Muse

So this test will determine whether you have the right personality profile to be a police officer. Just to make sure the machine is working, is your name Andy? I don't know how to answer that. Simple yes or no. Well, everyone calls me Andy, but my full name is Andrew, I think.

So, no? Wait.

Yes. Let's move on. Scenario, you pull a car over for speeding, you find out that it's your father. How do you handle the situation?

Well, first, I would be like, Dad, you're alive?

How can they say this about me? I don't believe it. I show them. I record everything. Basically, it's Tommy by way of Cirque du Soleil, set in space with heavy erotic overtones and the gripping psychodrama of a thriller with plenty of heart and more than a little humor.

Just like you pull in and you just get spit right out of them. You just drop in and just smack the lip. Drop down. And then after that, you just drop in, just ride the barrel and get pitted. So pitted like that.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Oh, yeah, buddy. My name's Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I like turtles.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill Broadcast Center, perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it is, I mean, it's just absolutely spectacular today, even though we're looking at February 1st. It's like I'm walking on sunshine. It is blue skies. The river is very calm, very glass-like. There's a sailboat motoring up the mighty Columbia River, a white sailboat on the blue background of the water, and it's actually temperature warm in here.

I feel warm and I'm levitating.

I think that bodes really well for the show today, because whereas a week ago I was blowing fuses trying to run various space heaters, I've got sort of the opposite problem today. Actually, it's not a problem. It's a blessing. It's nice and warm and dry here inside the studio and outside the studio, and we've made it, everyone, to episode 4132 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. You know, we are fascinated with all stories related to Australia.

Australia is a wonderful island.

And there is a story out of Australia involving a young woman and an attempt to save her guinea pig who is in danger. And it's really quite something. I've probably watched the video 10 times this morning. We'll get into that also. Listen, we are a listener supported program here. This is listener-funded podcasting. We only exist because of donations, so thank you. That being said, we're not trying to get into anyone's financial business. We're not trying to put anyone on blast if you've got a lot of money in the bank, or maybe you don't have so much. But there might be something you're doing in your home that's letting everyone know that you are, in fact, rich.

One hundo a day, both of us. Five hundo a week. That's rich.

At least according to The Atlantic that I was reading this morning. Oh, and it's a Thursday, a.k.a. Blur's Day. My birthday today. We'll do those Blur's Day messages all the kids are going so crazy for. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I'm working on said Blur's Days right now. While I'm rounding them up for later in the show, do you have anything you need to add to the list, or are you good?

Let's see. Blur's Day is February. It'll be my daughter's birthday later this month. You want to use that today?

Or do you want to submit it now over the air? And then I'll write it down and read it back to you later.

No, but I will tell you this. This is a big, big month in the Burbank family birthday business. That's a lot of bees there, dude. I know. because we've got my mom turning 70 and we've got my sister Hannah turning 40 and my big round numbers I love it yeah and Adelaide turning 30 70 40 and 30 all on essentially the same weekend because my mom and my sister have the same birthday my sister Hannah was born on my mother's birthday, which I always say, when you have as many children, as my mom did, the chances were deece one of them was going to be born on your birthday. It was like a 50-50 chance.

Keep spinning that wheel, see where it lands.

Oh, you covered every number on the roulette wheel. Okay, well, that would explain how that happened.

I am a system.

Addie was born in February, not far off from them. So it's a big month. Big, big month here for birthday celebrations. And again, big round numbers, 30, 40, and 70.

And also, it is February, which means it's Cupid's birthday, of course. I know.

You go absolutely crazy for Valentine's Day, don't you?

I mean, I live for it. I start planning it on the 15th of February.

It's crazy. You just consider it to be Valentine's month, right? That's one of the things that you do.

Happy Valentine's! I like to be pampered throughout the month. I know you do.

All those bubble baths, all that Calgon taking you away.

Yeah, I do. Instead of installing and then uninstalling the heart-shaped bathtub each February, we're just keeping it up year-round now. I don't know. Some people say that's gauche, but you know what?

You've got to honestly take that down before Labor Day.

Yeah, well, that's what some people say, but you know what? We all celebrate in our own ways.

There's a house down in town that's kind of bordering this lake where I like to go for jogs sometimes, and they've got all their Christmas lights up still, but they did a really nice job. and it's got me thinking i don't know i mean what is the again as we say very frequently on the show you know gatekeeping on christmas celebrating or you know telling other people they're doing it wrong is really shouldn't be a personality it's not a very interesting way to move through the world so i'm not i don't have some you know big personal system around like how dare you leave up christmas lights but i will say that if you see them up in like you know june it can be a little like huh that's unusual but these ones are done so well that I'm kind of like I don't know I think

you're visually benefiting the area in it you know I haven't I don't know this house that you're

talking about it'd be weird if I did it would be actually unsettling it would mean you came to Longview Washington and didn't reach out which would be very strange but was walking I don't

know maybe a block behind you on your little constitution you're like oh I was checking out

the squirrel bridges at Lake Sacagawea do you know about those just kicking them making sure

of the squirrel is still safe for squirrels um well it raises the question though i think you know what's the difference between a light and a christmas light you know do they have a do they have a crash in the front yard you know like how heavily are they well andrew jesus made

one of them and the other is from some kind of i don't know what woke mind virus wait jesus made one what i don't know a christmas light is made by jesus but you said what's the difference between

a christmas light just a regular light i'm saying one is oh sure yeah yeah no there were two sets

of lights exactly one was when jesus made it oh we should oh you know we should talk about this more interesting than this i don't think anything's more interesting than my theories on jesus

lights no but what i was gonna say i guess to finish that thought is happy valentines i could be wrong about this but our neighbors across the street like kind of we live in a corner and so it's kind of across a side street from us i kind of like it they have a big backyard that is not particularly fancy but i can tell they have a lot of kind of projects going on back there and they sort of have an outdoor tent area where i think they have gatherings sometimes it just seems like kind of a nice hangout space for them i don't have a great view of it but um they have lights on back there that i think went up around christmas time and then they had some lights in the front around christmas time i could be wrong about this but i think they've taken down the front yard lights and those were like in trees right those were lights that were trees which kind of gives more of a holiday um feel but then in the back i think they've left them up they're just sort of like draped along the fence or whatever sure and so like how is that different than the the lights that genevieve has she has those um are the edison bulb style outdoor lights or whatever hanging like

in a yeah those were all the rage i can't wait to get some of those up around here my friend they're

nice and they give a nice glow and it's like okay well we have those and we turn those on sometimes they're not that different than than a holiday light so anyway we're not so different this house in your neighborhood that I definitely have never seen or peeped into your open windows more on that later. Oh, yeah, right.

Nice segue.

Is it like very holiday-ish or is it just sort of like garden lights? It's extremely holiday-ish. It's like Santa.

Is it really? Oh, okay. Literally. No, it's hardcore Christmas, and it is fully lit up at night. I mean, it's a whole thing. But again, they did a really nice job with it. So it's – I mean, it doesn't – I'll put it this way. It doesn't make me feel unhappy when I look at it, if I'm driving home from the store or the Papa Murphy's pizza, as is often my, Andrew, when I tell you that I have a preferred Papa Murphy's pizza now, that's of the two that I could choose.

from I'm an ocean beach boulevard guy. I know. It's, you know everything about my comings and goings down in town. But like, oftentimes I'll kind of just go around this lake even if it's not the most direct route because I just like the drive, it's pretty. And so I drive by this house pretty frequently and it, again, it's, I'm okay with it. I'm getting very excited and I have no reason to, But I'm getting very excited about getting, yep, yep, getting very excited about Christmas. I'm getting very excited. I mean, I am legitimately excited for next Christmas because I will hopefully be living in a house that is kind of more set up for, like, putting up the tree and, you know, putting some other decorations up and kind of living in it. It was an extreme construction zone a month ago. So I did set up a tree, but it was, it was, you know, it was, it was, it was not like the ideal scenario, but no, what I'm getting excited for is the idea, Andrew, of uplighting foliage, uplighting. There's another house by the Christmas house. There's another house and this is what they've done. And I don't know why this hadn't occurred to me. There's just, you know, sometimes if you're going to a, maybe a restaurant or you're staying at a resort somewhere, or it's just, it feels really pleasant at night to be there. And some of it could be some of those Edison bulbs you're talking about, but the move is to set up some lights in your, let's say, garden area or where you have landscaping or some trees or whatever, and then light them at night from below. Have you ever noted this, this approach, this feature?

