Muse

...down 20, 5.03 to go, someone has run on the field, some guy with a brawl, and now he's not being chased, he's running down the middle of the 40, arms in the air in a victory salute, he's pulling down his pants, put up your pants my man, pull up those pants, he's being chased to the 30, he breaks a tackle from a security guard, the 20, down the middle of the 10, the 5, he slides at the 1, and they converge on him at the goal line. And the players with hands on hips at the other end of the field are looking at them and shaking their head and saying, why, oh, why is this taking place in a Super Bowl? TBTL.

Well, with all due respect, I mean, I hate to admit this, but I don't think I've been online in, you know, a couple days or weeks or whatever, so that's really not an important thing to me. my face your face instant face go go talk to whoever you want that does that stuff i don't know okay this is what i would do i would start with a joke joke vince vong quote obviously

swingers or crashers fred claus i could really lay him out quickly with him out of the way i think we're just going to be 360 spins and slam dunk pointers all right hello good morning and

Welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. What's that? What's that, brother? My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. You're like the Daniel Day-Lewis of only doing one thing. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it's getting not dry out there, unfortunately. You know you like to get wet, though. But we had a good run. We actually had a very nice weekend. Well, a very nice Saturday here, perched high above the mighty Columbia, and there was something going into the weekend. On Friday's show, I said I was considering something, but I wasn't going to do it.

I'm not going to do it, girl. I was just thinking about it. I'm not going to do it.

But then, of course, knowing me, I am.

I did it.

So we'll talk about that. And a lot of other things here on episode 4139 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Including the Super Bowl, which was yesterday. You probably know that.

Well, what did everybody think?

We will talk about some of the ads, some of the bets that I made that were successful, many others that were unsuccessful.

That cash could really get me out of a couple of jams.

And the fact that my good friend, Andrew Walsh, was taking the most careful of notes. He sent me a photo during the game. It was quite studious of him. Speaking of my friend, Andrew Walsh. Isn't he the best? The longest-running cobro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Joining me right now, good morning, my friend. This is a nice part of the show where we just get a little quiet time for me to whistle along with the theme. Andrew, if you think I'm hearing you right now, if you think me and the listeners are hearing you, we are absolutely not.

Oh, you're not hearing me. How about now?

Now we are.

Oh, well, what do you know about that? Do we just barrel through all this? Why not?

You know what? Honestly, I'd say we just make like Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs, and we just figure out a way. Even though we're not off to the hottest start, much like they weren't off to the hottest start, we just muscle through it and find a way to win the game.

Put the game on my shoulders. Put the podcast on my shoulders, Luke. Well, it's interesting because what you missed was me. You're my McCole Hardman. Thank you. me arranging my headphone cable. I mentioned that and saying I'm ready for a week of broadcasting. You missed that. And then I said, you know what's interesting, Luke? That's what you missed. So let me get back in the space. Sure, sure. You know what's interesting, Luke? Huh, what? My dental floss has an expiration date.

Well, my baloney has a first name, okay? So you're not the only person with an interesting story here on this Monday.

It sort of feels like coming out of the Super Bowl Like, that's where we should begin today. Have you ever noticed that your floss has an expiration date?

I haven't, but I also switched flossing techniques a couple of years ago to those little pre-strung dealies. And I will tell you that it has changed my entire relationship with flossing in that I floss probably three, four times a day now. Like, whenever I'm just slightly bored or feeling, I don't know, like I just need to do something to feel better. Like, I'm emotionally dysregulated in some way. I will often just grab one of those bad boys and start flossing. Now, what they told me when I went to the dentist not that long ago is they're not as good as regular floss. You don't get the proper tooth wrap.

I could see that. I could totally see that.

Also, tooth wrap, probably something a dentist somewhere did to try to reach.

their younger patients some kind of rap about teeth

oh my goodness, what was the website

what rhymes with bicuspid

orange is my go to on that I don't like the sensation of those little pic things, I've tried them before, I know some people are staunch advocates of them, me, I'm that person I think my dad likes them but it's funny, I wouldn't have had the word tooth wrap, but maybe that kind of gets close said it like when i'm now i don't floss as much as you i would argue and if you want to call me dr dentist you can do that um you wouldn't be the first i've had um my fair share of paramours who've called me that over the years for some reason um but uh i think that if you are using a lesser flossing method but it's gotten you doing it three or four times a day that's probably better than my exactly what the hygienist said to me that's why they call me dr dentist

in certain states, but not in others where there's still a lot of pending questions in front of the various dental boards. That was basically what the hygienist said to me was, it's not as good as doing the full on thing, but if it's what gets you to actually floss more, and I don't think we need to do this three times a day, that's probably excessive. I do think it is for me some sort of soothing exercise now. I think it's when I'm feeling like other things in my life are not going well or I'm making bad decisions. I can sit there and I've gotten to the point now where I'll use the little, you know, the side of the of the device that has the floss pre kind of strung on it. And then I don't know if you've ever noticed this. I'm guessing you wouldn't mess with this because it's not your thing. The other side is also some kind of implement.

Yeah, it's the pokey.

It's the pokey side. And so what I do is I go through with the regular floss, and then when that's all done, then I go through with the pokey side, and I just really kind of try to lift and separate. I try to really – that's what they always say. You want your teeth to be lifted and separated.

Sure, like a sports bro.

Right. So I try to lift and separate and really just make sure – and it becomes kind of almost an unconscious thing. That's why I say I think it has to do with some kind of self-soothing, because I'll just be sitting there like mindlessly watching TV or looking at my computer or kind of zoning out and just jamming this device increasingly far into the places between my gums and my teeth.

