little bit.

I want to try to narrate for the listeners what I think is happening. So we are basically just hearing John talking to us down the line per sort of usual. And whatever the sort of Doritos factor has not actually been introduced into the audio chain. But introducing that could throw the whole thing, the whole broadcast off the rails. So we're going to find out sort of together. Yeah, let's give it a try.

All right. Doritos, crunch cancellation, engage. Okay.

You sent us a video of this, John. I can't believe I'm giving Doritos more attention, but you sent us a video of the interface and it had all kinds of little knobs and do-hickies. I'm assuming that's all bullshit, right? Like it's just to kind of make it seem like you've got this real high-tech piece of audio gear going.

Yeah, so I just clicked it over, but I think I would have to refresh with the new settings. Andrew, am I refreshing the new settings here?

I think you're going to need to do that, yeah. So me and Luke will talk here for a second while John goes away.

I can eat a Ricola while John's doing that if we want to keep some consistency around mouth noises on the program.

Have they created a Ricola and a sucking sound? Because I could use that.

Let's play one, Andrew. If they got one, I don't want it.

All right, Andrew. I'm back, and I'm not getting the feedback I was getting earlier. So you guys ready for me to try crunch number two? I'm excited.

This might work. Wait a second. Are you ready for science? Wait one second, John. Sorry. I'm in the big city of Chicago, Illinois. I don't know if you can hear this, but. Okay. We've got a whole, we've got some sort of emergency response. I don't want to.

anything interrupting the purity of this crunch that we may or may not hear so can we just um sort of okay it's going away now so so what we're about to hear supposedly right is you've engaged the crunch silencer and we should hear you so maybe Andrew do we need him to say something like in three two one and then crunch it because we need to know when it is that we should be hearing

something except we're not hearing anything right sure that's a good point yeah I mean my guess is this isn't really going to work 100% anyway. We'll hear something. But yeah, why don't you, for science, like you say, why don't you do three, two, one, crunch? All right. What is the, wait one second before you do that. I have video recording as well.

John, what is the screen telling you? What is the Doritos silencer telling you is about to happen?

There's a lot of, there's waveforms and that's really all I'm seeing. It's, yeah, it's like basically like, you know when you watch a movie like The Matrix and you're like, oh, computer code, but it's really just garbledygook?

It's basically that, I think. Okay, okay, so all right, here we go. right three two one you could hear it trying it's it it tried to step on john's countdown but the crunch was beautifully in the clear until like but i think the computer it heard the beginning of the

crunch and then i heard it kick off like we heard the beginning of can you uh john i'm sorry to make you do this but we're all gonna let's get in the clear again and then john three two one and because Because I think it's so janky that it over.

But John, try to get a few chips ready to go and try to chew for like. Oh, shoot. Okay. Try to chew for like seven seconds.

Just continuously feed Doritos to my mouth.

So we want to hear when the Doritos silencer kicks in.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ready? All right. Three, two, one, science.

what do we think Andrew it's not it's not totally ineffective it's mitigating it it's definitely mitigating it it's kind of do I need to keep eating Doritos hold on hold on hold on John we're gonna put you through I'm gonna put you through another another pace here so just hang on keep your okay keep your powder dry but like oh don't worry I gotta play Doritos it's definitely making the some of the the chewing sound and crunching sound less pronounced but I think it's kind of doing more of just a generalized muting of what John's sending us, right? Andrew, is that how it strikes you? Well, the thing that I'm

impressed by is, now that we know that it is engaged and it is, you know, quote unquote, working the way at least it's supposed to, I'm impressed that it's not affecting John's voice at all. I thought it would add

some sort of... Well, except he's not talking while he's chomping.

That's what you gotta get to. But it's engaged right now while he's talking to us, and so while John is talking to us, and we hear his voice, I'm impressed that we're not hearing it like it does not a watery sound or usually when you start introducing this kind of stuff to an audio chain it will sort of affect everything right so they've sort of used a light touch and in that way I'm impressed that it hasn't made your voice all janky. That's a really good point. But it is it's funny that it in a certain way it works better than I thought it would. I kind of have to agree with you. Should I try experiment? Now John just

Just say the word crunch. Just say the word crunch. Let's see what it does. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. It doesn't identify the word crunch.

