Muse

All right, here are some more slang words you can use to sound cool. All right, first up, we have crim, short for criminal. The way you're eating that burrito is crim. All right, next up, we have straunt. Yo, babe, I just heard about this new Italian straunt down the street. We should go check it out. Next up, we have liquid laugh. This is Australian slang for boofing. Where's Will? He's out back having a liquid laugh. Then we have valdemode. It's a diabolical state of being. You went valdemode last night and got us kicked out of the bar. Finally, we have yondi. Far as hell. I'm not picking you up. You live yondi.

T!

T! T! T! B! T! T! T!

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. Mmm. Ah. Gaspacho soup just burned my lips. The gazpacho? Yeah, it's been sitting out. It warmed up. It warmed up so much that it burned your lip. Let me explain something to you. If you're expecting something ice cold and you bring it up to your lips and it's room temp, it's going to feel like your mouth's on fire. It's going to feel like your body's on fire. You don't have to make rude noises. That's all right. I don't mind. Laughter, a sure sign of a good time.

Hey, everybody stand by. Here we go again.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Welcome to the Internet. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Oh, my God. He unmuted.

Coming to you from Las Vegas, Nevada. Vegas, baby. Vegas! Looking out at the preparations for the Super Bowl, which is still a couple of weeks away. but uh i'm looking at allegiance stadium and it's interesting to see the way that these kind of temporary tents sort of ripple out very far away from the actual place the game is happening probably for a good half a mile there are just parking lots and things where you can just see they're erecting all kinds of like it's probably like one entire parking lot for golf carts that people working with the super bowl will need to be having charged at some point it's a i don't know if you know this but it turns out it's a big operation putting on a super bowl it's also a beautiful day here i think it's going to be like 65 it's blue skies it's been a while since i could play this audio oh ma pa it's just beautiful i believe seattle has now reached the point where the sun will not set before 5 p.m uh for a good long while uh everything's coming up millhouse my friends and we've arrived at episode 4128 in a collector series let the fun begin speaking of old favorites john stewart has announced he is returning to the daily show well well look who's back kind of we'll tell you what the kind of part is coming up uh also the great debate as to if wired headphones or Bluetooth headphones are actually better. If you want to talk, I've got two ears and they're tuned to the listening station. It's raging on the internet this week and we will join in the rage here on this Friday. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships during one of our recent show meetings. John and I had to kind of explain to him that his energy has been a bit low on Friday and so he apparently has taken active steps to really pep things up this morning.

You know what I used to eat for breakfast?

Cocaine. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

I'll take it down a thousand notches if I have to.

I'm more in the place where there's probably a lot of that sort of behavior going on.

It's also the Super Bowl of drug consumption. I have a question for you as a radio producer. You as a radio producer, and me, I guess, as a radio producer.

I consider us both radio producers.

Radio producer to radio producer. I have a question for you. in all your years of, you know, whether it was your own project that you were hosting or working with other hosts, have you ever told someone, I'm sorry, we can't use your interview, we had a technical problem, and you really had a technical problem?

Oh, wow.

Because in my experience, when you say, I'm so sorry, we had a technical problem, we You won't be able to use your interview or we're running a rerun because things went badly in the editing deck. It's usually, oh, you were not a very good interview. You were not a very good guest. Have you ever actually had a technical foul-up that sank one of your segments?

I would say technical foul-ups would be more common, would have been more common, particularly when I was a booker. than actually not using the interview because that was how lazy i was there's no flipping way if i booked someone and then got them to go to an isdn studio and then they we were finding some way to use five minutes of that yeah right yeah i don't think i had to deliver that particular excuse very often and the other problem with that excuse is oh we had a recording issue i feel like the one time i maybe had to do that the person said well i can just redo the interview and that's when that argument that's when that that whole cover story really falls apart well you say well

we can't get the host back we don't have the time to do it we're on deadline i'm available whenever

this role play this out no i'm actually you know what i'm still i i'm actually i was getting lunch a couple blocks from the station and um i'd love to just head back you know stuff happens right and uh anything you need i'll be around all day and all night you know our host is uh literally

choking on a burrito right now it looks like there's i learned the heimlich i was a ymca

lifeguard you need me to come over and give them the heimlich right now i'm afraid the damage to

the esophagus is going to be long lasting and we will not be able to book this for another year at least you know you know that's not how we do things around npr my friend well for now i mean it's maybe time to push the envelope a little bit anyway okay this happened to me yesterday

Anyway, were you the person with the technical times?

No, I didn't have technical times. I was the guest on a podcast yesterday on KUOW's Seattle Now podcast, kind of a little Friday roundup of local news. I've done it, I don't know, like maybe getting close to 10 times now, and I've talked to you about it probably more off air than on air. I'm always pretty nervous doing that. The last couple of times, less so. In fact, yesterday when we recorded it, I was probably probably about as chill as I've been. I mean, it really does just speak to, you know, repetition, right? Absolutely. Doing something enough until you get those reps. I'm not saying that I was brilliant on the show yesterday or even that I offered anything better than I than I have on days when I'm less nervous. But I just don't like myself. I hate hearing. I can hear the nervousness in my voice when I'm recording something. In fact, like you and I recording on Monday or Tuesday earlier this week, The Big Flop, that was a podcast I'd never been on before. It's a much different thing. You're there specifically to be entertaining, whereas on the Seattle one, you're also supposed to just have good conversation. And I felt like there was just a different kind of pressure on The Big Flop. And it was just a space I was unfamiliar with. So I was actually quite nervous doing that. I don't know. I held my mug up to the camera at one point. Could you tell how badly I was shaking? I realized I started to do that and then I had to put it back down