You know, I can 100% picture what you're talking about, but it's not something that I've like sort of like connected with, if that makes sense, until you're saying it right now. The next time I see it, I'll think of this conversation. But, yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. I mean, this goes back to what we were talking about the other day, just like lighting, right? Like there is something – I am picturing – now this is going to be a real look-at-me-Louis situation here. But a couple of years ago, Genevieve and I went to the holiday party at – is it – I don't want to say mansion because that sounds too highfalutin. But is it officially called the president's mansion, like the university president's mansion?

Oh, where the UW president lives? Yeah.

And I think it's somewhat of an honorary –

Not been allowed there since the incident.

Sure. But anyway, I just remember that being like, you know, it's wintertime, it's cold, you're bundled up. But, you know, it was obviously really well done with just such nice winter lighting. And I think we saw some of that, what do you call it, uptreeing?

I don't think that's the term, but I think we should start using that uptreeing. Trees. They're all around us, but who gives a s***? There are those little touches that, so this house, it's not the Christmas house, it's a different house that I have interest in their lighting. it's adjacent to this lake what they've done is their whole front area they have i guess what you would call zero scaping where it's like they don't have a front lawn they have some really nice well maintained you know bushes and kind of small trees and things but they don't have a lawn that they're that they're watering which truthfully is probably the way to go for most of us in this in this day and age but anyway they have like this almost i don't really go in for whimsy most of the time so So when I say Dr. Seussian, that's, I don't know if that's, if that's kind of sounds like not what I'm trying to describe, but basically like there are these, they have some different kinds of trees that you might've seen at a mid-century house in LA in the 1950s, but they're very well maintained and kind of shaped and it's just different variety of things in their front yard. And then they've got these lights that are lighting all of this stuff. And it is such a cool look when I'm trying to fall asleep at night, I will literally in my mind picture where I want I don't even have any of the of the foliage right now like that's the problem this is it's a barren it's a barren wasteland up here in terms of yard stuff but I'm already just thinking about getting some little trees and planting them and then figuring out how to light them and then you know me and my coat hook moment moments just kind of sitting and looking at the these trees and shrubs that have been lit from below and I'm very it's like this is one of the main things I think about in my life now a good but I mean that's not age though

you've always liked staring at trees this has been a consistent line through the show since i've

always liked staring i've always liked you know looking out at you know from a viewpoint or looking at like you said like a pretty tree or anything i'm a big the one of the few times that my mind feels like it sort of quiets down is when i'm doing some quality staring i mean it started in college i the dormitory i was in mcmahon hall at the u-dub my room that i shared with arun norayan in looked out on lake washington and i-5 and i used to just sit on that bed and stare out at the 520 and uh i said i-5 but i'm at 520 and watch the cars go across 520 and uh ever since

then i've just yeah i've been a big starer i love watching traffic from above it can it can be very calming

also be very interesting also do you remember when I was pretty new on the show I feel like one of the storylines where we kind of something we reference back to a lot was you told me some story about how you went to your old neighborhood and stared at a tree and found oh yeah you cried staring at a

tree yeah I was yeah that was the house that I had on Beacon Hill with my first ex and I had planted some trees no no it was it was young adulthood what would the story with that place was it was in a neighborhood that didn't have sidewalks and so there was this kind of area that was in front like the you know the the part where the the front of our yard that was in front of the fence met the street and people would just like to park there and also it would get really muddy so there would just be these like deep muddy tire tracks and stuff it was very unappealing and so I I don't even know legally if I was allowed to do this I don't know if I owned that piece of street or if that's technically city property but what i did was i got these huge creosote railroad ties kind of like you know you can picture these right those big like i don't know what they would be like six by six long heavy soaked in some kind of chemical that causes them to never ever ever sort of rot um not only can i picture them i can smell them that's it you smell them before you see them really kind of like my feet um but uh i i think i've told the story on the show a few times but i decided what i was going to do was kind of build almost like a curb like thing i was going to basically create a barrier that kept people from peeling out in the kind of like wet wet mud right in front of my house and um so i but the thing is at the time i was the proud owner of a honda accord which for all of its um you know sort of benefits hauling creosote soaked railroad ties from the lows down on uh on rainier avenue in seattle was really not one of the things the car was designed for but i remember sticking like four of those bad boys in the trunk with the trunk you know not fully closed and hanging some flag off of them and then just like doing a wheelie all the way back up Graham street going like in my Honda Accord. And then just like digging this trench and whatever, putting these things in and kind of making this, it worked by the way, people didn't park their cars there anymore, but then I also wanted to make it kind of pretty. So I planted a couple of trees and they were pretty small when I planted them. And then years later I went back and they had grown into much larger kind of, you know, I don't know, nice trees. And I was just Some kind of, I had some moment where I started crying because of that.

No, that's reasonable. They weren't even up lit.

These were just regular old ass trees, bro.

Did I just hear, if the answer to this is yes, please don't feel like it's a distraction. I found it delightful if I'm right. Did I just hear the whistling of a working man whistle past you?

No, here's what you heard, Andrew. You heard the working of a working Walt.

Before you tell me, here's what I pictured. I was on a Zoom call with you yesterday, and so I saw some work going on in the background. I literally, for part of the Zoom meeting, I saw your dad on the other, like, it was almost like a shot set up like this for a movie. Like, you're in the foreground in a chair talking to me, and then way in the background, but very clear and perfectly framed was your dad on the other side of a window. Who's my daddy, and what does he do? Fixing something on a door, I think, and he was perfectly framed within the frame. It was very interesting. So just a moment ago, I thought I heard a little whistle and I was picturing your dad walking by maybe with a maybe with a lunch pail or maybe holding like a long, I don't know, tool of some sort and just forgetting that you're recording and just whistling as he works.

you did hear my dad okay the noise you heard wasn't whistling what it was was my dad tweaking or kind of finagling this piece of duct work ducting that goes from the bathroom here in the madrona hill studio out to the outside of the building and the reason that that duct work is it's like for the it's the bathroom fan okay so if you were to turn the fan on in the bathroom Because there's also a shower in there. I mean not yet, but there will be someday This is the fan that that gets you know steam and other things out people know how a fan exhaust fan. Yeah Thank you exhaust people are exhausted of me talking about this exhaust fan, but What happened was the didn't have the little outside like vent cover on it because I was The the exterior paneling of the Madrona Hill studio was not put on yet had not been installed and in the time that that that that exhaust fan sort of outlet was out there a bird put a nest in there oh my goodness and uh so we had my dad did like just right out of a they might be

giant song they put a little birdhouse in my vent and my dad is trying to remove it because he's actually putting the housing on that vent and he was he was kind of kind of tweaking it pushing it back and forth and it made a high-pitched sound that sounded like whistling but what you were hearing was like sheet metal rubbing on the inside of uh of some kind of tube

i don't think you're right about that i think and i'm sorry i know that you hate it when i correct you it disgusts in front of the listeners in front of the listeners but i think what i heard was your your dad whistling to the birds in the nest to try to calm them down during this process because he