You can see how it could become compulsive behavior.

It's right. It's one neighborhood over from slightly compulsive. Yeah.

You know, I think about this a lot, too. Actually, I think about this almost every day. I use Q-tips in my ears. I know you're not supposed to use anything. What do they say?

I also use the flossing tool in my ear.

Yeah, the pokey side. I know you're not supposed to, but I'm very careful. I've done it my entire life.

Everybody calm down. We don't need any emails on that topic. Yeah.

Well, have we talked about this on the show? I feel like my mom used to tell me nothing smaller than your elbow should go in your ear, which is just always like that's such a bewildering thing to say. Like, why not nothing smaller than a golf ball or something that could actually get in my ear? Like the idea of like, how big is my elbow? How does one measure an elbow?

I think that's probably because of how your hand and your fingers, more specifically, are attached to your forearm, which is attached to your elbow. Oh, I see. I think it's get your fingers out of your ear kind of thing. And so it's like you can go north of the elbow if you want. If you can get your fibula in there. Wait, is fibula leg? I think that's leg. Femur? No, femur is leg. What's the bone that are biceps?

You're on your own journey here. I don't know, man. I wasn't ready to play hip bone connected to the pelvis bone today.

But you were ready to play outside bones. I was ready to play outside bones. And that's what's surprising to me here on a Monday morning. Here's the real question. Are you going to throw caustian to the wind and keep using your expired dental floss?

Oh, yeah. No, I think I'm fine on that. But I was going to say with the Q-tip thing in the ears, did you – and I think about the – I use them in my ears every day after a shower to dry things out in there. just be careful it'll dry out but I always think of the same scene in the episode of girls did you ever see I think it was a season closing scene I don't remember that scene very shocking so Lena Dunham's character um which it's funny she she doesn't use her real name in that show but it's been so long I can't remember what her character's name is but we know that she's you know she's a stressful stressed out person she deals with various things in life but I think there's this sort of revealing moment at the end of a season if i'm recalling this correctly where we realized hannah horvath hannah and she has like a it's revealed that she must have some sort of a history of obsessive compulsive behavior or something like that because we see her using a q-tip on her ear and then kind of not stopping in a compulsive way that is incredibly uncomfortable

yeah i'll just leave me like a kind of i'm feeling like goosebumps rising yeah and it's not gory it's

R.L. Stine's works, by the way, Goosebumps Rising.

And it's well done and everything. It's not, like, grotesque, but it's just this moment of realization that I found very, like, kind of shocking and interesting and good filmmaking. But, again, it lives with you. Now, every time I use a Q-tip in my ear, I always wonder, like, don't do this too much. Because somehow it's very relatable.

I mean, it is a well-known bad idea, I think, too. Because if you just think about the sort of geometry And I guess you would say physics of it Like This is a passageway And you're putting something That's roughly the size of the passageway Into the passageway to try to remove things From the passageway And the chances of just impacting things further Like a musket Thank you It seems greater than the chances of Like yeah imagine you had something in a musket And you're like let me try to get it out with this musket loader

Yeah right Do you know they call me musket ears in some states, too?

Did I ever tell you that? Believe me, I've read the court filings. But, like, that being said, I do wish I had slightly better inner ear health. And, in fact, I should look into this because I can't hear for shit anymore. Like, in a loud room, it is just an absolute disaster for me now. Like I have to be, I have to sort of like bend over and like, you know, stoop over if the person's a bit shorter than me and kind of put my ear to them and stare away from them. I know this came up not that long ago, but where was I? Oh, you know what? I was at this work thing for Becca's work on Thursday night and it was a loud environment and I was chatting with people and I spent the whole time just kind of like staring at the floor as I was craning my ear towards people. And I think that that is because of a 20 plus years of wearing headphones for my job for a significant portion of the day. And also just the fact that I'm getting older. But I also, I mean, I don't use Q-tips in my inner ear. And I haven't been to the otolaryngologist or whoever it would be to say, hey, what's doing in there? And you know what you want to talk about, like pulling the plastic off a microwave? Forget it. Blasting the earwax, like, you know, safely and medically. out of your ear and then suddenly hearing much better that seems i mean like honestly probably better than sex at my age i was literally fantasizing about that all right stay out of my

stay keep your fantasy out of my pants no i was fantasizing about you making sweet my coffee out you've had enough coffee issues in the studio recently please sir no i wasn't i wasn't fantasizing i was doodling no i was um no but for real i don't know and again a lot of ear talk i you know well I actually don't want to it is true that it's on my mind especially now because I've been wearing ear buds again lately I got kind of my first I'm going to say maybe oh it was a Black Friday sale so since like late November I have switched from using these big over the ear headphones that I use constantly for my Bluetooth needs and I now have like kind of air I guess what do you guys call them in the Apple community AirPods AirPods is the term

brand for something that goes that's wireless but goes in the ear as opposed to over the ear although that's also called airpods i don't i don't like it the biggies that you wear which i have some now that go over your entire ear are also called airpods they're just called airpods

max oh yeah they could have come up with something better but either way my point is i went from being somebody who did not have things actually stuck into my ears much to being somebody who spends his entire evenings listening to podcasts with these airbud type of things airbud right That's a movie. I always do that. AirPod. I don't blame you.

I blame Apple for that.

They made it way too close to the movie Air Buds. But they're in my ears so much that I think my ears are having kind of a bad reaction. So I'm trying to back away from them a little bit. It's nothing awful. But anyway, it got me sort of thinking about what's going on in my ears. And I was laying in bed the other night trying to fall asleep, imagining what it would be like to get those babies flushed out. Because I hear some wonderful stories.

