Muse

Hi. I don't recall ever seeing you in here.

Well, maybe it's because it's my first time in here. That's right, my mom used to do all my laundry, but I do now. I'm what you call San's parents. Oh. I can go to a movie on a school night like that.

Well, welcome to the neighborhood. What's your name? Garth, Garth Algar, what's yours? I'm Honey, Hornay. Oh, okay, Miss Hornay. Would you like to have dinner some night? Oh, I like to have dinner every night. 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. I am not going to talk about myself. I'm going to talk about you. And if I talk about you, I think I'm going to talk

about me. Beware of things that cost $1.99. Those are the membership dues for this club that I joined. The Columbia House Music Club. Turns out that wasn't really even a club. It was just a business for making money. Although it is how I found my favorite band, various artists of the 80s oh i see dirty monkey not okay but dirty monkey dance i could really use a win here

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a friday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live it's your lucky day you just found a usb flash drive in the parking lot my name is luke burbank i am your host come Come on, brain. Think of things. Come on, brain. Be so smart. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia, where I apologize if I sound a little distracted. Right here at the top of the show, I am also... I've got two screens going on here. I've got the regular kind of TVTL computer that I use, that I play audio drops on, things like this, and things like Tom Shane. Let the fun begin. When I'm telling everyone that it's episode 4098 in a collector's series. But then I've got another laptop going where I'm watching a YouTube video. Key fob battery replacement, easy DIY for the Mazda CX-5. And I was just getting to the important part when it was my time to talk on the show. Once again, this show, my actual job is getting in the way of important work, like me replacing the fob battery for my car. anyway let's you know what let's gather together one another and enjoy episode 4098 in a collector series um it's not just key fobs that i'd like to update you on from my actual life it's also number one films on netflix which i watched this week so who needs a movie i uh watched leave the world behind the new movie with uh maher shala ali and uh julia roberts and Ethan Hawke. And I've got thoughts, my friends. I have got thoughts. I also have realized that it's finally time for me to come clean with the listeners and talk about something that I will be doing during our upcoming holiday break that most people, when they hear about it, think is truly unhinged.

It's time for Operation Crazy Plan.

So we'll get into that, too. It does involve Sky Jinx. And we're also going to talk to this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show. maybe best known for the depictions of the tall ships. He is, of course, also one of the most beloved soulful rockers from New Hampshire. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

What you're going to want to do, Luke, is get yourself a flathead screwdriver, sort of a large flathead screwdriver. I'm assuming your fob has the kind of key that—does the key fold down, or is this keyless? You don't even have a key in this thing, do you?

It's complicated, my friend. And there is a tiny key that is inside the housing of the fob. So the fob has kind of like a sort of clamshell kind of a thing. And if you, sorry, I muted myself because I'm about to cough. All right, that's all done. And you press this one little button to open one side of the shell. And then you take out this little tiny key. i used to um i'll be vague here to protect people's um people's uh dental secrets i used to um date someone a long long long time ago i'm talking like high school college-ish and they had she had a um one of her front teeth had And I'll see you next time.

at some point been knocked out so she had like a fake tooth that went over the front tooth and um and that was uh you know that was just a part of this person's smile and the the fake

tooth was quite convincing and everything i think we're pretty open to dental illness these days and talking about it and destigmatizing it is dental illness a show title maybe addressing

dental illness addressing dental illness and so um but one day something happened where the glue came off or whatever and this person I was dating showed me they pulled out this tooth that had been, I don't think I maybe even knew that this was the case but what had happened was they're like maybe it was an adult tooth right because if it was a child if something happens to your childhood teeth they just like let them fall out and then wait for the next train to Clarksville right but this must have been adult tooth that got injured in some way so that it stopped developing and growing and so the solution was to use that adult tooth a tiny shriveled adult tooth as kind of the anchoring system for the fake tooth that went over it and again it was very convincing i don't think i even knew any of this was going on and then this person said uh oh you want to check something out i said sure and then she just pulled her fake tooth off and just had this little tiny squiggly leftover tooth from many years ago and i thought boy we are really comfortable around each other And I think that's a good thing. But anyway, that's what this key is like. It's like a tiny little old tooth that's hidden inside my key fob. I guess the idea is that if the battery dies on the fob, I could take it apart and I could use this to at least open the vehicle.

Yes, I believe I've heard of these hidden keys.

The problem is I don't think I can start the vehicle without the fob. There is not a spot for me to put the key in, the ignition. There is no ignition other than the button you push. The reason this is top of mind for me, Andrew, and this is not even really what I wanted to get into here at the top of the program. What I wanted to get into at the top of the program was a quick plug for the Talkin' Taco Time podcast. These are a bunch of very nice young men who talk about Taco Time every week. I was on the show, this week's show, and I meant to promote it. I meant on Monday, this Monday, to say, hey, check out the Talkin' Taco Time podcast. i forgot to and now it's friday the reason i'm doing this andrew is because i wanted there to be a groundswell i wanted them to go from having whatever their normal number of downloads is to having like a massive number of downloads so they would be like wow that tbtl thing boy that's we got that tbtl bump but then i forgot to promote it so now there was like what little tbtl bump might have happened did not happen and now i'm feeling personally uh embarrassed over that so So apologies for just shoehorning that in. But please, everyone, go download the Talkin' Taco Time podcast that I was on so that I look good in front of these other folks.

Can I tell you a story about teeth? Yeah. I was friends with a woman. This is years and years ago. And I'm going to leave everybody's name out of this. But I will say that I was living in Los Angeles at the time. In fact, I think of you because I associate you with this bar. You and I have never had drinks in this bar together. But I think it was my geography is so bad. but I think it was one of your favorite dive bars in Silver Lake. Was it either the drawing room or the rustic? I was going to say it's named after a room. I just can't remember which room. I was thinking like the living room. It was the drawing room across the street from the rustic inn, ye olde rustic inn. Ye olde rustic. I wasn't here for this, but that bar, the drawing room is going to come up in a moment. So I was friends with somebody. I didn't know her super well, but we were getting to know each other, and she was dating somebody, and I loved them as a couple. They just seemed to – they were both very cool in their own way. He was somebody who was well-known in certain circles. I'll say he was a writer who was well-known in certain circles. I don't think probably many of our listeners would be totally keyed in on his writing, but some of our audience would probably know who he is.

Rhymed with Raven Ring.

Yes.

Okay.

I'll just admit it. You're friends with Stephen King's wife. It was Pleven Pling. Rhymed with Raven Ring.

By the way, I just want to say, from just a kind of like a sound standpoint, Peevinping is so much funnier than Reevinring.

Peevinping. Yeah, the L helps, too. But it rhymes with Reevinring.

I want to honor and salute that you made that joke much better, Andrew.

You know, P's are a strong consonant, and the P-L sound is very strong. It's a plosive. It's poop. But anyway, so I thought they, you know, I didn't know that they, I was a little bit surprised to hear that they had broken up. And I wasn't super close to them as a couple. We had socialized a few times as a couple, but I was mostly friends with her. And I was like, oh, you guys broke up. And she's like, yeah, you know, I think. And what I learned over time was he had a pretty severe drinking problem. And apparently the turning point was when they were in the drawing room together. Plinking. Blinking problem.

Yeah, a blinking problem. And he sneezed and a tooth came out. And it wasn't a fake tooth. It wasn't a veneer. Oh, damn. It was just a man who was not taking care of himself. And it was, like, I think prioritizing drinking almost above almost everything. And it's, you know.

Over not sneezing your teeth out.