wants to respect their home as well i think i hope to god the birds are long gone um i do know that when he just pulled it out a shitload of feathers just went like old feathers not like a live bird let me do this andrew if we can a little a little live on the spot because i do have a slider here sliding glass door i'm going to open this i'm going to ask my dad a question hey pops was there was there a dead bird in the thing oh no oh no i heard that oh not a dead bird hold on not a dead okay a bird's nest but not there wasn't coming inside to blow it that's okay you can do that but i just i was just for the show i was wondering was there wasn't like a bird in it it's just the nest okay cool all right well do what you got to do pops don't worry about it don't don't i guess he decided not to use his power blower in here because he heard me doing the show oh that's um but i but honestly at this point it's probably one of the more entertaining things that happens for the listeners uh i i'm happy to report no birds in there but a bird's nest that my dad said is it's just as bad and i was like it's it's so much better it's not no it's not great he's just thinking practically he's like removing it oh it's just as bad oh i see that's that's that's that's what that's where his brain is is like well there's no bird in it but it's a bird's nest and it's a pain in the butt to get it out of this because it's it's down you know it's it's kind of it's sort of trapped in part of this venting but i'm all i care about is were there any did any birds die in the making of this bathroom vent and it sounds like no no they've already moved

they they headed south and they're enjoying their time they're heading all over though

because i can see there's a lot of birds i see them flying periodically around here and i swear to god they have not picked a direction whether it's north or south you know i we talked about this a while ago but like the idea that yeah you're you know this is your isn't this your dad's bit yeah oh it's been believe you me it's been deployed this week andrew this week it's been

deployed we're now recycling our family members bits on the show yeah who is my daddy what does

do all right why don't we thank some of the donors and maybe even use that little quick stop down oh an owl oh my gosh andrew what what what we've got we've got tbtl breaking news tbtl breaking news apparently it was an owl's nest an owl's nest but still not an owl okay there's a giant owl feather that my dad just brought in oh wow are you gonna save that like

Yes, are you kidding me? Yeah, sure.

I mean, that's dope as hell. I don't know what I'm going to do with that, but the fact that there was an... I would have let them live there, honestly, and just put another vent in. That would have been my solution.

Just have intelligent conversations with the owl.

Find out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll.

They hate that question, man. They hate that question. I'm so sick of people thinking they're funny and asking how many licks can we please

just talk about nietzsche i when i can't even tell you how many times i as a kid embarked on the project of trying to figure out how many i bet you weren't alone it took to get to the center of a tootsie roll and you never ever stuck with the project to its completion i think one of the issues was like your tongue you do some real damage on your tongue if you actually approach the tootsie roll that way like unwrap it and then go like lick one lick two lick three like you wear your tongue out pretty fast as i think that's one of the issues now i think i've asked you this

before and i know we have to thank the donors but um this is really important that we get to this now what did you like more the the tootsie pops or the kinds of suckers with gum on the inside

charms blow pop yeah i think i was a blow pop guy you know the thing is i yes blow pop was that was amazing because it felt like you were two amazing things were happening yeah but i would say just pound for pound as far as like like so many things when it's a hybrid you kind of i felt like the charms blow pop was not the best gum you were ever gonna have and it was not the best lollipop you were ever you know whatever you want to call it sucker like the the tootsie like a cherry flavored tootsie roll like what we tootsie pop i should say or grape even And did they make a grape one? I think so.

I mean, in the...

Tootsie Pop was always like the chocolate. It was regular Tootsie Roll. Yeah, I never liked that one. Oh, the middle part. The middle part.

But there also, I think, was even, there was one that was chocolate, too, right? Like a brown wrapper.

I couldn't see that.

And I didn't like that one very much, actually. But the ones that were more fruit-flavored, I think from being a sucker or whatever you want to call it, it was better than the Charms Blow Pop. But the Charms Blow Pop, when you're a kid, you're like, I'm getting two things are happening here, you know? So I'm going to opt for that if it's an option.

Yeah, and I remember very distinctly that feeling of when you finally chomp into it. Either one, but I'm thinking specifically of the gum one here because, again, I think I was a fan of it. But now thinking about that feeling when you've gotten down to, like, the last, let's say, licks of the lollipop or whatever, then you're ready to, like, you know, really just nosh on it. What's the word I'm looking for? You know, bite down on it.

Do you know that I can't use the word nosh anymore?

Why? Because of, like, the overuse of, like.

No, because somebody that I know, somebody who they are close to is a person who had a baby and would nurse the baby and would describe the nursing as noshing, as the child was noshing. And now this person has told me, you've got to stop saying nosh. We can't say nosh.

Because nosh means breastfeeding.

To this one person. And I'm like, well, that's not fair that it's ruined for everyone else. Oh, I see.

So it's not your rule. It's not some sort of connection in your head. Here's the deal, though. i don't i feel like do i need to do this i feel like the word nosh is kind of like i don't know i don't like it anyway exactly that's what i was trying to say before that's why i didn't mean nosh when i said it i was trying to think of that moment where you like chomp down i think i'm thinking of the word chomp not oh right but like nosh is just like it's always comes with like an air of we're doing things a little bit fancy but it's usually not even that fancy have you noshed with us before have you nosh with us before or just like oh my god come on over we are gonna nosh and sip wine i'm just like okay i'm not i'm not part of the noshing class

but are you part of the window covering class andrew which is something i want to ask you about after we thank these donors you've probably heard me talking about the radiotopia show everything is alive it's the interview show where all of the subjects are inanimate objects and they're created by, you know, amazing performers who are kind of ad-libbing what it's like to be a streetlight or a can of soda or whatever. Well, the folks that bring you everything alive are trying something a little different this season. It's a new series called The Animals. It is an interview show in which the subjects are all animals. You ever wondered what's going on in the mind of a flamingo or a kangaroo with a joey who refuses to leave the pouch? that's all happening this season on the animals from the folks at Everything Is Alive. Hari Kondabalu is there, friend of the show. Maeve Higgins, my pal from Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. It's an amazing show, and you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you, baby.

Hey, let's thank some donors who are making today's episode possible. Folks like Randy Grover, who's in Bellevue, Washington.

Thank you, Randy. Thank you, Randy. Thank you, Randy. I'm never in Bellevue. It's amazing what a small footprint I leave in this city of ours.

I want to see like the family circus style little cartoon of your comings and goings. I have a feeling it would be a fairly tight, fairly tight circle of North Seattle.

It's a line that goes from the dartboard to the dart line to the dartboard to the dart line.

Occasionally to the AM, PM.

Do you belong to, do you use Google Maps or do you use some Apple version? Have I accepted Google Maps as my mapping service?

No, you know what I use? Well, here's the thing. I use whatever one is built into the iPhone. But I feel like I had heard, is that Apple Maps? Is that actually different? Or did they just basically rent whatever Google Maps is doing, and then they're just overlaying something different on it? I don't know.