I mean, there's some pretty good online content, and by pretty good, I mean could make certain people wretch if they saw it, but I'm here for that kind of stuff, and I mean, the biggest problem is it's always a five-part, it's always a five-parter, and that's, I mean, if you want to know the degree to which my brain is atrophied and my attention's been shriveled down to a tiny little California raisin, it's that when there's a video and I look and I see it's part three, I'm like, god i'm not i don't have i don't have four minutes to watch all the parts of this like that's what i've where i've gotten with things but a lot of these ones where it's like it's somebody who is a um i again like maybe an audiologist probably somebody who's a an ear doctor which again i believe is an otolaryngologist ear nose and throat and they've got some kind of special camera

are set up like it's usually like a teaching hospital or something so they're sort of like demonstrating for their students how to go about removing you know kind of like long-standing inner ear wax and things like that and my goodness gracious when they pull that stuff out when they finally get that that dislodged it is it's it is deeply satisfying i love the idea of that happening

to me and and the feeling i'm imagining that goes along with it i do not want to see it happen other people i'm kind of surprised you're i mean we have different styles of ick factor i suppose but it seems like something you would not like to see are you a pimple popper guy too well i was in the

early days what i consider to be the salad days of dr pimple popper in the uh in the pepperoni pizza days after pimple popper when it was just pimples uh i was very into it but eventually like anything it wasn't enough anymore we we as a society we as the viewers of the show we were no longer fascinated with a kind of like an extreme but still essentially pimple being popped now we start to get in all these other kind of medical conditions where you just basically have you know different kinds of of of disorders and and sort of medical abnormalities that are under the skin and do need to be sort of removed but they're not pimples but they're

larger than pimples pimples become boils become cysts like is there no end to this boys become

men it's just the yeah i mean seriously though like of it really i mean you're kind of joking but kind of not and i'm also not really joking in that if you have something that's popular like dr pimple popper there is naturally this pressure to just keep upping the the gross factor to where eventually you know she's just cutting out again these kind of like you know fatty deposits that have have developed under people's skins but under their skin but not something that's not a pimple doesn't you know it's just a lump yeah and then she's cutting out a lump and now i'm like now i'm just watching biopsies yeah that's no longer like as a person who had really lousy skin in high school that's probably part of my fascination was and by the way who continues to have pretty lousy skin for having low t this makes no sense the one thing i should get out of being 47 and and and watching everything about my body change as i as i approach what could only optimistically be called middle age yeah is i should at least not have pimples still yeah but

i do i'm sorry to interrupt there yeah the um that was a thing on seinfeld which just a reminder george was playing a character who i believe was supposed to be about 15 years younger than us oh

and i believe probably jason alexander was like 33 or something while playing george exactly um

and even his character said i think somewhat famously or it stuck in it lodged itself in my brain like i'm blank years old and i i'm going bald and i have pimples like how is that possible

it's not fair but uh it feels unfair to me and it's exacerbated by the fact that i have found myself in these jobs where there's a lot of eyeballs looking at my face which i already deeply dislike i was texting uh a friend over the weekend and i was i came up with i think the term that properly describes how i feel about myself i think i said i have low frequency self-loathing That Is My Constant Companion Wow Which Is Kind Of It Was It Was Actually Somebody Who Came On Live Wire And Was A Great Guest And I Don't Usually I Honestly Don't Usually Listen To The Show But I Was In The Car And So I Caught Some Of It And Then I Wanted To Reach Out To The Guest It Was Actually A Podcast Named Avery Truffleman And I Just Want To Say Hey You Were A Really Great Guest Thanks For Thanks For Coming On The Show But As I Wrote That Out It Was Like I Don't Really Listen Because Of This Low Frequency Self Loathing That Is My Constant Companion I Was Like Yeah That Kind Of Nails It So then how does a guy with that thing going on also push himself endlessly to the front of the line to be the person that's talking to the microphone or saying, look at me. It is a real conundrum why I've pursued this kind of job life when my general feeling about it is like a lack of enjoyment about a specific kind of attention that I'm also, I guess, craving. I don't know. It's complicated.

This is OK. Let me center myself. Please do. Your crisis.

I think, honestly, we're all ready for me to step to the side of this story, so please do.

Well, no, I was just going to say, I have something kind of similar. I think you and I are drawn to different kinds of things. I think that I fell ass backwards into this job I have with you, talking into microphones. Even when I was doing it on the radio briefly, it was a strange path to get there, and it wasn't something that I think I outwardly sought. Like, I truly always liked being a producer, but here we are, you know, whatever, 10 years into 15. No, no, me and you, 10 years of... doing this i think or whatever um and we had folks over here to visit us last week over the weekend and um you know just some friends hanging out friends i all friends i know really well by the way and not a big crew of people and the amount uh i know i say this a lot and i'm not trying to get an aw andrew moment here but the amount of frustration i had with myself like all weekend after that like usually if i hang out with somebody or or a few folks for one evening you can block out the next 24 hours of just like my brain popping up like why'd you say that why'd you say that why'd you say that why didn't you say that why'd you have your body language like this these are all true things that were like buzzing around my brain after one very fun casual like hanging out with friends I know well and when I'm when I'm sort of like you know washing dishes over the sink thinking about that and cringing at myself and and then I'm like wait how is it that I freaking then I'm going to like my job is to turn on a microphone and talk to you for 90 minutes a day. Like, how do I have a job when I'm the person who regrets every word that comes out of my mouth? How is it that I have a job where I am recording every word that comes out of my mouth for 90 minutes? It's bananas.

