Muse

You're not gonna believe this, Barney? I forgot Wilma's birthday last week. Uh-oh, Fred. So I bought her a new necklace. They were having a 50% off sale. But I left the price tag on, so now Wilma's saying I'm taking her for granite. Uh-oh, Fred. Now she's saying she wants a divorce. I guess you could say she wants a clean slate.

Fred? She wants sole custody. Fred? I guess it's up for the courts to decide. TBTL!

This Canadian rap, jump man, jump man, them boys up to something. Uh, uh, uh, I think I need some Robitussin.

Oh, he's hilarious, dog. Who is Rick Moranis? I've never, I've never, like, chased a guy across a crowded city square. I've never, I've never hung on to that part of the helicopter. You know that part underneath the thing where it lands? Do you, do you know that part? Yes, I know that part.

I've never hung on to that. I just feel like I'm excited and I feel relaxed and I'm ready. to party with the best of them.

Do you believe that?

I do if you do.

But it's absurd. Okay, are we done with the business part? I wanted to start the clown portion of the meeting.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBT All The Show that just might be too beautiful to live. The word that comes to mind is ludicrous. My name is Luke Burbank.

I am your host. Everything you're about to see is my real voice.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia where it's just an absolutely beautiful day today. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. Sun is out. The river is still. Walt Burbank is shingling away. It's a weird dynamic when I'm in here podcasting and my dad, who's approaching 70 years of ages outside doing real, actual, physical work. But I guess that's the way the world goes around. And here we are, my friends, arriving at episode 4129 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Speaking of my dad, he seemed to have some confusion this weekend about who the performer Wayne Newton is.

Wait a minute. Who are you?

When I texted my family a photo of me and Mr. Entertainment himself. Speaking of which, I did talk to Wayne Newton.

You want showmanship? You got it.

And I'll give you a report on that. also on the flight home from las vegas up here to portland somebody asked me if i could if if i

would trade seats with them that's so rude i can't believe that that's so damn rude i am not a fan

of that move and i feel like it was actually in a roundabout way a political decision politics in my mind were involved in this request for a seat change i didn't like it one bit uh so we'll get into that and we'll also talk to this guy longest running cobro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships he does sometimes carry a certain amount of anxiety into a monday morning show just at the beginning of the week you know it can be stressful incessant chewing of ropes and chains has worn his teeth to nubs he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now

good morning my friend good morning i do have a little bit of anxiety today because i um well we We have to make it quick because I sort of have to use the restroom. So can we just kind of do the show and get out of here? Yeah. Yeah.

Honestly, like legally, how long does the show need to be most days?

Yeah, right. And this is kind of a first for me. I mean, I feel like in however many years I've been doing this with you, I mean, I must have had to go to the bathroom during the show before. I don't remember ever, like, starting the show with sort of a ticking clock like this. That was exciting. Have you seen the Mission Impossible movies or the old TV show?

Did you know that Tom Cruise does his own urination?

I have heard that. I was listening to a podcast the other day, Luke. I assume it was a Levitard-related thing. And most of the people on the show did not realize that Mission Impossible had been a TV show. Wow.

Yeah, generations. That's got to be a generational thing. You know, it's also interesting that two men of our rapidly advancing ages that we it's not more common that in the in either the beginning, middle or end of the show, one of us is kind of doing, as we used to call it, the.

potty dance, because that's a thing that happens more and more. What I've noticed for myself is it really goes now from zero to 60. That's the big change for me. So I don't even know if it's that I'm urinating more, but when it's time to do that, it's really time to do that. I have anxiety sometimes on the airplane because of, you know, like, in fact, just the other day i think maybe when i was flying to vegas we're sitting there we hadn't taken off yet but i was worried i had just the very beginnings of needing to go and my thought was sometimes you taxi around on the runway for like a long time and sometimes it's you know it just seems like you kind of don't know the exact the exact delay between when the airplane pushes back from the gate and by when you'll be at a cruising altitude where they'll turn that little light off and you can go use the bathroom and something about the anxiety me all of a sudden thinking what if this is one of those flights where we're just sitting out on the runway for a long time i got so anxious that i had to ask the flight attendant if i could pee really fast and said you got to be fast you had to unlock the bathroom door like they had locked it for the takeoff then i was like well i'm really um i'm really on everyone's radar with thank god this isn't a number two situation well

let me ask you this when you got access to the bathroom and you were able to use it did you have to go as badly as you thought you did because that's my situation is i hit a certain age and then suddenly like i'm nervous about it all the time like well i'm locking into a situation here almost like a child again like well you better go before you leave the house like i feel like that was not something i had to think about for the vast majority of my life as a little kid you had to think about it and then as an adult i'm kind of like well you know i'm gonna be outside for about three hours don't know what the what the future holds let me just make sure and then when i'm on an airplane too i start to i start to feel i start to feel like i have to go but then i have to ask myself do i really have to go or am i just being anxious about this am i getting in my head about it yeah so anyway exactly we're young so i'd be on the bathroom pp and he'd be standing

right there pp um speaking of that flight i um i i got on the airplane and uh and i was sitting i was not in uh the front of the plane as i said i was not in first class i was in coach but that okay because i had a window seat which i really like and if i'm you know if i'm gonna be uh towards the back of the plane at least if i'm on a window and like an exit row where there's a little more room maybe then i'm i'm a-okay and i got seated and the guy came up to me and was the guy sitting next to me and he had this like huge backpack one of those like kind of camo backpacks that's very like military issue i don't know if you've seen people even in the airport with these but It's like it's like what they give soldiers or something. So and it's got multiple parts to it And but this guy was not a this guy was probably in his 60s or something He was definitely did not appear to be somebody who was like active duty military And he sits down next to me He's kind of a little out of sorts because he's looking because it's one of these small airplanes That doesn't have the typical amount of overhead space. I will mention that I put my away suitcase from the fine folks at away who may not have paid much to advertise on tbtl but they did give us a couple of free suitcases which i still use and uh i was able to fit my like it's not like there's no overhead space what there's not is not enough for your gigantic military style multi-pouched camo bag and he's kind of looking around and and because where he is sitting i'm on i'm on the window but it's it's kind of complicated basically the way this airplane was set up he didn't have he wasn't actually behind a seat if you can believe that because of how this exit row was set up so he didn't have anywhere to put this bag and it couldn't go in the overhead i've

had that seat before is it there what it was the entire row in front of him missing or just that one seat in front of one seat yes i've had that seat it's a weird seat it's a fun seat

so he's looking around and i'm you know i've got my headphones on i'm kind of zoning out i'm like getting ready to oh another thing was i was thinking you know this will be a nice chance for me maybe to catch a little bit of shut eye and the only way on an airplane usually that i can even fall asleep for a few minutes is to lean against the wall where the window is which is part of why i always want to pick the window side and i'm kind of start i'm leaning against the wall now and i'm in that mode where the plane is idling so i'm getting a little bit sleepy and i feel a tap on my shoulder and the guy's like hey um i can't put this backpack up above can you uh can we trade seats and i'm like in my mind thinking i really do not want to trade

seats with you i picked this seat from the seat map for a specific reason um i don't want to be in this your weird seat where people are almost walking into you the whole time because you're kind of almost in the aisle like literally where there's a little curve in the airplane

that's interesting i don't think i have and people are like did andrew sit in that seat ever or not i believe one time i sat in a in a seat that was some sort of exit row adjacent type of situation but mine was the window seat and for some reason it didn't have a seat oh yeah i've seen that

before too this was a variation on that thing okay gotcha but the but the thing was i was like so first i said i'm kind of partial to the window seat and he was like oh okay and then i started thinking i was like is it really that much worse for my what i wanted to say was why did you bring a bag on here that's so enormous you can't put it in the overhead why didn't you check that or why don't you gate check it right now why don't you give it to someone uh who works for the airline and then get it when you get off the plane why do i have to change seats because you made a bad decision but i didn't say all that i was just like you know what it's not that big of a deal it's like a two-hour flight whatever so i said you know what we can switch and he's like oh thanks i mean he was i will say this he was not rude about any of this he was appreciative but then so we switch and what that allows him to do is to put this big massive backpack under the seat in front of him because again where he was originally sitting there was no seat to put something under so that was where