I would be surprised if they're sharing info. I don't think of Google and Apple as working together on things. I could be wrong about that. I remember when the iPhone released its mapping service that was much ridiculed years and years ago. So that was like, remember that? That was national news of how bad the Apple map was that came with the iPhone. Do you remember that? Anyway. I'm looking this up too, by the way. The reason I ask is every now and then, or I guess monthly, I get an email from Google that says, hey, do you want to take a look at your sort of map history? And I don't know why. I get this Genevieve says she doesn't get this but it'll say hey your most traveled day was this and that's like a day that I drove down to Soto for brunch or something like that you know and it really it's always kind of fun to like retrace your steps and says you stopped here and you stopped here and you stopped here and it's one of those things that my friend Avish I would have described back in 2005 is sort of creepy sort of cool you know like it's amazing how like from Spotify end of year wrapped stuff to the Washington Post doing that that was on our show sheet for a I don't think we got to it to to Google Maps saying hey look look at all this information we have about you They've sort of like turned into a fun game to distract us from the track You how creepy it is. Yeah

Do you think that we can maybe through the TBTL website? We used to have an app a long time ago, but like could we create some kind of a like a TBTL wrapped where it covers every story that we never got to Every story that I promoted that we then never actually managed to make it to Luke Burbank

this is something to think about because i i have this thought from time to time like i i sometimes think like if we needed to pre-record something or if i had to i don't know i wouldn't probably do this without you on the show but anyway i i don't know if you know this you send me a show sheet every day right i copy and paste that baby into a google doc and i save that google doc throughout the year i just keep adding to it on the top adding to it i believe you reformat it

you don't enjoy my formatting no i make it a little bit just get over that yep exactly just

Keep your eyes on your own work, buddy. And I know we're thinking the donors here, but I was going to say, like, I have the ability to very easily just sort of scroll through an entire year of shows and grab. Oh, my God. In heaven, Andrew.

I just had a catastrophic situation here happen at the Madrona Hill studio, completely of my own doing. uh i just spilled a huge amount of coffee on myself and a huge amount of soda water the soda if i could have spilled the soda water on the coffee we would have probably solved the whole problem there but um sorry i was lowering my sit stand desk and then it was getting caught on the chair that i'm sitting on and then when i tried to straighten it all out i just tipped over my barsuk records powder coated thermos of coffee anyway sorry i did not mean for you to hear all that i just also i mean where first of all i inadvertently unmuted the microphone while i was

dealing with this whole issue no i'm glad i got to hear it because you could hear the water dripping down i thought something had happened with the work that your dad is doing like we we drilled through a pipe or something i thought water i pictured water pouring down from the ceiling

that sounded like so much water yeah well that was the again the soda water is is it's not a big deal it's this uh it's this coffee situation that's well why don't you is it all over your

lap and everything we're just talking the other day about that terrible feeling of sitting in

wetness no no no actually when i said all over myself i actually uh it missed me mostly it's just on this it's just on this mix pre three it's no it no it's it's not on any equipment it's just on this rug but it's like this raises a whole other conversation this is why we never get to anything andrew and this is including you telling me about how we never get to anything with your formatting but um i uh i when i was putting the studio together i was trying to figure out what sort of a rug to get to put uh kind of in this area and i wanted something that i could roll i have this like ergonomic chair that also goes up and down and is kind of fancy i got it for free from liveware and uh i wanted to get and anyway i i stupidly bought this carpet that's a little bit too light in color so it's constantly getting stuff on it it means i have to vacuum it almost every day just so it looks nice and i also spilled coffee on it once a long time ago like and it's i even though i cleaned it with carpet cleaner i never a rug cleaner i never got the coffee stain out still to this day to this day although now there's a larger coffee stain cover the good news is it's now within the footprint of the second but it's i'll just send you a picture this it's like what you're hearing going on in my mind right now is the realization that i may i may have finally just realized i need to get a different rug i need to just i need to just like you know move on from this project this failed project from this company called ruggable which is a real i'm just gonna sorry ruggable who will never be sponsoring us i feel like it's a little bit of a it's a little bit of a snow job from them they're big they have really here's the thing that they have that's great they have a million different rug designs like anything you can imagine so that's the cool part but they're not selling you just like a rug like you think of that you might buy like an area rug they're selling you a system and the system is basically like some underneath part that you kind of velcro the rug cover down over and then what that's supposed to allow you to do is wash the rug so i have this huge area rug in here it's i don't know know what it is like nine feet eight feet or something and what i could theoretically do is take it all apart like undo it from the thing that's underneath it the rug pad they call it and then throw the whole thing in the wash like a duvet cover almost it's like a duvet cover exactly but that's i didn't grasp that when i bought this thing when i bought this rug and i never really liked it and also i would have to move so much stuff off of this rug so that i could like do the process of like washing it and everything i'm considering this may have been i'm just saying this may have been a blessing

okay but let me tell you this and i'm not saying that you want to put in the effort to to get these stains out but have we talked about folex yet do you know about folex the stain remover i mean that stuff is it's it works miracles so if you haven't tried that but it sounds like maybe you've already

tried that on the old coffee stain i think i tried a different product you know that i bought at the store I could I could throw some full X at it I'm also like just want to kind of keep going with the show and not I I feel like if here's the thing wait are we recording you better be this is the

most interesting part of the show so far than the owl feather but um I what I really should do is

like stop and I should go get a like a towel probably and put it down I should walk around

on the towel and why don't you just do that right now and then we don't have time can you thank the

donors while i do that yeah yeah let me get this so we can keep so we can keep ever forward with

the program okay i'll thank the donors you go get a towel because it's going to make we've already

thanked randy grover don't give randy grover an extra i want to thank him again i want to thank

him again you get out of here i'll do my own thing hey randy see how fast i can do it can you time me no i'm thanking donors okay randy grover thank you i will make my way over to the east side and visit you in bellevue soon i promise whether or not you invite me also thank you to laura peterson of seattle washington see google maps knows i'm in seattle washington all the time and i'm in seattle washington right now right next to my dartboard we got thomas seagrove of houston texas supporting the show today thank you thomas i have um friends in houston i've never been there myself but i hear it's a pretty cool city so thank you for donating from that cool city same with molly Byrne of Columbus, Ohio. Now Columbus, Ohio, I've been to not a lot, but I definitely visited there in college. The Ohio State University, I believe, is there in Columbus, Ohio. Kathleen, hold on, I got to move closer to my screen to read this. Kathleen Vandlick of Naperville, Illinois is supporting the show today. Thank you, Kathleen. I think I got all the characters. Uh-oh, Luke's back we got to get this done quickly abel ing of aberdeen washington supporting the show we are and finally randy i wanted to thank you once again for all of your support along with abel ing of aberdeen washington thank you everybody for supporting the show i'm sorry that luke

couldn't be here for this i'll go back and reflect on uh all of these names we got a little bit later okay so one other thing that is kind of good is i don't put sugar in my coffee so it's at least not sticky although i do put milk in there and milk or half and half which has does have a high sugar content i think so just naturally i don't know but all right well that's by the way this is what it sounds like when i run up and down the stairs yeah i'm with between the place and the madrona hill studio so all this exercising is really uh it's really helping it's really helping the situation Hey, thank you so much, by the way, to our donors. And thank you, Andrew, for covering for me so I could go get this. I thank myself.

Don't worry.

Well, you've got to get your beak wet, too. I'll see you, yeah. We couldn't do it without you. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. I feel like, now I feel like the whole kind of like, I don't know, gravity of the show, the physics of the show have shifted now into Luke tries to clean a carpet in the Madrona Hill studio. What do you do as a noted clean person and a co-host of a great cleaning podcast called Spotless? What do you do if you dump entire Barsouk Records thing of coffee onto a kind of whitish rug? What's the process of getting that thing under control? Well, the first step of

cleaning up a mess is not making a mess in the first time. So I secure the lid on my cup.

That's the wrong person.

I'd probably do what you're doing. I mean, I already sort of told you, like, first of all, you sop it up as much as possible. I have a bunch of, oh, shit, you're going to be, you regret asking yet? I have a bunch of towels under my sink that are, they were formerly dish towels. And then after they served their duty for a long time, they got replaced by new dish towels. Then they became, like, hand towels and counter towels. And then eventually they become floor towels. And so I have various like sort of stages of a towels life in my house.

I feel like there's a. counter towelism joke in there somewhere but I can't get to it oh counter towelism oh yes something I don't know I'm really I'm as you can tell I'm pretty disparity wait what what are you please tell me you're not supporting the impeachment of Mayorkas is that where this is gonna land don't tell me that so here's what I do have by the way I don't have any folex I have something called Carvana not Carvana Andrew not something that will drive you happy and drive us away from American public media.

