Muse

It lasted how long? 9 years, 180 episodes. You gave it up, right? I did, sir. They didn't cancel you, you canceled them. You're not aware of this? No, I'm asking you. You think I got canceled? Are you under the impression that I got canceled? I've hurt you, Jerry. I thought that was pretty well documented. Is this still CNN? Do you know who I am? Jewish guy, Brooklyn. Yes, 75 million viewers, last episode. Don't take it so bad. Well, it's the big difference between being canceled and being number one. Okay, I'm sorry. We'll be right back. B-movie opens. Can we get a resume in here for me? B-movie opens tomorrow. We'll be right back. TBTL.

It's all about speed. You gotta get to your memes quick If you can't get to them quick You're useless They'll just keep blasting you with memes And you can't fire back You have to know where your memes are

It's a meme-ish thing I actually couldn't think of the word meme for a second I could only think of the word dank, weird

Was my underwear showing when I was climbing down the tree? I wore my Thursdays because my Saturdays Had a case of the Mondays if you know what I mean

I like it Each second so rife with information Go on please I'm sick all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show it just might be too beautiful to live to that end we'd like a moment of your time to talk to you about video interpolation my name is luke burbank i am your host this guy again coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty and still very frigid columbia River. That's right. It is still super duper cold and icy. In fact, colder even than when we recorded yesterday's program. In a case gone cold, could a podcast bring the heat? I know that there are folks in different parts of the country who are dealing with temperatures that on paper are lower than what I'm dealing with here at the Madrona Hill studio. But I would guess, and I would hope anyway, that those people listening to this are at least able to turn on some kind of space heater or something, which I don't dare to do here because when I came into the studio to record this Wednesday edition of the program, once again, I had blown a breaker with running this little heater, which is advertised as an energy-efficient little space heater that isn't going to do that, but it keeps doing that. And so in order to bring you the program, I am just going to have to bundle up and push through the cold because that doesn't stop a foamer and get about the business of episode four thousand one hundred and twenty one in a collector series. Let the fun begin. I saw a piece in the wall of the Washington Post, rather, that I have been sending to just about everybody I can think of. At least everybody who I know enjoys good storytelling, good journalism, good narratives, good narrative arcs. Because the story, the headline is, he spent his life building a $1 million stereo. Sounds expensive. The real cost was unfathomable. And it was. And the article is amazing. We're going to talk about it. the guy who tried to build the world's best home stereo and what that looked like for him and what it meant to his family. Coming up on the program, we're also going to talk to this guy, the longest-running cobro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. If he sounds a little bit more on the ball than me today, if he seems like he's just broadcasting at a higher frequency, at a more competent level, It's because he's toasty and warm there in his fortress of solitude.

I feel warm and I'm levitating.

Unlike me, who's suffering for our art. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I just had an idea that's going to probably sink the show right off the top here. I'll do my best.

I'll do my best. I'll do my best. Don't delay, Joy. Don't delay. Let's get right to the sinking of the show.

No, I mean, this is good. Yesterday, I felt very lame on the show. I don't know why. I felt like I couldn't form any opinions. I was empty yesterday.

You didn't want to weigh in on parents singing Little John and the Eastside Boys to their babies?

It wasn't even that. I don't know what it was. I don't know what it was yesterday, but in the moment and after the moment, not before the moment, but in the moment and after the moment, that's unusual for me. I mean, say what you want about the show. I'm not somebody who brags about my broadcasting skills, but a lack of opinion or even a lack of words. I see.

That's not my problem. And yesterday I was like, yeah, I don't know how you feel about this. And I was thinking about people listening to the episode for the very first time or checking out the podcast for the very first time and being like, why would you listen to this guy? He's got nothing to say.

I want to tell you that from my end of the broadcast, it didn't feel that way. And I also, I know this is not why you're bringing this up. You're bringing this up to Torpedo the Show early. I get that. But no, you're not bringing this up so that I'll give you a pat on the back. But I do think you do a very good job on this show of keeping the needle moving. And that is an important skill and I think one that is underappreciated. When folks do tune into this program, it just sounds like a couple of two bros bro-ing it up, a couple of guys chopping it up. And it sort of is that. But there is, believe it or not, a rhythm and a knack to making a conversation happen for a minimum of about one hour every day. And I do think that we kind of low-key that And we joke about how the show is just Us just BSing and stuff But I have had occasion to Partner up with other people And other broadcast endeavors and things like that And you are really good at doing this thing That we're doing right now So I want you to give yourself some credit And also, it didn't feel yesterday like you were Not, you know, keeping the hacky sack going As we say

Good, well I appreciate you saying that Because I want to start today's show by saying Sorry, that was me trying to give raspberries, but that was a mistake in front of my computer.

I feel like that's exactly what happened last time you did that. Have we learned nothing?

Wait, have I done that before? That's not a new bit that I just came up with? Spraying spittle all over my

Well, I can't remember how much spittle got sprayed last time, but I do feel like I don't know, maybe six months ago you made that same sound, and like this time it chilled me to my core.

No, it's not a good sound. That's why I remember it. It didn't come off well. Okay, here's the little experiment I wanted to. So I'm going to tell you a little I'm going to start with the story, and then we're going to do the experiment. And this relies on you, just so you know, a little heads up here. This relies heavily on you having a good understanding of what is happening in the publishing community. Sure. No pressure on that.

Your story is a beautiful story. From my point of view, it's a beautiful story.

I got an email the other day from something called NetGalley saying you haven't logged in in a really long time, And so you're going to lose your credentials. Now, it sounds like you know exactly what NetGalley is because you're still doing work in that maybe in that part of the in that sector of the industry. But for me, I had no recollection of what NetGalley was. Sometimes I don't know if you saw this in my Instagram stories. I'm sure you wait with bated breath for my newest Instagram story. But a week or two ago, I also posted that I got an email from a music service called WhatZatSong that I signed up for once like seven or eight years ago because I was trying to figure out what ZatSong I heard was. Yeah, sure. And I don't know why, not Spotify, but what is the song recognition software we all have in our show? Shazam. I don't know why, this wasn't Shazam-able for whatever reason, and I went down a rabbit hole and I was trying to identify something, so I must have given my information to a website called WhatZatSong. And lo, these many years later, I don't even remember what ZatSong was that I was trying to identify. ZatU song? That I was trying to identify.

That's the Louis Armstrong follow-up to ZatU Santa Claus.

But they still send me holiday emails, just thanks for being part of the WhatZat community. This is how many songs we helped identify this year. And I'm just like, wow, it actually sort of warmed the cockles a little bit. But I got an email the other day from NetGalley saying, hey, you haven't logged in in a long time, so you're going to lose your login rights. And I was like, this, first of all, could be phishing, so I'm not even going to click on it. And secondly, whatever website this is, I probably don't care about it. But then a little curiosity got to this cat. So I started Googling, of course, again, good internet hygiene. I did not click on anything in the email, but I did Google NetGalley. And I'm like, oh, NetGalley.com. That's right. This is a way of getting access to digital books that are new releases so that you can, say, interview an author. Or if you're a producer like me, help a host interview an author by getting access to these books.

We've got previews. NetGalley. Do they have a commercial? That was a shout out to the old heads in the Northwest who will remember the We've Got Crab Legs Sea Galley TV commercial.

Oh, OK. Gotcha.

Sometimes I'm broadcasting through and right over you. And that's not actually talk about not being a good co-bro. I knew you would have no frame of reference for that. That'd be like you throwing me a super obscure Ohio reference that, of course, I wouldn't know.

Although I think I got you up to speed on most of those at this point. You would understand a Big Chuck and Little John reference.

were that one I would get your way but but I do know that there when you when we say net galley

more than one time there's a certain part of the listening community that grew up in the northwest that their mind goes to sea galley the uh i don't think it exists anymore but the seafood chain that

was in the northwest so anyway back to net galley what if i threw a garfield one two three two three at you you familiar with that is that that's gotta be hyper local right is that yes steph but i feel

like i've only i've heard about it through you but was that a heating and cooling place yeah i think

So a lot of commercials in the Cleveland area. And again, this is when telephones.