Yeah. And also, you know, probably, and, you know, this is where I got to be careful. I know that, like, I've talked on the show about my reluctance to put myself in doctor's offices. By the way, I told you I got just a straight up, like, my first, like, medical, what do you call it? A health screening or whatever. Yeah. Like, just a physical? Yeah, basically a physical. Just a health screening. And I don't know if I told you this on the show, but, like, I've learned now that I've got to be really careful not to bring up specific ailments because they even make you sign a piece of paper now saying, like, if you bring up specific ailments in the doctor's office, then your insurance may not cover it. Like if you're in here just for a wellness check, it's ridiculous. And it harkened back to some issue I had like five years ago. The last time I had definitely promotes a very good communication style between the patient and the doctor. The system is so broken. And so during the office visit, I even kept saying to the guy, to the doctor, I was like, well, I want to be kind of careful because the last time I was in here, I got charged a whole bunch because I brought up something with an ankle that wasn't part of the wellness check. And therefore insurance didn't cover it. Like so much of my doctor's office visit was talking about what we could and could not talk about. And we weren't talking about taco time, but you are talking about taco time.

Yeah, we'd recommend everyone to go download that podcast. We do discuss Andrew's current physical, though. And it's a massive HIPAA violation, but it's quite interesting.

But I know I'm way off topic, but I guess the tooth story is basically over. But I my this time I went in. This is a couple of weeks ago. Everything was basically fine. I told you I got to go back for some more checkups on blood pressure and stuff. But while I was there, he just gave me a wellness exam. We were very careful not to walk outside of those lines. I also went across the hall to a lab where they drew some blood so they could just check some general checkings of blood things, right? And I believe that's exactly the column.

That's how it appears. When they're billing your insurance, it was checking of blood things.

What's the billing code on this? So I got the notification from my new insurance provider last week, and I finally opened it yesterday. And there were two notifications, one for the doctor's visit and then one for the lab work combined for, like, you know, like let's say I was there for an hour combined. Now, I'm not on the hook for this, by the way. I've got to pay, like, $35 or something. It's fine. But what do you think insurance paid for this visit, for this wellness check and blood drawing and lab work?

you were this doesn't matter but you were there how long let's say the whole thing was probably

about an hour in and out and i lucked out because apparently the lab has been very busy lately because they shut down another lab or something but i was able to walk in and out of there the whole thing i'm going to say probably about an hour i am going to say that that the insurance company was charged 1500 oh wow well maybe i'm the one who's out of step it was 950 it was like That's a lot. That's still a lot. $5.50 for the doctor's visit, which was maybe 20 minutes of his time. But, you know, there were other care providers there who, you know, who, like, took my blood pressure and stuff. So it wasn't just him. But, yeah, $5.50 for that and then something like, I don't know. I don't have it in my – there's, like, three-something for the blood work, too. And I was just like, wow, that is just like if I – you know, if you didn't have insurance. The system just seems so unbelievably broken right now. It's just – it's ridiculous. You can't raise certain issues with the doctor. Otherwise, you're going to be charged outside of the bounds.

Again, I mean, any good medical system is based on a lot of secrecy between the person who needs the medical care and the person who understands how the medical care works. I mean, do I have to draw you a picture, Andrew? Yeah. By the way, if I draw you a picture, you're now out of network and cannot receive any of the medical attention that is described in the picture I drew you. I think that why I guessed And I'm going to be totally honest with you I thought I was guessing low Because I thought this is a better payoff If I'm well under the number So if I'm being honest I would have said They're billing it at $4,000 This is an indication of how little I understand About what things really cost in the medical world Because I grew up without health insurance And was under the impression That if we ever had to go to the ER Or to even just a regular doctor like um let's say on on sort of like in a rush kind of capacity that it would cost roughly one hundred thousand dollars and then we would immediately be evicted from our rental home and we would you know wander the streets of seattle like that was that was the general vibe that my my parents particularly my mom kind of cultivated so i think i to this day and you know i have uh have health insurance and I actually really I have to say so far with Kaiser that's who I have so I like to say very very confident name to call it permanente permanente oh yeah we we are going to be around for a while my friends this is permanently installed this system but um I actually like them like when I've anytime I've had to call this is this this now we're moving off of now we're moving off of key fob talk but also health talk although I just got the key fob all fixed and the battery is replaced you already had the battery i bought the battery last night at the home depot as walt would call it um and uh this is because i couldn't i almost couldn't start the car in leavenworth i we were on a pretty tight recording schedule and then i was running to a shoot there were the very nice people were literally waiting for me for about an hour just sitting there twiddling their thumbs and becca and i jump in the car and i'm pressing the little start button and it says you your fob is not your your key fob is not near the car not near the whatever and i'm like it is i'm holding it and when i tell you that i like freaked the flip out because i was already way way overdue for this thing for forgetting to where we were going i was like oh and then like i just like i go to becca i go like there's a key in here can you try to get it because she has like fake nails that are long that are like i couldn't i couldn't pry into the thing and i'm just like oh i like i really had like zero chill and then i just was holding it and maybe shaking a little bit and somehow i jostled it enough that it started

like you were shaking it or you were shaking out of terror i think i was shaking my my wags was

shaking my hand was shaking somehow i i did something where i kind of you know if you have something where the batteries are accessible a remote control for instance we've all done this it's not working but you're too lazy to get off the couch so you take the back off and you just roll the batteries and it gives them a little more life you know that move right yeah i think

i've probably done that i mean i can definitely picture doing it i i can also picture thwapping the um remote with into the heel of your hand one of those two things so i did some combo of that

and it it it had just enough life to start the car and usually what happens in those situations for me is i um i then just continue to put this off for days and weeks and months until i'm totally screwed like i'm late for a flight like i was last week and the car won't start well in a um in a real in a in a real plot twist that almost no one saw coming including me i actually went to home depot last night brought the clicker i mean i had to because it's how i drive my car walked into home depot uh and uh did a quick search on my phone as to what size battery i need to replace the battery in this little thing and i've actually now replaced it and so we're good to go for another few years and i did it andrew before it was a total crisis i mean i did have one total crisis but this is before the next total crisis i had to replace

the battery on my key fob now mine is a key still it's the kind that you know it's like a volkswagen key fob i think you've had this exact kind before where the key kind of folds down into the fob um so i need to start my car by actually inserting it into the ignition but of course i unlock the car by pushing the unlock button there's not a i think similarly there's might there might be an emergency way of me opening my car even if my key fob is dead but it's not you know convenient or handy and i don't know how to do it um so i've had to replace the battery in my key fob twice already in our cars 2018 that seems like a lot to me but i guess i i might be a paranoid person And so every time I lock my car, I wouldn't be surprised if I toot it twice, not to get too personal here. Yeah, but, like, I might just fidget more. Like, I wonder if I'm getting half the life of these batteries because I'm always hitting the button twice to make sure that nobody steals the stains that cover the seat cover.

Well, if you have your tables, I mean, that is how – that's what you do for your job. That's how you make your living. So you can't have anybody stealing your car with all those tables in it. No, that's not true. I'm thinking now – let's try something, Andrew. I don't think you'll be able to hear this over the recording, but what I'm going to do, I'm going to hit the panic button on the remote.

Oh, yeah, you're not in the city anymore.

No, no, I'm out here at the Madrona Hill studio, so let's take a listen to this. I don't like that. Did I put the battery in upside down?

Are you sure that you're close enough that it would be working?

did someone steal my car i haven't been outside in a while that's weird i mean i am like very i'm pretty close i am in a converted garage so here's what you need to know i'm in a converted garage which is right next to the driveway that used to lead to the garage which is where the car is i'm like i don't know 100 feet from the car i don't know maybe these walls did walt and i build these walls so solidly that not even my Mazda

cx5 remote can get through them i don't know i'll have to invest just do it more time let's just hold on just what i'm going to do andrew you can't hear me but i'm walking over closer to the door i want to get eyes hold on i gotta take my headphones off i'm trying to get eyes on this whole situation and see if if I do the thing no I have definitely I have I have 100% made this situation worse somehow Andrew and I don't understand it I was playing siren sound effects

while you were doing that so now it's definitely not working though huh no and I have a brand new

energizer 2025 lithium battery in here put it in the right side right side up well it only can go in you know one place so it was even even luke's can replace this thing we thought but like i'm very confused because i mean i did it exactly like the video on youtube but now when i'm clicking it i'm not getting any response from my car i'm also by the way uh if i have somehow broken this thing And right when we're done here recording, I've got to jump in the car and zoom down to Portland for all kinds of important things.