I wasn't sure why I had a trigger reaction to that. That's probably why.

Oxy-powered carpet cleaner. Goodbye, Staines. Hello, happiness.

Be careful with the Oxy stuff, though. Really? I don't know. Maybe I've done it. I don't have a lot of experience with it because the one time I used it, maybe I used too much of it, but it ended up taking a lot of color out of the hat that I was trying to clean, and it made it seem very aged very quickly. But you start by taking towels, like real towels if possible, and just sop up as much of the liquid as possible. Then after that, I would actually hit it with another towel that is a wet towel, nothing but water from the sink, and just sort of see if you can wick off any more of the actual coffee stuff. And then I would maybe let it dry a little bit, not all day, but let it dry a little bit, and then I would really go crazy with the Folex. I've never had Folex kind of stain or discolor anything. I don't think you can over Folex.

Well, it's too late. I just went ham with this Carvana shit.

Well, see, you don't like this rug anyway, so if it doesn't work.

Well, that's the thing. By the way, this is what it sounds like after I've been going ham with some Carvana shit. Again, does this sound like the cardiovascular health of a man who runs four miles a day, six days a week? It does not. I spilled coffee.

At this rate, the donors don't have to worry about donating too much longer, given our personal health.

It's not. We do have it written into the business agreement. that the donations will automatically stop if the show goes out of business because of my poor health. But all right, yeah, it is what it is.

But don't worry about the stain right now. I mean, the thing is, I didn't want you sitting there just like, you know, just like sopping wet or having standing water, standing coffee or bubbly water somewhere. But if you at least have it dry for now, I would probably.

I mean, it gets into a much larger situation for me, which is like why do i really even care about this carpet like if it has a car if it has a coffee stand on what does it really matter like i'm the only person in here generally speaking it matters i don't know i i feel like i get too hung up sometimes on i don't know the things that are not super critical like of all the things that i need to be spending money on with this project buying another rug is probably pretty low on the list yeah if you have to like kind of balance that

against other needs sure but i think that not wanting to come into your workspace every day and stare at a stain is reasonable i know that maybe i i don't speak for the every man when it comes to cleanliness or stains but like there is something okay you have one little stain but then you have one you know it builds and at some point somebody walks into their living space or working space and if there's stains all over the place it's going to have an impact on probably their their their mental state right it eventually stains your soul right exactly i mean people will have you know different tolerances for this but i i understand like remember that stain that i battled at our eagles that was like this big nasty stain that was the first thing you saw when you walked in and walked up the stairs to the club area and it's like well that's just like a it bothered me every time i saw it it's by the way i if you'll recall i cleaned that so that there ended up being like sort of a clean streak down those old dirty stairs and now it seems to have kind of evened out a little bit from like you know another year of usage those stairs could probably use another cleaning but at least like the stain is sort of just like you know balanced

out with the rest of everything else well we've gotten it to uh andrew where i can actually stop obsessing over it i uh it's a lot better than it was um i i am out of breath also from now retoweling everything off it's i think i've gotten things to a point where i can go about the rest of my day and not make this the focus of my day because i got to run down to town and stuff and uh we can get back to the top stories

hello and welcome to top story all of that is to say luke that i have all the old show sheets so i have every story we've never gotten to and at the end of the year some more coffee at the end of the year we could do a roundup of the stories we didn't get to in fact i've been struggling with things to write in the newsletter recently so maybe this week for the newsletter I can go back

through the 2023 stories that never got air I think it would be funny if we tried to do the stories without any further research search oh so we try to do them from memory you know what let's actually you know what i'm not

going to do that for the newsletter i'm going to collect these things and maybe in a couple of weeks we can do a show where we just we go over the stories without rereading them that we skipped

and just tried it like i'll be doing it from memory you may or may not have even seen the stories in the first place so you'll be really really kind of flying well sometimes shooting

from the hip it kind of depends on when the email comes in but yeah so yeah that'll be good oh wow

Okay, message received

Not necessarily

Don't you know how much I'm dealing with right now? I've got a loose owl I'm spilling coffee everywhere

It doesn't mean like, oh, did it come in too late Sometimes it could just come in at a time that Where are you at in your life? Where am I at in your morning?

Totally the toilet The perfect time to read the articles

Right

Speaking of reading the articles Did you happen to look at this The video link as part of this story that I saw?

no I didn't actually I was I was drawn first to the window covering story so I was I had read that and I forgot to go back to the Australian girl well let's do the let's do window coverings

because we've kind of mentioned it and today feels like yet another HGTV adjacent um you know TVTL episode since Walt is out there I mean this is also I love my dad but like there's so much stuff that could be done on this property and house and the fact that this is the thing that's happening right now is hilarious to me the the exhaust fan yeah because like there's we we have the list is a mile long of things that we could be and i say we i mean he could be working on right now but the one during the hours during which we're recording tv oh i see because it's

the proximity to the recording too yeah i see this i mean right right right right i didn't

understand what i spilled the coffee maybe what's that is it do we i mean would i have spilled the coffee if there was someone trying to clear an owl's nest out of here a walt flaps its feather exactly a walt finds an owl feather and we've got a real situation anyway let's let's yeah let's talk about this uh headline from the atlantic that says why rich people don't cover their windows an unexpected status symbol has become a fixture of high-end homes this is a piece by michael waters i was immediately intrigued because i'm into all things uh you know home decor and because in my own life i have never been a fan of having curtains um and i've always i've i've always been like the i mean i as we just discussed the other day on the show i need an absurd amount of natural light light to just feel okay generally um but i also i i've i'm trying to think of the various places that i've lived in i don't know if i've ever lived in a house where i had curtains that i would draw like pull you know pull together um i always want to have either the curtains open or no curtains i want to be getting as much light as i can and it turns out this is actually something that can be predicted by income um the new york times recently referred to the quote obligatory uncurtained windows of brooklyn heights a rich enclave in new york city the root pointed out that this seemed common among wealthy young white people living in gentrified urban areas although this phenomenon is mostly visible in cities the link between wealth and exposed windows extends across the u.s most people still do close their shades but americans who earn more than 150 000 are almost twice as likely to leave windows uncovered as those making 20 to 29 000 a year according to a large 2013 study for the u.s department of energy nearly 20 of the first group compared with just over 10 of the second group um so you know if this is to be believed there's something going on with a certain kind of income demographic with not closing their blinds or shades or whatever and then they go in to explain a lot of it has to do with well living somewhere where you feel a level of safety that is a privilege in and of itself being being able to live somewhere where you don't actually have concern that someone's going to peep in your window and come take your stuff living in areas where you're more spread out you have more kind of personal yard privacy space also having a house that's large enough that you could have like your living room or whatever your kitchen like all the days don't have they don't necessarily have curtains but because you have private spaces in your home you can still go to so you've got a big enough place that it's like well this is the public show-off place and then this other part is that's my little private sanctuary like that's a huge

amount of privilege yeah like what is facing let's say the street or a public space you know might not be the room that you even need to be in whereas if you're like in a like I'm the totally opposite I keep on picturing this I love that they quote an actual window historian of course there's a window historian who yeah literally wrote the book

about the history of windows do you mean daniel jute a professor at nyu who talks about the history of windows in his book transparency the material history of an idea that's a pretty good

name i like that book yeah that reminds me i mean god if i if i was producing a public radio show right now he would totally be one of the guests although i don't know i mean the history of

windows could it be he could have called it refenestration oh because the analysis of window defenestration is throwing someone out a window i guess refenestration would be throwing them back

up into the window i wanted to talk to you i almost started to say this at the beginning of the show i sort of wanted to analyze what we did with the show title yesterday when i say we i'm

spreading yeah you know i'm gonna be honest with you i uh did we make a rage against the machine

reference i would here's the deal so i yesterday we were making fun of the new york post's like somewhat botched attempt to make a chowder keg yes chowder keg and but the it was a story about somebody throwing pumpkin soup and so you were like that's not technically chowder so i was like oh we could call it like i don't know we were going to call it something kind of kind of dumb and silly and punny but then i got obsessed after the show was like i wanted something that would be as close to a New York Post style headline, but that would not identify it as a chowder or a bisque, but like what the soup actually is. And so I was going around and around and around. I was like, I guess it's a puree, right? Like a pumpkin soup is usually a puree. So I ended up naming it puree against the machine. I really wanted to name it pure age against the machine, but I didn't know how to spell that in any way that anybody would know what it meant. And so like I kept on going, it was weird. There are some show titles that I throw out there and I don't think about them again. But then there are some like this one that I was both I was just wildly swinging back and forth between being really proud of it and really ashamed of it at the same time. Because I feel like it's so close. Like I wanted it because it's like against the machine. These were protesters throwing the puree puree.