where the problem really was it's tons of leg room but there's but you can't just set something

there exactly and so and then i look over and and the guy who's now across from me who's actually trying to be helpful too is like oh if you want you could try to put it under here and he's like he goes well the guy who's sitting across the aisle from us goes well can you take that apart because it's again it's one of those backpacks it's like multiple things all strapped together and the guy's like oh it's a hassle to take apart and and i look at both of bags and i realized they both have kind of similar bags and both of their bags have just a ton of nra on there and that is when i remember that there was a uh a conference i mean there's so many conferences all the time in las vegas i believe uh i was mentioning to you last week that was concrete world there was also something called like shot fest basically fest i don't know conference shotgun there was like a conference for people that sell gun you and stuff relate yeah that's the proper response peep it was like it's like the get together for all the a bunch of people that do some stuff related to like the gun industry and like i look around i realize like 60 of the people on my flight on saturday coming home from las vegas are in like black rifle coffee have those stupid tactical glasses turned around backwards on the back of their tactical sunglasses like and this guy's weird ass backpack that's now made me move it's i don't think he has guns in it i don't think he's allowed to but it's got something that's gun adjacent in it it's got some kind of it's got some kind of stupid ass camo sweatshirt that he wears when he's carrying a gun everything now about this backpack made me so furious because i realized what was going on here was this guy was coming from some gun he was coming from this gun thing and had this probably all his stuff for the trip in this backpack that was now making the reason i had to move was because of this backpack that i now associate with basically our gun culture in america and i was like so incensed the whole flight i will i will mention again the guy was actually not a rude person to me he was appreciative that i switched him seats and at the end of the flight said hey thanks for switching me seats like it was kind of in my head if it would have just been a normal backpack i would have gotten over it in a minute but there was something about the fact that i then associated this whole event with a guy who's flying to vegas to sell more guns or gun adjacent things because like that's exactly what we need in this country and now is flying home but won't check his bag because who knows what the hell's in there and now i have to move because of it i was as you

would say andrew rip shit so roll it back and tell me how you think you would have handled things if you had seen the nra and made the connect seen the nra logo or whatever and made the connection

sooner i would have switched faster because i would have been terrified i mean low-key that is a real thing that really bothers me which is and again i keep i have to stress this this guy was not an overly aggressive dude at all like he wasn't the embodiment of this but i get very i feel like the world is a slightly worse place because there are people that are driving around all the time in these where I live anyway these enormous lifted trucks I saw somebody at Home Depot yesterday who i'm not kidding you andrew he was the the vehicle was a dodge ram we the people edition i believe that the dodge company is literally selling a truck because this wasn't like a modification of course he had every terrible punisher bumper sticker you could you know decal like he had his this truck was about eight feet off the ground and it had every thing on it you could have but i believe it literally was a we the people edition of this truck which by the way if that's true uh fuck you dodge dodge ram we the people edition now maybe he just after marketed this or something but it looked like it was like a thing you could order

isn't that a bummer though i you know i still wanted i i still want to talk to you about like because i i assume that you're the type of person who for this two-hour flight started to think about like well what would the scenario be how would i have shut this guy down would i have just ignored the nra sticker and said no sorry i'm sleeping here or whatever i want to come back to that alternate reality and explore it but isn't the we the people thing like a real son of a gun like there are people in my family who would hear this conversation they'd be like what's wrong with we the people like it's right we the people like it represents what's good about our country and the ideals of the country and it's like so hard to explain why that is why that is upsetting

exactly there's so much stuff i mean the american flag in a way there's so much stuff that that now is so coded and it didn't it doesn't have to be i want to also clarify i'm just looking on the internet i believe this might be an aftermarket thing you can buy and put on your truck so sorry dodge i retract my fuck you although but i go back to my fuck you because those trucks are bad

for the environment those are terrible whipping back and forth i know god it's life comes at you fast here on a monday edition of the show trying to nail down whether or not fuck you dodge but

yeah possible show title but no i i don't think i don't think that's a version of the truck they So I think it's a badge you can buy and put on your Dodge Ram. But what I was going to say is I know that my behavior, if somebody cuts me off in a Prius and I'm annoyed, I might beep at them. And if somebody cuts me off in one of those giant lifted We the People Dodge Rams, I probably won't beep at them because I think there's a chance that they are armed and aggressive. And I don't want to die over that. And it bothers me because it means it's working. Like this idea of evincing this sort of tough guy thing this don't tread on me All of that stuff. I don't like that. It actually modifies my behavior. I don't like that at all, but it it's true It's like it's working I am intimidated slightly by that stuff and I will behave differently towards somebody who's doing that whole scene than I would now had I seen the NRA stuff on this guy's tactical backpack I I probably still would have, I don't, wouldn't have felt afraid of him on the plane. I probably would have traded him because more of the awkwardness of two hours of just being withholding from someone would be difficult for me. But I don't think I've ever successfully, speaking of standing your ground, I don't think I've ever successfully stood my ground on the request to trade seats. It's called standing your air. I don't think I've ever successfully stood my air because again, that also usually means you have to fly next to the person who asked you for something for many hours and i just like it's better for me to trade and be the good guy than to spend hours and hours kind of on pins and needles or whatever about that but um it was a weird yeah it was just like a weird thing because i i just spent the whole flight thinking about like gun culture in this country and this stupid conference they were having in vegas uh and and the fact that it was in a roundabout way leading me to be mildly inconvenienced and have to move seats on the airplane which i already don't like doing but it felt like i was moving seats for a very bad reason speaking of uh camo there was i had the weirdest experience at the hotel on saturday i was walking around i was coming out of the little hotel gym and there was like a a guy with a dog in a camo vest standing around in the like you know like kind of lobby area of the building and then i get towards the elevators and there's like a bunch of guys with like sunglasses on and earpieces in and everywhere i'm going in this hotel i'm just like i'm like what who what are you doing what is going on and i get up to my hotel room and i look out the window because from the hotel i could actually see the airport in vegas it's kind of a weird layout and i could see what i thought was air force one i guess it was air force two technically but kamala harris was staying in the hotel i was actually leaving so we we didn't get to hang out because we were sort of you know i was leaving as she was arriving but what's what i thought was

weird was before i kind of put this all together when i just saw the like third or fourth cluster of secret service dudes i said to i walked with them i go is the Thank you. president staying here and they went no and i go uh well then who is and they just silently did not respond to me i thought i wonder what the obviously there's you know a lot of protocols and things and what they can say and not say and i was wondering like all i had to do was well one i got to my room and i saw the airplane i was like well if it's not the president it's got to be the vice president and then i just googled it and then i was like oh it's the vice president is here i wonder what the point of not confirming to someone that it's the vice president is like from a security standpoint i mean i obviously they just have a thing which is you're just not going to give out any information to anyone but like i'm trying to be distracted too probably you know we probably

have a little bit of a royal guard thing going on there too just like because if you were somebody who was either intentionally up to no good or just a wackadoo like they just they can't be messing around you know what i mean they're just like they must just have strict rules like you are like focused like very very focused on what you're doing and you don't let in distractions

yeah i i was like i did i think i did shift into some mode of being like i was outside of like a buckingham palace and wanting to like get make the beef eater laugh because i was like these guys first of all i haven't really i guess i've you know when i was working in dc in congress there's probably semi-frequent that there would be secret service around but it's not something i'm super familiar with and so immediately if I see like three super serious dudes in sunglasses standing around in like the downstairs lobby of the Four Seasons slash Mandalay Bay I immediately want to like get them off their game for some reason which is a great instinct and probably will never ever come back to haunt me right but then I was kind of starstruck I was like I'm in a hotel where Kamala Harris is or where she might be eventually like I didn't really know what her itinerary was there but i got i was sort of geeked out about the fact that i was that yeah in that proximity

to the vice president of america yeah absolutely i think there's a viral video going around of somebody getting somebody getting clocked maybe by one of the royal guards what do you call them the b theater guards i i'm trying to i'm trying to think of although i don't feel like they're usually the violent type they just they're just quiet right they just stand there well yeah their