What if I say a competitor of Doritos? What's not Frito-Lay? Like what if I wave chips or something?

Takis, say Takis. Takis, Takis, Takis, Takis, Takis. Anything? Nope, nothing. Hot Takis, Hot Takis.

Wouldn't it be amazing if it took other chips and it amplified them? So that way you can only eat Doritos while you're gaming. so that's where

to me that's the next round of this which is John pretend that we're all playing I don't know Call of Duty

I used to play a lot of Call of Duty

so you know the terminology I want to be Leroy Jenkins well that's World of Warcraft I know but just go with it no it's okay now what we need to do is we need to hear it in practice like we're on a mission together and John you're enjoying some Doritos and you're talking to us though about Andrew do you have any Call of Duty patter you can do I don't know Call of Duty at all

can I ask you a question Luke yeah like so you want me though then to like be chomping talking as I'm kind of chomping like this is the idea right like we're playing I'm playing to be as

close to the real experience as possible so we're doesn't have to be Call of Duty I just was trying to think of a yeah a game where someone might have a headset on and be talking to their their teammates or their friends and kind of like hear what it would be like if you were telling us go hey go in that shed and get that guy but then also you're enjoying doritos like in real time with those sort of different inputs is it actually going to mute the chomping out right right all

right i'll wing it i'll

pretend like i'm playing the game andrew just just respond as if you're playing minecraft it's all the same stuff all right right but it's called duty okay yeah i'm gonna cosplay call of duty here okay all right alpha team we have oh wait a minute i'm a pacifist oh can you hear me talking while i'm chomping is this disgusting yeah keep going anything talking and chomping all right

what's my direction what am i supposed to go do lieutenant all right alpha team alpha team

0900 you're going to go about two clicks to the west and you're going to engage with charlie and then after that you're going to get in a fire when you see the white of their eyes

i do not feel inspired by our leader andrew he seems way more fixated on eating doritos helping us survive this hellscape that is this war wait wait wait wait so you got what you got

anything no no that's it that just sounded like your voice with a mouth full of junk but i know

John, by the way, you did everything right. You did exactly what we asked. That was perfection in sort of testing this, but it runs up against exactly what I thought maybe one of the shortcomings would be. I'm with you, Andrew. It seems like as a thing that can kind of figure out what the sound of chip chomping is in the clear, I'm going to give it like a six on that. But what it doesn't seem to be able to do, because this would take like i don't even think this technology exists literally in the world but it can't go through and take out the chomping if you're trying to talk and chomp so it's like if you agree to only to not be talking while you're chip chomping i'd say this is mildly effective but if you're trying to like eat and talk it seems to just kind of stop having any

efficacy do do we need to simulate like another game like i can simulate a madden football like that's something you guys would be so like all right all right so hungry just just chomping

down what kind of stuff do you say on madden are you i've never played madden but like you have andrew are you have you ever played madden with a headset on andrew no i've never played any video

game with the headset on against another person i mean you would just like talk i think like you

normally talk right but i think in this scenario because we're simulation and it's for science and like I'm going to bark out some like quarterback signals, okay? Omaha, Omaha. Yeah. Omaha, Omaha. Boom, 15, down, shit, right, right, right.

I'm getting so hungry. I mean, it's not, it's not only is it not muting out the chip sound, it's making the chip sound more delicious.

Oh, okay.

Also, is there something on there that is like, I don't know if it's a switch in the program or something that makes me want to check my fantasy football lineup because I just remembered that I need to get this set before the weekend football begins. Oh, really? Because football weekend begins tomorrow. I mean, I know it began yesterday. Yes, right. Of course.

Sure, yeah. What do you think about that Thursday night game, Andrew? Boy, that was, what a finish. I mean, so many zingers and dimes thrown. What did you think about that call at the end?

I got to say I'm going against the grain on this one. I think everybody's overreacting a little bit.

I mean, here's the thing. If you leave it so that the officials can decide the game, you've already failed.

The fact that they let the officials play the game, though, is what surprised me.

Although I'll tell you, Ron Torber is yoked.

I'm just going to trust you that that's a real riff.

Ron Torber is, but he's no Sean Hockley. Ed Hockley. Ed Hockley. No, his son, Sean Hockley.

Oh, his son now does it?