I feel like I feel like very often on the show this particular conversation unfolds between the two of us which is you explained to me how nervous you were about something or how in your head you were about something and it sounds like I'm just shining you on going well that wasn't how it seemed to the rest of us but honestly you didn't strike me as nervous at all when we were doing that thing on Tuesday and no I did not notice your hand shaking um uh when you were holding up that Cleveland mug because we were on that show talking about the Cleveland balloon release that went very very badly because the show was about things that went very badly um but no I didn't notice at all and I also just didn't I didn't have a sense looking at you because we were all on like um you know a video program as well I didn't looking at you or hearing you you didn't strike me as nervous at all there is a huge disconnect between the inside of you and the outside of you and that's that's good though that's good because the outside of you is not your quote you know the quote went through my mind and i just i was like there was a there was a um i think it was a miss manners question the other day in the paper yes andrew not only do i think about light bulbs a lot i sometimes read the miss manners section of the paper and the the reason the headline grabbed my attention was i that it might be tbtl content because it was like what do i do with a friend who constantly tells the same stories over and over again oh my god did genevieve send that in well i mean honestly the advice was was really unhelpful like i don't even know why that column is still around what

yes exactly it was like you get them on your property but no it was like it was i it was

very bizarre it was like i i don't know what's going on with miss manners um but it was not a satisfaction it wasn't an answer that made me think oh andrew and i could talk about this but really who came to my mind when i saw the headline was the listeners of this program sure yeah because they have to hear us tell the same stories over and over and over again and then i try to footnote it by saying i know i've told this story a lot or as i've said before on the show but then that's also very kind of that slows everything down so i just don't i don't know really how to handle these things that being said you did not strike me as i mean the idea that you were physically shaking. news to me and it did not come through on the recording i feel like if i would have been even

more nervous doing that if i hadn't had a little bit more experience doing things like this you're gonna say whiskey the seattle now pod or whatever like i gotta say i i'm a little bit more comfortable doing that like dialing up in that atmosphere which i was not you know i didn't really know what to expect i was probably less nervous in 2024 than i would have been in 2022 doing that so i'm I'm not trying to make it sound like I was totally freaking out. Like, I've been so nervous before in either Zoom meetings with our old colleagues or on other people's podcasts where I can barely even tell what I'm saying. I feel totally detached. I feel like I'm, you know, like those commercials where somebody takes cold medicine and their head becomes a balloon. I have been so nervous before that I don't even really feel like I'm in control of what's coming out of my head. And I go back and I listen later. I'm like, oh, you sound somewhat normal for as freaked out as you were. i wasn't that level of freaked out i want to be clear but i was definitely shaky i i held up the mug to the camera i wanted you all to see that it said vacation in cleveland but i realized i'd made a fatal flaw which was my camera was over my computer the cup of coffee was more full than i realized and i was shaking more than i realized and i was holding it up and i was watching this liquid splash out the top and i'm like oh the jig is up they now know i am scared i am scared

it did not that absolutely did not come through and maybe that's something that you can remind yourself of when you're in that situation you said that when you listen back you don't like the words i've never had i've never heard you talking and thought andrew's having an aphasia right now like in whether it was in those apm meetings or anything that you know we've been a part of like if there's a way for you to like tell your brain even and i know what you're talking about i've been that nervous plenty of times where you just feel like you're you basically feel like you're having an out of body experience and you're making sounds kind of with your mouth but you're really not like it's just not you're not processing it in the normal way and it's very disorienting but if you can remind yourself that historically those sounds you've made with your mouth do make sense and are fine and people like you don't sound the way that you think you sound or the you know what i mean because you're somehow you're holding it together so maybe if you remind yourself of that in the moment it'll ground you a little bit yeah a baseball monkey pie um

and wait i'm unfamiliar huh huh what am i baseball monkey is this

it took me a minute i thought okay this is what i thought that was something you and genevieve say to each other to be not nervous no i was trying to have baseball monkey pie no i but

anyway so what happened last so after being on this on the seattle now podcast yeah um they told

you sir you kept uttering baseball monkey pie luckily we weren't actually recording so we're

just not going to use it i got a i got a message from the producer vaughn who is also the the other guest yesterday um and uh and vaughn said in the email last night like the subject line was update on seattle now and i was like i never get an update we just record and it goes online i was like what and you're doing that from your home yeah just like dialed up the way i kind of dial up with you only it's over zoom as well and then we all kind of record ourselves locally and trade files but um all of that is to say i got an email last night maybe around 7 30 from vaughn saying we've had technical issues and we tried to you know we tried to make it work and it looks like we just won't be able to make it work and so we're probably running a rerun tomorrow which is kind of

tough for a news-based show i would not to mention that you you know obviously nobody wanted this to happen but you you know you did this whole recording right like you put your time in and

now that is going to be for yeah excuse me essentially nothing that um that that you know that part didn't bother me so much like honestly if I can get out of these things not feeling like I hate my I mean this now this is going dark honestly that didn't really even occur to me that much like if I can get if I can do one of these things and not feel bad about my performance like that's enough for me whether or not that's a big win for you I mean that's very seriously like

as far as your like life goes that's actually a more important thing than if it gets on the

internet yeah honestly because I guess we started this by saying also like repetition helps and so you know just me being able to to hang even hanging on some stories that I didn't really have a lot of didn't have a lot of insight into but just being able to say well I can at least I can keep the needles moving a little bit here or be a good guest and and you know help the other people along in the conversation um like if I can just do that without being too nervous that's sort of a win for me so i wasn't like i'm not gonna get my moment to shine or all that work i put in like i honestly that didn't hit me all that hit me was was it really that bad i was what did they

say what did they say the technical issue was um it's a little bit it's a little bit complicated

but essentially the hope i mentioned that we all record ourselves locally and i think the hosts recording something got corrupted oh is the host at the station um yeah that was page hosting yesterday I know she was at the station she had just gotten done doing a newscast so anyway it was some sort of corrupted file situation I don't know the details of it but I really I was having dinner and the email came in and I I was just one of those moments like podcasting corrupts absolutely and I'll use as a show title and Vaughn what did Vaughn say in their email some I can't remember exactly what it was but I was just thinking like this sounds legit but but I just was like but I've I've never heard of anybody actually losing tape before it used to just be a cliche in the radio world well I lost the tape and that means that you you know the the interview didn't go well and so I but I was just like really struggling I was like I don't think it was bad and I was like is it true maybe I need to be more nervous and I was actually even thinking about that um wow way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory right exactly um but then i i really did it by by the end of the evening i was like no i believe them i believe this was truly a technical issue because it wasn't i mean we had laughs like it was fine like we're good