whole move is to like what never laugh right that's the never smile that's kind of the that's the the prime directive for them i will tell you that when i finally got into the lift to go to the airport on saturday i mentioned to the driver i was like kind of stoked i was like hey i guess kamala harris is here and he goes oh yeah yeah and trump's in town too and i was like gross yeah i was like one of those things makes me feel good and one of those things you feel bad

yeah i guess nevada's the next state right i guess so i guess they're all kind of yeah doing their

things in there but like um yeah it was like i said i i was i was geeked out at the idea that somewhere in this enormous building was a person who you know is on the side of politics that i

tend to agree with i know what i was gonna say i wish i could cut out that whole thing about maybe seeing a viral video of some uh guard attacking a woman because i don't think and first of all attack would be the wrong word there i was stalling with my words because there was something else i wanted to bring up a detail of the story that you dropped earlier when you earlier said you saw a dog in camo i thought that that was somebody who was you know attending this gun conference or just somebody with bad taste or something because i was like yeah well i mean you know camo at this point is like it just is a fashion choice whether or not it's our fashion choice you know i mean it's just a fashion choice you don't need you don't need camo sweatpants either you know but people try them oh but this was an actual dog who was there working this is a working dog this is a serve in a certain way a dog that is serving its country and the dog thank you for your service

exactly they could first mr thank you for your service mr muttons you may board the airplane first actually now by the way if a dog would have asked to trade plays with me on the seat

oh yeah heart oh my god that would do it you'd be playing cards with them on the plane um but uh yeah that is weird that like an actual a dog that actually kind of has a purpose yeah they're dressing that dog in camo well that's not a fashion decision you would think that

what is the what is the reason for it it had it had a camo harness on basically and then it said of course do not pet yeah right which uh yeah like i i guess it's just the color they make these things but it's like i'm trying to imagine kamala harris you know parachuting into like somewhere on the ho chi minh trail uh actually this was more desert camo so i guess it'd be like kamala harris somewhere you know outside of of of baghdad and being guarded by one of these dogs and someone's like we got to get the dog we can't find the midsection of the dog it's so camouflage it blends so much into this desert environment like i that doesn't seem like a likely scenario in vegas it should be like sequins or it should be like right they still wear like pink sweatpants that say pink across the bottom or was that 2002 i think that was i think that one is

although it'll be back soon i promise you hey let's thank some donors who are making today's edition of tbtl possible i had the um experience of to some degree trying to explain tbtl to a stranger today that somebody came by to give me an estimate on installing some gutter uh a new gutter on my house and uh i was working here in the madrona hill studio so he was crunching the numbers and then came in and then we started chatting it was kind of like observing this room and um you know every time particularly for somebody who is uh you know has a normal person job when i try to describe tbtl or its longevity my mind kind of a i feel embarrassed about the whole thing we've established that but b my mind just kind of reels that this is still happening and he was saying oh yeah there are just so many podcasts now and i have friends that have are trying to start them and stuff and i you know all i could think was golly are we lucky for folks like annie johnson in seattle washington you know that we that we can do this five days a week for many many years four thousand one hundred and twenty as of today nine times thanks to the donations of folks like annie and

also ingrid keller who's in fort worth texas now i don't want to be possessive but if annie and Ingrid could listen to TBTL before they listen to these other podcasts that your gutter man's friends are starting to produce. I feel like we just need to really emphasize that those programs are still in the works. So just stick with us for now. Please. And we think we can justify the expense.

Yes, exactly. Thanks also to Brittany Schuster who's in Marysville, Washington. Thank you, Brittany. Appreciate you. Thanks to Scott Rosen who's in Seattle Washington a hot zip of ours indeed our hottest zip still right I'm get yeah Seattle's still

gonna be our hottest zip I would guess yeah too bad if I'd known I could have swung by Scott's house it's not too late we're not too late up truck this weekend oh hey stuff to the let's I

was so busy talking about shadow boxing with a guy on the flight we haven't even gotten into that Let's get into that Right after we thank Jeffrey Burke Of New York New York You truly are The most generous person In New York City See how I modified that on the fly But see I didn't say devious bastard A that's not Jeffrey Burke's life And we don't like to say mean things About our listeners Particularly our listeners who are donating money So I did that on the fly I just made it into a different thing That was less offensive and more encouraging jeffrey to continue supporting the program much the way andrew henderson has been andrew is in ottawa ontario canada making it rain down on us from above yes i'm uh paying andrew uh paying the um his monthly donation to tbtl in loonies indeed which is a you know i had something happen over the weekend which hasn't happened in a long time but i had two different occasions to get change it is so rare that i use cash anymore but i hap what was i i was buying something and it was like one of those like maybe it was in the snack shop of the hotel but it was one of those things where like it was five dollars and eight cents and i had six dollars and the person was like do you have eight cents and i was like no and then she gave me 92 cents and i was just like now i have to deal with this um and i carried that i flew that change across state lines i brought it all the way back here and then i put it in a piggy bank which i do have so i guess it wasn't the worst thing but i i you know it's almost like is 90 cents at this point

a curse or a blessing in your life well you know vives and i still have a change jar it's like a It's a large mason jar. When I come home with any kind of change, I still pay with cash from time to time. Also, sometimes whatever change comes into my life. You know me. I embrace change. So I throw in this jar. And honestly, like Vives and I, well, in the past, it'll be like maybe when we're moving apartments or something. So if we've stayed in an apartment for five to however many years, when it's time to move, she'll. have like a rolling, a coin rolling party of one where she'll watch, I don't know, Con Air and roll a bunch of coins or something. That's a good coin rolling. Not coin air, not to be confused with that. But anyway, and then it ends up being more than you think.

I am actually a coin air, not to brag.

Yeah, you are because you got those coins, yeah. But it ends up being more. Like I remember finally going to a bank, and again, banks are so weird these days. You walk in, it's all this real estate, and there's like two people in there and a fly buzzing around and like some sort of a dust ball blowing across the floor. They're just strange places, but I went in with like a—

Tumbleweed?

Or tumbleweed, yeah, and I just went in with this big, heavy-ass bag of coins and walked away with a few hundred dollars, I think. So you don't mess with the coin star. No, don't they take a cut?

Yeah, but that's easier than rolling all the coins.

You got coin air, you sit down.

Yeah, you got CoinAir, you got your thing. It's kind of, yeah, that could be a fun project. I could see that. Maybe that's how Megan Dahl in Seattle, Washington is funding TBTL because Megan is our final donor we want to thank. Megan might just at the end of the year take the coin jar, put on CoinAir, roll up some coins, and then direct that money towards TBTL. It's very possible.

I've made a terrible mistake here. Megan is tomorrow's donor of the day technically.

You know, it's funny, Andrew.

I must have copied and pasted wrong I am so embarrassed right now

I said this is a long long list but the last time I pointed that out you were like no no we've always been doing 11 people

and I felt like a fool yeah no we usually do 6 and apparently I sent you 7 now the big question is do we thank Megan again tomorrow I think so I think Megan Dahl gets thanked again tomorrow you can thank her if you want

I've already put in the work my friend that money is spent Thank you, Megan. Thank you to all of our donors for making TVTL possible. Hello and welcome to Top Story. I want to hear about this kind of project that you and Veeves did this weekend. But just to close, I did a really bad job last week of paying off on anything that I was forward promoting. So may I just quickly tell you that Wayne Newton was absolutely lovely.

Oh, that's right. So you rode the big wheel with him.