Do they service the perching high above the mighty Columbia neighborhoods? Because I could really use some heating. We'll wait on the cooling, but I could use some HVAC help over here.

Let me see. Oh, no. This wants me to play it off of Facebook. Oh, God. Never mind. Oh, God.

This isn't even the part where we're torpedoing the show.

Can I just go back to spitting on my equipment? Because that was a nightmare what I was just looking at for a second.

Okay, so NetGalley is telling you.

Don't try to push me along. I'm on a Garfield one, two, three, two, three bender here, my boy. And let's see. It looks like this is because you're business. Oh, God damn it. YouTube won't let me block ads anymore. So I can play old ads. This is ridiculous. I don't care, though. I've got 10 more seconds of no, just five more seconds. And then I'm going to play this jingle. OK, here we go.

Our jingle has lasted more than 50 years. Almost as long as our sighting will.

Siding Garfield 1, 2, 3, 2, 3 Garfield 1, 2, 3, 2, 3

That's the one It's siding, not heating and cooling How are you on siding?

I need some actually To be totally honest with you It's something I think about a lot There's a cedar kind of siding That is on the house That I've had to tear portions of it off In some places Because of the remodel And the expansion And putting windows in and stuff And it turns out it's ridiculously expensive Like you buy it by the bundle And it's like, I don't know $300, $400 a bundle for 10 square feet People are selling it on eBay because you can't find it And there's two things that really And yes, you've hit upon a very, very pressing issue in my life First of all, I hate this siding I don't like it, I want to tear it completely off the house But I don't really have the money to put something else on the house right now But it's annoying to me to have to pay a bunch of money To buy the bundles of this siding To patch in where I've torn it off for different things And also, the Madrona Hill Studio Which of course used to be the garage It was covered in the stuff, Andrew And I pulled it all off And I burned it Oh shit And it made a hell of a bonfire it just went up like you wouldn't believe and i am so regretful of that i i think that i may have burned i mean now granted when you take this stuff off of a building you do some damage to it so it's not like it would have been one to one like each shingle or each cedar shingle or whatever you call it i could have reused but even if i could have only used half of it i think i probably burned like seven thousand dollars worth of this stupid cedar crapola that i that i don't like i'm going to pay all this money to put it onto the house until i can have enough money to tear it off the house and put on something i find more aesthetically pleasing just when you thought you

had the best price on vinyl siding and replacement windows along comes the aluminum siding corporation and saves you more it happens all the time because of our tremendous buying power unlike other companies we buy in large quantities and receive huge volume discounts we pay less so you pay less

call the aluminum siding corporation you hear i forgot they would just have random people in the store sing it that that was from my era that was from the 80s um what's great about this place is

their website and by the way we are not being we're not being sponsored by this siding company in cleveland but we would happily accept their money the website is garfield12323.com so even though my guess is that doesn't work as a phone number anymore by itself that's so identified with the company that it's still their url i'm assuming that was from an era where you could just dial a few numbers and get to someone it was one of those as i like to say hawthorne 273 kind of deals and that just must be how everybody knows about them in your area the way you said

those numbers you said them totally in the right order you did nothing wrong but it absolutely broke my brain with the way you paused you said because it's obviously everybody knows it's garfield one two three two three and you said the web address is garfield one two three two three and i've i've never wanted to watch another step there mouth out with soap so much as you're

Totally disoriented.

Pausing in the wrong place. What, you psychopath. Okay, a couple of, I want to come back to NetGalley, but I did want to say I just learned as of last week that cedar is rare. When I told you we had our carpenter Seth come over a couple of days ago to look at putting what we were calling the human door, although you've dubbed it the meat door for some weird, sick reason. I just thought it sounded sexier. Sure, into our garage so we don't have to open the full garage door every time we go in and out. We were making some room for the area where we want to put the door in, and we have these two, they just, we inherited them with the house, these two big pieces of, like, pre-made fencing. Like, you'll see sometime outside of Home Depot, it's got some lattice work at the top and then planks down below. They could be used as gates or as fencing. And we said to Seth, like, you have any use for this or otherwise we can just, like, burn it or donate it or whatever. And he's like, well, this is cedar. Like, this is actually valuable to some folks. Like, you should probably repurpose it or give it to somebody who could use it because cedar isn't long for this world. And Veves was like, oh, yeah, we don't have an endless supply of cedar. And so I secretly came back. I didn't want to admit to them that I didn't know what I was talking about. I was like, oh, yeah, cedar. Yeah, we got to nip that in the bud. And then I secretly came into my studio and I Googled it. I didn't realize that, especially in this part of the country, that the cedar forests are receding. And I'm not just saying it sounds like cedar. So is that part of the issue with this siding? You know, I don't even know.

I just know that my dad was the one who informed me that to just, like, fill in some of these gaps, like I said, was going to be in the neighborhood of probably, like, I don't know, a couple of grand to just get enough. I also don't understand what, like, square footage is. He's like, a bundle is 10 square feet. I'm like, well, that should cover all of these. Like, we need 10 bundles. I was like, what?

I'm terrible with measurement. you and I we share a few of the same weaknesses when it comes to that stuff like measurement and

directions and geography I cannot picture what like 10 square feet really means but like again the thing that bums me out is I don't like uh this particular I think it's called like um it's it's like um 10 inch staggered shake this is uh actually you can buy it I'm learning in vinyl you they basically make a vinyl version that looks exactly like it's wood you can see that at vinyl shake.com also vinyl the vinyl shakes is something you would get if you did too much angel dust back in the 80s the vinyl shakes vinyl shake two three two three but um uh yeah i i didn't i didn't know how expensive it was going to be when i was literally lighting it on fire and it pains me to replace it on the house but uh to tear it to tear all of this off and then have somebody come out and put another thing on a different thing on is going to be that's a going to be a couple summers away as far as something i might be able to afford so we're just living with this uh whatever this particular kind of cedar is but yeah i hadn't maybe it is the recedering forests i don't know but uh it's not cheap yeah well if you need a little bit of

cedar. I got you covered if you want to

turn it into some siding. Okay, because you said it's a fence. Is it like fence planks? Have you ever

seen, um, have you ever been to Home Depot? You've never been there, have you? It's like a big hardware store. They have a song that the kids love. Oh yeah, that's it.

Do you know that my dad had never heard this song? Oh my gosh. I played it for him on my phone the other day. Well, he's probably not bit

torrenting commercials now that I think of it.

Right, and also not And despite him saying he was expecting whatever happened with the Seahawks, oh, Pete Carroll leaving, I don't think he watches football as closely as I do because that's where you get a good Home Depot doers getting more done sighting or hearing, as the case may be. I was kind of shocked. This and Fleetwood Mac are the two things I was most surprised my dad was unfamiliar with.

Yeah, well, we'll see what we have next week, too. Have I ever been to a Home Depot? Have you ever been to a Home Depot and kind of outside in the summertime you'll see? This thing is probably like, I'm going to say maybe seven feet tall maybe and four feet wide. And it's kind of like you could buy a bunch of them and set up a fence essentially. It's kind of like pre-made fencing. But this is like we have two panels of that essentially. So it's not like slats. It's like the part that is cedar is like, you know, it's like a it's a plank. It's a big thin plank that covers the whole thing. It's not.

Well, if you could do me a favor, and if you could kind of rip those down into shingles and send them over, that would be amazing.

TBTL, we got shingles. Just an idea there.