here right there's also i mean i would say that this is why i don't believe why i i i generally don't believe conspiracy theories because the the where most conspiracy theories fall apart for me is what you got a hundred people keeping this secret you got you know the entire federal government you know like you the more people that are trying to keep a story straight the less likely it is it is going to work and like you got the host of the show the producer the other guests potentially you got all of the the engineer you had all these people to lie on this or did they

just have a corrupted file right well although I'm not going to be going I'm not going to be hunting down sources at KUOW saying what actually happened it's just you know the producer telling me what happened but i i did get an email from vaughn today saying that there was some magic worked uh behind the scenes and they did end up posting the podcast so i was like oh okay all right it really was a technical issue but i really truly did have to say like boy this was the time i was kind of least nervous was it really that bad like i i just i couldn't believe that it was actually technical oh i know what i was going to say before when i kind of got lost in my thoughts one of the things Vaughn said in their email was as somebody who produces a daily show I'm sure you're like pretty familiar with these types of mishaps or whatever and that's what that to me I was like no I don't know this as a mishap I only know this as an excuse when you need to quote unquote lose the tape so I was kind of like I don't know but also what you and I put out there is a little bit different than what other folks are doing so I don't but also you're very very

meticulous about the recording and people would be i i'm impressed surprised people you know i i feel like our little pre-show like right before we start every day you kind of go through a little checklist okay this you know i'm rolling here and i'm rolling this backup and like you're kind of just checking through your list and stuff like there are a lot of redundancies in place for for this little show that that sounds so kind of like haphazard at times and and like it's just two two bros bro-ing it up I think the fact that we have not had in 4,128 episodes very many times where we literally don't have the file that's a testament to your diligence of all the recording that you're

doing well I hate to even breathe life into what I'm about to say but what I can't believe is nah never mind starting that funny talk again why why why give life to something why why jinx myself by saying I can't believe I haven't made this mistake but given how many given how many episodes of this show since 2015 is when I took over like sort of like the recording and producing responsibilities here that's 2015 and so that's almost 10 years now well I guess nine we don't have to round up there in nine years that I haven't left in like you and I talking during the break or you know what I mean like any kind of extraneous conversation that shouldn't be in the show I saw somebody post a few years ago hey I like it how sometimes we hear Andrew at the end of the show saying hey you still on the line and I didn't really so I guess a couple of times I've left a little bit of that usually what happens is we end the show I stop the recording and then I'll say to you hey Luke you still there or whatever and usually you are but if you're on the road and maybe in a hurry I think that maybe you have to run out of your hotel room fast or something But aside from maybe a little second at the very end of the show of me saying, hey, you still there? I haven't left in like the parts of the show where we just absolutely bad mouth John Sklar off or our listeners. I mean, that's when we really let it fly is like in between the segments.

And luckily, in fact, in fact, you part of why that hasn't happened and it will never happen, Andrew. Yes. Is because if you and I have a conversation that's not even like we're we're shit talking.

We're just maybe, you and I are talking in a way that we would talk, the two of us, versus the way that we would talk, you know, when we know there's going to be thousands and thousands of people hearing it. And, excuse me, I'm just going to. I've been getting coffee downstairs. By the way, no free coffee at this hotel, which I was a little surprised by. But I guess also it has 1,300 rooms. So if you were just going to give everyone free coffee, I guess it would be, maybe that would be expensive. It's been a while since I've been in a hotel where you can't just go downstairs and get a coffee. But I think that, and so they're making it for me, and my way that I get the coffee now is a large coffee, a little bit of cream, and a Splenda. And both mornings, yesterday and today, I've been dealing with some real glottal challenges, and I think it has to do with maybe they're being generous with the cream in my coffee, which is something that I struggle with. If I have anything like that, it usually causes me to have a hard time broadcasting.

broadcasting i love how vegas gives you free drinks but not free coffee what a world free

alcohol but no free coffee at the four seasons at the mandalay bay which is i mean that's the other that's kind of like the that's the part that's also sort of funny is i'm technically i'm in i'm in the hotel the mandalay bay but i'm in the four seasons of the mandalay bay i'm not paying for this this is cbs oddly enough this hotel room was one of the more reasonable rooms on the strip if you were asking andrew about the like you know if the super bowl kind of um you know hype and and falderall is is is showing up here in vegas i don't even think it's really the super bowl yet there's a conference going on in the mandalay bay conference center called concrete world oh i love it go get me a magnet or a key bob crawling with people in the concrete trade oh Oh, I love it. The whole city is just people in concrete.

Did you end up going to that locksmith convention with our mutual friend? Yeah, our friend had a locksmith convention in Vegas years ago. Did you go to that?

No, that was Camaro.

Camaro went with our locksmith friend.

Camaro went, and I believe our locksmith, I'm not even going to say friend anymore, acquaintance.

Our locksmith, it's complicated.

I think our locksmith frenemy, our locksmith situationship, I believe the story was Camaro Kev and this person we know who's a locksmith, people can probably do the math, came down here ostensibly because the locksmith was going to go to the locksmithing conference, and Camaro Kev was going to hang out in Vegas, and then they were going to go get dinner and have some fun at night. And I believe that our friend the locksmith attended exactly zero minutes of the locksmithing conference. Yeah, that sounds about right. Most of that person's time was taken up trying to get money out of their account because when they got here, what they did was got out a certain amount of money and cut their card in half and then immediately lost a certain amount of money. And then we're just – I've been in a version of that before here in Las Vegas where it's just like you do something – like, you know, one of the things is, oh, well, just bring the amount that you're willing to lose. And it's like, OK, I was actually talking yesterday with the head of the International Gaming Institute at UNLV because they have this amazing setup over there. It's the gaming lab. And you walk in, Andrew, it's crazy. It's just a casino. And they've got all these slot machines. They're real like, you know, they're actual slot machine games that you could see in the casinos. They've got all the different craps table, roulette, blackjack, three card poker, all of it. And it's just for sort of studying the world of gambling and, you know, just sort of like what goes into it, why people do it, why people have problems with it.