This is anxiety-causing.

It is, but see, that's the...

This is why you just say, give us a key. I mean, I know that I guess there's an emergency key, but you say you definitely can't start it with the emergency key?

No, because there's no... I mean, you know what, Andrew? I have a different fob. Actually, this is... Oh, okay.

Hold on, hold on.

Please hold. I just realized all I need to do... Okay, I have a backup fob. Let's see what this one does, okay? Ready? Oh, I heard it. Wait, what the fob? So the backup fob worked. The backup fob is great. Well, it was great. So what is wrong with the one that I just replaced exactly as the directions? Let's see. Hold on. Try a second.

Oh, there it is.

Yep.

See? That's still the backup one?

That's the backup fob. What in the tarnation is going on with this new one? I don't know. I'm sorry. I've already distracted us far too much with this.

We're calling that segment Not My Fob, by the way. Full of puns today. Full of puns.

That is great. You know what? Let's actually do this. Let's go to the donors now. I want Not My Fob to be as fresh in their minds as possible because that's honestly one of the better things that's been said on this show in a really long time. And let's just try to ride that goodwill right into these donor things. Let's thank some of our donors today. These are the people still holding their sides, which were recently split by the joke, Not My Fob.

Does that, I mean, a lot of just like kind of low-hanging wordplay by me today, but does that knock dental illness out of the running?

Well, I mean, I like both of them a lot. And I guess I would say maybe dental illness might, for some folks that have struggled with mental illness, maybe would they see dental illness as glib? I mean, are you even allowed to make jokes anymore, Andrew? Can you say anything anymore?

Yeah, you can't joke anything anymore.

So I like both of them. They're both very, very strong contenders. I should actually ask Elizabeth McElreath of Springville, New York, a.k.a. Bette. That's right.

our friend bet out there in oh i'm sorry i cut you off springville new york yes where bet is uh donating from and i text with bet every day do you know why every day around noon it's wordle bet is my wordle friend what do you say here's what i here's what my score was yeah i usually just send you know there's a way to share your score and it shows all the little colored blocks without giving away the actual answer. I'm up to, if I'm going to brag here for a second, I completed today's Wordle. I believe I'm on a 126 game streak right now. That means I have not lost or skipped a day in 126 games. Oh, not lost, too. Not lost, yeah.

Impressive, very impressive.

Thank you, appreciate it.

I've been a little bit getting into, what's the other one where you categorize things? Oh, yeah, I play that, too. Problem Solvers. What is it called? Yes, Problem Solvers. connections connections connections right uh i'll play that one with becca sometimes and i really like it and i was very proud i forget what it was but it was a couple weeks ago on a sunday morning and i like got you know maybe the third little level of the connections and and i felt very proud of myself and then later i was looking at tiktok or something and there was a guy on there going i love connections but new york times can you make it harder it's way too easy i was like oh man could have really used a win there you really could have used it well you did have a I know, but I could have used it to not being sullied by here. that the connections is too easy do you find it to be too easy well not to be a braggart i usually

do get it like in you know in four in the perfect but then the thing with me though is if i mess up early on then i get frustrated and i kind of stop caring and then i don't get it at all or something like it's rare that i but for the most part and we all share our connections so now like i have a whole thing now luke all right let me just tell you this really quickly we'll move on um i do so here's my routine we get done with the show i do my uh oh was the battery in upside down or

something and i fixed it no it wasn't but somehow taking out i'm putting it back just maybe a

connection issue that's good news i'm glad you hear that those are so easy yeah so my uh so my routine is this i get done with the show and then i have lunch and i play wordle then i send my wordle score to my wordle thread my group of friends here in seattle who we all play wordle Let me share it. And then I go over to a different app where the TBTL text line is, and I send bet my score, and I see what bet's score is. Then I go back to the app, and then I open up Connections, and then I do Connections, and then I send that to the Wordle thread again, but then I also send that to Phyllis because Phyllis has become my Connections friend. So it's this whole thing, but it's a way of staying in touch.

That's a really good – that's a very good point. It's nice to have some No pun intended But it's nice to have Connections with friends And kind of an An excuse or a reason To just be like Hey this is a thing That happened The reason that Every time you say Listener and donor Bet's name And I just respond With bet Is because that's also How the young people Now say you bet Or you betcha I like a good you betcha None of the young people Are saying you betcha I know but I am

I am

They're opening A dad's root beer

They are Some of the froth Is getting right In their mustache They're going you betcha And they get some hard-sucking candies.

Thank you, Bette. Thanks also to Sarah and Phil Roilence of Seattle, Washington. Thanks, guys. Appreciate you. Roilence, that's a cool last name.

It is. It has, well, it has royalty implied. It does. It feels very, like, you know, regal.

Somebody was a duke of somewhere. Very regal. Thanks, Sarah and Phil. Thanks also to Kathy Walquist of Orangevale, California. Yeah, I can smell the oranges in Orangevale. I can smell the veil. Piercing the veil, we're told, is reality. That used to be part of the intro spiel of the guy that I produced for named Peter Weisbach. Oh. This is probably where I learned, not from him specifically, but a lot of the stuff that I do, even all these years later on this silly little podcast, that folks like Kathy Walquist is supporting, And also Nicole Spahich of Worcester, Ohio

Oh, Nicole Shout out to Worcester

Like, this show, all these years later Is so much of it is the result of just little things That I almost, like, absorb through osmosis The intro that we play with all the drops I think that kind of was inspired by this thing The Ron and Don show that I love They had a really long intro that had, like, a ton of tape

Not Ron and Don

Did I say Ron and Don? You did I meant Don and Mike, excuse me One of those two groups is still emailing me about real estate every day

I'll give you one guess

but um no Don and Mike excuse me from WJFK and then I wonder if cause Wiseback used to have like a kind of almost in the way I say the show that just might be too beautiful to live you know there's a patter that I'm doing at the top of the show that's the same thing every single day some of that is just convenience for me my brain's not capable of thinking of new stuff every day but it's also I think cause I just learned that as a young producer and he used to say a whole bunch of things pricking the pretensions and then he would say piercing the veil that we're told is reality

and was he I don't even know really what that means Was he a conservative talker?

Yeah, oh wait, wait, wait I mean, and just an all around bad person in my experience

Not to be confused with Herb Weisbaum No, all around good person

I'm pals with Herb Herb Weisbaum and I, we text each other

Oh that's great, I knew that he was a big admirer of your work as well because that's mostly what we text about is how good my work is

right yeah no that is legitimately really fun for me to get to kind of count herb weissbaum as a friend because i grew up watching him on tv and um and and then listening to him on the radio and he's just like he's a real like seattle uh media legend and you know we're losing seattle media legends unfortunately left and right so uh and herb is as far as i'm aware and he's hale and hardy and doing great but like to get to text with uh a seattle media legend who i grew up admiring is like very fun for me um not that i'll ever become i may become a cowlitz county media legend that's that's about the best i can hope for at this point can't find consumer man

that's a little song i wrote about her boy

right is that creed uh no that was can't find a better man by pearl jam yeah i know i was just naming a band it sounds like pearl jam but isn't teasing me on purpose i was i legitimately believe that that was terrible we have some breaking news here that wasn't that katie just got a four uh i got a four on wordle that just came tvtl breaking news what if that becomes a thing i just tell you the scores of my friends as they pop up into my text nobody tell herb weiss bomb he he holds me

in high regard as a media professional. He finds out this show is just us announcing Wordle scores and me celebrating it with two toots of my car's horn, which sounds like this. Oh, no. Why is it? There it is.