Yeah, literally against the painting.

Yeah. And I just I could. But it just it's like it's so close. But I don't know. Anyway, I just want to talk to you about it. That's why you got a weird text from me in the middle of the day that just said Pierre Ray against the machine.

I saw the show number, so I knew it was referring to yesterday's episode. And also, really and truly, you come up with the greatest show titles. So I just figured there must have been a Rage Against the Machine reference that I spaced on. But I trusted. I was like, oh, if Andrew is sending me this, it's because he likes this, which means it was a good title. That was my journey.

I think I needed somebody to reflect one way or the other, whether it was good or bad. Like I told you, I loved it and I hated it. No, it told me that I should hate it and that I should, by extension, hate myself. So anyway, I'm going to read this book about the windows. Yeah, but I was going to say if you look at the real extreme examples of poverty or even, you know, I think this historian goes back to like the 19th century or something. Yeah, you if you have a bunch of people who are living in really cramped spaces sort of on top of each other in a very in a very dense urban area and you picture it being kind of like maybe, you know, dirty or whatever, you know, just against thinking of kind of the extremes here. You could totally see like the idea of let's close the shades. Let's let's at least protect the small the small space that is our space versus somebody who even think about your house in Beacon Hill. that was the the house that i knew or i guess i know that one was uh that was down in um mount baker or mount baker i'm sorry and i bake beacon hill was the crying tree right mount baker was the other one baker but i know that house well that's where you and i used to record daily you know way back in the day and so i know that house well as a it was a nice house and it was also though it was up on a hill away from the street of course you could leave your your window yeah your windows um kind of open or or uncovered and the same thing here you know i mean this is a much

much more humble abode but it faces the where i'm looking right now well where i'm looking is at the coffee stain and just trying to see how my work is paying off here but but uh normally i'm just looking out you know this river one whole side of the studio and one whole side of the little house is you you'd have to fly a drone up here to see me so there's absolutely zero motivation to cover those windows but that's a huge amount of privilege too to like have that much room to operate or to have that much privacy and now it's also interesting because if you think about there's a version of having no curtains up that is also could indicate a kind of um a real kind of economic marginalization too right like somebody that doesn't or something that i've always and i want to be careful with how i talk about this because i don't want to sound like i'm judging anyone or kind of um just making anyone feel bad about whatever things might be looking like but like I've always had a kind of gotten a sort of a bit of a sad feeling if if I see that somebody has tacked up something that's not really curt

material to just cover like the you know like the window on the house if it's like an old blanket or a you know comforter or something like for privacy sake i i look at that and i think man that's got to be probably kind of a tough situation because you somebody wanted the privacy they wanted to cover that window but they didn't have the kind of stuff that we usually use for that which would

be curtains you know what i'm talking about yeah yeah i know you're talking about usually it'll be like a bed sheet or tapestry of some sort you know there is that um person who lived in an apartment building kind of across from our old place like when i say across i don't even mean across the street i mean our old apartment was kind of up at rooftop level so i would look across the roof of the businesses next door yeah you want to talk about like again the example of i i had my ash bucket and i would i would look across at this apartment building and one of the apartment buildings had remember it had like tinfoil or something all over and i'm sure that was somebody who probably and that was a building that reflected the i'm trying to think it wasn't east or west but it did get some very direct sunlight and i'm sure that was somebody who probably had a night shift right and probably had to sleep and had no couldn't have light coming in during the day but it definitely is you know it didn't look like an enviable situation certainly i also just wonder i

mean everyone is just on their journey and is living their life but i i can tell you that i've lived in neighborhoods before and i've driven by homes there's even one that's kind of down the hill for me here i know where every every time i drive by it you've seen it every time i drive by it it's like their curtains are just you know um like seven days a week curtains a front window curtain just pulled shut always that's just the default setting and again i don't know what's going on for those folks uh it could be a whole variety of things right but it's and it's it's a home it's not like it doesn't seem to be a you know a space where that the only place that they could be is is that room that, you know, which has the curtains pulled. I guess I'll put it this way. There's something that for me with my life gives me a kind of a sad feeling. Like if I imagine myself living in a space and having the curtains pulled shut all the time, it bums me out for me. I'm not saying that anyone has to live their life that way, but I have having, you know, the curtain, and my mom is the exact same way. My mom, and this is totally where I get it. My mom needs massive amounts of natural light. And if she walks into any room and there are closed curtains, In fact, they don't. My parents also don't have any curtains and their kind of house is more in the woods. You've been out there. Their upstairs is a little bit more kind of shadowy because they have a lot of tall trees, but they also have no curtains.

And I'm sure that's my mom. Yeah, that's interesting. You won't be surprised to hear that. I sort of have a little like for me, you know, I have my little routines around everything. And Genevieve usually makes the well, often she'll make curtains for our places. And she has these really nice linen curtains that she made for our front window. And again, you know, you know, our place, I like our place, but it's a humble little place. But we do have this sort of like picture window on our in our front dining room. And it also and then it even curves around a little bit. So there's a little bit of a side window there. And so Genevieve has made these custom curtains that hang for both of them. And I love in the morning drawing those things. I love the sound it makes. I love the feel of them. and they're hanging on these brass rings that makes this one of the sound and bingo knows that sound bingo will come running and want to look out the window with me and then at night i like to leave them open for quite some time i like to leave them open until certainly until genevieve gets home because i don't know if she knows this but i actually think about that there's a very i actually think when you open up our little front gate and walk into our front yard if that those blinds are open like you can see it's a nice little very cozy look into this one little room in our house and i love that and it's got this and again it goes back to lighting we have one of those um lamps that everybody had a while back and maybe they're a little cliche now but one of those big curved lamps that kind of goes up to the ceiling and then bends down and it just sort of sets a real mood i feel like and so i like to wait until evening time and let genevieve come home to that and then i and then i draw them at the end of the day and again it's a very genevieve sort of lightly teases me about how like kind of tactile i am or the tactile experiences

i've drawn to and that's definitely one of them it's funny that you say that because what i'm remembering now is when i lived at the burbank springs location up in bellingham again another place that i was very fortunate you know kind of was up on that hill and you could kind of see town from there and the tv room which was actually converted garage but uh we had these big curtains that were like on those kind of rings that made that noise you're describing and those would get pulled clothes every night i don't know why exactly but i think it was just something carrie preferred but i i have this memory of a going out in the morning and like with you know rudy kind of like tagging along by my side opening all of those curtains and hearing the sound of those curtains opening and it was it was something very sensory that was like okay the day's beginning The coffee's a-brewin'. The curtains are being opened. I love it.

know so I I do I do kind of dig that I am again I don't want to tell anyone how to live their life but I would ask if you live down near Lake Sacagawea in Longview Washington and you're making a like you're having a cozy family moment you feel comfortable could you leave the curtains open because I enjoy nothing more than a nice walk in the early evening and seeing what everyone's up to What are they watching on TV? What are they, you know, are they all gathered around the dining room table together? Are they eating on TV dinners? Are they, you know, are the kids playing Nintendo Wii? Like, I live there's something.