And he's also, he's not Ed Hockley buff, but he's pretty buff. Oh, wow. Yeah, famously, there was a guy, Ed Hockley, who just had some guns on him, and now his son is one of the referees as well.

I might have seen him the other day, because I saw some guy who seemed pretty, I was noticing in a football game that the ref had, I mean, it wasn't like, maybe this is the wrong person, but he was in really tight sleeves. Yes, yes, yes.

I bet you that would just Google Sean Hockley and see if that's who you were thinking of.

What were you going to say, John? I'll say, Luke, you know what Ed Hockley's job was when he was a principal or was he a financial? He was an attorney. He was an attorney. So, like, can you imagine being in the courtroom and that guy's like prosecuting you or something like that's terrifying? That guy, he was basically an NFL player.

I know he that was that would commonly come up, I think, during the games. And, you know, Ed Hockley lived for it, which was occasionally on like a more boring game. The announcer would be like, Ed Hockley looks like he could suit up. You know, it was like every day when Ed Hockley was like, it's leg day, I don't feel like it. He would just be like, but what if Sean McDonough says, looks like Ed Hockley could suit up. Like that's, that got him into the gym every single day. I've told this story on TBTL many times, so I will, I'll try not to belabor it. But like I did when the Seahawks were in the Super Bowl against the Pittsburgh Steelers. or the first Super Bowl the Seahawks went to, I was... covering it and i was just in like the greater detroit area for a week just looking for stories to do for npr and i thought well what about a profile of all of the officials and referees like who are these people where did they come from what are they doing when they're not here like let's do a deep dive and so i did a deep dive on all of them including a guy named i think mark hittner was one of the officials and he was from i think boone north carolina where he led their football team to the state championship anyway i gave all of these these officials and refs their day in the sun and then they just absolutely pwned my seahawks i mean that's the only super bowl the nfl has officially apologized for yeah like i was like wow thanks a lot dudes

i wasn't following i wasn't really following i think much football at all but certainly not the seahawks then but i know of that of that i'm gonna call it a catastrophe um from talking with you on the show about it but i don't think i ever pieced together that the story you were working on was almost raising up the exact it was very much that screwed you it was humanizing i thought you

know these really my thought was everyone likes to yell mean things at the officials in football me included by the way but like no one ever kind of asks the question of like what what goes on with these people you know outside of this and how'd they get here and they are they all have rich lives with families and things that they're doing because of course the nfl is still to this day the only professional sports league where its officials are not that is not their full-time job actually i don't know about like msl and and things like that but as far as between football basketball and baseball football is the only one where it is not their only profession and that's because it's like well it's 16 games a year but it's like yeah but the stakes are pretty high and the nfl has a lot of money coursing through it you could make this a 150 000 a year job for everybody involved but then the argument against that is well yeah but so what it's what are they going to just study more tape like the thing about officiating is there's a ceiling for how good at it you can be it's you know these things are bang bang plays it's like is it pass interference or Is it not? Did you all happen to catch that Kansas City game where there was clearly a just absolutely ridiculous pass interference by the Green Bay Packers that literally was it was it was the final drive of the game. Kansas City threw a bomb and the Green Bay person literally just tackled the receiver and there was no call in it. And it was it was I was super mad because we as Seahawks fans need Green Bay to not also join the playoff race. But like, I just can't believe sorry to make this about football, but I just can't believe that pass interference is not on the list of reviewable plays. It seems like the play that most benefits from looking at it in slow motion.

And it was for a season. They made it a reviewable play and then none of them were overturned because refs never want to admit they're wrong. So they're like, well, this isn't working. Let's just go back to the old way of not being able to challenge that. Yeah, you're right.

Andrew, I forgot that lost season of reviewable PIs.

What was it, like two or three ago maybe?

It was so – well, when did Schubert Dip come out? Yeah. That's my question.

Famously, people in authority positions don't love a man when they're wrong, so I'm surprised that was a failure.

Well, and that's why we're expecting – well, we're not expecting an apology from Mr. Dorito Silence that this... All it's doing, John, is muting you when you laugh.

Yeah, did you hear that? That laughter sounded a little bit like a crunch. Stop laughing like a crunch.

Ooh, is that a show title? Laughing like a crunch. Well, John, thank you for your dedication to audio experimentation.