There it is. Just delayed.

I was so proud of myself. Boy, what a journey for the donors, huh? Donors like McKenna Jones in Portland, Oregon.

Hey. Thanks, McKenna. I'm going.

second second day in a row of um of a portland reference which makes me feel very loved in my kind of adopted hometown i was doing wait wait last week and that the story that we talked about on yesterday's show about uh the cosmics you know on wait wait i said you know uh well that really kind i basically said on wait wait what i said on tbtl which is i kind of think that mcdonald's is coming after this thing called dutch bros although i called it dutch brothers and i said i don't know why i felt the need i don't know if this made it on the recording or not i didn't listen to it but becca told me that the dutch brothers thing made it in but i said something like well in portland where i live now and it was the weirdest thing because like no one cares if i live in portland or not i can just say i live in portland or i could leave it out but i got caught in this weird moment of like i guess i live in i mean i don't right now technically but i did i think of myself as culturally portland like that arby's is culturally edmund sure so i was just kind of like i don't know why i just had this moment on i guess you could say a sort of a national stage where i'm talking about something that's basically a detail that matter doesn't matter to anyone except me but i found myself getting caught up in trying to explain and like had to say like now as if everyone who listens to wait wait has been going like well wait a minute that's doesn't luke live in bellingham like like as if anyone's tracking this stuff but i just felt felt the need to clarify it was I hope they cut that out wonder what that feels like to just find

yourself giving as I was saying that I was like this information about your life that nobody asked for it finding yourself knee deep in a story you never meant to tell I have no idea what that's

like I again I'll I I don't care enough to go back and listen to it but I would be curious if the if the editors were doing me any sort of kindness that never made it into the broadcast. But I do want to, before we're all done here, I want to thank our final donor for today, which is, of course, Cheryl Axel of Bellevue, Washington.

Thank you, Cheryl.

Thank you, Cheryl. Thank you to all of our donors today for keeping TBTL going. We could not do this without you. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right. Um, which considering how things tend to get out of hand on this program in terms of the timing of things, uh, which story, if, if, if something's going to get booted, what do you care about more? My insane plans for the holiday break or my insane take on the number one movie on Netflix called leave the world behind?

Well, I guess it depends. If I think I might ever watch Leave the World Behind, I'd rather not talk about that now, but I don't know anything about it, so I don't even know if I'm going to see it.

Also, it's not a very insane take. I just wanted to try to hype it the way that I hyped my plans for the holiday.

You wanted to hype your take, or you wanted to hype the movie?

I wanted to hype my take. Oh, okay. Yeah, you know what? Let me just tell you, you know this, but I don't think the listeners outside of our friend broadcast barrier are aware, but I'm going to be doing something um that uh sounds like a pretty uh a pretty nutty thing to do but i uh when basically christmas night december 25th i'm getting on an airplane in seattle i'm flying to frankfurt germany i'm getting off the airplane i'm walking around frankfurt germany for like i don't know 23 hours like i don't even know if it's a full day full 24 hours and then i'm getting back on the airport and then i'm airplane at the airport that's where they do that and then i'm flying back to seattle i'm doing this whole thing so that i can maintain my status with alaska airlines for all of 2024 so i am paying out of my own pocket because you have to buy the ticket that's how it works this is how you get the miles if i were to use miles to fly to germany and back That would do me no good. I have to buy an international ticket on Condor Airlines, which is a code share with Alaska Airlines.

and fly over there and fly back so that I will hit my status that I need to so that all of 2024 will go hopefully a little easier for me in the sort of airline department.

How long of a flight is that?

Nine hours.

That's not as bad as it could have been. I guess it could have been 48 hours. But, yeah, nine hours. So that what your longest flight here in the United States is usually like, what is it, five hours to get maybe?

Yeah, I mean, if you're going to like Miami from Seattle, you might get into the neighborhood of like pushing six hours depending on the jet stream. But yeah, nine hours, you go over Greenland or something, right? Like, it's very odd what the most direct route to Europe is. Like, if you're looking at that little map kind of thing, you're like, whoa, OK, I guess we're going. Are we over the north? Am I Santa right now? did santa come late for this um so yeah it's it's about nine hours and i really i sort of went back and forth on this and then did something impulsive which is my general decision making process it's hem and haw and hem and haw and then just do something so that i do something that i can't undo and what it was was i was sitting there looking at kind of how many miles i've flown this year and and and and what how many more i needed to uh to sort of get to this number which is like gold 75k is what the thing is called it's not even the highest level anymore within the company there's now a 100k and what that means is you've flown either 100 000 miles in a year or 75 000 miles in a year and i'm going to come up i don't know maybe between 10 and 15 000 miles short when when it's all said and done. And this has to happen before, this has to happen during 2023 for it to count. And so I was texting with our friend Barry, who is just like, he is playing four dimensional chess with this stuff. One of the things, and I think Barry would be okay with me saying this. I was like, what do you know about like, what do you know about a way for me to try to rack up a crap load of miles, but not overpay for it? And he goes, I got your flight. And he just like sends me, He's like, this one, this one. He goes, yeah, I've been in some of the forums, and you're getting this for $0.07 a mile, which anything under $0.10 a mile for a mileage run is just like a steal of a deal. Like, there are people doing this all the time this time of year. It's called mileage run, and it is just to make sure that you've got your status for the following year. And there are all these folks that have figured out basically the best ROI on a mileage run because they're not all created equal. Like, I could fly to London and back on British Airways, but that ticket was going to be ten thousand dollars jeez louis so i don't know i don't know what that like you know what i'm paying per mile for that but like there are people that are sitting around figuring out what is the furthest you can fly and back for the cheapest that will get you the most miles and this condor airline flight to frankfurt and back it turned out to be this is eating up three to four days of my vacation too which is that part is what really you know i look so forward to getting a little time in the summer and a little time in the winter to kind of not have any of my job stuff you know live wire will be in a bit of a lull uh ideally i'll keep cbs at bay we will be i'll be on a break i know you're going to be working posting the shows but like

i love how i said that like we got to make sure joanne hears that the old the old bosses yeah yeah because in the olden days it was the case that like you know i i'm pretty i i've got lots of boundaries around the time that we take off. I'm always like, I'm off, off. And you were off and working, posting the shows, doing other things. But if I was like, and then we're going to be, you know, taking a little time for ourselves, every once in a while you'd be like, well, yes, but I will also be working. And it was to make sure that, like, maybe our bosses weren't like, what is Andrew doing on his time card? But then I just realized we are our own bosses now.

Well, you know what? Can I be honest with you? It wasn't about those bosses so much as especially when I'm working through that break and then get like I'll get a lot of emails from listeners or even friends just saying, I hope you're enjoying your time off. And when it's not time off, it just I don't I just hate it. I don't know why. Like, I hate it when people are like, hey, hope you're enjoying your time off. I'm like, it's not time off for me. I'm working. And like, it doesn't matter. Nobody's checking my time sheets. But I just always sort of found that somewhat. I don't know. Just itchy to me a little bit. And there is something that and we're going to not to derail this conversation, but like because of various technical issues and stuff, like even when I do travel or travel or something like there's always it's always, you know, on me to get the shows posted or something. And we're trying to figure out a way because I'm taking some time in March and I don't want to like I don't know. I feel like I need to explain to the listeners that like, you know, like Vives and I have some plans that we need to do in March and it doesn't line up with your plans.

And so I'm trying to figure out a way to take like a real vacation in March where I'm totally fully unplugged. And so there might be some pre-recorded shows or something in there. And people are going to be like, boy, that Andrew sure is lazy. He took two weeks in the winter and then he's taking a week in the spring or whatever. And that's just it's kind of not it's kind of not the case. But that's kind of maybe people burning the candle at both ends.