Are the adults expressing their love physically?

Yeah, exactly. And do they mind if I observe, you know?

That's something that you're really into?

Basic questions. No, but I, like, that's something I do kind of miss living out here now is that, you know, there's this is not very this is not a walkable area at all everyone is up on some sort of piece of property far away from the road and other people and like when i lived in particularly in bellingham but also even in portland like i really love walking around a city at about you know maybe seven o'clock on a kind of a nice spring or summery night and you can just smell you know dinner being made and it's just like kind of just getting a sense again appropriately from the sidewalk a sense of what everyone's kind of nighttime routine is or what i don't know there's something very there's something very lovely about that experience for me

there's a right way to rock and a wrong way to roll you can't just listen to your soul just remember that life is number one you can be having so much fun just remember that life

We didn't even get into the quotes from Indoor America, the interior landscape of post-war suburbia.

Ooh.

Yeah, another book that was cited in this Atlantic piece. I just happened to see that in front of me. Let's wish some people some blessed blurs days today. You were sort of bemoaning recently, Luke. I don't know if you realize that we were bemoaning the sort of lack of Blur's days or the lack of voluminous Blur's days. Probably doesn't use that word right. But anyway, we are back. We are back with a lot of Blur's days today. And I will say thank you to everybody for really, I had to do zero editing. They were all the appropriate length. That is a rarity, and I really appreciate it. Like this one from Erica who says, I'd like to wish myself a happy day and much success in the year 2024 and beyond. I need a jorb. Now, I don't know. I've been thinking about this. I don't know if Erica is just being kind of silly and calls a job a jorb.

Oh, a jorb.

Or maybe it was a typo, and I'm calling Erica out on that. I don't mean to. I love it. I mean, I don't love the fact that you need a jorb. Let's get you a jorb. But I like calling jobs jorbs. I do, too. I think that could be a new.

I am doing my job here. I am doing my jorb here. Happy birthday, Erica. Nice jorb on the blurstays today. Thank you. That's so much more fun than job. It's so much fun. Hey, how's the Jorb hunt?

Yeah, yeah. Erica, let us know how the Jorb hunt is going. Yeah, and good luck with that. For real. Linder says, now you might realize here this is kind of a reverse blurs from, I believe, last week or ten weeks ago. Oh, yeah. A couple of friendos blursing it up. Linder says, I'd like to wish my dear friendo Bet a happy blurs day. Oh, sure. In that nothing that tank girl ever said is fit for a birthday wish, especially when she was wishing someone a happy birthday. I'll just say, cheers to you, dummy. What you do is so important. Moi. I believe the moi indicates a kiss. Also, both Blur's Day messages. Believe it or not, I'm a complete catch. Between these two people involved tank girl references that go over my head.

But the film work of Lori Petty, I believe, right?

I believe so. Happy Blur's Day, bet.

I just want you to be normal, and clearly you're not.

Isn't that for? Yes, it is.

Isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheets?

spreadsheet. I'd be so good at that game. What's the next one, dog?

Oh, man, you're hot. I'll say, what's up, dog? Oh, I got that one. I stopped it.

Debra says, happy Blur's Day to the fabulous Carolyn. She's my cousin and my almost birthday twin. Always thinking about you this time of year, cuz hoping bugs spoils you rotten.

As Jay would say, he's got flow.

That was me. I heard me at the end

of that was that. You didn't. No? You heard something we never play. It's apparently from Archer.

Let's play some goddamn cards. Alex says, I like what we did.

It did sound a little bit like you, though, by the way. I can see why you kind of thought. Yeah, well, people see me as sort of an Archer-like character. Actually, I got gummy bears.

A. Walsh Benjamin, I believe they call you behind your back.

I got a thing of gummy bears right here. All I've had to eat today is gummy bears and some scotch. Two gummy bears and some scotch. All I've had today is like six gummy bears and some scotch. That's about right. Alex says, I'd like to wish a very happy Blur's Day to listener Christina this week. She's been an amazing friend, partner, and co-listener. And I know she's going to have an amazing year ahead. Happy Blur's Day, Christina. Happy Valentine's Day! James in Louisville says, I'd like to wish a happy upcoming Blur's Day to my 11, Jennifer, or as I call her, snakes. Forward pro for tomorrow's show. That is awesome. Lots of people don't get my pet name for her, but she does, and that's rad. I think you're great. Let's go get a pizza.

My motto is to catch a snake, become a snake. Think like a snake and be a snake.

I think that came from a real news story that we were covering. I do. I believe I believe that's the story. Amy in Minnesota, the Minnesotan, the Pandrumic drummer from the talent show says, Happy belated Blursday to my husband, Chad. I think it's so awesome that you are now halfway through seminary. And I want everyone to know they can still swear and drink around and with you. I'm inspired by your compassion and your commitment to listening to other people's stories. I'm still going to bug you to eat, though. Happy Blur's Day, Chad.

You're like the coolest person I've ever met. You're like the coolest person I've ever met.

Wow. I'm the coolest place for you. That's how much we celebrate Chad's Blur's Day and also Chad's progression through seminary.

This is why people are always surprised to hear that we script out every moment of this show. Caroline says, I'm wishing a very happy Blur's Day to my amazing Kiwi cousin, Deborah, down in New Zealand. Now, is this the birthday twin we heard about before? Yes, it is. I should have paired these up. Oh, well. Oh, yeah, buddy. What was that one? That was Obama saying, this is our time. It is our turn. It is our turn.

What do you think the next one is? Oh, I talked over it. Hold on.

It is our turn. Oh, God. Is that from, it sounds like, what's his name, Screaming from Always Sunny in Philadelphia?

Well, it's a scream. It's the Wilhelm scream.

Oh.

Yeah. Yeah.

Caroline says, I'd like to wish a happy birthday to my amazing Kiwi cousin, Debra. I'm singing now. Woo, woo. Down in New Zealand. Happy birthday to you, Debra Sita. Her birthday is Saturday and mine is tomorrow, so it's a twofer. Happy birthday to us both, and here's another amazing year. Here's two in another. Yeah, exactly.

Don't go there.

I'm doing great today. And finally, Michael in MLT. What is MLT, Luke? Mount Lake Terrace, maybe? Oh, Michael in Mount Lake Terrace. Happy 8th Blursday to my five. MJ, I can't believe we've made it. Eight full trips around the sun already. You guys are going around the sun? What kind of a spaceship do you have? Don't get too close. It's exciting to watch you grow from my baby burrito into a kind-hearted, hard-working, and energetic kiddo that's so full of potential excited for what your next year will bring don't call someone a burrito

when i haven't eaten anything yet i'm kind of hungry too now i've got burrito i might have tacos when i go home i'm not quite sure yet now i'm very very oh man i was just battling battling with going to taco time yesterday as i was driving around i already had a papa murphy's pizza sitting on the the passenger seat of my car dude like i was getting some stuff in town and i was also um returning some things there is a ups store uh you know down in town that it's pretty crazy to go there now because it's it's sort of it's the tip of the spear if you will of the delivery economy we now live in it's all there's always a line out the door and it's a line of people with things they ordered mostly through amazon that they're returning and it's because this is one of those places that amazon says you can bring it here and drop it off with a qr code and we'll just take it from there and it's just like you just see how many of us are buying things and then getting them and being like yeah no and then driving it down to the ups store to get it mailed out um and uh but anyway i was doing that i was i was part of that world anyway so i was getting this uh papa murphy's pizza for me my daddy later but i was so hungry that i was like yeah but but i'm hungry now i know i have this i'm driving this pizza home that's yet to be cooked but this isn't going to be we're not going to be eating this for a good two hours and I'm

And I was, like, I was really doing, like, some deep kind of self-talk to keep myself from, like, involuntarily just going to the Taco Time drive-thru and ordering an entire meal there one and a half hours before I was going to eat a pizza I had just purchased.