Do you have any... This is the hardest it's been for me as an employee of 2BFultibiz, I gotta say. This has been really challenging.

now the big question is is benny is it is it benny who's there with you yeah yeah is benny

going to get a dorito by the or is that bad for benny's diet benny's the one with diabetes so he is certainly not going to get a dorito as much as he wants um sorry benjamin oh you know that's okay listen don't he he does get treats he gets plenty of things but he's not what is he allowed to have

what's a what's a diabetic friendly treat that he can have i mean he can have like any kind of regular dog treats and stuff we just kind of just no don't maybe no cool and no spicy sweet doritos

or whatever yeah like yeah but we just like don't give him as much as we might give like another dog or like you know if we have like some like you know fat from us like a like a kind of steak or something like that we'll split that up and like put in the dog's food bowls kind of thing um and so he gets like he gets like he gets all the the good stuff just not as much and not as

Does he know that he's not getting as much or does this part of the I know for you and your wife, it's a major. um responsibility with these dogs and is part of it because none of them can know what the other

ones are having we do i mean they we do gate them from each other when they're eating but that's only because they're all so food focused like the retrievers if you have a retriever like it's absurd um so yeah they don't see each other's food bowls but like i don't think that really plays it i don't think they really notice or care that much especially when there is like a little bit of bacon or something in there whatever it is everything even when you just

said, fat off of a steak I got hungry. It's uncooked fat off of a thing that I don't generally eat, and I was like, oh my gosh. I would trade this whole bag of Ricola for some steak fat right now.

Steak fat on Friday morning. It's part of a route

of 12-bounds diets. It's a classic Friday morning steak fat moment for me. Well, John, thank you. I mean, in all seriousness, thanks for downloading that program, and thanks for being part of the experience. I'm actually, to be honest with you, this has greatly exceeded my expectations.

This was a lot of fun, honestly. Yeah, the technology, even at a six, and I'm totally with you, Luke. I'm going to give that a six out of ten as far as effectiveness. But it worked a little bit better than I thought. And also, it didn't knock us off the air. No. That raises it right above a five right there. A hundred percent. And this was fun.

Thanks, John. I'm just going to put, before I leave, I will just throw out in the universe, if anyone who understands AI, like we got a lot of people sending stuff in. if you want to develop like a pizza silencer or a cheeseburger silencer i'm happy to i'm happy to

test all these things all right goodbye all right guys all right let's do a little music for your

weekend before we head on head on out um what would you like to favor the tbtl tens with andrew on this friday edition of the program notice i said edition and it's not friday as we're recording this but it's a friday edition that's my workaround if yeah this is a fun game to play at home if you're trying to figure out when things are being and by the way we're pre-recording this friday edition of the show because i'll be in the air when we would normally be doing the show but i'll always say friday edition or monday edition or i'll often use edition as a way of of stating what this is so i don't want to be actively deceiving the listeners but i'm also

not mad if they assume it was recorded on a friday but you do say edition every day right

That's why it's such a good system Because you have no idea when it's An addition or when it's an addition

Luke Should we tell him? I'm going to tell him We recorded all of these in 2018 We're not coming back until 2026 How lucky by the way did we get on the George Santos stuff

Most people had never even heard of him In 2018 But I was like that motherfucker is going to be on cameo

I actually couldn't remember for a moment if we actually talked about that on the air or if it ever made it off of our show

sheet. It was kind of hanging out on the show sheet all week, George Santos on Cameo, but it never got, it never made it to the show.

We didn't ever talk about it. Okay, then did you, I talked to somebody about it after I was out on the show sheet. I literally don't know if it was you or Genevieve or what. Alternate version of the show. What a world as a friend of mine might say. What a world indeed. I woke up this morning or maybe yesterday morning. It was definitely an edition of a morning, but not morning edition, and I had a little sunshine in my inbox because I didn't discover this artist, but this artist made their way into my listening life. I don't know, a couple of months ago, I got really obsessed with an artist called Joanna Sternberg. And I told you about their music. And we went to their website and everything. Exactly, and I played one song, and I think Joanna only had maybe one record out at that time, but it looks like they're getting ready to release another record and just unveiled or released a new single that I'm going to play for you here in a moment. But I wanted to say there was something especially exciting about this news. The song I'm going to play for you by Joanna Sternberg is Without You. But more importantly to my interest is they also announced a touring schedule. And I had checked their touring schedule a couple of months ago, and there was nothing coming our way. But now here it is, and I'll say this for anybody who's interested. Saturday, February 24th, Seattle at the Fremont Abbey. Have you been at the Fremont Abbey before, Luke?