It is a strange job for you. Ooh, brother. Ooh, brother. Ooh, that is something I don't have as much of as you do, which is kind of intrusive thoughts about things that I said. it happens sometimes but it doesn't happen all the time mine is much more vanity based i think that's the problem for me which is i just i think i i somehow at this you even though there's no reason for me to keep clinging to the side of whatever this this cliff is i think i'm very vain and so the constant reminders that i am subject to the degradations of aging and life and everything uh that that is hard for me like if i was less vain i guess i wouldn't care what i looked like on television and that i have pimples but i am vain and i care about that but that somehow is a less sympathetic thing than what you're going through which is just purely beating up on my friend andrew like you're just being mean to yourself about something you said i mean not intentionally but that's what your brain is doing to you i'm just thinking like god why don't i look hotter which is a very unsympathetic kind of reaction to things i do understand like sort of

the difference in what we're describing but what i'm trying to say is i think you should also be ashamed of the things you say oh good okay as long as we've gotten there i feel like you were

listening but not hearing have i should i be ashamed andrew should i be ashamed about possibly knocking planet earth as we know it off of its axis because i may have done that this weekend let's hear about it it was a beautiful sunny saturday here and um and i was getting to some yard stuff when we did the weekend review video this week i was talking to you and our friend steve from the root bound podcast and i was saying i was very excited if the weather cooperated on saturday to get out and do some outdoor stuff and i did in fact get out and do some outdoor stuff and um the it's uh what was february i guess what 10th was that saturday was february 10th it was sunny it the i swear there were some early daffodils starting to shoot up in places the birds were chirping ty france has really re-engineered his swing i mean i i had taken i was listening to a podcast that i cannot recommend highly enough it's uh it's called uh violated and it's from wbur and it's about a particular uh court case um and a crime that went down but it's a kind of a larger conversation about our um our parole system in this country which is a like everything with law enforcement a very unregulated kind of very arbitrary wild west of basically who has to be in prison and who doesn't have to be in prison anyway would recommend but it's a sunny day i'm listening to a riveting podcast i'm yanking this weird heavy duty fabric out of like a planter that's kind of on a hillside which involves all of this it's like had all this topsoil on it so the people that had the house before me i guess i don't know what their thing was with this hill that's right below where i'm standing right now basically like i'm standing in the converted garage it's elevated up above where the house is and there's a little hill between where i am in this patio area and i guess they didn't want the hill to erode so they went to incredibly great lengths to nail in with these like huge you want to talk about nine inch nails like literally nine inch nails like to nail this very heavy duty fabric into this hillside and then cover it with pounds and pounds of topsoil the problem is the water has eroded some of that topsoil and the that fabric has kind of come undone in places so it's just like hanging out like loose flaps of skin it's very unsightly and i have to look at it every morning as i'm walking from the house here to the studio and so i decided i was going to rip it out it was so hard dude i almost quit so many times but it became a kind of a referendum on myself like who I am as a person

because i was like this is harder i was like thinking what's the listing on task rabbit for this what do you ask for can you please come do a thing that is doable but just harder than i want to deal with like please help remove this fabric thing that i don't like how it looks um but it's really actually under a lot of dirt so i decided to commit myself to the task i did and i shoveled all the dirt off into a wheelbarrow and then i would pull the fabric up and then i would move the wheelbarrow over i would replace the soil behind where i was removing this we're talking like 30 feet of this stuff and like 30 by like five feet like it was and it's all one piece and you can't cut it or rip it it's just like it was a deal but anyway i got all that done and then i was feeling so triumphant that i looked around for one more world to conquer and what do you think

that was andrew um let's see here one more world to conquer one more yard-based world to conquer

on a sunny Saturday.

Did you mow the lawn already? You did it? I did it. No, I think that's okay.

No, I don't think it's okay. A, I don't know what it'll do to the lawn. I feel like the lawn goes into a sleep mode during the wintertime, and then, of course, when it's super dry in the summer. But in the wintertime, it goes into a sleep mode. It's nature's design, that the lawn will just chill out, and then we don't have to deal with it very much. And then also there's that first, we've talked about it extensively, because of our age there's that first really warm weekend in the spring where every just everything is blooming and that's when you get out and mow the lawn you don't I feel like I failed that whatever that delaying gratification experiment is that they give kids where it's like you can have two marshmallows now or four marshmallows later I couldn't stay away from the marshmallows on Saturday of mowing my lawn and then sitting there and admiring it which is exactly what I did but I don't know if that's going to kick my grass into growth mode I don't know if that's going to, if it's going to die. I don't know if when I mow the lawn again, when it's actually spring, if it's going to feel the same, that's probably the biggest downside is now I don't, I've, I've basically like deprived myself of that special moment that I look forward to all winter. I kind of like jumped the gun on it. Yeah. I mean, I could see that. I obviously can't

speak to the health of the grass. It's a question that I have as well, because the weather has been nice here and i got some real shaggy grass in some areas now i have a very i have a postage stamp of a yard compared to what you're dealing with but there are just certain areas that could really use some cleaning up kind of like going to the barber like you know like parts of it are fine but parts of it around the edges need some cleaning up and i'm sort of tempted to to get out the lawnmower i think i'm definitely going to wait until a warmer day it was nice and sunny here on saturday but it's still pretty i thought it was pretty chilly i don't know but um you should

If I tried tearing 80 square feet of fabric out from under a hillside, boy, I would have heated you right up.