I rode, it's called the High Roller, I learned. And it was actually kind of a, it was kind of an interesting, just from a production standpoint, thing, because they basically let us into one of these pods. It's just like a giant, well, it's a room that you're in that's going around on this huge Ferris wheel. And so they let us on a couple hours before we were actually supposed to meet Wayne Newton so that our camera guy and sound guy could get all set up. but then it's this odd thing where they don't stop this ferris wheel or whatever this high roller they it comes down have you you have not been on one of these right i think we clear we confirmed

that last week no i have not i mean not not one of the big i feel like i can picture it but i think it's just from people telling me stories about a genevieve went in one in london one time right

that i think that might have that was definitely one of the most famous ones for a while but it part of it is it doesn't stop it slows down but I guess the thought is if we had to stop this every time it would just make a less fun experience and it would take a long time so this big pod it comes down and then these doors open and then it's moving pretty slowly for like a I don't know what maybe 50 feet or something and and they have these little rugs you know a mat non-slip mat and you so you go and you you get into your pod which is still slightly moving and once it goes past that area then you've got to wait for a full rotation and like there was this whole thing where it was like we were trying to get a certain amount of we didn't want it to be actually right before sunset because the light was going to be terrible for our camera guy the light was going to be shifting too much but wayne newton and his wife were supposed to get dinner at five o'clock so they wanted to do it at like 4 30 but then they were running late i think if it's i think it's five o'clock it's called supper right and i think you know when you're um 81 or whatever i think it's definitely supper i think it's unquestionably supper but so we're like in this pod trying to time this out and we we get a text from our friend who was who works for caesars and mgm or whatever saying um actually i think those are separate i think you worked for for caesars you think i would know this but anyway this guy robert that was helping us out he was on the ground to wrangle wayne newton and he texted our producer mark he just said basically well enjoy another lap of the wheel because they're still a little bit running behind so we go down our doors open no way newton we keep going and then right as we

get to where our pod is now up in the air again just slightly we look back and there's wayne newton standing on the platform with his wife and our guy and now it's going to be like 27 minutes before we get back to wayne newton and what was amazing was they friggin stopped the high roller whoa they backed it up they backed it up i didn't even think that was possible like from a engineering standpoint they stopped it uh people started running around like crazy like into the control room i could i just happened to be in a spot where i could look right into the control room like for the for the machinery they're opening like imagine like a sound board you know like at a radio station they opened the whole thing they were getting into the like into the guts of the control panel there was like this monitor that was flashing red there was literally a red button it was like people were on the phone i don't know if they had to call washington or something there were two people with keys i made that exact joke it was like the nuclear football like they had to and somehow they managed to not only stop the wheel which i was told would never happen but back the wheel up to let wayne newton on um and uh it took roughly 20 minutes to do this i don't think we only saved seven minutes yeah yeah i don't even think it was a real time saver but it was amazing to see that sort of power but my my whole thing that i was talking about with you last week was i was hoping that like i could in chatting with wayne newton about like las vegas and the fact that they're having the super bowl and stuff that maybe i could like get a kind of a somewhat real response from him not just kind of like a practiced you know i'm doing this for television and i'm happy to report he was a tremendously sweet guy and what was the question

again we're talking about this um on the show you're you're joking and saying okay so i have one spin of the wheel to really cut through you know just decades of a man being the face of a sort of like a plastic face of a plastic town but i'm going to get to the real i'm going to get to real depth of this but what was the actual depth you were trying to get to i was trying to just

sort of get him to talk about like what it feels like to what the changes are in kind of vegas over 60 years and also like who comes out to see him and just the vibe like this is a guy who has been in this town observing this town for almost longer than anybody at this point because he got there when he was like 15. and so i think he does actually have kind of a unique perspective what i didn't want was like a story about frank sinatra or a story you know he has all these kind of amazing entertainment stories which i think he's pretty used to telling but i wanted to get off of that stuff because that wasn't really relevant to our story and get more like a so are you shocked that they're having the super bowl here would you have ever thought that was possible also like what's it been like for you to be here all these years and also like to look around and see that this place is the way it is now versus when you got here he's trying to just get his human perspective of just being someone who's been in laws like as if he just was the you know maitre d at like a steakhouse in you know the whatever like uh the the mirage like that was the i wanted to talk to him like as an institutional memory of the place not as a guy who's uh professionally answered questions about frank sinatra for the last 60 years and what is the what is the what is the

overall story is it basically that just like how did how did Las Vegas become the home of this

year's Super Bowl yeah it's kind of a story about the unlikely development in this in the town of Las Vegas of getting all these pro pro sports franchise when that was at one time really unthinkable I mean there was a prohibition on Las Vegas as a concept with pro sports teams they wouldn't let Las Vegas advertise during the Super Bowl like 10-15 years ago like they wanted to run one of those like what happens in las vegas stays in vegas ads and the nfl said no too

close for comfort because we don't want to associate gambling with our brand back then and

now there's been this massive shift in that and so that's kind of the the the main part of the story is like what is the impact of all this legal sports gambling and also this kind of relaxing of the kind of moralizing around that at least for a lot of people in america what's that done for Las Vegas and also just kind of how how shocking is it or surprising that we've gone from you can't advertise during the Super Bowl to we're having the Super Bowl in your town and every single ad

that's running is for gambling and you got 27 minutes with Newton yep yeah you did which is

also the the name of my one-man play that I'm putting off off off Broadway it's called 27

minutes with newton yeah i look i look forward to um telling you that i saw that i uh um so and he had he had good insight on on this Because I'm just I guess I was just sort of curious. I remember you telling me what the broad scope of the story was, and I sort of forgotten the point of the story. And then and then I was curious. So so Wayne Newton was able to speak to sort of the gambling and sports aspect of it. Or is that like a dash of color? You're able to get him. Yeah, we had that covered.

We had that covered with some other people. What he what he talked about was just he was just very heartfelt about, like, the city of Las Vegas and the idea that, like, the people that live there. And we've got some we've got some listeners in Las Vegas and we've even got some donors checking in from Vegas occasionally This kind of larger question about a city. What does it mean to be a resident of a city? That is a real place you live with hopes and dreams you have hopes and dreams and you live in a place But it's a city that is so defined by this idea of like gambling and vice and you know glitzy lights Like it's got to be weirdly disconnecting and one of the things that I didn't really realize until I was down there was people in las vegas people who live there are so proud of their hockey team the golden knights not just because they won the stanley cup but because this was a thing that was created originally in las vegas like they didn't move there from somewhere else this was their team but also uh the the last the golden knights uh kind of i think their first season when they got to the stanley cup but didn't win it i think that might have also been the same year that there was that tremendously tragic shooting that happened in las vegas and there was this kind of sense of like this town is is is mourning this horrible event and then putting a lot of energy towards this hockey team that they're now all kind of rallying around so it took on an even bigger importance but this kind of question of like uh what what does it mean to be a resident of las vegas nevada you know what i mean above and beyond all of the kind of stereotypes around the city and he actually gave me some pretty interesting answers on that and he was kind of able to go there which i was really like just pleased about like he was listening to my questions he was responding appropriately like he wasn't on autopilot um which was all i was really hoping for i mean this will be one one clip in the story but it was a it was a nice real it felt like a real conversation between two people more more so than it might have been under other circumstances yeah i was happy i was happy

about that outcome yeah that is kind of surprising again not i don't even say that to besmirch him but he's just you know he's been doing a job for a long time and that is a big part of that job has been being like the ambassador of las vegas right and so you're right like and i'm sure there are a million people and i'm sure he has a million amazing stories that we'd be interested in hearing but i was understanding like that's not what we're doing here and why it would be hard for somebody like him to turn that off like he's exactly he cranks that stuff out all the time

And he's doing a billion interviews because the Super Bowl is happening in his town and everybody wants to talk to Mr. Las Vegas. Sure, yeah. Like I guess Gail King was about to do, she was going to sing with him in one of the gondolas in the fake Venice canals of the Venetian Hotel. So hopefully our piece will air before that so we don't look like we're ripping them off for putting Wayne Newton in some other context. The last thing I'll say on this was— Hey, hold on, though.

I think gondola is the word we're looking for for the things on the great wheel as well, right? Or the holy roller or whatever it's called. Don't they call those big? The holy roller. That's not the holy roller. That's somewhere else. That would be a total. That's probably in Branson. That's in Missouri. Yeah. I was thinking Branson. But, yeah, isn't that what you call those things, though? Sorry to interrupt you, but I think that's the word. When you said gondola, I was like, oh, is he just going to keep on going around this wheel interviewing and singing with people? It is a gondola.

then what do you call the boat in Venice?

No, also a gondola, I think.

No, you're definitely right that the thing in the air is called a gondola and the boat is called... Is that the only time where the same term can describe things that are that different? One is in the water and one is flying through the air.

Yeah.

Those seem like very different conveyances and that have the same name.