Guess who's also not going to be taking some time off me when I'm calling you from Frankfurt?

Yeah, if we can work that out, I was looking at that. We need to really look at your schedule and the time difference is pretty stark. It's like, you know, morning here is like evening there. So we'll have to kind of figure out.

Yeah, but I mean, I have nothing going on in Frankfurt. I'm literally like our friend Barry said, go stay at the Hotel Moxie. It's by some museums. Like I'm this is this is not a, you know, a vacation or a thing where I have like literally I'm going to fly there. I'm going to depending on what jet lag is doing to me. I may wander around town. I will go to my hotel. I will call you and tell you how Frankfurt is I guess my point in all this is I will be sending in some kind of update from there and I'm sure that it's doable I don't care if I'm doing it at 11 o'clock at night I have nothing going on

Here's what I've been thinking because this has been on my brain lately as we're trying to figure out our holiday schedule is I just want to make sure that we're very clear as we figure out the math on this that we have the days right because there's a chance that let's see if it's morning here and night time there It'll still be the same day. Right. That's what I want to make sure of that. We're not like somehow on the other side of the midnight divide. Oh, God, what a record. Have you ever heard the other side of the midnight divide?

If you put that on right at the beginning of Wizard of Oz, I think some really interesting stuff happens. Well, let's just say, OK, right now, as we're recording this, it's about twelve thirty in the afternoon local time here on the West Coast. And it's nine thirty at night of the same day.

I was just looking at that too, so that's good. It's the same day. So all it'll be is the normal.

So like we could do, I guess my point on all this is, yes, I'm a person who's overly obsessed with trying to maintain their little status with the airline. But my defense of this to people is if you are traveling a lot, the difference between being able to check your bags for free or getting upgraded or pick your seat, you know, even if you're in coach kind of picking a sort of a seat with a little bit more leg room, that's just so that's just such a game changer as far as, you know, doing this lots and lots of times throughout the year. People are like, wow, you travel a lot, and boy, that must really be a grind. And I'm like, it is. But also, as far as once the plane is taken off, I'm actually kind of like in about as good a spot as I can be, generally speaking, whether I'm in first class or coach. So that part is actually usually pretty tolerable. It's all the other stuff. It's waiting for the rental cars and taking shuttles and things like that. But so, yeah, like the other thing I wanted to say or the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think that the talk we've been having, Andrew, and we should really just, you know, nail this down offline. as it were is we're going to be doing the winter games around uh you know um the the christmas holiday and then new year new years is that like daylight saving time has everybody been saying

new years and it's new year no it's probably it's new years i think i always get caught up on that

too but we are um but there's also going to probably be a few non-winter games or a couple of non-winter games sprinkled in including me checking in from germany um other things crab Rangoon and things of that nature. I guess what I'm trying to say to the listeners is, you know, here's the general feedback we get from the winter and summer games is, you know, I appreciate that you're putting new shows out. Some people really love them, particularly people who have submitted them really love them. Other people will say, that's a time for me to catch my breath. Like, there's so many shows, and like, I know that when these special shows come out, I catch my breath, maybe because the narrative isn't moving forward in quite the same way, and then I jump back in. That's everyone's right. Do whatever you want. Use the show ever works for you and your schedule. But this time around, there's going to be some even newer than new stuff in there. So I just want to tell people to kind of watch this spot. If you are somebody who's in the habit of maybe kind of taking that as an opportunity to explore your relationship with other podcasts or whatever, this is going to be, there's going to be some new in real time stuff that is sprinkled in. So you might want to kind of keep a closer eye on TBTL during the winter games than maybe you have in the past.

Yeah, it scares me, Luke. What scares you? Well, it scares me of people just saying, well, I'm going to just take a step away because of just like listening habits first. Well, that's what we're doing here.

We're trying to incentivize people to stay. I know, I know. Keep your friends close and your TBTL Winter Games closer.

Exactly, so don't, don't, don't.

How about we don't even tell people which days are going to be the new days, like where I'm in Germany or maybe you're doing a show maybe with Veeves or whatever. Like, we're going to be throwing down some content that is not simply a Winter Game. And when I say simply a winter game, we have great winter games. We really do.

I don't know if I've told you that. People have been sending them in, and they're really good, too. That was a lucky guess. Yes, we have a whole bunch. They're really good. I'm not just saying that. I'm actually very excited to get into some of these.

Okay, good. So now that's out of the way. If we have any listeners in Frankfurt, hit me up. Maybe we can get some coffee at 9 p.m. right before I have to log in with Andrew. God, do I get any vacation time on this program? The other thing is that I watched, Becca and I watched that movie on Netflix, Leave the World Behind, which is the movie with Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali and both Kevin Bacon and Ethan Hawke, who in certain ways have become the same person in my mind, Andrew. They kind of look the same. They're kind of the same age.

Yeah, I could sort of see that.

Not necessarily young versions of them because they were in different movies, but I'll tell you what, this version of them, I mean, the point is, or I would say the differentiator, the difference is that in this movie, Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts are married And he's like a professor of media studies And Kevin Bacon is like a prepper Who has like a Dallas Cowboys hat on So they're playing very different characters But if you took them and you put them in Exact same outfits and you had them Doing similar things we'd be getting into Dermot Mulrooney And who's the other one That we always I'm trying here Why is Dermot Mulrooney the one that I remember More clearly and the other one is named Dylan McDermott

Dylan McDermott, yeah.

Dylan McDermott, Dermot Mulroney character, I feel like Kevin Bacon and Ethan Hawke are starting to kind of get into that same zone for me. But anyway, they're all in the movie. I guess it's based on a novel. I was kind of surprised to see executive producers, Michelle and Barack Obama. Oh. I didn't know they even dabbled in that world. They probably have been for a while, and it was just news to me. But like, I mean, my guess is that they have a production company that makes all kinds of things. And one of the things it helped make was this movie.

I wonder if it has to do with it. I'm not even joking. Obama's podcast with Bruce Springsteen or something. Maybe they just have to have this media company and keep keep it. I don't know. You got to keep moving, I guess, forever like a shark or else you die.

But I'm sure somebody came to them and said, you have an incredibly valuable and powerful brand as the Obama's. And, you know, when Barack Obama puts out his like, here's what I'm reading this year, here's what I'm listening to, people really then take that as kind of, you know, a guide to what to listen to and read. Somebody probably said, you know, it's not just, you know, raising awareness for worthy causes. It's not just trying to, you know, promote, you know, a sort of better standard of living on the global scale. It's also making movies with Julia Roberts.

well is there any though that's what i'm asking because their brand is so i mean kind of specific but also very important and you know we're talking about former president and first lady here um is there anything about this film that seems like it fits in with the general messages that they put

out into the world like why this one well without giving away too much of the plot and that's a danger because a lot of times you know we'll spoil a movie that's 30 years old and like who cares This is really pretty new stuff.

Yeah, and I don't want you to spoil anything. I'm very sensitive to that.

Yeah, so I want to be careful about how I describe the content. I would say this. If I hadn't seen their names at the beginning of the movie, at the end of the movie, I wouldn't have said to myself, boy, that really felt like it had Michelle and Barack's fingerprints on it. Like from a sort of, I don't know, just philosophical standpoint or whatever. Like, uh, it gets into, you know, I don't think I'm giving anything away to say that it's a sort of apocalyptic type of thriller. And I think I can also, uh, without ruining anything, say that it sort of starts with Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke. Uh, they live in, in Brooklyn and they decide that they really need, they and their family really need to kind of get a break from the city. And so she rents this, like, really gorgeous house through presumably, like, Airbnb or something out on Long Island. They go out there. They're enjoying themselves. And then Mahershala Ali and his daughter show up at the house because it turns out it's actually their house that they had been Airbnb-ing out or VRBO or Vacasa-ing. I don't know why these are the details I need to focus on. They never get into what vacation services used to rent out the house. Duly noted. but basically like they there's you know the grid goes down essentially the internet grid that is and so everybody is is kind of you know pretty freaked out and mahershala ali and his daughter um just want to get back to their actual home and it's actually that part i think is a very is a clever device because it's like imagine what would you do andrew if you and veeves went and rented an airbnb and you're there and you're enjoying it and then two complete strangers show up and say, This is actually our house. I was emailing with you, although the name that I used in my email isn't the name that I'm using right now. And there are also no pictures of me and my family in the house. But this is our house, and things are going down in the wider world, and we would just need to stay here. Like, that's a pretty good, actually, premise for, like, a kind of psychological thriller.