I'm obsessed. My dad called me out in a loving way, but in a way that has not left my brain since he said it to me, which is I'm looking because I'm here in the studio.

actually looking at my little house and I want to be very clear about that it is it's a teeny tiny I don't know what the square footage is but this place for all the time and money I've invested in trying to spruce it up it is a small little place it's like you walk in and um and you basically you get to the sort of kitchen area which is yet to actually be filled in with stuff and then just right next to that is the little living room area like it's a very it's a cool spot but it's very humble little spot and what happens is when I get some part of it kind of tamed like the living room is nice now um then immediately i start obsessing about something else and the latest thing i'm obsessing about is that the house has the worst curb appeal of any house i've ever seen or at least that i've ever owned so one side of the house is looking at the mighty columbia that's pretty cool the other side of the house is just a disaster it has one of those like it has like a tar roof on one section this is something that i've learned is that there are certain if your roof doesn't have enough of a steep enough pitch if a roof is in any way relatively flat then you can't just put like roofing shingles on it because it won't drain properly so the answer to that is to basically put down one of those roofs that's like hot tar and then just kind of like some very unattractive asphalty kind of you know cover on that um and and then above that so that's like the first thing you see if you look at the house if you were to pull up in the drive in the in the parking area and then the next thing you see is this tiny little window which looks into the bathroom that me and my dad put in upstairs and then next to it next to that crummy window that you where and you see a person potentially crapping is is a very poorly placed downspout like you know so for what because there's a little um shed dormer it's called and it has a drain on it and then that drain goes into a um you know like a downspout from your gutter but it's like basically whoever built this house and whoever put it together they just weren't like me they weren't the kind of person who wanted to come up and like feel good when they initially saw the house they were like whatever it's a house it works you go inside you have some dinner you watch some tv it's that's called life that's how most people are that's not how i am my latest obsession is this crummy vinyl window that looks into the bathroom the upstairs bathroom i'm obsessed with replacing it with a circle window like a casement circle window i think it really it'll really tie the house together it'd be so much more interesting looking than this crummy window that's there they're also not cheap they're andrew they're the price of about 100 square feet of cedar shakes they're like it's i don't know a couple grand for a window like that and i said to my dad i want to get a window like that and i go but don't worry that's way down the road because i don't have the money for it he goes it's probably going to happen sooner than you think because it always does with you yeah i don't know why that like he wasn't saying it to be mean i was i was i'm not sure why that comment has been living in my head but it's true it's like once my mind is set once once something enters my brain as a possibility it pretty much within reason and

even sometimes without reason becomes the reality because i'm not the kind of person who can just stare at this shitty window for the next two years waiting to save up money for a circle window it's like now that that's in my brain it will probably happen in the next six months because that's just the way my brain is so are you familiar with net galley then do you use it i try to avoid it because sometimes um logging in is tough it's not unlike well it's i would say it's a better version but it's not unlike how sometimes you'll get a preview of a movie or a tv program or something that's kind of embargoed and they send it to you with all kinds of codes and one-time use passwords and I feel like I what I really try to push for if I can is a physical copy of the book I'm a big physical copy of the book person I will use NetGalley as a court of

last resort I will say um not to be like your dad just being passive-aggressive all the time and living in your head no just joke just joking Walt but it does seem like when I called my dad the

other day and tell him about my shaving and he said respect the process it was a dark moment

Why are you holding the tablet to your ear? This is FaceTime. Yeah, exactly. All of that. Yeah, all of that. Listen to yesterday's show. I was great on it, Luke says. I do feel, though, that passwords are a through line. It seems more with you than with websites. I have re-upped whatever I needed to re-up for NetGalley, and it seems pretty slick to me. I do have to go online to sort of choose what book I want to put on my shelf, But then I can just basically read it on my phone, open up my app and it's there. My question for you, my experiment was I wanted to see if this is still as legit as it was when I signed up for it. God knows when, whether that was in New Hampshire or L.A. when I was working on a public radio show. Like I was going to ask you for your live wire work, do you have any like brand new books laying around? They have to be new. Again, this isn't just a compendium of every book ever written. This isn't a library like this is for. galley copies of digital or digital galley copies of books. But that's great. I can read new books just like I can read old books. What is a new book that's out now? I want to search for it and see if I have access to it.

A book that's in stores or that's in a preview mode?

Something that would be in a preview mode that maybe you're interviewing somebody on Livewire. What's out there? I don't read the New York Times book review every week.

Okay, the director, I'm doing, apparently I'm going to do a CBS story about the director named Ed Zwick. He made a lot of famous movies, particularly back in the 80s and 90s. And now he has a memoir out. It's called, I believe it's called Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions.

Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions. Some version of that. So it's out now. Let me just do it.

Well, it's in preview mode now. I have the advance uncorrected readers.

I'm not hits and flop so maybe this can you look it up

under the author name because just look up Ed Zwick

Z-W-I-C-K

correct

okay let's here we go here we go here we go no it's not there that's a real bummer and again I'm not trying to steal from the publishing industry but I just thought like wow did I just stumble back into something that puts all kinds of new releases right at my fingertips and because I'm a member of the media and they even said like as I was sort of like you know resetting my registration it's kind of like what is your industry why is this service relevant to you and i said you know we talk about pop culture and culture and books and tv on the show how about

the book um by the writer sloan crosley it's called grief is for people how about that's another one i'm reading because that's we're gonna have her on livewire grief is for people sloan crosley

i'm not seeing that although it just occurred to me and i was teasing you about your um i was teasing you about how the mighty have fallen i think i was searching i was searching the wrong part of this i have zol uh zwick no joel zwick directing the sitcom that's something else um who was your zwick again ed zwick no there uh grief is for people is on here in february of 2024 so this is maybe what i need to do to justify can you read it and summarize it for me please and send me your notes actually i kind of like the cover did you have a copy of

that there yeah i have the uncorrected reader whatever you call it proof so it doesn't have the real cover but i do know that sloan is a tremendous writer uh she wrote i was told there would be cake which was a big hit book heard of that uh and um and let's see here i'm also finding you know what i had to do the other day uh because i was putting some travel plans together and uh i was doing all this con convoluted and complicated planning around the fact that we're going to be doing live wire down in eugene at the holt center and then i had to go to their website and i was like why are they not promoting the show what the hell holt center and then i looked everywhere on the website i went to the date i was like what do you like well we're gonna have a hard time selling tickets if you won't promote the program and then i texted our executive producer and she clarified we're not doing a show that night there you were it just was some it was something that was on my calendar from some previous uh but like the way that i find out about this stuff is usually going to the website of the venue and seeing if we're actually doing the show there on the night that I'm thinking we might be doing the show there what's it going to

take to get you into a directing the sitcom by Joel Zwick it's part of the steps for success

series that Joel Zwick has produced well I'm already working on a Zwick related project so I kind of I'm sort of full up on that second of all if I am going to launch into that area of inquiry i'm going to start with writing better episodes of true detective yeah because as i went off yesterday on the show i really feel i'm sure that everybody kind of feels this way but i think i could write a better episode of that show than at least the first episode and i had that thought when i was watching it like why am i not writing these like i could probably do this better than the thing that i'm seeing on my hbo television right now i'm going to give you some information

about Joel Zwick because I think the background that he's written for himself here or that somebody has written on his behalf doesn't give me the information that I want because I'm buying this book or I'm stealing this book from netgalley.com

Oh, go Abby Hoffman.

Right, exactly. Directing the sitcom Joel Zwick's Steps for Success. It's so difficult for me to say, I'll be honest with you. But it credits him as being kind of the master of the sitcom. So you'd expect his description to list all the sitcoms he's worked in. Instead, it cites some more interesting part of his career. It says this guided tour of the American situation comedy, that's what sitcom stands for in case anybody's having trouble keeping up, is given by one of the most prolific directors in the genre. So that sets me up to be like, great, what did you work on, buddy? Brooklyn native Joel Zwick began his career in the late 1960s at La Mama, a New York experimental theater club. before moving to Hollywood to become a successful director during the sitcom's golden age. I'm still wondering what sitcoms. He describes the 10 steps of sitcom production and outlines the five-day process from the early table read to the final shoot in front of a live audience. Behind-the-scenes anecdotes include personal and professional experiences with actors Tom Hanks, Penny Marshall, Robin Williams, Jamie Foxx, and the cast of Full House and many more. So I'm guessing he worked on Full House. But, I mean, he's one of the industry's most prolific directors of the sitcom, and we don't know one sitcom he's worked on.