Just a bunch of mice behind slot machines.

It's a bunch of mice just chain-smoking.

It's cute as hell. It's like a little New Yorker cartoon.

They have tiny little cups, tiny little cups, and if they hit a slot, they get tiny little coins going to the cups.

I love it.

I love it. But, like, I was talking to this professor at UNLV and talking about kind of the fact that sports betting is now everywhere in America. And, you know, if you have a phone and you're in one of many, many states, you can just jump on and start betting. And it's funny because as somebody who has gambled a lot in my life and likes gambling, I also realize it's not, I don't think, a great thing to turn loose on, like, all of the citizens of America. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think it's a I don't think it's a great thing. Now, there will be some people who have more access to gambling and they'll just be a fun thing. And on the weekends, maybe they'll throw down five bucks and it'll just add some fun. So I'd put them in the this is a good thing category. But I tend to think that the bycatch from that, you know, they're going to be some lives that are made worse by the fact that now everyone in America with a phone can pretty much gamble. See the evidence of the kid at LSU who's arrested right now for gambling on himself.

oh I didn't know about this although I've been hearing stories kind of circling

this type of situation yeah I forget the guy's first name but his last name is like Boutte and like let's just say that his first name is John like John Boutte one of the ways they caught him was he because you're not allowed to bet on sports if you're like a college athlete you're allowed to bet on college sports and if you're a pro athlete I think in the NFL you're not allowed to bet on sports or at least your sport he had created these fictional accounts that were like John Boutte owed seven and John Boutte 11 those were both the numbers he'd had at various times in his career well it wasn't a it wasn't the greatest bit of subterfuge 11 it was no oceans 11 but all that is to say I was saying to this professor who studies gaming because I said well what do we do about this like I what she goes well one of the things that they're doing is you know along with all this new money that's flowing in for all this gambling uh they're creating more of these like 1-800 helplines and 1-800 problem gambling and these flyers and i'm like yeah but really does anybody call those because what you have is an emotional thing which is gambling for some people and uh and it's you know it's like any other thing that can be an addiction you're you're looking to create a feeling or you're looking to maybe not have a feeling you're looking to numb out in this way that's not logical or rational it's almost it's emotional it's it's it's it's almost like feels in the moment like a survival instinct you got to do this and then you're asking them to do something very logical which is like take a flyer like i always find it hilarious that next to the atms in every casino are these flyers that have a very sad person on the cover that says when the fun stops yeah and like legally they have to put them next to the atms well if you're at the atm making your 20th withdrawal or if you're our locksmith friend you know at the bank holding up a debit card that's been cut in half trying to re put it back together you're you've left the bounds of logical reasoning yeah and yeah you're not going to pick up the flyer and call the number probably she said some people do call 1-800-GAMBLER because they think it's a tip line to get like stone cold locks which I thought was pretty funny because it could it be more the opposite of what the thing is supposedly set up for so or just like anyway I think there's more money on

the other end my bank account is empty if i call this number 1-800-GAMBLER they're gonna be it's

right next to the atm 1-800-GAMBLER anyway all that is to say i have not attended a locksmith conference here but i would i absolutely would i love nothing more than a weird super specific uh you know kind of in industry conference where everyone's really into something that you give

almost no thought to you know i don't know if she can do this or not but this talk of gambling and you said you know you might be the type of person who can just like you know throw 20 or 50 bucks or whatever and then just not think about it anymore and obviously i've never even been to vegas i'm scared to sit at um well no you've been to vegas well i've been i've been to the good part of your vegas god i never the high ace is that what it was the high aces maybe something five Ace is high. Ace is high. It was the dive bar we went to. But, you know, every now and then I'll pull tabs or something at the Eagles. And I just I for various things that I have irrational behavior around gambling. Thank God isn't one of them. I was actually quite I think quite afraid is the wrong word, I think. But I had no desire to get involved in gambling and all kind of growing up. I always felt sort of like a born loser anyway. So I remember being in high school being like, I don't need more opportunities to like lose.

This is the only way that your persistent self-loathing is actually really helping you. Right. Like, because honestly, this this this sorry, I don't mean to cut you off, but this very much explains or is very much explained by the differences in our personality. I have this kind of irrational fantasy of like, oh, I'm going to walk into that casino and this is going to be my day, even though all of the statistics argue against that. And you are kind of like, it's never been my day. Why would this be my day of gambling?

Is that a show title? It's never been my day. It's such a Charlie Brown. I did feel like a Charlie Brown.

But in this one particular case, your brain is giving you really accurate information.

Yeah, and also – and I think there is an educational component of that as well. Like maybe I was scared, startled early on somehow because I felt the same way about credit cards. Like I didn't I mean, this was I was too extreme with this. I didn't get any credit cards, so I didn't build any credit until I was already kind of well out of college because I was so scared. I'd heard so many horror stories about getting in over your head and debt and stuff. So all of that is to say, and I don't know if she's available to do this and I don't know if she wants to do this. But Genevieve had a little adventure pulling tabs a couple of weeks ago. I was not there for this and ended up kind of hitting big on Poulter. tabs but there's a caveat to this and some etiquette questions i think i was gonna see it's had to do with she's okay she's walking in she's walking and do you want to take a break and i'm sort of dominating the show here but i would like your no i like this on what genevieve's adventures and pull tabs were i would love that okay genevieve's coming in the studio right now

hey let's thank some donors these are the wonderful generous people keeping tbtl going as i stated yesterday there's a very very durable membrane between the tbtl donations And me Being here in Las Vegas There's a firewall like you wouldn't believe