Yeah, I know. Genevieve was doing some work. She was cleaning out the garage and, like, hacking apart some old wood in the driveway. And I was down in my studio podcasting, Luke, like a true hero. And then I got done with my podcast. And so I go outside. I'm like, oh, I'll help Genevieve. And it's, like, so cold. I'm wearing, like, a long-sleeved shirt. And it's so cold to me. She's like, are you kidding me? It's so hot. I'm like, you know how I'm going to help? I'm going to go get us some sandwiches. What do you want? I'll go to Jersey Mike's. So then I leave her working in the yard while I bundle up with a scarf and a coat, and I'm driving away to go get some sandwiches, and I see a guy jogging past our house taking off his T-shirt to expose his entire upper body as he jogs by. First of all, I didn't appreciate him doing that right in front of where Genevieve was working. I thought that was uncalled. four and secondly was it usher he was on roller skates okay um but i'd never have felt like such

a loser i mean i don't know like a person who was engaging with the world differently than like

genevieve and this person that was jogging genevieve's like how could you be cold it's so warm i'm like oh it's so cold out here i'm gonna go bundle up and get us some sandwiches and then

this like hot guy is jogging by literally like peeling his black t-shirt off of his torso So while I'm like driving by in my Volkswagen to go get some food.

Well, I will keep everyone posted, and I'm sure to a degree that nobody is interested in, in what goes on with this lawn situation. Because, again, I'm not sure if I've kicked something into gear that I shouldn't have, if I've opened some sort of arc of the lawn covenant that's going to get out of control here. But I can tell you that much like I said on the Week in Review video, I am, I don't think I've, and I don't, this is, where I live is very odd because I don't live in the heart of any kind of major city or even town. I live kind of out in a weird no man's land. I'm on like maybe an acre and a half or something.

something but I don't actually have that much lawn oddly enough because I'm on this hill and so I guess to sort of terrace it out and get the like a flat spot to build a house and then a garage which is what I'm in right now there's just it's a very odd layout it's like I'm not on a like a some pasture with rolling hills but there is a lot of like yard to take care of for different reasons like i have all this parking area that the guy before me he was very into create he must have had like four rvs or something there's just like all this like flattened out graveled area that has like grass growing up through the gravel you know what i mean like there's a lot of square footage in this in on this property that's not like fun you know what i mean it's not like it's not well maintained by me but it's also not like something kind of beautiful and pastoral so i've really got to figure out what my mode is going to be because you know me and the staring and uh I got to get this whole thing like my neighbor Brian but he's got it he's got it figured I'm looking at his yard right now and it's just like it's immaculate he's got you know like everything is is is sort of just trimmed and there's some stuff that's you know trees and bushes but they're all in this great these planters he's built a frontier town for his grandkids to come over where they can spend made up money in the saloon it's just a whole great scene over there and and And over here on this side of the street, it's not good. So I'm going to be going pretty ham on the yard work this summer. That's going to be a major project. Since I don't know how to do any of the inside work, I'm going to really focus on the outside work because even a Luke's can do that.

There's something about the inside of a Luke's house. Here we go again.

Boy, I don't know where the donors come down on the repetition of that joke, but we're going to find out because we should thank some of them, actually. all right let's thank some of those donors there's something about the inside of a donor's bank account that's good for the outside of a tbtl andrew that's actually pretty good i i don't

know if you heard it but i winced i was wondering i did hear how you were going to phrase that and i I literally instinctively winced.

I think that's the only rational response to that joke happening yet again. We want to thank these wonderful, generous people who are keeping TBTL going with a donation. And we're thanking folks like Erica Vanover in Wayne, Pennsylvania.

Erica. What up, Erica? I remember Erica is a listener who I remember the very first time she wrote into the show to say, I just discovered you guys. I think we were new to 8 p.m. or something at the time, and we became kind of pen pals, and now all these years later, you're a veteran TBTL listener, Erica.

Wow, Wayne PA, mainline, Delaware County, Delco.

Train go right through there?

I'm just trying to match your energy. I'm just trying to match your Delco energy. Yeah, right. If you watched Mara, how bad am I at this Philly accent, Even though it's essentially where I hail from What was the show? Mayor of Easttown Kate Winslet That was out there in Delaware County And yeah, Wayne looks like a lovely place It's an unincorporated community Centered in Delaware County, Pennsylvania On the Mainline Mainline is a nice spot Hey, thanks Erica, we really do appreciate you We also appreciate Stephen Burke In Seattle, Washington I don't know what line Stephen is on in Seattle, but I assume it's a pretty main one. Maybe the E line. I'm on the E line.

Maybe you and Stephen have even ridden the E line together. Stephen's probably in a better line than the E line.

Do they call it the E line because it's like express? What's the E for?

That's a really good question. I sort of have assumed that, but the thing is I think this line might have gone by a different name. I think there are D lines and stuff as well.

So I honestly don't have a good answer to that question because I, you know, obviously I did not engage with public transportation as much as I should have when I lived in Seattle. But when I was a kid and I would take that bus up and down Aurora Avenue, I don't remember it ever being called the E line.

I think they rearrange some things. I am seeing that there's a rapid ride D line. I think there's a there's a certain bus and they are all express buses called rapid rides and they go through the main throughways. I see. So it's just a letter of the alphabet thing.