Well, you're going to, Andrew, you're going to be real embarrassed because he directed 33 episodes of Laverne and Shirley. Okay, okay. 1978 to 1980. Directed four episodes of Mork and Mindy. Okay. 18 episodes of Bosom Buddies.

Oh, I did like that show.

And I'm leaving things out, or I'm leaving out Joanie Loves Chachi, three episodes. We're not even getting into The New Odd Couple, 17 episodes. How about a little show called Webster? Okay. Ring any bells, my friend? All right, how many EPS? Webster. How many EPS? A lot of EPS. A lot of EPS. A lot of EPS.

65 EPS, okay. Joel. 65 EPS. You know what happened here, Luke? I fell for the classic blunder. He doesn't need an introduction. You know how when people say this man needs no introduction, literally, this man needs no introduction. If I had to ask, I'm not ready for this book.

You don't direct nine episodes of Hanging with Mr. Coop from 92 to 97. Boy, has that ever found its way back into the controversial zeitgeist. What? Why? Well, because, you know, we're pretty late to the story now. But like Cat Williams, the comedian, just scorching the earth when he was being interviewed by Shannon Sharp on the Shea Shea Club, Shea Shea podcast that has really lit up the Internet of late. I wasn't following like who Cat Williams was, you know, sort of on bad terms with or mad at or whatever. But apparently one of the people is Steve Harvey He really doesn't like Steve Harvey And he accuses Steve Harvey Of ripping off Mark Cooper's show Hanging with Mr. Cooper Mark Curry, excuse me Hanging with Mr. Cooper Where Mark Curry, I guess it was a principal On Hanging with Mr. Cooper And then Steve Harvey, according to Cat Williams Just went out and did the exact same television show Where he played like a principal and he was, you know, perplexed at life, et cetera. And just like, according to Cat Williams, Steve Harvey basically just completely ripped Mark Curry off.

I see, and that was the Steve Harvey show. Yeah, I listened to, I think I was telling you this on a text chain with our friend Phyllis Fletcher. I listened to like the, I had heard of this, I had heard of Cat Williams kind of, you know, scorching the earth with Shannon Sharp. So I actually went to the Shannon Sharp podcast and did listen to it. But like, I got through like 15 minutes of it And like, you know, maybe I'm just not a caddy B here for the drama, Luke, because it like after a while, it just became like a recitation. All right. Word. Andrew, you know, recitation of just like sort of like of just well, obviously just like grudges that he's hold and complaints. But I didn't actually find it all that entertaining. And maybe it's because maybe I'm just kind of culturally illiterate when it comes to a lot of this stuff. But it just sort of seems so performative but not well-performed and just a list of gripes that, like, after 15 minutes, I was like, okay, I think I know what people are talking about now, although I guess I missed this entire Steve Harvey Cooper-specific thing. But I just, as entertainment, I was sort of like, I don't know, when somebody just kind of comes in with, like, with a notepad of paper and tries to sort of make it seem like it's coming off the top of the head, but clearly they just, I don't know, they just have everything kind of locked and loaded. it didn't appeal to me too much are you seeing a lot of it on the tiktoks it's very big on tiktok

and also i watch a lot of shannon sharp because shannon sharp and chad ochocinco also have a podcast they do which is so much fun for me oh yeah i was watching it the other night right after the eagles were eliminated from the playoffs by the way peace and love to our listeners in philly and pa but like they're just it's the funniest thing because shannon sharp you know chad ochocinco's His name used to be Chad Johnson, but Shannon Sharp loves to call him Ocho. So it'd be like if you had a nickname, you know, and if every time I was addressing you, I was like, Ocho. Okay, listen, Ocho. And you know, you know, you know that I love Arby's Ocho. Okay, Ocho, but listen to this. Like, first of all, it's just hilarious to me how much he calls Chad Ocho Cinco Ocho. But, like, their dynamic is hilarious to me. So I'm getting a lot of Shannon Sharp-related content lately. Anyway, this Club Shea Shea thing I'm with you The part where it became tedious for me Was that Williams at least as he was in this interview is in this mode where it's almost Trumpian to me in that it's unerring his he is never ever the person who made the mistake ever it's always everyone else messed up and it's always everyone else is lying and it's always he has the receipts and it's but then he says things like I don't even think I caught this part but some I I heard somebody else talking about it that he apparently at some point in the interview claims that he would he read 3,000 books a year from the age of like 15 to 30 I don't think

they were well check NetGalley were they writing a million bucks he's got a NetGalley login too

uh-huh probably ill-gotten like yours is no but like he just there's a point I think that the I think that the the tea spilling as as you might say if you wanted to use something that's very old and tired and no one says anymore it's more interesting to me if you bring a little bit of kind of um humility and also um what's the word humanity or humanity maybe like you're kind of like if the setup from kat williams was like hey you know what i've made a lot of mistakes i bopped somebody on the head with a microphone once in seattle uh i tried to buy a ferry uh i've done some kooky things uh and uh and that's all you know that's all real life i'm not perfect but i can tell you that this is something that's really frustrated me about you know these other folks it was just this like litany unending i mean one of the things shannon sharp said about the interview was he said we sat down and i didn't even get to ask the first question for a half hour yeah because it was just like you know just wind him up and let him go i heard yeah and that kind of like lowers my level of uh of sort of the believability of what cat williams is saying it goes down the longer that he talks without taking a breath and the more kind of outrageous the claims are um it would be more interesting if he was like look this is you know these are the things i've done that have not been great um and uh but these are the things that i've observed that other people have done that have not been great it's like every story cat williams is the hero he's the only truth teller everyone else is crazy like there's another comedian i heard him i heard cat williams being interviewed on a different show about another comedian who i think is a i don't want to say up and comer but somebody i wasn't particularly familiar with and this comedian's thing was, their story was, I was supposed to perform with Cat Williams at this big show. And then Cat Williams, for some reason, I was really excited to meet him. And then Cat Williams didn't want to meet me. And then I went, they wouldn't let me into the building. And then his bodyguard just handed me a check, kind of reached over Cat Williams and handed me a check. And I was told to just be on my way. And so then Cat Williams is saying, it's like, why would I be mad at a person I've never even met? And it's like, well, I don't know, but why would that guy make up that story like there's just a lot of like things that we can't know but what i do know like in these interactions but there seem to be a lot of them related to cat williams and it seems like in his estimation he's literally never done anything wrong or had one misstep and that's always kind

of makes me believe someone a little bit less as we go over the cv of cat williams antics um you You know, I don't want to pull another Joel Zwick here where I leave anything out.

Director of 100 episodes of Perfect Strangers.

Oh, wow. See, you know what, man? I really do owe Joel Zwick an apology.

But in the words of Balky, don't be ridiculous.

I do think, and I have not looked this up because I'm hoping to end up on Cat Williams' list. If I slander him here, maybe he will mention me.

I mean, we could really use the attention, honestly.

The next time he's in Club Shea Shea. But I believe he also around the time, but after he'd gotten into trouble here in Seattle for for bonking somebody in the head with a microphone. And then I believe fantasizing about potentially and then maybe tweeting about the idea of maybe someday buying a Washington State Ferry because he liked their guy.

He there's something happened to him, too, down at the the place that became Art Marble 29. But before that was the World Sports Cafe or something.

I think he went there maybe after the performance where he hit.

There was a situation there as well, if I remember right.

I want to say even maybe the same night as that. I could be wrong. But sometime around that, like within weeks, I believe, he finds himself in, and I remember this specifically, Yolo County, California, where I believe he and maybe somebody else stole or borrowed ATVs and took them joyriding around Yolo. So I believe during my flailing attempts to host a radio show back during this era, I tried to make an argument that in Yolo County, this should be OK. You named your county Yolo County. Like, what do you expect? Did I hear the tippy tap of you fact checking me on this? Do I have any of that right?