I have. We've actually done Livewire there before. Oh, it looks like a beautiful venue. Very cool place.

Yeah, so I'm thinking about maybe seeing if we can get a gang of folks to go to that show. Because, you know, February 23rd, is that Valentine's Day?

No, 14th is Valentine's Day.

Oh, right. So anyway, I'm a hopeless romantic, as is Joanna Sternberg. Here's the brand new song, Without You. A nice old folk ditty with some scatting.

without you. I'll never, I'll never stop feeling so blue. I'll never, I'll never stop thinking of you. If love songs can work at all, of course they do, but not without you. There's a lot of scatting in Joanna's songs.

I really dig this so much.

Oh, my goodness. I know. It sounds like the first one you played I really liked, but it had almost like a Daniel Johnson vibe. Yeah. kind of like almost like like lo-fi but in a very intentional way and then maybe it was also just the website and the font that was used on the website it was also this one piano i think that's

the thing it's usually joanne and one instrument i've noticed and the piano songs are something

very stark about them and but that what you just played i love too it sounds a little more produced or a little more i don't know kind of there's something about it that's a little different

than the first stuff i heard but also enchanting yeah the first one that i played for you um And there's a few others on that record that are like this is much more like kind of plaintive and painful sort of with a piano accompaniment. And this one, obviously not a piano, but still very stripped down and much more much more pretty sounding sort of. But anyway, yeah, I do love that. And I unless it's already sold out for some reason, which I don't think it will be, although I'm assuming that's a small venue. I'm very much looking forward to that. It's a pretty intimate spot.

So if you want to hang out with Andrew, you know where he'll be February 23rd, I think, is the takeaway from this.

Well, Luke, and I'm not trying to produce your other show for you, but, I mean, I don't know. I sort of feel like there could be some live wire opportunities here. Joanna's going to be in Portland the day after that in February 25th. So I don't know if the schedules would align, but it seems like it would be worth reaching out. I mean, I think that the live wire audience would probably love this, too.

Yeah, I mean, that's everything that I've heard that you've played And the stuff I've checked on the website, I really, really liked In fact, I think last time I went and was checking Oh, you know what it was? I was in New York Oh, yeah, yeah And I was like, maybe they're playing at Avenue A Maybe they're playing at one of these kind of cool spots in New York And it wasn't the case, but definitely Does it say if they're playing in Portland?

Yeah, the day after that, Sunday the 25th at Polaris Hall So I'll promote that for Joanna as well But I don't know how that lines up with like live wire recording stuff. But anyway, we'll move it. All I need is that associate producer credit. It's all I do this for is just to once get an associate producer credit on that show.

I would like to suggest a song by somebody who I just recently found out about. And I believe I'm saying there. I hope I'm saying their name right. I think it's Ellery Saxel. And I don't I heard this song bouncing around the Internet. This particular song is called Moss 2. I believe like m-o-s-s and then like maybe capital I capital I or something and it's off of a as far as what I was able to trace it back to I think it's off of a compilation called sound wonders a series of epics and this is a compilation with a number of different artists who are making really interesting to me it's sort of experimental music that is typically doesn't have vocals but it is just oh my gosh this sound wonders uh album or compilation andrew i have just been like obsessing over at the last few days but um ellery saxel is somebody who's done movie soundtracks and has composed i think music for like you know classic like chamber orchestras and orchestras and also has um a couple of like i don't know if you call them eps but one called wave one one called wave two and wave three and then also a relatively new album called the blue of distance that's all so if you like this ellery saxel thing moss 2 you might check out this their their latest record and i think it might be their only full-length record or the one that i was able to find called the blue of distance so can we play a little bit of ellery saxel here on this friday edition of the show We'll be right back.

Thank you.

All right, that's a little sample of what this song just builds and builds and builds. As you can tell, Ellery Saxel uses a lot of looping and kind of electronic instrumentation and things. But I have been really, really digging a bunch of songs by them. And then also this album, Sound Wonder. So if you're into music that doesn't have a lot of lyrics but kind of puts you in a mood, would recommend.