I put Little flyers up next to the ATMs That say Problem gambler, remember You're Luke of TBTL, this isn't your money

Yeah, that was embarrassing By the way The fact that you and John Each morning move all of the TBTL funds To a different bank account

Well that's also for tax purposes

Some would describe that as overkill But it's what's good is the money that's being donated by the fine folks I'm about to announce is being it's very safe and it's being used to keep TBTL in business. And we couldn't do this without the help of people like Cindy Pestka of Seattle, Washington. Thank you, Cindy. Thanks, Cindy. Appreciate you. Also, Jennifer Evanoff is checking in from Chicago, Illinois. I love Chicago. You know, I love Chicago. Yeah. Thanks, Jennifer. Many people describe Chicago as the gateway to Western Springs, Illinois. Yeah, a lot of people do. Which is where Mike Croshaw is. Thank you, Mike. Thanks, Mike. And then we're bringing it back to the Seattle area where Eric Ryden is checking. And you gasped excitedly.

Well, I get excited about Seattle. I love this city. That's so beautiful. It's a great city.

I love that it still gets you that excited. They put me on podcasts here, Luke. and then lie to you about technical problems with the podcast.

Exactly.

Thanks, Eric. Thanks to Christine Mello, who's in Wiley, Texas. Oh, that coyote. Definitely sounds like a place. I would just say if you're in Wiley, Texas, make sure that any tunnel you're driving into is...

I was going to say that! I was like, if he doesn't make the tunnel joke there, I'm going to make the tunnel joke.

The main hazards of life there. Thanks, Christine. And then Aaron Schultz is in Shoreline, Washington I believe this is We went a long time without a Shoreline reference And now we're getting them left and right We had a Shoreline Somebody checking in from Shoreline Maybe even on yesterday's program

It was yesterday's show Because I think I told you As I will tell you once again I will be in Shoreline tomorrow In a rented truck Using the transfer What is it? The transfer What do they call them? Station? Dumps Yeah, transfer station

You and If I understand this right You and Janet

I'm feeling down in the transfer station

that's so great speaking of Genevieve Genevieve has been nice enough to take a break from her real job to come in here hi there hi thank you so much for taking the time I heard my name and like a teeny I was summoned I mean honestly really what I want to hear about is the you guys going around the neighborhood collecting refuse for people but maybe one maybe on Monday we can get a report on that uh maybe more critically since I'm down here in Las Vegas Andrew said that you had a uh you had a big score at the at the pull tabs table but that there's some kind of a there's

some kind of a an etiquette question well i had an extraordinary um piece of crazy luck uh at pull tabs so we were at our i was at the eagles club i was actually there um because it was like a meeting night for the for like the the officers it's one of our you know our induction of new members night uh-huh and since all and you have to hold the laptop and i'm the designated laptop holder for virtual attendees no i i i was calling bingo i was getting ready to call bingo that that coming weekend and i needed to like meet since everybody who was kind of who had all the information i needed was there that night i just went to meet with them and just make sure i had all the rules and everything down for calling bingo which was also very fun to call bingo

oh my gosh that's a that's a high profile gig there yeah yeah i'm i'm becoming like the go-to

person on the mic at the eagles i love it you're the in-house entertainment yeah um but anyway so i but while i was waiting for the folks to finish up their meeting i was sitting at uh just having and i'm doing dry january which does sort of is sort of relevant to the story so i'm not drinking alcohol but i was there i was having a diet coke but i was sitting with our friends alexa and john who are also members and pretty new members and I

said oh i'm going to the bar to get a diet coke i'll buy you guys a drink so i i just got them a a drink i got them each a drink and they were like oh that's so nice and then we started talking about pull tabs and i was explaining how there's this one pull tab bin that's only for members of the airy um that uh and was actually pretty fresh i think it had very few very few tabs had been pulled in this bin uh as yet and almost nothing was taken off the board right nothing had been crossed out certainly no big uh big prizes had been crossed out and i explained like you can put only to put twenty dollars in uh per night and you can't then you know if you the only way to get more tabs out of it is to reinvest any winnings that you get if you get like some you know a little bit of money you can put it back in but there's all these sort of like there's sort of this like ritual around this one bin of pull tabs that's just for the airy members

bin number one baby number one i love that i love that idea by the way because in other words somebody can't just come in and a lock it down right or b spend five hundred dollars and and empty it out or whatever like it's the idea is that it's a special privilege for people that

are members yeah yeah exactly and actually you say five hundred dollars that was the top prize it was five hundred dollars uh which is pretty big for pull tops i think much more than that and you start having to, like, declare it.

Or go to what I call the reverse DMV in Oregon, which one time on one of these local, like, little silly machines in, like, a bar by my old house, I won, like, a pretty significant amount, like, in the thousands of dollars, which is, like, impossible to do, and I was not expecting it. But it's an amount that they don't give you the money from the bar. You have to go to this, like, little office in, like, Springfield, Oregon, that's next to an o'reilly's auto parts and the craziest thing is everyone in there was depressed even though everyone was in there to get like large money and what i realized was most of the people who were in there had sure they had hit on something that was over whatever it is 1500 bucks but the amount of money that they had had to spend to get that that was not the case for me it was maybe a little bit like what happened to uv's i just kind of was like having a beer and like i don't know i put 10 bucks in the machine and like got crazy lucky yeah but nobody else i went down there with becca and i was like this is going to be wild it's just going to be a room full of people who hit it big and everyone in there was super bummed it was really weird it was strange that's a that's a real i think uh pointed note

like lesson about gambling but yes so i actually am not much of a gambler you know that like i if i go to vegas i might play a little blackjack but i'm not i don't go to because i'm not casinos aren't like my happy place i also get nervous uh if i'm in a kind of gambling where it's like performative in any way once i messed up at a craps table and i really like i can't kind of