Yes. Comedian Cat Williams arrested in Yolo County after surrendering to deputy. Sacramento County has released the mugshot of comedian. Oh, here's something I didn't know.

Cat Williams' first name is Micah.

Oh.

I just assumed it was Cat, K-A-T-T. I'm a very trusting sort. Yeah. I released a mugshot of comedian Micah Cat Williams, who was arrested last Friday in Yolo County. They arrested him at a Dunnigan Chevron gas station on County Road 89 after Williams walked up to a deputy and said, I hear you guys are looking for me. Huh. He was taken into custody without incident because of a warrant out for his arrest in Sacramento County. Just before he approached the deputy, he was at the Dunnigan General Store where the clerk said he racked up $400 in groceries. He bought a bag of dog food, 12-pack of soda, a lot of batteries, some hats, some ice cream, breads, tortillas, candies, Red Bull, a full case, said Tony Ravinder Singh. By the way, this is good reporting, and I'm not even kidding you. I love that somebody thought to ask the guy at the Chevron what Cat Williams had been purchasing. That's the most interesting part of the story to me, honestly.

Yeah, absolutely. And again, I do think that maybe YOLO needs to rethink its name. Yes, it definitely. It sends the wrong signal.

It sure does. It sure does. So anyway, I guess what I was going to say is I don't use NetGalley that much. Hey, let's thank some donors who are keeping Club TBTL in business. Maybe we should think about some rebranding. Hey. We should be working for Shannon Sharp for Unk.

I kind of like that. If we're not a club, though, what other kind of like. What other kind of. Society. Yeah. Ooh. Yeah. Institutionalize yourself. Snorting into the microphone. Was it Institution or Salon?

Yeah, Institution sounds probably more accurate.

Yeah. Get 5150'd here at TBTL.

Yeah, exactly. These wonderful donors are keeping TBTL going with their donations, and they come from all kinds of places, even from people who are essentially in your family, Andrew, and that would be Julia Haas out there in Concord, New Hampshire. Haas.

We're going to go with Haas on this one. Sorry. Julia, thank you. Yeah, Julia is Genevieve's sister. Although, you know, there are some members of her family who have taken to calling their last name Haas. Well, that's why I get confused. But it's my understanding that it's Haas. I assume Julia still goes by Haas. I'm not sure. Yeah. Maybe we should check in. We should check in. Julia, I just want to say I still have the Andy's Candies jars you got me last year. She got me some candy jars filled with, I believe, Reese's Pieces. and those would not last in my house well that's why she got these for me because I was complaining because I had bought some candy and I offered some to Genevieve this goes back a ways and I offered some to Genevieve thinking she would just take a couple of pieces then I turned my back and I came back later and it was all gone and Viva's like yeah you offered me candy while I was watching TV what did you think was going to happen I was just going to do a little sample and move on so Julia sent me a couple of Andy's candies jars to protect my stash Luke nice thank you so Julia

is is not only supporting the program she's supporting you on a personal level in many many ways thank you julia thank you thanks also to heather rowe of sellings grove pennsylvania

see what i did there andrew good job on that i was looking at that i was like what is ap that

must be a typo pa i believe that's in pennsylvania i see uh i hope although every time i'm proud of myself for some sort of audible omaha omaha uh then i end up regretting it but i believe that Heather is in the great state of PA. So thanks, Heather. As is Omaha. That's right. There is probably an Omaha, Pennsylvania, don't you think? Although Omaha might actually be a Native American name. Yeah. So it might be related to the people who were first there in that area. Yeah, I could see that. Springfield, Oregon. I know where that is. It's where Shane Foreman is. Hey, Shane, what up?

Thank you, Shane, for supporting the show. I love Springfield.

I drive by Springfield all the time when I'm going down to Salem.

Yeah, I want you to know, Shane has not sent me any candy specifically, but that's okay. Shane does something very, very important, which is keep TBTL alive and well. So don't worry. I just worry that Shane is sitting there thinking I didn't send him any Andy's candies jars. Don't worry.

Shane has sent me a ton of gently used Werther's Originals.

Oh, nice. Good.

They're still good. like a handful of them all with one lick taken out of them thanks shane thanks also to jules bailey in portland oregon jules i know where that is as well hey jules we got a julia we got a jules we got a shane we got a heather we got a lars

Lars Lang-Peterson is in Seattle, Washington. What up, Lars? Nice, thank you.

We haven't had a Seattle donor in a few days, it feels like.

Yeah, what's going on? Are we lost our popularity in what I consider to be our hometown?

Wow, Luke, I'm going back. We haven't thanked somebody in Seattle since the 9th of January. Today is the 17th.

Oh, no. I don't like this at all. Is this, are we, is our core of support hollowing out? Are we seeing a hollowing out of our core?

No, I think that we are, I think we're expanding too quickly, is the thing, or just quickly enough. Fail fast, though, Andrew, that's what I've always said about TBTL.

15 years into it, have we failed fast enough yet? I just subscribed to the first part of that. Thanks also to Allie Port in New Orleans, Louisiana. Boy, what a great distribution today. We've got New Hampshire, we've got Pennsylvania, we've got Oregon, we've got Washington, and we've got Louisiana. Thanks, Allie. Appreciate you. Thanks to all of our donors. Thanks for making TBTL a thing that can happen every day. We would not be here without you. hello and welcome to top story it's a pretty remarkable story from the Washington Post written by Jeff Edgers I read the headline at the beginning of the show but I'll read it again he spent his life building a 1 million dollar stereo the real cost was unfathomable Ken Fritz turned his home into an audiophiles dream the world's greatest hi-fi what would it mean in the end can you believe that we've gotten this far into this conversation and I didn't occur to me that we've also got this it's an audiophile's nightmare what was an audiophile's dream turned into it's an audiophile's nightmare um we seem uniquely positioned uh to have a little bit of a kind of point counterpoint to that part of this washington post article anyway it's this is a really remarkably well-written piece i think and it follows this guy named ken fritz who uh when he was a kid got was was really transfixed by record players and radios and all things kind of stereophonic and got really really into kind of building his own kits and then ended up becoming pretty obsessed with it building he thinks he spent about a million dollars on um on like not not buying so much the components of like an incredible uh stereo but sort of building it himself bit by bit and in fact even doing things like pouring concrete floors and walls in his living room so that it could become his special stereo sanctuary so that there would be no sound intrusion from other places uh according to his children they never went on vacation as a family because he was just, anytime he wasn't at his company, which I believe did some kind of fiberglass molding, which made me think of you, by the way. Didn't you work at a fiberglass factory?

I did, yeah. I was thinking about that job the other day. I worked at Omega Pultrusion's in Aurora, Ohio. No longer, I mean, still sort of around, but it's changed names many times.

So I think that he had a business that did something with fiberglass. Interestingly enough, his business wasn't Hi-Fi, which I kind of expected seems like the right guy for it right like you think he would open a stereo store but he had some other thing going on but when he wasn't doing his other business it sounds like every single waking second of his day outside of work was spent thinking about working on and perfecting this home stereo system and in the article it sounds like this was sort of to the exclusion of his family like I said they didn't go on many vacations he was always it sounds like kind of recruiting his kids to work on the stereo stuff like that kids said that they didn't want to invite people over to the house like their friends because if you were at the house you were getting basically conscripted into stereo building um here's a little bit from the article in the 1980s fritz launched his project by blowing up the living room into a listening room a 1650 square foot bump out based on the same shoebox ratio just under two to one that worked magic in concert halls like the muskiveren in vienna and the concert biao in amsterdam the idea was that the acoustic waves would similarly roll off fritz's long cement filled walls and 17 foot high wood paneled ceiling to bathe the listener in music he got his older son kurt to help pour the concrete floors then he worked alongside a construction crew to put up the the 12-inch thick walls and the sound panels to line them.