Yeah, but the air gondolas... You know, that reminds me, this is really far afield of anything we're talking about so i'll introduce it into evidence here um i'll allow it i almost started the show the other day just by saying one word to use scurrilous because it's another example of a word i was trying to describe this phenomenon of words in the english language that we as a culture only use in association with another word that always follows it like rumor yeah rumor right like do you hear that word used in any other context That one might be a bit of a stretch, but, like, 99% of the time it's scurrilous rumors. Yes, or allegation. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, scurrilous allegation.

But, like, same thing. Like, it's never—I've never heard scurrilous just hanging out there on its own.

I'll put together a list, and then we'll make it our goal for 2024 to use those words outside of their usual comfort zone. Hmm sounds scurrilous. The last thing on the Wayne stuff is I sent the Hawksquad a photo of me and Mr. Newton together and my dad responded and I think unironically because I don't think he even understands how funny this joke was. He responded, is that Lil Wayne? i mean is that what people call wayne newton i don't think so and it it's we we as we so often do we find ourselves with more questions than answers first of all how does my dad know that there is someone named lil wayne that's well how do you spell it i'll find that i'll go back to the

the text record here yeah i'm not sure exactly what this proves but i think it's interesting information if we're going to try to like figure anything out here is it lil wayne i'm trying to

scroll hold on scrolling hawk squad it turns out this is a very active feed um okay let's see here uh um i go he lil my dad said is that lil wayne or something like that question mark and i said something like that and i responded dad are you familiar with wayne newton and then

he responded oh right sorry okay so this wasn't him identifying little identifying wayne newton And not even realizing that there's a rapper called Lil Wayne and just kind of saying, is that Lil Wayne? And accidentally landing on something. He's heard of a pop culture figure named Wayne Newton and a pop culture figure named Lil Wayne. And he literally doesn't know the difference between them. My God, are we the same person?

I mean, those are, I just want to say, some very different looking dudes.

Indeed. But if you've only heard mention.

Yes, that is true. Yeah. That is very true. So he's probably heard the name Lil Wayne, but he didn't call him Little Wayne, which is also interesting.

Yeah, that's why if he had said little, I would have thought, oh, maybe he's like a, you know, he recognizes. Oh, is that Little Wayne Newton from back in the day? I was trying to figure out if that was an option. Lil Wayne Newton.

Little Wayne Newton. Little Wayne Newton? I don't know. But that continues my dad's streak of not knowing things that I'm surprised by. Another recent one that I've talked about was being pretty unfamiliar with Fleetwood Mac. That was pretty shocking to me. This is a man who knows that a little Wayne exists but was a little hazy on Fleetwood Mac.

I mean, don't – and again, this is why maybe I'm offering some grace here is I unironically on the show expose myself for not realizing there's a difference between John Legend and John Mayer. That was a discovery that I made on this show like five or more years ago. And I now realize why that's funny. but at the time it was just like i don't know i heard these musicians named john i just i didn't follow any of them and so they were just words in my head that somehow ended up coming out on the show like okay let's slow down walsh these are two very different performers and so um you know i guess you know if you're if your father isn't like actually having any proof of concept of either one of these performers right he's like little wayne wayne news he's just working with names yeah

exactly not yeah absolutely um what exactly went down this weekend with you and a rental truck and

a neighborhood garbage pickup i don't you know and i i mentioned that during the donors there's not i'm not trying to wedge this in that this isn't this is no grand adventure or anything like that but it was kind of a fun little adventure this weekend i guess it was a little adventure not a grand adventure but uh we rented a truck i almost rented a truck from u-haul but Instead, I went to that little place called Handy Andy on Aurora. I'm sure you know it well.

A little place called Handy. I played baseball for Handy Andy.

Oh, that's right. That was your Little League sponsor, right? Handy Andy. And what was the name of the team, or was it just Handy Andy?

It was just Handy Andy in those days. It was like Domino's Pizza, Police Guild, Handy Andy, Garber Filters, and a couple of other teams that I forget the name of.

Well, Veeves and I got a new couch last week. it arrived and so we had tons of boxes and we'd also had a part of our garage that was starting to collect a lot of garbage from over the holidays and now we had this old our old couch was so busted up like literally it wasn't it was like kind of a cheaper couch anyway that we bought maybe I don't know how many years ago but it was so busted out that the bottom of it was actually cracked and like I would sit on it you could see the wood coming at the bottom of the couch maybe I'm just saying that for people who are concerned about our consumption and just like dumping this couch instead of, like, rehousing it. This thing was mostly just a scratching post now, our old one for our cat. Was it the gray one? The gray one down in the basement. That at one point, like, looked nice, but it was one of those, what is the word that we borrowed from some writer where it was, like, it kind of looked nice, but it was, you know, kind of cheap. Bought it online somewhere, and it definitely served its purpose for many years. But anyway, we had to get rid of it. We replaced the couch. But now we had an old couch. in our backyard for a few days, soaking up rain, you know? Oh, nice. Yeah, real nice. And then a garage full of cushions and old boxes and all this stuff that I was trying to stay on top of, but it was just getting out of control. And also, we just needed to get rid of this old couch. We weren't going to go more than a week with a couch in our backyard. It was tucked away. I don't think anybody could have seen it, but Vives and I just, like, the idea of just having a couch in the backyard.

You didn't want to also, like, in any way normalize that behavior for the neighborhood.

Yeah, exactly. I want to be very clear here again like no neighbors could see this thing was tucked behind our garage but like we knew it was there you know like it just it was a bad feeling so we made a plan and I so I called hand Andy like I don't I don't know how the price would compare with you haul I thought you haul was trying to do something now where you can almost rent a you haul truck almost like you can rent one of those little cars around town like a zip car or so yeah they do I rented one a while ago and it's exactly they are trying their hardest to keep you from talking to any human beings when you rent a u-haul are they because i download like i actually downloaded the u-haul app and i'm like oh this must be the app and i went to it just like kept on like whenever it said like rent a truck it just kept saying you can call this number or go online here and i was like i thought this was supposed to be like a zip car app is there a chance that they have two different apps did you download a special like u-haul rental app well it would be bananas

they would have two different apps here it here's what it comes down to the kind of facility you end up at so if we can just take a moment to get way into the minutia of u-haul it if you were to go onto their website or their app and you were to say like hey find a u-haul truck near me a rental they would give you like a shocking number of locations like so many more locations than you would expect and if you picked the wrong one as i have before what you would find yourself at is not like a place where people who work for u-haul are who are like here let me um you know let me help you with this rental you will find yourself at like a gas station or some other you name it like a storage locker place just some business where the people typically at least this happened to me at a gas station in bellingham when i was bringing the boat down here and stuff a place where the person who works there has literally no idea what's going on with any of the vehicles and there's a lock box with a code on it and you have to do this crazy process they're trying to make you do it through the app but it's impossible so i ended up on the phone with someone at a different location where basically like i'm going through this elaborate process of verifying that i'm allowed to drive this truck and also figuring out the condition of the truck and all these insurance i mean all the hoops that you go through to rent a large truck but over the phone with someone so I can get these keys so that I can take the truck so that no physical human has to

actually be where I am it's way complicated it's funny because in this case that's more what I wanted I wanted to like hey let me just like look on the app where's the nearest truck use my app to unlock it or something but it sounds like U-Haul is stuck between and this is kind of what I what I what I worried about with U-Haul like they're still sort of stuck between the old model of like almost like a rental car place where they need to do all this paperwork for insurance and whatnot but trying to like cut that stuff out with an app and have it be more like zip car but like i think you're right the app just sucks and the system just sucks compare that to my experience where i called up handy andy on like wednesday or thursday and said hey do you rent uh pickup trucks um you know i just need one for a few hours on saturday and they said yeah i'm like okay can i reserve one like you can just walk in here but sure i'll take down your name and just make sure that there's one here for you it's 25 bucks plus like 89 cents a mile and we were only going a few miles they did not mention you they they had a trophy for seattle's little sluggers 1989 um i don't know if that would have involved you at all but uh it was so simple they're so laid back there they asked like do you want to put it down another 10 bucks for some sort of coverage and we're like no we're pretty sure that our insurance would cover that they're like sounds good to me trucks coming around and we i mean it was just such a simple process and i don't know why they are legally able to do it easier than u-haul is and seemingly cheaper so like i had like weird anxiety about this you'll be surprised to hear because first of all this is where things get a little bit tricky i guess is the as we discussed on the show as i discovered on this show actually the dump that we go to which is technically in shoreline is also technically only for people who live outside of the Seattle boundaries. I live in the Seattle boundaries. I didn't know I was getting away with something. This is a recap for people who weren't following this, uh, uh, this story, however many years ago, but I, uh, I just showed up there one day and they said, what's your zip code? And I said, nine, eight, one, three, three. And they were like, okay, here's a sticker. You're good to go.