Mm hmm. Yeah. When I was in Ohio, there was you won't be shocked to hear that my parents rely on different news sources than I do. And I don't know what was like Mother Jones and a lot of Mother's Grist, a lot of Mother's Joan. And but there was something that was popping up in both of their feeds about some guy here in the Seattle area. And I think maybe even Seattle proper, like South Seattle, who was Airbnb-ing his house out. Or it might have been Fadagio. I don't even know. What was the one that you just said? What is the vacation? Yeah, right. VRBO. Anyway, but then somehow he ended up like they ended up the people wouldn't leave. And now he can't get them out. Yeah, I know that story. Yeah, you know that story, too. I was making kind of national headlines while I was in. And, of course, it's a type of thing that is good. not clickbait because that implies that it's that it's untruthful in some way maybe and that's not the case but of course like that is the nightmare right did you hear what's going on in seattle people can't even stay in their own homes anymore because people are squatting in them it's sort of

which is so funny a little bit which is funny because i mean that is a sucky thing but there

seemed there should be no political valence to that yeah and no i i should be careful here it was not politicized in the way it was brought up to me either time because a couple of people had seen it and brought it up for me i get a little i i think i maybe get a little defensive about that so i i wonder about those things but forget about even the fact that it was seattle that didn't seem to be i don't know that that was really leveraged in the article that much but generally speaking that story that's such a that's such a story that would catch the attention especially i think of a certain generation do you hear what's happening people are airbnbing out their houses and they can't get back into them and the next thing you know it's like a thing you know whereas i think it's a relatively rare thing but it definitely captures the the panicky imagination right it's

kind of part of a larger like this world is very different yeah lots of stuff is happening that's kind of hard for me to wrap my mind around potentially i will say that story was pretty yeah i think i ended up reading it yeah yeah yeah because i the the the cherry on top was that at least according to this you know the guy who had reached out to the local media and i want to just take a moment to pat myself on the back andrew for what i just said which was according to the guy because i can't believe how many times lately on npr i've been hearing people reporters state things that are clearly based on the testimony of one person who was involved and they stated as a fact i'll give you a really really serious example that i don't know why i'm going here with it but like it was a really awful thing that happened where there was a shooting of of of some some young Arab American men who were just living their life out in the Northeast, and somebody came out and attacked them with a gun. It was a truly, truly awful situation. Now, I actually don't know what your response is going to be, Andrew, and I don't even know why I'm bringing this up on the show, but it just hit my ear. It was interesting to me, or at least it was notable. The reporter said, the men were speaking a combination of Arabic and English when this person came out in and and hit them and my thought was well that's what they're saying I bet they were by the way I a hundred percent believe that these men were just having a conversation minding their own business but I were but I guess I was wondering is there some this is really what my question was what happened was so egregious it was so one-sided it was so beyond the pale that we're just there's no reason to to clarify the men say that they were speaking a combination of English and Arabic because that is their telling of events we have no reason to disbelieve them and what the other person did is so manifestly awful that we can I kind of felt like we can toss out the journalistic rule of like if someone's telling you they did something but they're the ones telling you you have to say according to them but this is so obviously one-sided of like one person being horrible and other people just being normal that maybe we just

go with it and in this case I wasn't sure if this is where you're going with it because I almost interrupted to specify something these were specifically palestinian men right or i believe so so you know obviously something that is um on the front of mind for everybody in the world right now um so yeah that's interesting but so in other words the reporter didn't specify that the men say or even claim isn't it funny how the word if you swap out sounds really sus doesn't it yeah You say claim and you're automatically saying, well, they claim.

that as opposed to right that sounds right yeah and I I know part of me was thinking that there's anything that these these men are saying that isn't in any way untruthful it's very clear that something unhinged and awful happened in this and and we it's all indications are that it was from this person who came out with the gun but but technically speaking what what we're reporting as a fact on NPR which is the men were speaking combination of English and Arabic it we're reporting it as a fact and it is based on what these men said that they were doing again it's that's such a minor note and in no way is that my way of trying to cloud the issue i was just really wrestling in my own head with like if i were reporting that story would i add in the disclaimer according to the men they were speaking a combination of english and arabic would i even add that in would that even matter if it were a much less important story if it were something about somebody you know was arguing about who bought a lotto ticket they walked into the store that i would definitely as a reporter say according to the man he had actually grabbed the lotto ticket first before the other guy grabbed the lotto ticket like if the stakes claimed there that might be a case for claimed because it's like lottery who cares but like in this case what it felt to me like the person doing the reporting and it was a written piece by the way it wasn't a two-way so it went by an editor this person had kind of contravened or gone around a journalistic principle but in a way that was so minor compared to the true awfulness of the overall story it kind of didn't matter but also the like curmudgeonly old person who was copy edited a lot back when I was a journalist at least for most of my job thought oh I are we have we got have we kind of dropped that little have we dropped that rule that when you're going to be repeating something that is according to what one of the people or one group of the people

say you clarify that this is what they're saying happened you know how I before I was doing TV tale with you my professional career post-college was almost exclusively talk show producer and you know various levels of talk show producer and various jobs involved there but like that's a very specific thing in public radio whereas most people in public radio i think even if they have worked on a talk show often they are parlaying that into a job to be more of a reporter to even before podcasting now it sort of seems like young producers all want to eventually become podcasters. But back in the day, everybody wanted to do those long NPR style features with a lot of sound mixed in and everything. Whereas I was the type of guy who was like, No, I like doing live stuff. I like throwing, throw, you know, prepping, throwing it all on the air. I'm taking up too much time with this story already. But the reason I bring all that up is I'm I've got to be one of the people who's got the most public radio experience without having hardly any experience of the true editorial process when it comes to like going through a story and like i even remember like kind of in my last public radio job being really flat-footed on that because i couldn't edit you know reporters or producers who were going out doing um you know pieces out in the field like field reporting i didn't know how to how to edit their scripts how to truly go through the editorial process it's a huge blind spot for me that i think about a lot the one exception the one time I feel like I was actually edited with like, you know, I wrote it. I wrote a script. I had tape and somebody kind of walked me through it was when I first moved to Seattle. And this is an embarrassing story for me because I had no idea what I was doing. All I know is I quit my job in New Hampshire and I came out to Seattle without a public radio job. And I was just going to try to grind it out a bit. And I worked at KUW a little bit, but I also made an audio piece for a, I shouldn't even tell people this because if it exists anywhere online, I'll be super embarrassed about it but do you remember b-side radio in early podcast by tamra friend tam keith yes now i don't know how well you know tamra i don't know her that well but i was a huge fan i mean this is long before she was an npr white house reporter and everything she was a reporter for npr but also had this what i thought to be really cool podcast called b-side radio is a half hour just various kind of you know tales from the world and um i uh said hey i have a i pitched a story which is there's a writer for the stranger i assume he still writes for the stranger occasionally he's a music reviewer named um dave siegel do you remember dave siegel and he had written something very short or maybe just mentioned something somewhere that he had been moving like from one state or one city to another and he had an immense record collection like you know like thousands and thousands of rare records and everything and i think if not all of it at the time a huge chunk of it was simply lost by the moving company oh like it was a story of just like what not to do

why you get insurance for these things and i think it was a pretty shady moving company but he was like kind of a young man you know and so he didn't know next thing you know like he just is just gone and it just seemed like a gripping story.

to me so i was like you know i'm moving out to seattle i just need to like make stuff and so i like arrange an interview with him and and i pitched it to tamra and she's like yeah let's work on this together and i know this is such a long story but i am coming back to your original point one of the things that i did a lot of cringy stuff in that story and i can never go back and listen to it including ending it with neil diamond's song sung blue for reasons that i remember tamra even saying i guess you can end it with that song i don't quite get it but you can

Was that one of the albums that went missing, maybe?