To minimize hum and potential electrical interference, Fritz outfitted the room with his own 200-amp electrical system and HVAC system independent from the rest of the house. He crafted by hand the three 10-foot speakers that loomed like alien monoliths at the head of the room with the help of Paul Gibson, former employee of his. Each 1,400-pound slab pulsed with 24 cone drivers for the deeper tones and 40 tweeters, 30 shooting into the room, 10 towards the crimson curtain, draping the wall behind to project the upper-range sounds. One of the things that I thought was kind of entertaining about this story, Andrew, which I thought would jump out at you, was when Fritz was in his younger days and when he was kind of like hanging around in the audiophile scene in 1957, he bumps into somebody named Sal Marantz. That's a name. If you've worked in public radio, Marantz is a name that is near and dear to your heart. I don't think it even occurred to me that that was a person's last name.

Yeah. I mean, I first knew of Marantz and I'm assuming that Marantz makes everything from microphones to all kinds of equipment. But when people like you and I think of Marantz, we think about the old Marantz recorders we'd go out into the field with. The ones I started with were cassette tape recorders, you know, like classic little black boxes that you would hang across your body and then, you know, plug a microphone into and then stick the microphone into somebody's face and ask them, you know, what happened on campus that day. I'm thinking very specifically about Kent State, obviously. I don't know if that is obvious, but I found myself as I was talking about my own history with radio and that I got my legs there at WKSU. But then they started to make digital versions of those things that record on flash drives, which, boy, that was just such a such a quick moment. The flash flash drive revolution to mini disc recorders. But, yeah, that's what I think of when I think of Marantz.

yeah it's a big if you work in radio or at least if you worked in radio back when we did it'd be like okay uh yeah just check out the marants and go get something because i never i didn't rate to have my own dedicated marants so i would there would be a couple that like belong to the newsroom and he'd be like all right check out the marants and go see what you can get it was it's like it was like your typewriter or something but um anyway he so he meets this guy Saul Morantz and and you know it kind of it's interesting in the in the article they said that for a kid like Fritz that was better than meeting Willie Mays like this is the Willie Mays of this guy's life but then what the story sort of continues to describe is that this basically was an obsession that probably wasn't great for his family life it was you know it basically became the only thing he cared about at least according to this piece and to some degree according to him fritz even admitted that he wasn't a very great dad and then the story starts to get even kind of more complicated do we worry about spoilers when it comes to newspaper journalism the way that we might if it was a netflix show um if this was a brand new article that came out

like this morning and we're talking about it maybe but i guess consider this a spoiler alert if you are interested in reading it i think you can still read it after we talk about it and enjoy it but if you want you can fast forward a little bit because i don't want to leave anything for something like this, I think it's important that we talk about the details and how this how this story unfolds.

Right. So he, you know, sort of a strained relationship with a lot of his kids. His first marriage ends in divorce and then he ends up remarrying a woman who had worked at his whatever fiberglass factory place. And all along, he's still obsessively building this stereo with these local audiophile guys. And, and, uh, you know, he's got a million dollars into this thing now. And at some point, I think it's maybe about six years after he'd completed this thing. So finally he actually got to the end of it, which is almost a little surprising in and of itself because things like this can be an obsession where there's no bottom to it. Right? Like I was almost a little surprised to hear that there was a day that he declared it was done because obsessions like this take on a life of their own to almost to the point where the person doesn't really want it to be done because when it's done and now it's time to just listen to it it's like alexander wept for there were no more worlds to conquer you know and um this the the this guy fritz ends up finding out unfortunately that he has als and over time his body is deteriorating from the ravages of als and he's not even actually really able to operate this you know it's a it's based on uh you know record players and so he's eventually you know not really able to pick up the records or put them down he develops this suction cup system that he's going to use to try to like actually be able to kind of do the you know operate the system without the same physical abilities that that he would have had when he you know before the als and stuff and then eventually even that doesn't really work for him um and then that the the diagnosis

that he has is especially, I mean, it's, it's obviously like more than most of our brains could comprehend, certainly mine, but his oldest son, he and his oldest son have a huge falling out and his oldest son. And it's amazing to me, this made it into the article basically says to the father, and this is intense. So I hope you're ready. Basically he says to the father,

I hope you die slowly. And this was after the diagnosis. It's if I understand it correctly,

that he said that to him and they're still estranged i believe that's the the oldest son kurt um they don't they don't have any contact uh he and his father uh it sounds like the the fritz's daughters have have maintained a better relationship with him or you know they they do stuff with him and and uh we're trying to sort of help him out and and you know participate in this whole thing it does sound like they didn't they weren't as destroyed by this stereo project as the oldest son was i think that everybody involved admits that the oldest son kind of took the brunt of it i guess you know that being forced to work on this thing and feeling like you know it was the only priority in the family or whatever but just this idea that this guy spent all of this time and all of this money and kind of again really it sounds like the the wasn't a very joyful person really at all but but but made this project his sort of entire point of his life and then at the end of all of it the part that really struck me was you know he's he's in ill health he's gonna need you know he and his wife are gonna need to move into a different kind of home because this home is too big for them and there's different levels and stuff and the part that broke my heart was the resale value of the stereo like because it turns out that anybody who could afford the world's greatest home stereo is not going to want to live in this fairly modest house i mean it's a nice looking house i saw a picture of it but this relatively modest house somewhere in virginia was it in like is it in like reston or something or anyway i can't recall the if like basically it's the elon musks of the world who might buy a million dollar home stereo and if they're going to do that they're not going to go live out in the kind of suburbs where this guy was living so the house and the stereo they don't match the the carpet doesn't match the drapes as it were and so you have this problem and also i didn't even think of this stereo is very subjective like this is kind of like a custom-made suit this is all of these sounds and everything are are dialed into a kind of combination that this fritz guy likes but that might not be the combination that you like if you're like a stereophile obsessive maybe you want more bass i'm going to use the most simple terms because this is the extent of my stereophonic knowledge maybe you want more treble those are the two things i have to describe the different ranges of what you'd be doing but like basically it's not worthless but it's fairly close to worthless this thing that this guy built that he got to enjoy for maybe six years i mean it's a very it's It's almost a Greek tragedy of sorts.

Yeah, and I have so much to say about this. I just read this earlier this afternoon, so it's kind of fresh in my memory. For me, this story is about a lot of things, obviously, about the nature of family, about the nature of obsession. And what you brought up there is sort of the nature of legacy, I think. And I know that I'm a little bit—I think you and I are very different when it comes to legacy. And I think that I'm generally speaking, probably outside how most people think about a legacy, because I don't really care about legacy. Like, I don't I don't spend a lot of time thinking about how I will be remembered, other than the fact that I want to be remembered generally as a good person. Like I that that's basically the extent of it to me. And so the article talks about how, despite the fact that he didn't want this thing being sold off piece by piece, that for him it was something it was literally his life's work. And it was all of one. It doesn't bother me or break my heart so much to know that the family was not able to sell it for, let's say, the million dollar price tag. It ended up being something like, what, fifteen thousand dollars.

I think all of the stuff was one hundred and fifty hundred. But that was like every single thing, you know, to sold out to different people.

Right. Exactly. These speakers, these huge speaker towers that he built, sold. I think he sold two of them for about ten thousand dollars and the article even points out like that's like comparable to some of these high end Yamahas or something that you can I believe it's less than like like less than some really nice Yamaha bookshelf speakers would run you these days and like so this is a really complicated story because and I think it's OK for me to put this bluntly while the article puts it in a much more sort of poetic and inferred way. the guy was a jerk you know like and and there's there's a lot to it and that's why he has a very strange relationship with his youngest son and he was and he had no relationship with his oldest son even though his oldest son did try to sort of um you know talk to him before he died i think him the father rejected that overture right oh overture how about that luke yeah sure you're Oh, hey, I'm back, baby. Oh, no, he's talking again. But I think that I have so many different thoughts in my head and I'm trying to figure out which I want to talk about first. The idea of it not being of monetary value after he died like that doesn't break my heart as much, because like a project like this, if it wasn't so if it hadn't hurt his familial relationship so much, it would be a labor of love, you would call it. And something that like it's part of the process, at least that's how I would look at something like this, you know, and you even mentioned like usually there isn't a final the final act on something, a project like this would just kind of go on forever. But he basically said it's done now. And that was two years before his diagnosis and I think six years before he passed away. So he had like two years of of of like his healthy life to enjoy this before he started to sort of, you know, lose various motor skills or what have you. And it impacted his enjoyment of this. And the sad part, of course, is what he lost along the way when it comes to familial relationships. But this is maybe a a weirdly cold thing to say. Maybe it's a hot take and a cold thing to say, Luke. Even if it was in a case gone cold, could a podcast bring the heat in all seriousness, reading this story and getting to know the various characters in it.