And I told that story on the show and somebody said, oh, you lucked out. You're one of the few zip codes that actually straddles the line between Seattle and Shoreline. You don't know this, but you actually got away with something. So now every time I go there, I have this little sticker on my car, but I don't have my car. I have a rental truck. And so this is I want to make it very clear. This isn't like a free experience. We're still paying customers of this transfer station. I'm not like really taking advantage of something other than going to a place that is more conveniently near my house. But I was so nervous about them rejecting me because I'm driving up in a rental truck and I don't have this sticker that I looked up a random address and shoreline. Oh, my God. They asked me like an actual address.

Were you practicing it in your head as you were like rolling?

Yeah, I wrote it down on a piece of paper. I took a photo of that piece of paper on my phone and I had it and Vives and I were in the truck and I kept on going over that address. I won't give you the actual address, but it was on one hundred and one hundred and eightieth streets northeast. I just picked that. And I was like so ready for them to give me the third degree because like I the address on my driver's license is actually a couple of apartments ago. And so I couldn't you know, they could have questioned that or whatever. And I was just ready. And also like I do feel that at the dump, it depends on who you get. Sometimes you get a really friendly person and then sometimes you get a real grumpus who just wants to find any reason to reject you. Like, I had friends who told me, oh, yeah, one time I showed up there and they were like, your load isn't secure enough. You have to pull over there, re-secure your load, then come back through the line. It's like, what? We're already at the dump. Like, an unsecured load. Like, that was the problem. That was a problem for the cops on the street. I'm here now. It just sort of feels like they are looking for reasons to reject people sometimes, depending on who you get. So I was a little bit nervous about that. But we did have this truck. We picked it up. That process went really smoothly. It's, you know, just a pickup, but a much bigger truck than I'm used to driving because I'm used to driving a tiny little car called a Volkswagen Golf. And anyway, we did call a couple of our friends who live nearby and say, hey, do you have anything? We're loading up the back of this truck and we're taking to the dump. And like there's a baseline of, I think, thirty three dollars and then anything over a certain weight, they start to add on. And so we're like, might as well take advantage of this dump run. Right. So, like, we stopped by our friend Katie's house and Roden's house and threw some old tires in the back there and some old bedding stuff and flooring that they didn't need anymore. And then we, Avivs and I, took a little trip to the dump. And I was, like, thinking, like, I was going to show up and be like, my first thing was these aren't the droids you're looking for. Then I realized I don't have the force that won't get me through the gate at the dump. What am I going to tell these people?

I love the idea of you being basically like Jenna talking to Jack Donaghy but lying about her age.

When it's researchers in, our audience doesn't like green. Oh, that's too bad. I like green. Research doesn't lie, Jenna. It lets us know what we're thinking. What's too boring? What's too gay? What's too old? What's too old? That's a very good question. How old are you? I'm 29. What year were you born? 1977. When did you graduate high school? 94. When did you turn 40? 2017. Junior high crush? Kirk Cameron. Prom theme? Motown Philly, boys to men. What movie did you lose your virginity at? Arachnophobia. Theater or drive-in? What's a drive-in?

Of course.

That was you. Lying about your address. Turns out all I had to say, I roll up. I roll down my window.

There's a very nice woman there. Drinking coffee every day. Hold on. Sorry. I don't know why I just auto went to the next thing.

And all I had to say was, I'm sorry, I don't have my little sticker. This is a rental. And she looked at me and she said, well, then I guess we can't let you in, can we? And then said, ha, ha, ha, ha. And then gave me a little card with my truck's weight on it because that's how they measure it. They weigh you coming in and they weigh you going out. and that was it. It was, like, so not a thing. I never had to give an address. I never had to give a zip code. All I had to say was, like, I have been here before, clearly. I know the deal. I even had a follow-up question, like, okay, well, I don't think there's a way for me to, like, get – we had some yard waste in the truck, too. I'm like, is there a way for me to, like, dump the yard waste first? Because, like, I just showed familiarity with the system, you know what I mean? Yes. Like, oh, yeah.

Like a cool customer.

And then the only other thing maybe to say on this, although none of this really has a good power, out but um vives and i were of course i mean you can't help it like this was not an expensive endeavor right like i think at the at the dump itself was under 40 bucks to dump a whole like you know bed of stuff off of this truck um but it's hard not to imagine how you would game the system you know because like so you're weighed on the way in and you're a certain amount of heaviness and then on the way out you're lighter and so that's how they figure out how much you know in pounds you dumped yeah and so then vives and i like so that the trick have your friends hide somewhere how do you facility yes and like fill put them in or like i was even saying like maybe some

extra food like a heavy meal of spaghetti and meatballs you somehow hide that in the dump somewhere and then you dump all your stuff and then you eat it and you really like it's inside you like those and then I started thinking about those fishermen who hid the um the metal weights inside of the the fish right yeah the fishing competition I'm like what about that can we get some sort of metal weights inside the truck and then we're like okay there's a fence over there we're having this conversation while we're dumping things like could we come in late at night and sneak some weights in here and then we're like the fence yeah and then like you're saving like what like maybe ten dollars by doing this and i'm like maybe you guys exceeded the minimum the minimum charge i was like maybe we could just do like an extra hour of podcasting and that'd be a much easier way to earn the ten dollars as opposed to um as opposed to hiding weights in fish inside meatballs on the other side of this fence that i can take when um when we're in here But yeah, we did slightly. So it's like thirty three dollars is the is the is like the baseline and then anything over that. I think we paid thirty eight or something. So it was barely it was barely any money over that maybe five extra dollars or something.

I want you to know that every time I use the dump here, I think about how I would game the system. You can't you can't not. Yeah. I mean and here's the thing that I've started doing though is going I used to when I you know like lived in Bellingham and stuff going to the dump would be kind of like what you described which is like I might even rent a truck for it it's going to be this huge thing it's a massive amount of stuff but I've started going to the the local dump here for way smaller things like like you said when stuff gets delivered now it comes with so much just like styrofoam and and and unfortunately you know there's so much sort of stuff that doesn't really go in the garbage or at least it would use the whole garbage can like we have Cardboard recycling around here, but what I have found myself doing sometimes just because I'm trying to keep what's what messes I can sort of Keep under control here at the house as all this construction continues I try to so it's seven dollars the minimum at this dump is seven dollars and that is if you know have like a mazda cx-5 it's a hatchback if i were to put you know some gar like literal bags of garbage and then some styrofoam anything that's just kind of inconvenient for me to try to put into my garbage can for a week and it's also by the way this dump is not far from home depot which i go to almost every day i have now just started being like it's going to cost me seven dollars to get this stuff out of my life right now and just doing that like even taking cardboard there sometimes i have like a ton of it and it's got like stickers on it and maybe it got like or it's got you know it's a combination of cardboard within the plastic that came in the cardboard which you're not supposed to throw in the recycling you know the giant recycling dumpster for cardboard that is supposed to be dry clean cardboard you're not supposed to have any styrofoam or plastic in there there's not supposed to be any too much um you know whatever you want to call it labeling and stuff on the car but there's all these rules those rules are totally unenforced by the way i don't know why this recycling area doesn't have a bunch of prominent cameras even if they're not feeding to anything i feel like i want to tell those people you need to put the fear of god in folks because i see some people throwing like a washing machine in this thing remember i got

hollered at one time for putting putting um styrofoam in the wrong recycle because you can recycle styrofoam at these places which is amazing but i was putting it in the wrong recycle bin and some guy yelled at me hey my man and i was very dressed down at the dump yes so i've started

kind of just not waiting until i have this gigantic amount of stuff just being kind of like i'm gonna feel so much better not having this all this like packing material and stuff kind of sitting by my front door just kind of taking up visual space and i'm already going to go into town that's the other thing about living kind of out in the middle of nowhere like i do going into town is a whole thing now for me so like i try to plan all of my stops getting my little dry cleaning running around jogging around the lake maybe like i'm going into town and then if i can like throw in a quick dump run and get that out of my life it's like a whole thing but i'm availing myself of the local dump on, like, a once-a-week basis right now.