like over dude craps is an amount of pressure that shouldn't exist so scary for something that's supposed to be fun it is like between the throwing of the dice and just all the crazy lingo and the

like math and and the culture of it is so specific and if you don't do it right and you mess up all of these like lunatics who think that like the way you crossed your legs or yes or what hat color hat you're wearing matters like get freaked out it's too much for me i actually don't i don't

enjoy craps for the same reason if there's a gambling style that i don't like because it's too much pressure that tells you there's a problem not with me with that gambling style

didn't like years ago didn't luke talk you into playing one hand of poker at the ramble on not the ramble on in what was that called luke the one that's now aurora borealis the drift on in drift on in yeah i think you played one hand and it was the scariest mortified i have jumped out

of a plane and been less scared true true story amazing um so anyway we're sitting at the we're sitting at our table me alexa and john i've bought them a drink and we're just having a nice time and i'm explaining how this tab situation works to them as new members and john's like okay and i and i also said this is also important i said everybody has beginner's luck with tabs i've never seen it not work like it everyone i know who's like had a first first time they've played pull tabs suddenly they get lucky i won 45 bucks right you win 20 bucks the first time you play

still might be a high watermark rain or shine by the way this is a theory that i have always had about the organism that is gambling about the the large language model that is gambling's ai which is it somehow senses it somehow knows it knows when you do it for the first time and it gives you a good outcome yeah so that you think oh this is fun and this is how this works and it never works

that way again it's ever so john says all right i'm gonna go get some tabs and he goes and gets the $20 worth of tabs.

and he brings them and then he splits them up between the three of us like evenly like he gives each of us you know whatever a third of that would be and I said something like oh if I win I'll split I even said have you ever seen that movie It Could Happen to You with Bridget Fonda and Nicolas Cage where he's a cop he doesn't have money to give her a tip Has Luke ever not

brought up that movie

on this show?

It's based on I think that's Sliding Doors 2 No no no I know but this has come up on the show before I think that's based on true events as well by the way yeah loosely yeah so he so so everybody probably knows but he

gives her in lieu of a tip he gives her a lottery ticket and and they sort of jokingly say we'll split the winnings if we if we if you win and then she does win of course and it's a whole thing so i say to john oh i'll split the winnings with you if i win and he said no no no don't this is yours like this is a thank you for the drink that you bought me and i was like okay that's nice he and alexa are pulling their tabs and they're each they're each pulling quite a few ones you know and they probably racked up like five or six dollars in one one dollar tabs which

they can and probably will throw back which you should throw back in the tank to to get more more

tickets so i'm pulling i'm not getting anything i'm like getting no winners no winners no winners i think i did pull one one dollar winner i get out of my last three tabs and i open one and it's the five hundred dollar holy smokes it's the top it's the oh it's the top prize and by the way this is a fresh bin so there's like 6 000 tickets in there this is basically this is bad for the for the bar it is bad for the right yeah yeah because nobody's gonna want to play that now they gotta cross out that 500 yeah like real early in its life and i mean i was like i i don't i can't remember i've never had a bigger win than that in gambling like ever because i just like i said i don't gamble very much so 500 out of the blue for money i didn't even spend right right but this was a like a gift to me from john i'm just sitting there and i like i for a second really didn't know like how to how to react and i just like kind of blanched and everyone kind of looked at me like because at this point like kevin and anita and katie were all up up from this meeting and i just like was in sort of shock and i was like i it's this is the winner this is the big winner and everyone's like celebrating and people get a little weird about about it they're like i've seen people win big money they're like a few hundred dollars and like be asked to be escorted to their car like with that much cash in hand you saw wow the eagles yeah i saw it at the eagles and i wow i know like you know whatever things can go down but i just was like because somebody mike asked me our bartender asked me once i was collecting the money do you want an escort to the car and i was like no i i think i'm okay i think i can walk the 15 feet to the car without become without getting assaulted by one of my fellow eagles so anyway i i'm like oh my gosh what do i do and i did i said to john like i'll split it with you and he goes no no no don't split with me this is yours so i take the ticket up i cash it in i tip out to mike the bar i tip out to the bartenders i tipped out 40 bucks and i'll tell you why i didn't tip more because then i took a hundred more dollars and gave that to john and then i kept the rest for myself i think

that was a very very generous uh thing for you to do and and i mean i because he kept saying no no no you don't you don't need to that's where i think you would have had a very legitimate reason to say okay he gave this to me as a gift that was the intention and the gift really worked out so i think you know i think that was a nice thing of you to do the only thing i might have done is gone 50 because it's 10 of 500 that's not an industry standard i just like the symmetry of

that number yeah the only reason i didn't is because i was paid out in 20s and so i would

have had to like get change gotcha gotcha or bump i think 60 but that was that's a little excessive

come on come on i well i would have tipped out 60 if i wasn't planning to to then 100 split the

hundo yeah give the hundo to i just sort of i went because i got a text from you i believe that evening or actually this was in the morning no just joking um i got a text from you that evening I was here at home doing something and you said, I just won $500 of pull tabs. I was like, oh my gosh. And then I think maybe when you got home, you told me the details or maybe your second text or something explained, well, somebody bought it for me. And then I was like, oh, then you didn't win any money. Like I just, I, I just felt like I was like, oh, can you do that? Can you keep that money?

But you gave, you did, you had a very similar experience. Somebody, Darren did something nice for you and you gave him one tab out of the $20.

I gave him one tab, and he won big on that or something.

Just one tab he pulls. That's amazing.

That's true, and I didn't want any money. I'm like, no, no, no, that was yours straight up. And then we found out he got our tab. And I think also maybe left some money in an envelope that the bartender gave us after the... Did he? Yeah, I think he did. He did something pretty generous but sneaky on me because I refused to take the money.