I think it just happens to be the e-line I think I will tell you this from a branding perspective if you're trying to reach people like me who are a little hesitant about engaging with public transportation and for no good reason by the way at all if we all took more public transportation the world would be a much better place.

calling it the e-line is appealing to me because it makes me think i'm getting on some kind of a like dedicated conveyance like i'm getting on the subway like i you know taking the a train as it were in new york or getting on the one or the three like i liked that but what i liked about it was i thought i'm getting on a thing that's going to get me where i'm going very quickly because it has its own dedicated tracks i'm sure this is a whole there's an entire department of research about how people think of public transportation that focuses on this kind of thing, like perceptions. And like the MAX train in Portland, it has its own dedicated, like, you know, or, you know, monorail, the light rail in Seattle. I'm very drawn towards those modes because I feel like, oh, this is something special I can't do in my car. I'm going to get in this, I'm going to get on this light rail. It's going to go under Capitol Hill and then it's going to come out by the stadium. a bus is just my car going slower in my mind but if you call it the e-line i'm like oh yeah we got oh i just hopped on the e-line and i was right here interestingly the bus should be going faster

because it has i mean depending on how this whatever city you're talking about what the infrastructure is you know like the e-lines and d-lines the whole point of those are they have dedicated lanes like there's a whole dedicated lane for the e-line throughout throughout um up and down aurora um in 99 so you're zipping past other cars i remember the same thing like to the special bus that would take you to dodger stadium in la um but i also think that just um kind of mentally as you're kind of describing like people's barriers to getting on a bus especially if you don't know the area well but even if you do it's this idea of like getting on a train and now you can have more complicated train systems like in new york or even boston where you have to know like okay i get off the orange line here and get on the red line here but still it's kind of like you're on a track and you know where you know you know that you're gonna not just end up completely in some neighborhood that you don't know or if you do you just get on the train going the other way whereas buses i think are a little intimidating because you could get on one you're like oh i got on the wrong one because it's a i got in the 15 instead of the 15a and now i'm in a completely wrong part of town and it's unclear how i'm going to get back and there isn't that kind of infrastructure of just like a line a train line and i think there's something about e-line d-line by the way i'm jealous here each line each of these rapid ride lines has its own wikipedia entry by the way i'm on the rapid ride e-line wikipedia entry right now on the real wikipedia i'm not like on busapedia or something like that i want to make that clear how dare you it looks like they had started service in 2014 so you know relatively recently in the past 10 years

obviously well thank you um steven burke for supporting the show thanks also to mark jeffrey who's in brentwood new hampshire brentwood okay did you ever hear of brentwood new hampshire

it rings a bell um obviously brentwood in california is way uh or outside of la is way more famous um it's on la's main line it is um sorry something terrible happened in brentwood I believe right do I have my nothing comes to mind nothing like anything about that piece of garbage being on a radio row and being interviewed by podcasts and stuff during Super Bowl week yeah so great Mark Mark Jeffrey yeah Mark Jeffrey anyway Mark Jeffrey in Brentwood New Hampshire

thank you thank you Mark we really do appreciate you we couldn't do this without you and also of course Matt Becker hey that's our friend Matt Becker who's in St. Paul Minnesota why on earth Would someone who we know so well live in St. Paul, Minnesota? Well, because they worked for our former employers, American Public Media, if I have that right.

In fact, Matt, I believe, works for a public radio station in Texas now, although, I mean, I guess he could be doing it remotely.

Still taking his mail in St. Paul, huh?

I don't know. I've been assuming that he moved to Texas, but maybe he can do his work remotely, so I'm not sure.

This is how we track a lot of our friends and where they've moved, is where is the donation emanating from? That's how we keep tabs on you all.

I picture him in a cowboy hat ever since he took that job like three years ago, and I just wonder if I'm wrong about that.

And yet he was really wearing a Brunhilde kind of Viking helmet all along. So thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL possible today. We really and truly would not be here without you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. um you watched the ads of the super bowl if the text you sent me is to be believed much more closely than i did i know you and genevieve are doing a special edition of after these messages i was at a watch party if you will at becca's brother's house and it was a really fun afternoon but it was the kind of thing where my ability if i were if i was going to go sit and like stare closely at the well first first things first

I mistimed things, and we didn't get there until about, like, right after kickoff, which is terrible. I was also the first bet that I lost. I bet that it would be tails never fails, and it was heads. So that should have told me something about my gambling prospects. But anyway, we got there a little bit on the late side. And so it was the kind of thing where if I was going to watch the commercials closely, I would need to have, like, grabbed a chair, ignored everyone, and then just, like, sat in front of the TV.

Yeah, like I did last year at a friend's Super Bowl party, and it was uncomfortable. I shushed people at times. I didn't like who I was becoming.

Exactly. I just decided. And frankly, the same thing kind of goes for the game. I mean, I sort of locked in for the second half, which was okay because the first half was fairly unremarkable. But it was like I was in that mode of like, you know, am I going to be a social butterfly or am I going to do what really and truly I want to do, which is to just sit in a room with the television and stare at it? Because I find the Super Bowl quite intriguing, and I do find the ads very intriguing, just from a kind of, you know, I don't know, corporate standpoint. Like, who's spending money on what? Who has the first ad? I think it was, what is it, like, BetGM had the first ad this year. I had to look that up on the internet. Like, the first ad after the kickoff. Yeah, you know, that's... That primo spot.

That's where I was wondering, like, when does it take place? Like, what is the best real estate?

What do we consider the most valuable real estate? What's the Brentwood of the Super Bowl ad?