Yeah, I love that, because you don't have the $33 one. Yours is more like $7.

No, it's actually $7.77, which I find to be a really intriguing number. Like, if I was playing three-card poker, that would be amazing, triple sevens.

Is that God's number?

Is it? I know 666 is the devil's number. Does that make 777 God's number?

I always thought that the number seven represented God in some texts, but what do I know about that?

It's a truly holy experience when I am able to throw some of that trash out and just not have it in my life. I still haven't figured out, by the way, what the remedy is. what the resolution is of my um they didn't take my garbage for two weeks here and i need to figure out did they refund me that can i put more cans out it would take like a five minute phone call

but i'm too lazy to do it yeah that's one of those things that's on principle like even it's like you understand like okay well they weren't able to do their service because of the ice like okay that's understandable but you definitely shouldn't just pay for a service if they weren't able to provide that service so yeah i mean i don't know if that's a i doubt it's a bank breaker but like i told you I called the other day to get my $7.99 back because they charged me for a Christmas tree. And it's like, you know, again, it kind of comes back to, like, what is one's time worth on that? But I'm glad I did. Like, it just sort of felt like, you know, this is a free service. I shouldn't have to pay for that.

Also, I'm making notes to myself. Waste management. I got to call them. And then good to go. The toll people, I got, like, a collection letter from them. I went into my account They're charging me tolls on a car That I have never owned in my life or seen

And it's not coming through the rental agency?

No It's like It's a specific vehicle And it has like Its number is like 80% but not all of the numbers Of the Tiguan that I used to have That Carrie and I used to have So it's clearly a mistake I like emailed her or texted her I was like oh hey I think that they're maybe putting like the charges on this account and she's like um no i actually set up my own account which is should would come as no surprise for anybody who had met both of us and she was like um and um that's also not the license plate number for the tig one it's like the first four letters but not the last two i'm like how does that even happen like that's a big difference and we're talking about computers like it shouldn't matter that like the first four letters are the same it should be The system should be tracking all of the letters and numbers in a license plate of a car.

That's interesting, except if you don't have an account set up, and I'm, God, what am I doing? We both have to go to the bathroom. Why are we extending this? Yeah, how are you doing?

Are your eyeballs floating yet?

I'm all right. One thing I didn't tell you at the beginning of the show, and maybe this would have added more.

You've been peeing the whole time?

It's not pee, Luke. It's another. Whoa. Yeah, yeah.

That is a dangerous game, Dano.

I know. It's the most dangerous game.

It really is. Forget someone hunting you on an island.

Trying to hold in a number two while you podcast. Right. But I guarantee you, if somebody was trying to hunt me on an island, I would have to go number two. Well, that's a form of self-defense, though. Yeah, no, that is true. You're talking about good-to-go passes. Yeah, because if you don't have an account set up and you don't have that magnetic sticker in your car so that when you're passing underneath the automatic toll lanes or whatever, the toll detectors, it'll just take a photo of your license plate. And I wonder if somehow the similarity of the license plate, somebody who didn't already have an account in the system was driving under there the first time they drove under the camera, like, you know, just read the license plate incorrectly or something, you know, an H looks like a four or something. And then it's just locked in

I'm considering though This is the thing I'm considering doing something So unlike me And that really violates my core principles As a human being Which is Maybe just paying the erroneous Fee Because here's why I called them You'll be surprised to know That if you call good to go It's not like a guy down at the Good to go office in Olympia or something It's some call service somewhere So first of all you're like it's you know it's it's not going to be something that's easily fixed on their end because it's you're not really getting to the actual source of the issue you're talking to somebody who's been hired to kind of try to sort of push you in a direction and the person was like well there's something on the website where you can like uh you can file a like a you know a protest or something so i did but all of my protest was this is not my car and i sent it to them and i immediately got a response we need more information from you i was like i don't know how to provide more information about how this is not my car how do you prove that it's i was like you prove it to me that it is my car show me a a dmv report that says this license plate is my vehicle so i don't and it's like okay so i can fight this out with them and i'm getting like robo calls from them saying like you need to fix this before we like send you to collections i could also just pay the 40 and not deal with it which but then if that car goes through again you're going to keep on getting bills potentially i closed my account because i don't even have i don't live up there i don't have one of those little you know kind of things you screw on your front license plate i used to have one of those on both of the vehicles that i drove they go on your license plate back when i back in the olden times when i did this there was a little black that's they probably have a better system now but you used to get a little black rectangular box that you could Screw use the screws that hold in your license plate the top part of your license plate frame

you screw those in i'm sure again i'm sure they have some like little tiny sticker now that does exactly the same thing but in those days so i had those things i don't i don't need to here's my point i don't need to have this like tolling system for the greater seattle area set up on my car because i'm not up there enough to justify it so what i did was i went on to this thing and i closed the account down i shut her down so that i wouldn't get hit with any more of this stuff and But there is this kind of like lingering $40 of fees on a car that is not my vehicle. And it's like, is it worth $40 for me to just make this go away? Or do I want to keep arguing it out with them? I don't like I got bigger problems in my life than arguing this thing with the state of Washington tolling system.

I'm in the middle of something now. And like, I'll just say this as a teaser for someday. I may be able to tell you all this story, but I can't right now. But I am. Can you tell me off air? I can because it actually kind of affects you like I haven't even wanted to talk about this because it's so infuriating, but it's also related to our show and brings up something that is somewhat off color that I don't feel like getting into right now. I'll tell you about it sometime off air and we can decide how and when we want to talk about this on air because it's actually a really it's a very interesting conundrum I'm in. But the point is, like, somebody is doing us as a podcast really wrong in the podcast universe right now. And I don't know if it's an accidental thing or a hacking thing or what it is, but I have been writing to Google trying to get this set up. And I am not convinced that any of these emails that I'm receiving are from a human being. I think they're from, like, an AI guy who's pretending to be human. And they keep on saying this isn't a problem. I keep saying, yes, it is. And they say they keep on saying, we're closing this ticket unless you respond. And I keep saying, do not close this ticket. Do not respond. Here is video evidence of what is happening here.

Was this like my pants where I was like arguing with an AI person? It took me a long time to figure out it was AI. You already know it.

It's a little. Yeah. And I'm sorry to our listeners that I can't get into this right now. But it is it is one of those things where and I don't know if everybody's like this. I might be a little bit more likely to do this or predisposed to do this, but it's one of those things where it's driving me so crazy that I don't even want to talk about it. Sometimes it's rare that I have kind of a bad day or something, but back in the old days when I was going into a radio station or whatever and you'd have good days and bad days, when I have a bad day, I might come home with a little cloud over my head, but Genevieve would say, hey, well, what's going on? You want to talk about it? I'd be like, no, I don't want to talk about it. Like there's sometimes things bother you so much that you just don't want to talk about it. And this is one of those things. And it's something that I got to sort of resolve at some point. And now that you know this, you probably really want to know what it is that affects our podcast. Well,

you tell me off air and then what we'll do is we'll make it premium content. We'll figure out a way that if people want to know who it is, we're mad at, who's doing this dirty in the podcasting space, that that'll be a special, a special paywalled content that we will reveal to people for the right price.

It's Steve Nelson.

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 righty. Email or via. By the way, we talked off air just there for a moment about who we're mad at, and I cannot believe. That is some. Heads will roll. Seriously, that is some bullshit. Boy, I wish the listeners could know who we're talking about. No, I didn't. I didn't tell him anything. I'm trying to gas up our premium content here.

Hey, I don't know exactly what prompted this voicemail. It's actually been sitting in my inbox for a little bit here. But it must have been maybe we're thinking donors and maybe there were some town names from the UK or something that we were struggling with. I'm not sure. But the good news is we got this voicemail from listener Nick, who is here to clear up any questions we have about pronouncing town and city names in England.