The older I get, and I'm not 100% sure that's a clarinet and not an oboe. It sounds, I thought it was a clarinet, but like the older I get, the more I love the clarinet and wish I knew how to play the clarinet.

That's a really interesting observation. I'm not joking. No, I'm not being sarcastic. Like I'm thinking, I'm wondering, is the sound of that song that we just heard, is that something that 20-year-old me would have liked? And I think the answer is maybe no, or I would have not been like, oh my God, I found a new amazing song.

I love the loopy sort of trancy quality of it as well. But, yeah, and I just love the tone of that, that reedy tone. I don't know if I've told you this before, but growing up, my sister, who's about three years older than me, was really good at clarinet. And, I mean, at least, you know, I don't have context for it now. Really good in, you know, relative to the clarinet circles that we all ran in at the time. You know what I mean? Like, whatever. Like, for her peer group, she would go to a lot of private lessons. She would perform and compete in various things. And it seemed like a big part of growing up was, you know, going to her recitals and stuff. And she was really good. And at some point, probably as she got older and maybe in high school and college, just sort of left it behind. And it's funny, like, I never really considered the clarinet much as a kid other than that thing my sister plays. It also makes me look bad at in comparison because my parents expected me to be good at an instrument.

Don't forget, Woody Allen loves it.

Yeah. Two for two on a Thursday and a Friday of Woody Allen reference. And it's funny because I'm not a big rag like that. I don't know if it's ragtime and I'm out over my skis a little bit here. But like that kind of Woody Allen or whatever that whatever jazz that he performs that like seems ragtime to me. I could be wrong about that. That may be a little bit less so for me, but certainly like a more like kind of down down tempo type of situation like you just played. And certainly in various jazz numbers, like a clarinet, man, I have I have almost like retroactive FOMO at my sister's clarinet playing abilities. And it bums me out like not her. I'm not going to tell anybody what to do with their life, but like it bums me out to know that she has that talent and I want it. I don't think I've ever told her that before, but I don't think it's not too late, Andrew to start learning how.

Right. Remember when Noah Adams wrote that book about learning piano? At, uh, you know, you know, the, the, the NPR host, I believe he was in all things considered host, Noah Adams. When I first got into listening to public radio and working at a public radio station, Noah Adams was the ATC host and he wrote a book about learning how to play piano at, you know, I'm sure he was 47 at the time, Andrew, he seemed much older than me.

Yeah, right. I know.

I just saw, I'm assuming this is true. I just saw some listing of like how old the traveling Wilburys were.

Oh, when they were the traveling Wilburys? Yeah.

Bob Dylan was 47. The oldest traveling Wilburys was Roy Orbison was 52. No. That's what, I mean, I don't know. That also could be bad intel, but like. No, I believe you. Roy Orbison seemed like he was conservatively a thousand. him like literally mummified i mean like serious like like i mean i i i should double check that

right i don't want to commit any no i mean but actually though that i mean that sounds um that

sounds about right it's just like i mean we both outlived did we have we both actually outlived George Harris.

Harrison how old George Harris I don't know I can't Google two things at once but I'm I I thought he had made it to the to his 60s but I okay okay okay I don't know though I am again I'm just guessing here the age of the traveling let's see here the this is from okay this is good this is from the poke.com literally the poke.com written up in 2018 the headline is the age of the traveling Wilburys in 1988 will make you realize life is short and you'd better get a move on. Okay, let's see here. In 19, oh, this is not written.

I will tell you this. George Harrison was 58 years old when he passed away.

Oh, okay, so it didn't make it to the 60s.

I'm glad I haven't outlived George Harrison. I feel like that would be unfair to the world.

Okay, here we go. According to, and again, like, I know that we have to be careful about the information and where we get it, but there's no source I trust. Not even from poke.com. There's nothing I trust more than the poke.com. And according to the poke.com, Bob Dylan, 47, 37, Jeff Lynne, 41.

Oh, God.

I need you to really brace yourself for this next one.

I thought Jeff Lynne was 45 when he was born. I don't think a 41-year-old Jeff Lynne could exist.

I need you to take a Sucret. Wait, what do you have there? I need you to take a Ricola before I tell you how old Tom Petty was.

I don't know if you can hear this because I turned on my Ricola dampening software.