Don't you get the impression that if it wasn't the stereo system, it would have been something else like you mean for Fritz to obsess over or for his children, particularly his sons, to be upset about both.

maybe not an obsession quite to this grand because this is quite the obsession and maybe he started pulling in a certain uh piece of yarn a while back and the whole thing just became kind of um you know just so large and he became so obsessed with it but it doesn't sound like if it weren't for the stereo he would have had a good relationship with his sons there's certainly the oldest you know it just sort of sounds like and i don't know if this is me being fatalistic about it but it It sort of sounds like how much do you put on this particular project and how much do you put on just the personalities involved and who he was? I mean, the article says several times like he was not an easy person to be around. And he, as you pointed out, he says himself like he he was not a very good dad. And again, near the very, very end of his life, when his older when his oldest son calls him to make amends and hopefully, you know, say goodbye before he passes. He turns down that phone call that doesn't have to do with the stereo system, you know.

yeah I would say that this is just kind of I guess for Addy or you know whoever's around when I'm not around don't tell me how much my the Madrona Hill studio sells for because I've got a lot emotionally and financially now tied up and this better all turn a serious profit like I'm not even I'm obviously joking about that but what what I'm not joking about is I wonder if there was ever the thought of not selling the stuff while this guy was alive so as to i feel like and everyone's brain is different you it might be the case that he didn't care about the perceived value of it he just wanted to build this thing he dumped a lot of money into it but then when he could no longer really use it very much like he didn't care for me it's weird i don't think i'm a money obsessed person but there's something about selling it off for parts after i did all of that work to make this perfect thing this perfect for me thing that would almost be such a rough way that would be such a rough ending to this story that i feel like i would hope that my kids would just like protect me from that information or something but then again doesn't sound like he you know basically put a lot of goodwill in the family bank account and maybe if he had maybe they would have like figured out a way he could live in the house longer and they maybe wouldn't have sold it off or they wouldn't have told him what it sold for or whatever or i may have the timeline mess up do you think he was aware of what the sort of

denouement the whole thing was i do not think he did in fact i was going to bring this up and i'm

going back in the article okay good well then i often that's how i want it to be for me everyone

yeah i often misread this but this goes to the because i bluntly said before that that's not the heartbreaking part and maybe it would be more heartbreaking to see your life's work sold off for parts that are much less valuable than they were all together but i just i'm double checking because sometimes I will say I feel like just recently I misread something but was insisting I was right about it but um uh let's see here so it says that in the end he and his oldest son

They never spoke. And on April 21st, Fitz died. Then it fell to Betsy to fulfill her father's last greatest wish. So he was not around sort of seeing this happen. And so to the rest of the family, like, yes, it would be nicer if they had even more of a financial cushion, of course. Do you want to make more money? Sure. We all do. Did that commercial hit the West Coast? Do you know what I'm doing there? Was that Suzanne Somers? Do you want to make more money? Sure. We all do. 1980s commercial. Oh, yeah.

her husband thinks that he's being haunted by her ghost but in a good way is that true yeah i just

read that oh my god because he's the one who was like kind of is he the same husband who kind of went batshit when she was on three's company way back in the day and i don't know about her agent

and everything i don't know about that i i know that she this one this this husband she famously was madly in love with they were uh for many many many years maybe it was a second husband i don't know but like they they're in the pictures they were always you know like arms around each other and and considered to be madly in love for like 50 years or 40 years and i just saw a headline the other day that he was like i'm seeing odd things around the house she's definitely here and i was like good for you yeah good for you getting haunted like honestly you know what i mean yeah that would be a very reassuring thing to think that someone that you loved dearly for many years was still there in some form or fashion yeah i'm you know i'm glad you said that i hadn't

read that i'm just hearing that now for the first time and like i don't believe in i don't believe in ghosts i don't believe in the afterlife but like um i just think that there's a lot of levels of grief out there that i i have no knowledge of at all and so we don't know how major grief is going to hit us especially when you've spent so much time with that but like i'm sure that well i don't even want to talk about scenarios in my life where i'd lose somebody but then still feel their presence but i'm sure however you define that or whatever words you use might differ but i'll bet you the phenomenon is familiar to a lot of people who go through great loss but

um i i was gonna say andrew i'll be there for you every time you drive by goldie's every time you hear what's another thing i'm sad every time you hear very bad karaoke emanating from the mandarin gate i'll be there in the in between the notes on phil collins's against all

odds no we have talked about the kind of the very much the heavier part of the story and the sort of emotional part of the story, but there's another part that I sort of think is like almost, from another perspective, the climax of the story relating to the equipment itself. And you already shouted out who wrote this, right? The byline is Jeff somebody. Jeff Edgers. Is this somebody whose work you're familiar with, by the way? Is that a byline? No. I mean, it's just so well written. It's just amazing.

I think I know the part you're going to talk about.

Yeah. And for the most part, this story is told, you know, kind of in that journalistic way that's a bit from a distance but then um Jeff kind of puts himself in the story a little bit and he says you know now it was time for me to hear the stereo system and before I get to this part of the story I'm going to see if I can find this on the fly and read it or maybe you can find that part while I babble here because what I was going to say was you sort of responding to something you set up earlier about like the bass and the treble and what sounds good to one person might not sound good to another I do believe when it comes to sound I have this scene by the way great there is some objective truth to it I believe I mean there's going to be obviously a lot of subjective truths as well but I do think that like when you go when you go deep into a subculture of audio enthusiasts there will be common ground about what sounds good and what doesn't and yes you can tweak things differently but while I don't have the ears or the taste to to hear the difference between a really good stereo system and a pretty good stereo system it's i i think of wine in the same way like i've had my preferences and i've had some opinions and um what have you but i don't have the i don't have the taste buds to truly distinguish probably the the highest wines from very good wines you know i think there there are various things in in life that i think even in our culture that people shy away from because they feel like i'm not smart enough to understand good wine or good classical music or or what have you. But there are some, I believe, objective truths surrounding this. And then taste does come to play in it. Now, there's this moment in the story where the author, the writer, the journalist, Jeff, says, OK, now is the time for me to listen to this. And I think he even talks about having a little bit of anxiety around it because the person who's going to play this for you is always going to turn to you for a reaction. He'd had similar experiences when he was visiting other high-end audio facilities to write the the story and he's like okay now the moment comes where he's going to blast some music and then turn to me and expect a reaction out of me and do you have that do you have that already uh here's a great rock song and it gets your juices going fritz told us he's there with uh somebody else who's an audiophile uh he punched up do you love me the 1962 hit featured so prominently in the the uh movie dirty dancing and here it was the inevitable moment in every meeting with an audiophile it's an audiophile's nightmare when the proud owner of the system in question presses play they all want to know what do you think but as fritz cranked the loudest version of the contours hit i'd ever heard it was impossible to listen critically was the bass flabby or tight did the mids sound right what about the drums uh the voice fritz nodded his eyes brightening i found myself reflexively