Hey, dummies. Nick from Tacoma here with a little pronunciation guide for certain British place names. Despite my very obvious American-ness, or is it Americacity? I don't know. Whatever. I may look and sound exactly as American as I am, but I did spend a large chunk of my childhood living in the U.K., so here it goes. When an English or Scottish place name ends in witch, wick, wark, or something similar, usually the final W is silent. For example, a couple cities with famous castles that look like they should be pronounced Norwich and Warwick are actually pronounced Norwich and Warwick. Same with the London neighborhoods that look like Southwark and Greenwich, which are pronounced Southwark and Greenwich. And of course, the town of Larrick and the Shetlands is no exception. But as is the case with many rules, there are exceptions, like Ipswich and Sandwich. But I don't blame you for mispronouncing British place names. As a matter of fact, just south of where I used to live, there was a village that looked like it should have been pronounced God-Manchester, but it was actually pronounced Gumster. And I didn't learn that until I had actually lived there for several years. Thank you. Power out.

That's shocking.

All cleared up now. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, that's easy peasy. Speaking of Larrick

That must have been why it came up In fact it probably wasn't us thinking donors

Because I was saying how I did not get the response From my dad about flying over Larrick that I was expecting I think I would say Larrick It looks like Larrick It's L-E-R-W-I-C-K But on the show on Shetland They always say Larrick You know the other thing that they say a ton Which reminds me of that Clip from The Office Where I think it's The Dwight character is talking about murder but he calls it muck duck yeah it's like it's not quite muck duck on the show but it's like mother it's like oh why did he murder that person it's like it's almost muck duck territory yeah yeah muck duck most foul that's a good show title yeah um i uh yeah no we were watching some shetland last night it's just i love that show so much it kind of i've said this before but i just love how nobody ever keeps any thoughts inside the bad guys the good guys the cops the whatever it's like no one has an a rich or interesting inner life it's all externalized so as to keep the plot moving at all times there's never a delay in getting and there's always cctv of everything somehow there's uh they've never heard of a search warrant on the show well the

CCTV thing I thought that that was kind of a real thing that they I mean now here in the United States with their I mean you could collect video evidence from neighbors ring cameras to the security cameras of the 7-Eleven to the traffic camera so I think we're there now but I remember back in the day the idea of the UK like basically everything being on tape was just something about that culture that everything was on CCTV.

right it's i guess a better way to put it is they can get the cctv footage within five minutes of thinking of it you know what i mean like that's the part that's always because it's just great it's like it bears no resemblance to the actual process of investigating crimes and stuff it's just and it's exactly the way that all of the you know fine fine work of dick wolf on the like various law and orders and sv's you and all that stuff it's it's just designed to keep you kind of perpetually entertained by what's going on but it's just like anyway i'm a fan well do you know

and i assume that this is a common uh maybe observation of people who watch the old colombo tv series but like the thing that for for years now vives and i would always say like we get we like that show but we get so frustrated with the villains right because usually you know i think i think always you know who committed the crime then you just watch colombo figure it out but the people who committed the crime usually it's muck duck they're always like foul they're they're always trying to be too helpful which is like always how they're they're just telescoping their um is telescoping the right no that's not the right word there but they're just like amplifying their guilt because like columbia will be like you know there's just one more thing that's bothering me like why would her car have been in his driveway that night and then the perpetrator should just say yeah that's a good question colombo like yeah definitely if there's anything else i can do let me know and if you get an answer to that let me know but no they never say that they say oh well uh well it's it's elementary detective colombo i mean he was probably over there um visiting to um repair the panels in the study you know like they're just they're so like quick with like trying to help him sleuth it out it's like dude shut up just be like yeah i don't No, that's effed up, Columbo.

That's effed up, Columbo, was also a pretty good show title. The thing with Shetland that I had to just come to terms with it, because I would always try to explain this to my dad, why it made me crazy at first, was it's almost always the person you thought was doing it. Like, not even in the way you're describing, which is kind of like they're throwing you off the scent because, like, the person who was really helpful, then they eventually kind of show themselves to be the bad person. this is more just like in some of the seasons it's like hmm was it the scary drifter in season in episode two who kind of was a little too interested in the person and then by the end it's like yep it was the drifter and you're like oh i thought that was gonna be that was supposed to be a red herring that was supposed to be like there's many times where the people who are you think are the bad people on the show are just the bad people and i was like can you

You know, can you tickle my butt with a feather a little bit more, please, with some of these plot lines?

Didn't see it going there. But it would be nice if it was a cat.

No, I asked my dad, hey, dad, when we're watching the show, can you tickle my butt with a feather, please? Definitely.

I mean, family dynamics have changed a lot. But, no, I mean, I think what you're describing would be interesting if it happened occasionally. You know what I mean? Really keep us on our toes. Like, yeah, sometimes it is. Sometimes it is the person in the ski mask and the chainsaw hand.

And sometimes it's the florist. Well, you've got to draw the defense in. Sometimes you do have to run the ball. That sets up the play action.

I don't get the reference.

I'm saying, like, you know, in terms of just kind of—

Oh, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, sorry, yeah.

I'm glad we made it this far without talking about the football games yesterday.

I know, I was really tempted to earlier when you were talking about the Super Bowl. We could have had one of the most interesting Super Bowls in recent memory, and so we're going to have one of the most boring Super Bowls in recent memory.

We have a lot of listeners in the Bay Area, and I love them, and I appreciate them, and also appreciate all the folks who are donating from the Bay Area, so I don't want to say this to alienate anyone, but the idea that Detroit, a city that hopefully we're all rooting for, just, I mean, as a city, as a place, did not go to the Super Bowl after a pretty bad collapse, but allowed the place that did give rise to Peter Thiel and Elon Musk a chance. You couldn't draw a more stark contrast. And that's just a broad—you could say that about Seattle, because you could paint Seattle with the same brush that you might paint San Francisco with because of all the tech money. But it's just, you really couldn't draw up two cities that at least as far as the narratives we've all kind of laid out for them are more different than Detroit versus San Francisco. And also, I just don't like the Niners because I'm a Seahawks fan. It's just like, come on. Yeah.

Come on. Did Dan Campbell cry? I was waiting to see if he was going to cry. I couldn't even bring myself to watch his press conference. Me neither. I turned it off right away.

i knew by the way we're just gonna how long is this song 11 minutes perfect yeah i was in the car i was driving back from town from doing my errands and i was listening to the game and i heard when detroit had a chance to go up 17 points and decided instead to go for it instead of putting making it a three score game and i and and they went for it and didn't get it and i thought that's It's the game. And I don't know why I had that moment of clarity, but I was like, you can make this a three-score game right now with a field goal. Three scores is a lot of scores. And it sadly for the Detroit fans came to pass that that was the game.

I know we don't have time to talk about this right now. I will say that I kind of got to give it to Dan Campbell for saying that, like, this is the system that brought me here. So I'm going to be true to the system. And, you know, I think it's hard to stick to that as somebody who, like, you know, you have your, like, with Blackjack, right? I don't know much about it, but you got to kind of stick with your system. You can't be switching it around. Always or never, they say. But, by the way, maybe tomorrow or maybe just off air or something, I got to tell you about the emotional impact of watching a Seahawks-Broncos game from 1979 in its entirety on YouTube. and how an absolute collapse a Seahawks team that led at one point by 24 points and they went into this game in week four of 1979's NFL series as an underdog and on national television almost trounced Denver only to have a utter collapse in the second half of the game to lose it. that game from 1979 almost ruined my Saturday night. Like, how does that happen? We ended up, Vives and I were high-fiving when the Seahawks, like, unironically, like, we found ourselves getting into this game. And it turns out there's a whole bunch of classic games on YouTube. But anyway, yeah, that was my Saturday.

I think we've happened upon a new system, Andrew. We are allowed to talk about sports, but only over this music. Only when the music is playing. And for the duration of this music. And that's it. And then it's at the end of the show. It's limited. It's like getting on a Ferris wheel with Wayne Newton. That's right. 27 minutes to do this. We can reverse it here if you want. All right. Thank you, everyone, for listening. We are going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. And I also think it wouldn't hurt you to talk to a therapist about your bathroom issues because there's clearly something going on there.

Power out.

Thank you.