Yeah, because the program actually begins at 3, right? And the kickoff is at 3.30, so are you counting that? And a lot of people probably at Super Bowl parties, I'm assuming, are pretty dialed in to the national anthem and all the pregame stuff. So I wasn't sure, like, yeah, what do we consider the first ad? What was the MGM ad? I think I remember liking it. Oh, is that the not Tom Brady one? You know, I think so.

I didn't see it because I was still in the car. Um, but I just looked at a list this morning of like, what were the ads by quarter? Like, so starting with the, and I think historically, I don't know if this is the case anymore. And also you, like you said, viewing patterns probably change over time, but there was a point where what was considered to be the most premium ad was the first commercial break after the kickoff. Okay. Well, I have the most eyeballs. And I think that was, I think it said it was bet, bet MGM.

I would be surprised about that. I, so I actually, in my notes, I had like, I was dividing up like pregame show. pieces of paper going it was very impressive that was near the beginning yeah so i have like pre-game show and i wrote down some commercials i liked and then i wrote pre-kickoff you had the deadpool wolverine trailer teaser i don't think there was too much there but then i wrote game on and then so that meant like after kickoff it started with the wicked trailer which i think somebody said that's not coming out for nine and a half months yeah i heard that this morning on stephen thompson talking about it yeah and then m&ms did some sort of um commercial with scarlett johansson that i found to be absolutely inscrutable i have no idea what the point was it had something to do with comfort diamonds or comfort rings i missed the setup those m&ms commercials i guess better than conflict diamonds yeah i guess so so anyway and then i have the mgm being in the next ad break actually and i like that one it was basically like anybody can um anybody can bet with mgm sports book except tom brady you've won enough and it's all these scenarios yeah shutting him

out i thought it was pretty good i will say this from my perspective as a person without eight sheets of paper in front of me um i'm guessing did vives go watch the game elsewhere yeah you

know i told you on friday i was like a little bit conflicted about what to do a bunch of our friends were watching at the eagles but then i had the thing of i wanted to watch it with friends at the eagles but i also thought like i'm going to be in bad shape on monday if if i'm like trying to watch these commercials in a big bar area. But I also was like, but if I stay home and if I stream the game illegally, will they have commercials? I think I decided, of course they will. But what I really decided was, why don't you use that Paramount Plus app? I didn't realize that the game was going to be on Paramount Plus. So once I realized, oh, I can stream the game kind of like legally and properly sitting at home. And I hadn't had like a football Sunday this entire season where I could just like make myself some French bread pizzas, Crack a beer at 3.30 in the afternoon And just watch football So I opted for that I think that I ended up watching it

From the perspective of like The quote unquote average viewer Again I think I was giving it the amount of attention That the average viewer gives it And by that sort of standard And from that perspective I would say that I thought it was a quite unremarkable Year of commercials And I think we may have hit the like Probably we hit it a long time ago But it hadn't occurred to me until this year we've sort of I feel like we've kind of hit the like saturation point for the commercial that is just the how many famous people can how many famous cameos can we jam into this and I just felt like

So many things fell victim to that, for me anyway. Again, this is just kind of casually watching from where I was. I will tell you that there was a couple of standouts. You had mentioned the Christopher Walken one. I thought that was really good, and I thought it was good because it was the most understated you'll ever see Christopher Walken. It was a view into his experience that you wouldn't normally think about. Doing a Christopher Walken impression is not something that is novel or interesting. The idea of what is it like to be Christopher Walken in the world dealing with that is novel and funny to me. And I love how much how just Christopher Walken never saying anything that sounds classically Christopher Walken is kind of a perfect idea for an ad to me.

Yeah, like the punchline at the end isn't like him being super Walken. You know what I mean? It's like, but I do like the little nod. Did you notice the staircase at the end? Yes. Yeah, like a weapon of choice. Exactly. I thought that was in the little move. Usher does. I thought like that. And I use that as an example. Everything you just said about – you're just going to have to cut me off at times because I have 10 years of analyzing Super Bowl commercials that it's just like once you start to pick at this, it gets – I should go on Dr. Pimple Popper. Yeah, sure.

You're the Matthew Barry of Super Bowl ads, whereas he's the Matthew Barry of fantasy picks.

But I would say that, yeah, this celebrity thing, it's been something I've complained about for as long as I can remember now. It's just getting more and more. I almost feel, though, like the spec, I almost feel like it has peaked already, like maybe not the number of celebrities in the commercials, but the spectacle of things like last year. You had like Eugene Levy. Is it Levy or Levy? I always go. We'll never know. I go back and forth. We literally can never know. I'll say Levy. I usually say in like Eugene Levy, like driving around super fast in a car and it doesn't make sense. Like and it's just like it's both celebrity and spectacle that I'm just like these commercials make no sense. And it's just another celebrity. There are a lot of celebrities this year, but I feel like the the it's not as peaked. It's like I feel like mostly they're being a little bit more creative with how they're using celebrities. I think that walk in is the perfect example of like, listen, OK, you have a celebrity based commercial. Yes, you have one cameo from Usher as well. And I believe one of those women he meets on the street has a TV show or something. But it's not like – but you don't let the celebrity get in the way of actually telling a story or communicating something. And I thought that was really well done.

The other one that I legitimately LOL'd on was the Reese's peanut butter cup commercial.

Yeah, that's very funny.