I think this needs to be maybe addressed in the bylaws. of the mother airy i mean seriously or at least within the friend group there needs to be a clear kind of understanding that because it sounds like it happens more often than you would think of like someone is somehow showing their appreciation to someone by giving them pull tabs that have not been yet figured out if they're winners or not because this is you're describing two different scenarios where this happened yeah um it's almost like it should just be at this airy we believe that that wins that bozo did the dub and that if you give someone a pull tab you are not entitled to

any amount of the money from that pull tab well and there are different scenarios too because camaro kev is a big pull tab player as you know and he will often buy a basket full of tabs and bring them to the table and then parcel them out to everybody but my understanding in that situation is that this is just some entertainment for us to pull the tabs at the table anything that we win

is kevin's to do with as he wishes and unless you pocket one of them and then maybe the next day you come back and wow i had a 500 one who knew yeah in the scenarios that you're talking about

genevieve i can you know even picture we open them up and then when we get it when we get

another dollar we put it in the but we've never had a situation happen where it's like oh we got a 500 right or even even or even a 20 i don't even think i've ever pulled one where it was like more than a dollar um that i was you know because a dollar is easy you just feed it back but like right it's when it's more money now but i don't i'm not confused about that situation to be clear kevin's not saying this is yours to do with as you wish he's just like giving the table something

to like fiddle with right totally well i think it sounds like you you handled it very very well i mean one of the things whenever it's something like it's funny because when the powerball happens and it well it happens every week but when it gets to the stratospheric heights you know becca and i will buy some tickets sure and there's always this moment where it's like well what are we gonna do are we gonna like each get our ten dollars of tickets are we gonna just buy twenty dollars of tickets and if we win we split it yeah and i legitimately because of how my brain is so broken i'm like yeah we'll split it and then i just start future tripping on it like what would the impact on this relationship be if we had to figure out like if i had a if I had 400 million dollars but now I was going to have to give this person I love 200 million dollars of it but like like would this tear us apart would it like like of course there's no chance of me winning but it's weird how how kind of like I almost feel like that's an easier

question because to me the functional difference between 200 million dollars and 400 million dollars is like just it's it's abstract in the extreme like I like the difference in my quality of life and level of happiness is not different between those two numbers so i don't mind splitting it the difference between 250 and 500 feels very real to me right right you can do a

lot with 500 and maybe a little less with 250 so that is i mean that's a it's a that's a very interesting um kind of i don't know social science slash economics kind of argument it's the

difference between a dyson and a flovac or whatever the whatever the off market let me tell you though

So may I quickly mention, I don't have it in front of me, so I can't tell you the name, but I had bought that kind of expensive Dyson at Costco, and then it broke, and I took it back, and the guy explained, this is the most returned product we have. But then his associate, who he referred to as the vacuum queen, wouldn't give me my money back because I had forgotten a couple of the attachments. But Becca had this one that was not, it was just some kind of a cordless. I mean, it looked a little bit like the Dyson product, but it was like $120.

That's what maybe we're looking at. Are you giving a good review?

I'm looking at this one that's called like, everything on Amazon now has the weirdest names. Yes.

What's this one called? I'll recognize it if you tell me.

It's like Goonier or something.

Tecmo?

It doesn't make as much sense as Tecmo. It's just a random assortment of letters.

Jernor?

Jernor.

g-i-r-n-o-o-r

they just want you to be your normal and clearly you're not

and the reason I brought this to your attention is I follow this guy on Instagram who everyday gives you secret codes for really big discounts on Amazon stuff so like something and it's random stuff it'll be like face cream and a makeup bag and and a battery charger for your car it's just like these random consumer goods that he's like use this code 50QH124, and it'll give you 50% off.

And the Jernor will be yours. And they work.

And the Jernor, which starts at 150, came down to 75.

Oh, did we already miss our window? Did we have to act yesterday on that? I think we've got like a couple days to use it, but you do have to decide.

The Jernor waits for no man.

I mean, this is a big question for me. Now we're just all over the place.

Andrew, you know, it's really the Jurnor, not the Destination.

I'm just going to keep hammering away at this until we get somewhere. The real Jurnor were the friends you made along the way. It's a real conundrum for me because, like, a Dyson, like if I want to replace the level of Dyson that I have right now, which is what my inclination is, it's expensive, right? Like $600 or something.

It's actually on discount now for $400.

Okay, so $400, that makes this conversation a little bit different because I was thinking like, okay, for $600 versus taking a flyer on this thing, which would be $75 with your deep discount, it's like, well, even if this thing is a piece of junk and we have to buy the other one down the line, that's between $75 and $600 is huge.

Even between $400 is significant. it well that was the thing so i'm trying to see if i'm texting becca seeing if she can tell me what this thing is called but basically she had this at her house and i was like okay what is this she goes my mom researched this online and like bought it from like walmart.com and it was supposed to be like of the cheap ones like the best one and i was like okay and so then i when i took the dyson back and finally got all the attachments and received my my money from the vacuum queen i then bought one of these it's so great first of all it has a headlight on it Yeah, the Jernor has a headlight. Do you have a Jernor? No, I've gotten it, folks.

Jude, you got a Jernor.

I've got a Tyneco.

Okay, a Tyneco?

I bet you a Tyneco and a Jernor are the same product. They probably made the same factory in Shenzhen. I promise you. Promise you. So I have a Tyneco, and it's so great. Now, first of all, it has a headlight, which is really helpful. You wouldn't think, but in the corners of my house is not properly lit because it's under construction. That's just a functional thing that the Dyson doesn't have. I know we have a listener that works for Dyson, and I don't want to be mean, but it's as effective as the other one was. And yeah, if it dies after a year, I can buy five of these. I could do this for like five to ten years, buying one every year before I start racking up the cost of one Dyson animal.

I found I was starting to do my research right now on the show. I'm just like Jernor versus Dyson. The very first thing that comes up is a three minute video review that says Jernor vacuum cleaner review. Does it really work? Like, wow, we're really setting the bar low for the beginning of this review. Does it even work?

Does it draw power?