You are making me so hungry right now. I'm trying to figure out what am I going to go get for lunch. And will I recover from it?

Blame whoever named their kid Burrito. Yeah.

Now, I know you're eager to get out there and start slicing up and serving some pizza, but before we do that, we have some very important things to talk about. i don't know why i have that that's not tim meadows it sounds almost like tim meadows i think he's the guy from snl right yeah that's yeah yeah i'm pretty sure that's tim meadows i think that might have been a sketch about that was like kind of spoofing like um chain restaurant uh training videos you know how you know like we even played supposedly a real one from the 80s the other day but like i think he was doing some sort of corporate training video i don't know what the joke is though i love tim meadows though his voice makes me smile oh i love i love him as well i saw

this the other day andrew by the way i'm the thing i was trying to race out here to get to i'm blowing

it off um so just less less shit can i redo the blurs days i had so many i was racing through it i was thinking like dude it's like when you're driving too fast down the road and then you end up later because you get a ticket like just slow down i needed to slow down i apologize no i thought

it was good i thought it was good blame me everybody blame me because i was putting andrew under pressure and now i'm now i'm just playing old snl sketches that i saw for the first time recently i feel like this could have gotten more attention at the time maybe some people knew about it but the the sketch is called almost pizza are you familiar at all with this so it's it's like uh bill hater is the the it's like a commercial it's bill hater is the is the husband and kristin wig kirsten wig kristen wig i think it's kristen kristen wig is the is the mom it's kind of a very you know sort of maybe early 2000s kind of tv commercial and she they they're in the kitchen and she's got this pizza there and bill hater's like excited about this pizza and then things kind of get a little more surreal and i i think this is a pretty good sketch

pizza i didn't hear the delivery guy pull up that's because it's not delivery really and it's

It's not exactly pizza either. It's almost pizza.

Come on, that's pizza.

No, it's very nearly pizza, but not quite. It's almost pizza. See? Come on, let's eat.

So it's tofu pizza or something like that.

No, you could put tofu on a pizza and still legally call it pizza. But don't call this pizza. It's almost pizza. Pizza that's practically pizza in every way, except for a few key ones. Come on, dig in.

But it's food, though, right?

Come on.

Mmm, pizza. Nice one, Mom.

on here what exactly is this carol by the way bill hater's characters stopped their daughter from reaching for the pizza what we're starting to see is there's kristen wig does not want to eat this thing but she's very insistent on bill hater eating it for some reason it's like pizza it's

meant to but it's not if it was pizza it would just say pizza look i'll eat some she pretend

eats it very unconvincingly that thing where you put the food behind the other side of your head so it kind of looks like you're eating it but you're not sure smells like pizza that was their

intention who's just try it tom it's getting cold no if anything it's getting hotter okay what is this carol just eat some hell no i'll eat it no he slaps it out of the daughter's hands and the

pizza shatters like glass when it hits the floor of the kitchen hotter if anything it's getting hot or they cut to the pizza which is visibly warming now now the pizza is reforming into a slice of pizza from having been a shattered glass on the kitchen floor and now it's starting to

scurry under one of the kitchen cabinets if it's almost dinner it's almost time for almost pizza The thing that's much like pizza, roughly speaking, from Pfizer. I like that that whole thing just started with them just spoofing on, it's not delivery, it's DiGiorno. That's it. And then after that, it stops being a parody of really anything.

No, then it becomes, like, I love it because it is pretty surreal, right? It's just kind of like, is the wife, is she trying to, like, kill Bill Hader? Like, she really wants him to eat it, but she won't eat it. and like like what's you just don't you don't get it really explained to you but it's just funny and it's got like three or four really funny moments in it even though i don't fully understand

even the premise i feel like just yesterday this is a terrible terrible well i'll tell you what it's a better way to end the show than started i guess um better out than in just yesterday i swear i stumbled on another thing either at the Thank you. grocery store or maybe in my own refrigerator where they had to call a product something like in the same way that like champagne isn't truly champagne unless it comes from like the champagne region. Something along the lines of like because wasn't there a big fight about mayonnaise like the mayonnaise manufacturers not wanting the vegan mayonnaise is to call themselves mayonnaise because of the definition.

I think it was the fake milk. I don't want to say fake milk. Maybe maybe this happening on multiple fronts. I heard. Yeah.

The mayonnaise. Another thing I think. But I do think that a similar thing happened with the nut milks and what have you. But I swear I ran across a new one that I thought was fascinating the other day. But this is why I don't want to open the show with it. I don't remember what it was. So good on me for bringing it up.

It was a regionally protected thing.

I don't know if it was regionally. Like I say, it could be an ingredients thing or maybe it was like the flavor. In the same way that what people call licorice isn't really licorice. They're red twists or something. I swear I won't. Anyway, I'll figure it out, and I won't tell you about it.

The guy is a nut milk. A nut milk. A nut milk.

Nut bar. A nut bar. A nut bar. All right, I gotta eat something. What are we doing? I don't know what today's show was. Today was one of the weirder shows we have done in a really long time.

I would disagree. You mean the program where my dad was wandering through the studio, vacuuming out an owl nest, and I spilled like three gallons of coffee during the show, then cleaned it during the donor message, and continue to get down on my hands and knees periodically and try to scrub it more before blowing off my appointment and playing you a SNL sketch from seven years ago? Are you saying that was a weird show for you?

It seemed weird, and I raced through the blur states as if.

Why don't you even look at the show sheet, Andrew? Literally everything that happened was in the show sheet.

I am reading the script right now. We wrote this for the end of the show. Wait, is this now, this is where I hit the music?

Yeah, okay, go have a burrito. I might. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for listening, everyone. I'm going to lose that battle with Taco Time today, by the way. Yeah. I won. I was victorious yesterday.

You won the battle. You're going to lose the war. Exactly. I'm not a Taco Time guy, but I'm thinking about Chipotle, which is different, but that's kind of my thing.

Yeah. That's your Waterloo. It might be. By the way, the water I spilled was literally a Waterloo.

Is that the brand?

Yeah.

I'm not kidding.

If I could have spilled the soda water on the coffee, I feel like it would have just, the whole thing would have worked itself out. yeah i don't know if that soda water thing works i know it's in all the movies they're always using seltzer for things but yeah um oh tomorrow maybe i'm sure i won't remember this but i feel like we should have a little conversation on the subject of seltzer water soda water sparkling water i feel like so often frequent recently when i'm like particularly when i'm flying on an airplane and i'm trying to get a soda water or a bubble water i think i've started calling it bubble water and i don't think most people call it that i feel like there's been a lot of confusion from people who i'm ordering it from and i feel like we need to get on the same page as a society this is a good conversation are we calling it seltzer water soda water or bubble water because i use those interchangeably but i've gotten some confused looks from particularly

uh flight crew flight attendants i already have a million opinions that i can't give out right now Let's put that on the show sheet. Excellent. The guy is a nut bar. A nut bar.

All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. We will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary. It's Friday already tomorrow. My goodness.

That is weird.

We will see you then. In the meantime, have a great Thursday.

I meant that earnestly, but it came off stupid. That is weird. It's weird that tomorrow's Friday. Go ahead. It is.

Have a great Thursday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

Good luck to all. now let's forget all this nastiness and have some wholesome freshly delivered pizza power out