No, I think I just was kind of going through a Neil Diamond phase. It was just sort of like, I don't know. These are songs, and you're feeling blue. I don't know. I just chose it. It seemed quirky. Yeah, I'm with you. It wasn't the worst idea in the world, but it also didn't really connect to the story. But I just remember being generally embarrassed. I remember Tamara. I did that thing, and this is the only time in my life where I've done this. I think people overemphasized this too much. Like, oh, I had to record this in my closet so that it sounded like pristine. Like, luckily, I think a lot of I think we're kind of beyond that now. It almost seemed like a badge of honor for young journalists for a while to be like, you wouldn't believe the extent of the pillow fort that I had to make in order to, you know, do this, to file this story with NPR. It's like, all right, whatever. Get over yourself. But I literally went into Genevieve's tiny closet. I had no room to move in there. I was trying to, like, just be as NPR as possible for the story for B-Side Radio. and Tamara was like walking me through it and she was like on the phone with me while I'm doing my read and she keeps on like trying to have me redo things and have it be more conversational, all this stuff, which I really appreciated. She was so kind to work with me, but also I was just so embarrassed the whole time that I just like, I just kind of got on top of me and I was turning into worse and worse performances. The whole thing is very cringy in my memory. All of that is to say this story, one of the only actual like kind of stories I've ever written, it's all based on dave siegel's version of events that he told me so in the script i was constantly saying he says this he says this according to dave he says this and like i remember tamra being like you got to stop doing that like take all take all of that out and i remember being like okay that's fine but i was just in my head i was like but is is that journalistic if i just state that david rented this trucking company and then stopped in missoula or whatever like don't i have to say according to dave because i only had one source on this also by the way a great sitcom

according to dave i don't know why they called it according to dave but i think i'm sorry that i had to tell that entire story just to get to that point because i decided to weigh in on a very likely sort of like ethnically based shooting event which is always a good place to go on a friday episode of the show and you actually quite uh effectively kind of pivoted to something where That's more interesting and less, the stakes are not as high, but along the same lines, which is, yeah, do we just continually and constantly indicate that this is one person's version of events if it's something as kind of mundane as, like, where they rented the truck from, where they got gas? It is technically all based on one person's account. Why would they lie about it? They're probably not lying about it. But then on the other hand, you do hear stories about like a person who, you know, was like, you know, battling some illness and they were doing all these fundraisers and they were having five K's and the person made it up.

Right. Yeah.

There's all like when you least expect right when you let your guard down, right when you start believing that they went to that gas station in Missoula. That's what you find out they didn't. There were never any records.

Right. Right. And that's why I, to this day, am not even sure that Dave Siegel exists. Well, right.

i would just like to say uh i think leave the world behind is a very bad it is a not a good

movie that's your take and don't you so you're suggesting not watching it well i would suggest

watching it but agreeing with me okay i want to manage people's expectations i love apocalyptic movies for some reason i love i don't want it to be i don't want to live in an apocalyptic situation i don't or post-apocalyptic i don't want to be you know i don't want to be dealing with any of the stuff that they're dealing with and things like the last of us but i'm very curious to see how people respond to those kind of situations yeah in movies and books i've always been interested in that stuff so i was excited about this movie plus i tend to like all the people that were in the movie at least the kind of main stars um but it just it i would you know some people may love it i just like it felt to me like uh a person the the i don't know if it was if this is in the novel or if this was in the sort of screenplay adaptation of it, but a lot of times where the writer or writers thought like, oh man, we are really, people are just going to like drop their sandwich when they see this scene. And it's like, yeah, people have done this. These are characters and styles. of characters in movies that we've seen actually kind of a lot like it did I think it was a movie that feels like it's being really edgy when I didn't see anything all that edgy what I just saw was a lot of like unanswered questions things that didn't go anywhere that were I think chalked up as like yeah well filmmaking doesn't have to like you don't have to know why everyone's doing everything look at David Lynch it's like yeah well he's David Lynch you're not um there was so I don't

even think you're that big of a fan of David Lynch movies I'm not but at least he's you know I give

him credit for being truly original with it like I'll give you one quick example and this isn't spoiling anything this is not really part of the plot but Julia Roberts character is this real kind of she's just a very angry person and she the way that we know she's an angry person Andrew is because she says the F word a lot

I thought you were going to say it because she says I'm angry

a lot that was before the rewrite they just had her saying I'm angry and then someone was like what if you had her just use the f-word a lot of times where normal people wouldn't i'm scared how much i like wine exactly so so she's a real angry person and then like a kind of a a moment in the movie i don't even want to call it a breakthrough but a mo and again this isn't getting into the real plot of the films i'm not giving anything away she's like she has this heart to heart with someone and she goes you know why i don't like people because i work in advertising and when you see how much people really when you see how truly mean people are to each other like this idea that like if your job is advertising and you're trying to sell people to swiffer that in order to do that you need to study people and you need to study how evil we are to each other so that you can know how to use that information to sell them a swiffer like she's

like you have a real jaundiced view like you have a jaundiced view of the world because you work in

advertising i'm just like did you like that's the like most facile ever description of what the advertising industry is and also just the the lamest the lamest reason given for why julia roberts character is using the f-word all the time because it's just like the dumb to me it's like the dumbest explanation for that like when i work in advertising and i see how really bad people are to each other and that's why i like to swear all the time and i mean to people it's Because I was on the Mr. Clean account It's like, oh my god And then it's, I don't know It's just like, it's just, for me The reason I'm saying this is not to yuck anyone's yum It's to manage expectations What I'm actually doing here, Andrew, I hope Is creating a better experience for people Because I went into it thinking like Wow, these are some pretty major stars in this movie And it's the number one movie on Netflix And it's about the apocalypse And there's, or about an apocalyptic scenario And like, this has got a lot of things I like And then I was probably a little bit let down So by pre-letting down Our TBTL listeners Everyone will enjoy the movie tremendously

What I'm getting is the movie's too woke Because it was produced by the Obamas And for that you're out

The woke mind virus got to him once again That's actually honestly What's doing it all is the woke mind virus That's actually why the internet Doesn't work anymore Spoiler alert Hey let's do a little music for your weekend Whoa what was that? Can you hear me?

Yeah, I thought you did an accent there.

No, did I? No, I don't know.

I thought you slipped into a bit of a character, and I was just curious what it was.

Man, sometimes, honestly, the creativity just moves through me in a way that I'm not even aware of. I'm purely a vessel for this level of entertainment.

I think Leavenworth changed you, is what I'm saying. You hear it all the time. People go to Leavenworth for just like a weekend, and they come back, and they're just different.

They're like, what's the word for trunk? No, let's see, lederhosen. No, sorry, pants.

Right.

Derndl. No, I'm sorry. My shirt. No, we call them normal pants now. God, I hate my truck. I mean, I'm sorry. My collection of traditional Bavarian outfits. Let's do a little music. Can we get Andy Rooney saying, let's do a little music for your weekend?

Oh, yeah, we should. Oh, my God. Yes. It's listener Steven who makes our AI stuff, right? I do feel like an Andy Rooney. Steven's our AI guy. Andy Rooney saying, let's do some music for your weekend. and I can put some music underneath it and that's how we can introduce the segment every week going forward. Maybe I'm promising too much. You usually ask me to go first, so I will. But I can also go first. Oh, if you'd like to. I'm not trying to be bossy.