Yeah, right. Now, this also looks like it's plugged in. Are we sure that this is wireless? Anyway, we'll deal with this off air.

All I can say is, so far, I'm giving a big thumbs up to the Tyneco vacuum concern.

Oh, yeah. You know what? We don't want this. This is a corded stick vacuum cleaner. Sorry. We don't want that. We need a cordless. All right.

And now that your family has recently come into, if I'm doing the math right, $360.

That's right.

You've got money for two Tynecos.

Oh, that already went up Genevieve's nose, unfortunately.

all right let's do a little music for your weekend before we head on out on this friday

andrew what song would you like to play um i know that we're in a little bit of a time crunch here but i think that's okay because i think this is a relatively easy i'm journoring over to the giant

ferris wheel to hang out with wayne newton and we can't leave him waiting i'm really excited to hear

about that on monday i'll have my dump story and you'll have your wayne newton story um but anyway This is a silly thing I'm going to play, but it's actually somewhat easy to explain, which is I was flipping through Instagram the other day and somebody posted a little clip of this and I had no idea that this existed. Apparently, in the 1990s, there was an Australian Beatles cover band called the Beatniks and it ended in an X, the Beatniks. And apparently, along with covering Beatles songs, they also did a version of Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin, but they did it in the in the style of Beatles songs. And so this is like I don't usually go for like novelty music on this show, but I just thought that this just I was flipping through Instagram. This brought me real joy. You will recognize various Beatles songs that are being sort of aped here for this version of Stairway to Heaven. I think it starts with the first three chords of I Want to Hold Your Hand, if I'm remembering correctly.

One, two, three.

I'll go with the word she can get what she

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alone now. It's just that spring clean for the May Queen. Yes, there are two paths you can go by But in the long run There's still time to change

The road you're on

It's a fun song. It goes through various changes, as does the original. Only all these changes are Beatles-esque changes. This is now my favorite version of Stairway to Heaven.

it it's such an interesting experience because it's just so joy producing yeah right i'm glad you feel the same way it just made me smile like it's something there's just there's something ineffable in the chord progressions and and like there's just something about it that it's just you keep feeling happier and happier and happier as it's happening that's how i feel too it's like

the opposite of listening to tv i know i'm glad i'm glad you enjoyed it as well i did i super did

The song that I would like to suggest is by a performer named Buck Meek. And Buck Meek is one of the co-founders of Big Thief. He kind of co-founded it with Adrian Lenker. I think Adrian Lenker is kind of, you know, she sort of is obviously the lead singer and kind of the primary person in the band and has really become kind of a, for a certain kind of music fan, kind of a cultural phenomenon. I feel like it's Adrian Lenker's world, and we're all just kind of living in it. But there's also this other person, Buck Meek. And I recently, I don't know how his music came through. He was the guy who played Seattle and then was playing Portland, but it was sold out. And I mentioned on the show a while ago. I was like, oh, maybe I should go to Portland for the show. And then I was sold out. And then I was like, ah, no, I'm not going to. I was almost relieved it was sold out because then I had an excuse to not go do something. Yeah, like me on a rainy day. Which is a new development in my life As somebody who was always pretty out and about But he's got an album called Haunted Mountain that's out That's really good I've been listening to it a bunch And then I was hoping, Andrew, you could play The song Haunted Mountain Off of the album Haunted Mountain By Buck Meek

Before I lived here On this haunted mountain I was walking through the valley On my own Darkness all around me I looked to the sky and saw you Wreathed all around in a golden cloud All of my life I've been around you Traveling across this green land But now that I live here on this haunted mountain I know I'm never coming down I know I'm never coming down I'm never coming down again Every dewdrop on this haunted mountain All right, so there you go.

That's a little Buck Meek.

It's pretty good. I'd like to see how the Beatniks handle it.

When you said Beatniks, I was immediately, I sort of stopped. I was startled because the Beatniks was also the name of one of those kind of like completely constructed party bar bands that would play in seattle when i was younger so there was jambalassi hit explosion in the beatniks jambalassi hit explosion in the beatniks and depending on where you were in pioneer square on a friday or saturday night uh you might be seeing one of those uh one of those bands and they were just like a rotating cast of musicians some dude owned these bands like owned the names and the the you know basically would just like put together you know get to get a few musicians together they would learn a bunch of popular music and then he would you know get them hired out to different um different bars and stuff and the beatniks i believe was one as a kid i just remember hearing so many so many things about the beatniks we're going to be playing somewhere but i don't think it was chucky cheese band with humans that's right they were the uh the rock of fire explosion of seattle that's showbiz but yes same idea uh our listener suggestion comes from listener jennifer who's in eugene who says i stumbled upon

this music from bygones debut album and i love everything about them the blurb from their website might explain why i vibed with it as the kids say uh this is from the bygones website the bygones are an indie folk duo consisting of allison young and joshua lee turner their sound ties together unexpected genre from traditional jazz to 70s singer songwriter classic country to bossa nova josh's classical guitar background and ear for vocal harmony provide the underpinning for allison's powerful songwriting and nostalgic voice in duo arrangements which are intricate yet accessible classic yet fresh they mostly do beatles-esque covers i was gonna say this is exactly how i set up the beatniks yeah so uh jennifer and eugene wanted us to play a song called stars turn cold um from the band the bygones and that's how we're gonna wrap things

up here on this friday so sounds good well nobody has to hear me say at the end of the show luke are is still there. I know that you're in a huge rush, so you get out of there. The tape is fine.

But still say it, just for fun. That can be

the Easter egg. Okay, sounds good.

Alright, thanks for listening, everyone. That brings us to the end of our broadcast week. We will be back here on Monday with more Imaginary Radio. Have a great weekend. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck

to all.

a dream Oh, can you tell me what's going on? Is there something I'm not seeing, honey? Do you still want me like you did? Oh, and if you feel like you just want out, I wish you'd

tell me, instead I'm hoping about it When you're not around, I miss you like a kid And I know

luke you still there you still there god damn it power out