smiling meeting his look with an expression of wonder mouthing wow i was rooting for a man who who had devoted his life to this system. I wanted it to sound better than any other, even if I really couldn't tell. Was it truly wow or merely loud? I noticed Mykowski, that was the other guy, shake his head involuntarily and almost imperceptibly as soon as the music kicked in. He remained politely appreciative in front of his friend, but later I followed him out to his car where he confessed that no, it sounded off that day. He escalated that the Fritzes had probably been watching a DVD in the listening room and had accidentally left the speakers on movie mode to that end we'd like a moment of your time to talk to you about video interpolation um uh he said a common mistake that's i mean that's a a moment of i guess you could say heartbreak right because for all of this work the fact that he was potentially if this is what actually happened falling victim to something that i would do here with my television with my vizio just having it in the wrong mode or something after all of that i mean and and you're totally right andrew the being the person whether you're a journalist or not being the person when you know that it is your job to have to either experience the best bite of chocolate cake that's ever been bitten or hear the best version of do you love me by the contours that's ever been heard whenever you're supposed to be experiencing something at like an 11 because it's somebody's life's purpose that is way too

much pressure for really any of us and i'm obsessed with this part of the story for another reason too because maybe he had the so his friend makowski or whatever that guy's name was and he's another audio file. And he says, ooh, I heard it. It didn't sound good today. But it's implied that he's heard it on days when it did sound good. And Mikowski would maybe be a trusted source in this, right? Yeah. And so you take his word for it. So it's not even saying that at the end of the day, the system doesn't sound good. According to Mikowski, yeah, it is a good system. And it is amazing. And he is his friend. But he has to admit on this day, when the journalist was there, it just wasn't right. Something was switched the wrong way. But the next sentence in the article is, But it was the fact that Fritz could no longer detect the imperfection in the system, that he had spent years honing to his impossibly high standards, his heartbreaking reminder of his friend's physical decline. And so then it comes back to you again, like, well, why do you do this? And to what end? I would still make the argument. I mean, this story is so tragic in so many ways, but it's tragic because he sounds like he was this tragic figure coming out of the box in some ways. And if he was a guy, if this story was about a man who was cheerful and full of love and made the world just a better place, either with his project or just generally speaking when he was out. If it was a story of a man who spent years creating friendships based on this high fidelity obsession he has and people would recognize him in local stores or online. And he was always just somebody who would just brighten their day as he would come in and look for new cones for his speaker stack or whatever. Like this story would be different. And and at the end of the day, when he doesn't you know, he's his his body is failing him and he doesn't hear the that it doesn't sound as good as it used to. That could still be an OK ending to the story because it doesn't matter, Luke. It was the friends you made along the way. I just realized I was doing the fucking friends you made along the way.

with a brothel of a home and a pool filled with human excrement.

Is there a shorter way of putting this? Yes, it's with the friends you made along the way, but the tragedy is that he was an asshole the whole time, and all of our bodies are going to fail us at some point, and it's okay, but the journey could have been so sweet and beautiful, but instead it sounded like it was kind of toxic.

As I have said on the show many times, in a phrase that I personally invented, the love you take is equal to the love you make. When you said that, was that true?

do you remember the chris farley yeah so but no i think i think you're absolutely right i think that the heart of the story is really that any anything that you get really into can be sort of great or it could be sort of not great but but the the connections that you make and the way you are in the world is a bigger thing than then and you know i've seen this kind of stuff myself because like carrie's dad uh is a collector of cars and like buys you know acquires old vintage cars that are sometimes in bad shape and then fixes them up meticulously and is in all these car clubs and we would go to these car shows and stuff sometimes and there's just a whole range of like people involved in these things um and granted it's mostly like dudes of a certain age but like there are the guys that are just like they're just like having fun and seeing their buddies and and love being out with their wife and doing cool things and like it's just one part of a life that's super fun and then there are the people who are kind of miserable doing it it's like what are you even doing here and it's like if you're miserable uh in life and again you know mental health is a real thing and if it was easy to just be happy all the time we would all just be happy all the time but i think you're right i think that the this story could have been very different if this guy would have just been someone who through whatever either luck or dint of personal commitment to it would have just been a more pleasant person then this story would just be so different than it ended up being but that wasn't because of the specifics of stereos it was because of unfortunately this guy's personality and and where he was in the world probably because of a lot of things that happened to him but you know how he was uh in the world made this a sad story it didn't have to be a sad story, even if they only sold the stereo for $150,000 and it was all said and done.

Exactly, and even if it didn't sound great at the end of the road, but it could still be that he smiled because it still brought him joy, you know, that could still be the ending of the story.

What if in the piece it's like Fritz, he's still, you know, kind of got enough physical ability to play this record for the journalist, and what if he just drops the needle and goes, this is a rockin' number and it's just Get Low by Lil Jon.

that make a good Pepsi commercial that would be amazing here I go once again with the email

every week I hope that it's from a female no man it's not from a female

all rightily an email or a v-mail before we wrap things up today do you love a good mystery Luke

I sure do do you love a good mystery when it means money in our pockets or in I should and maybe say the TBTL coffers. Oh, it's my favorite kind. I thought you might. Here's a voicemail that we got from listener Bruce.

Hey, dummies. This is Bruce Morris of Ashton, Washington. And on last Monday's show, you gave me a shout-out during the donor segment. Problem is, I've never given you any money. But I signed up for a newsletter last summer, and I got one of those chunky coins, which is in the glove box in my car. And now I have to give you money or I'm going to some kind of help. Anyway, thanks for what you do. It's working.

Before we comment on that, let me just let Bruce finish. There's one other unrelated part of this voicemail.

Every time you mention Dean Baxter, I get a smile because for years I worked for a landscaper out here, and we did all of him and Donna's properties, and they were really sweet people, very funny, and good memories. So power out, and thanks for what you do.

So to recap here, because that went by kind of quickly, so that is listener Bruce, who does subscribe to the newsletter and stole one of our coins without giving us a red cent.

Third-degree theft, by the way, under $750 in the state of Washington. It's a gross misdemeanor. It's third-degree theft.

Also, and this is the part that went by quickly at the end.

Not that I was looking that up recently. Sure, yeah.

But also knows of our friend Bean Baxter. He says he worked for the landscaping company that worked on their properties, and so knows Bean and Donna. So anyway, that's at the end there if it went by quickly for you. But regarding this money, I thought it was funny. I thought it was also very honest for Bruce to say this, but I sent this voicemail to our pal, John Sklaroff, who keeps track of these things. He's like, well, I don't know, man, because here's the record for the Bruce, well, Bruce gave his last name here. I won't repeat it, but the Bruce in Vashon, same name, who is currently donating. So I don't know if we have the same, if we have two people with the exact same.

I wouldn't lead with that, Andrew. See, this is the difference in our personalities. I'm like, let it lie. And you're like.

Bruce, do you have any children in your home who are big fans of TVTL and know where you keep your credit cards? I don't know what it is. It would be amazing. In all seriousness, Bruce, if you want to get this sorted out, you can email me and I'll put you in contact with John. But either way, thank you for your generosity. Or you stole a coin and we need it back.

I love the idea that our business model is. to send stuff out to folks and also thank them on air just as a form of shaming them into donating. Yeah, right. Apparently, it worked in one case, depending on how that whole thing ends up shaking out. So that might be something. If we mention your name or we thank you for something, for donating money and you didn't, you know legally you have to now. That's the rule.

Yeah, exactly. And either way, you definitely owe us a story about the weirdest thing you found in Bean's yard.

oh i bet you there might have been a few things not like weird in a bad way but like donna has a very goth sensibility oh yeah decorating yeah yeah like i'm sure that if they had garden gnomes they were like the most goth garden gnomes of all time you know kind of do you know that bean is

again moving back to england he's selling his house again the one in new orleans going back to england now yeah he's uh and i say that because he's been talking about that on his show i actually don't know if the house has sold yet or not. But yeah, he's heading back to England and once again, selling a property that I would not be able to afford a room in.

Oh, no. Me neither. I wonder if there's any cedar paneling on that house that he wants to part with at an affordable place. Here comes the ending music. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you, so please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Hey, dummies, I want you to remember this song the next time you dig a hole. Digging. Digging is the opposite of filling. Digging is the opposite of covering up, digging is a wonderful thing to do. Power out, dummies. Power out.