Tom Petty was 37 years old. Oh, my God. What the living? He was that good, 37 years old Roy Orbison was 52 And George Harrison Was 45 Oh my god, Tom Petty was

36, did you say? 37 So I've got a decade Right now, as I sit here, my friend On this Friday edition of the program I've got a Clear decade on Tom Petty Traveling Wilburys era Tom Petty

Oh my god

oh and again i will happily donate another i'll you know what i'll donate my 80s to tom petty coming back for 10 more years nobody needs an 85 year old luke burbank but we could use some more

tom petty that well i definitely agree with the second part of that for sure my goodness gracious

well all right on that note let's get to our listener suggestion it's from listener brooks who says my submission for music for your weekend is an instagram account it's called pedal steel noah it is a 15 year old kid playing covers on a pedal steel with his younger brother playing the bass their dog also sits silently in front of every video now andrew i've actually seen this i'm guessing you haven't because you're a little bit less extremely online than i am or are you familiar with a pedal steel noah no i'm not well i what i love first of all i think that these young folks i don't know why i think they're in texas i think watching something made me think that they might be based in texas but first of all they pick a lot of really like well-known songs but then their interpretations of them are really good and kind of give the song a new life in my mind and they also dress their dog up occasion like for whatever the song is and then the dog just sits there stoically staring at the camera it's both musically great and it fills your soul up with great dog content nice so do you have the ability to play music from instagram can you

actually do that this is why if you hear hesitation my voice for the past minute is because whatever link is here for some reason my computer is only interpreting it as taking me to the main page of pedal steel noah and not the particular song so i'm googling or you want me to i've got audio here maybe see if you if you have the chance of getting to the specific song um because i don't know while you while you look do you want me to finish reading the rest of this message do you

know how old pedal steel no 37 years hey you want to feel old all right hold on so i'm gonna try to i had to i've been i've been holding my microphone uh i'm in a very janky setup here in this hotel room so now in order to search for pedal steel no i'm gonna have to be slightly off mic so what

were you were you gonna finish reading yeah i'll finish reading this and i'll read it kind of slowly because i'm not finding this particular version of this particular song that brooks wants us to uh listen to here but uh to recap here pedal steel noah 15 year old kid playing covers of uh songs on pedal steel with his younger brother playing bass their dog also sits silently in front of every video and sweet dreams by the eurythmics is my favorite from this week but who knows what's coming next that's from listener brooks now were you able to find sweet dreams well what i found

was unfortunately some kind of internet compilation that uh let's see okay well i'm at noah's i think i might be at noah's instagram page here andrew so this is a good start although instagram nope says something went wrong reload page do you think and this is not where anyone wanted to take this conversation but do you think instagram wants to be something that doesn't work on the desktop kind of platform because they want to make you go to your phone because there's just not... By the way, I found it now. Well, I found many Pedal Steel Noah videos. Yeah, I'm there. You have the YouTube page now?

Oh, no. I mean, I'm on Instagram, and there's a million selections here, but I'm just like clicking through. Oh, here. I found Sweet Dreams. I just had to click on all of them until I got to it. So I think I'll be able to do this. Okay.

I just want to mention to people, if you don't want to go through the journey me and Andrew just did, He's also got a YouTube channel, Pedal Steel Noah, at YouTube, and it's got all of the videos. And again, I can't overstate this. The dog in the videos is, along with the music, the dog just really sells it. Look at these songs these guys do. More Than This, that's the Roxy music song. Head Over Heels, If You Leave, let's see, I'll Stop the World and Melt With You. the Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead clearly they've got a little bit of a of a XTC deal going on man okay

so let's see here you're going to wrap it up I'm going to see if I can find it on YouTube but we decided I'm playing this from my end or your end because I can't find Sweet I think Sweet Dreams might only be on Instagram so I'll play it from here

I think okay if you think you can thank you Brooks for the suggestion thanks to all of you for listening We'll be back here on Monday With more imaginary radio for you In the meantime have a great weekend Take care of yourselves And please remember no mountain too tall And good luck to all

I hear it

Is it? I hear it Software's not working

Thank you.

uh thanks for the invite but you know i love are those hot mozzarella sticks cube them up put them in some marinara sauce you have them on standby of course you can't go wrong with some sour cream and onions so long as you bring ridged chips yeah power out