No, no, I'm not in any rush.

Go for it. Here, I will play this song and I don't have to give it too much of a ramp up because this is a band that I played somewhat recently on the show. I had not heard of them before. They've been around for about a decade and they're from Chicago and they have, I think, kind of an unfortunate name of rat boys but they released this album about i don't know six months ago now called the window and again they're from chicago been around a minute but um this album was recorded in seattle and produced by oh i'm blanking on his name who's the um oh gosh who's the seattle producer who did death cab he's uh in death cab um oh

Chris Walla He's not in Death Cab anymore He's considered a super producer And so I think you can sort of hear His fingerprints on this as well This is all stuff I said the first time I played one of these songs But since I discovered this record I really have been listening to it a lot this winter So if I'm just sharing with you the stuff I've been listening to I believe last time I played a song called It's Alive maybe And this time I'm going to play a song for you Called No Way by the Rat Boys The album is called The Window, and it's really, really good.

This ain't nothing new. I read every conversation, but I don't know what's true. Can you help me out? I'm trying, but sinking in this pit of doubt. I'm stuck with a belly for a heart at the bottom of a well. There's no way you'll control me. I'll take a penny for your thoughts, and I'll throw it straight to hell. There's no way you'll control me again.

I can already feel the nostalgia. I mean, this is a relatively new record to me, but I've listened to this so much that, like, even listening to this song now, I remember listening to this on the E line, on the bus, on the way back from, I think, maybe a ball game this fall with Genevieve, and it's already, it already feels like an album that is going to remind me of this period of my life, if that makes sense. Absolutely.

I love that. That's really good. Again, not the music I expect from a band called Rat Boy, but everybody do their thing.

Exactly. It's a beautiful song.

I do want to be like, what's the, for the, those, the insurance ads where the, who's the doctor that's helping, or like the therapist that's helping people not become their parents. Oh, Dr. Rick.

Yeah, yeah.

I want to be the Dr. Rick of telling bands. I would, they would love this too, by the way. I want to be the Dr. Rick of telling bands that their names are not helping them.

Yeah, right. Because it is, you're almost like the opposite of Dr. Rick though, because you're the old in this case.

I am. And I'm like, rat boy. That's going nowhere By the way, what is going somewhere are these biplanes that are flying right over the studio Can you hear that? Do you hear that rumbling? No Oh, a little bit, tiny, tiny bit I'll be honest with you, it's one of the kind of One of the things that I didn't really factor in or expect about kind of living up here Is that a lot of air traffic, a lot of like military helicopters and Cessnas and all kinds of planes fly up and down the river I don't know if because it's an easy visual guide or because there's just, you know, no power lines or whatever, but I actually really like it. You know, Blue Angels fan checking in here, even though I don't really support the military industrial complex. So that's been a fun little benefit or bonus, I should say. The song that I would like to play is the song by Darlene Love, All Alone on Christmas. Now, I heard this in Leavenworth, Andrew, because they had a record player at this Airbnb And they had a bunch of records And 98% of them were not holiday themed But they did, in fact, have the Charlie Brown Christmas album Which we had just listened to in the car driving there So that was kind of like, okay, we get it But then they also had the Home Alone Christmas album That I was talking about on the show this week And I had not heard this particular song by Darlene Love I really like her version of Marshmallow World It's my favorite version of that song I can't say that I know a ton about the music of Darlene Love But it's on, this song by Darlene Love Is on this Home Alone Christmas album And I was saying earlier in the week that I don't know how this album came about It's not just the Home Alone soundtrack But what it is, I've learned now, is any of the Home Alone movies where there was a Christmassy song, this is sort of like the whole, what do you want to call it, like sort of oeuvre, the whole, all of the movies together, because this song is actually from the Home Alone 2 Lost in New York soundtrack.

Oh, I see. The wet bandits do follow them all the way to New York.

They sure do.

I want to be very clear about that.

But this song, All Alone on Christmas, was...

written by Stevie Van Sant and performed with Darlene Love and members of the East Street Band oh wow little Stevie aka whatever his name was in the Sopranos I'll do respect tone that's I could picture him but I can't exactly remember his character's name but he's also in Little Hammer which I need to get back to that I watched like one episode of that with Stevie Van Sant in And it was really good. Powerful Fargo vibes were happening. Barely.

What's it called again?

Lillehammer, like as in Lillehammer Norman.

Yeah, I've seen that around. I can't remember. Did you tell me about that? I don't know if you've talked about that or not.

I've only watched like an episode, but I want to get back to that. So this, if you could, Andrew, if you could play All Alone on Christmas, written by Lil Stevie Van Sant and performed by Darlene Love off of the Home Alone Christmas album.

The cold wind is blowing and the streets are getting dark I'm writing you a letter and I don't know where to start The bells will be ringing, St. John the Divine I get a little lonely every year around this time The music plays all night, a little, little, little The lights will be going up the whole heart The bells are free, people window shopping on Fifth Avenue All I want for Christmas is you

You know what's funny is Now that I know that that was written by Stevie Van Zandt And that it's the E Street Band That's the most E Street Band song I've ever heard in my life

That's what I was going to say too That saxophone is a telltale sign

I was almost surprised when it wasn't Bruce Springsteen singing I wonder if it was written For Bruce Springsteen There might be a version bopping around with him

It's just that

Right up until Darlene Love starts singing You're like oh yeah okay here we are We're listening to the E Street Band right now

I'm looking for a boss version But I don't see one

The listener's suggestion Speaking Andrew of the Well you talked about Chris Walla from Death Cab Formerly of Death Cab The musical selection from our listener this week Is from our friend Maggie Maggie Middle Shelf And much like Julia Roberts In the movie Leave the world behind Maggie decides to unnecessarily use the F word That's Maggie This mother trucking song I love it, although she doesn't say trucking She says the word that tells you That she's very, very jaded about the people of the world Which is ironic because there's not a less jaded person I know than our friend Maggie.

Despite the fact that she works as an advertising executive.

She does, but she chooses to see the good in people, and we love that about Maggie. The song that Maggie would like us to play is actually a Death Cab for Cutie song. It's off of an acoustic. Oh, acoustic. Did I say acoustic weird? I don't like your acoustic tone right now, Andrew, at all. At all. It's an acoustic version of the song I Miss Strangers. I guess this is, I don't know, did Death Cab put out an album called Asphalt, and then this is the acoustic version of it, or is the whole album Asphalt acoustic? I saw Death Cab this summer. You'd think that I would remember.

This is all new to me, so I don't know, but I can tell you this. This is specifically off of an album called Asphalt Meadows and then parenthetically acoustic. So that implies to me a non-acoustic version of this same record. They might have released it twice.

The acoustic version implies a non-acoustic version.

Exactly, but it's Asphalt Meadows, I believe.

Asphalt Meadows, thank you. And the song again is I Miss Strangers And this is a suggestion from Maggie And this is how we are going to wrap up our broadcast week

This is exciting, I'm excited to hear this song

Thank you everyone for listening Thanks for being part of TBTL We're going to be back here on Monday With more imaginary radio for you So please do join us for that In the meantime have a great weekend Take care of yourselves Go Seahawks Old habits die hard

Somebody booked a meeting right at Monday night football time for me And at first I was going to try to like gently suggest another time. I was like, you know what? Yeah, it's fine.

Probably fine. Let's have a meeting. Actually, can I be in on that meeting? All right. See you on Monday. In the meantime, have a great weekend. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. I miss strangers more than I, more than I miss my friends. And the waves of conversations breaking on the shores of my head again. Furnishments dumpstered a ground score You didn't need money Not money Everything you owned in a hatchback Battered and musty And musty But these days I miss strangers more than I, more than I miss my friends. That's a swear jar. Every time someone swears, you put a quarter in it. Power out.