And I could have grabbed the audio, but I think it's highly visual. It's basically like the joke is like, hey, we're changing Reese's peanut butter cups. And then you've got these people that are at a football watching party, and when they hear that Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are changing, they basically riot and freak out. A guy punches through a wall. This may also have to do with the fact that I've been doing a lot of home improving, because then when Reese's says, oh, we're changing it for the better, this quick cut to a guy who's sanding the wall he just punched because he's now basically patched it up and put some drywall patch over it. And it went by pretty fast. And again, I was just watching it in this room full of people. But there's one of the characters just has this moment where they go, oh, that's not so bad. Or something like when they're whipsawing emotionally between there's not enough Reese's. Oh, there actually is. They're changing it. Oh, but it's actually going to be caramel. Like one of the moments, one of the characters goes like, oh, that's not so bad. Or something with their face that made me laugh so hard. It was so subtle. The person was not famous. It was not a cameo. and I just thought that is very funny and very comedic the other can I ask a question about that

before you move on because I haven't gone back and re-watched these yet I will be doing that as I start prepping for after these messages in a moment so you know keep in mind I'm watching this ad but also trying to write it down kind of at the same time so something that had a lot of quick snaps like that kind of I would lose some things I did not see the look of the person you're describing but I feel like I can picture it but is one of the people in that commercial also retching into a big bucket is that what they're doing like there's somebody the person on the left hand side of the screen is holding like what looks like maybe a big beer bucket or something i

swear they're retching into it we're gonna try this we're gonna try this okay it's a highly visual commercial but i have it here can i just try to play it yeah and i'll see if i can get a visual and kind of diagnose it a little bit here okay it's the reese's cups big game commercial teresa's peanut butter cups so okay i'm gonna back it up to the beginning the announcer obviously is just telling this group of people that there's about to be some big changes. We're making a big change to... By the way, that's Will Arnett, right? Yep, yep. Somebody should really cast Will Arnett as a sort of, like, powerful voiceover artist. Yeah, right. Those truck ads. Those truck ads, this one, all the Batman, the Lego movies, he's Batman. I mean, he's very talented. Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan. But it's like, again, it's kind of back to the, like, putting Rob Gronkowski in all the ads where Rob Gronkowski goes. It's just always funny to me, like, I would imagine that if you were already the voice of Ford trucks, it's a terrible Will Arnett impression, that Reese's would be like, well, he's doing the truck ads. We probably get somebody else.

He goes so low on the truck ads, too. And I got to say this only because it's one of my better show titles. We did a show just based on celebrities who voice truck commercials. And we called the show Celebrities. They just like trucks. And the thing that spawned that was the Will Arnett. He's already got a low voice, but I don't know. Is it Ford? Whatever trucks he's doing, he's going so low. And it's just like, Job, relax. Take a breath.

All right, so here we go. A little Will Arnett setting it up. We're making a big change to Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

No! No!

Yeah, the guy on the left holding a chili pod. He retches into the chili pod.

I don't think he retches. I think he headbutts the chili and it flies. Oh, okay. He buries his face in chili and then the chili flies out everywhere. Although it looks exactly like vomit. So we can't know if he's throwing up in the chili or not. I cannot tell you he's not throwing up in that pot.

Because later on, we see him when he's happy again. The front of his shirt is just covered with that. I'm like, is that human retch in a Super Bowl commercial?

I mean, that would be an amazing, an amazing. More on that, by the way. More on that in a moment. The idea of body discomfort. because that's the one other ad I wanted to talk about. So this guy just, like, headbutts. One dude just dives out a window. This one guy just, like, headbutts through a wall.

A delicious layer of caramel.

Everyone's really happy.

Oh, and somebody goes flying back through the window. Somebody jumps out of a closed window, I believe, when they're upset. And then when the good news comes, they just somehow magically fly back through the window.

One guy is on his knees dust busting the snacks that he spilled. The other guy is spackling back the thing he headbutted in the wall. There's just something about that that just is so funny to me, the timing, the quick cutting of all of it.

Yes, I love caramel.

The person flies back through the window. But we're only making a few of them. The grandmother, and usually I wouldn't laugh at this, But the grandmother just does right off the top rope Into the table She just fully bills mafias the table Because the commercial has already won me over I'm here for this You know what I mean I'm very over this You know Older folks being like radical dude And putting on sunglasses to enjoy Pepsi Or whatever But in this case because they've already set up This ludicrous premise and I'm with it It made me laugh when the sort of older gal just went fully Bill's Mafia on that table. And now the guy who has dunked his face in the soup is dunking his face in popcorn. Clearly his way of processing is to smash food into his face. There's this one dude who's standing behind popcorn slash chili guy who has pretty low-key responses, except he's basically thumbs-up, thumbs-down guy. Oh, yeah, right. Like, again, for all the overthinking that happens on some of these commercials and how unsuccessful I find a lot of them, I love the process of each of these characters. Like, there's in and out of the window person. There's head through stuff guy, because now he's putting his head through a grandfather clock. There's dude who stays mostly near the couch. There's thumbs up, thumbs down guy. There's head in and out of food person. Like, it's kind of great. A few million.

Yeah!

Oh, by the way, the guy who's head in the chili, I don't know his name, but he's in everything and has been for the last 20 years. Commercials, you mean? Commercial guy, yeah. Like, he's just, like, very, very, very sort of commonly cast in commercials. I've seen him in every kind of prescription medicine you can be on where you're, like, boating on a lake with your family, but you're also, you know, battling some situation.

Some moderate to severe situation.

Something that's moderate to severe. He's definitely in all of those ads. Anyway, so let's just. Are you still selling regular cups?

Yep.

Yeah!

New Reese's Caramel Big Cup. Yes! Oh, and Thumbs Up Guy shows up at the very end just giving a thumbs up.

Yeah, apparently. And then, like, the guy who was cleaning up the table is now making out with the older woman who crashed through the table earlier for some reason.

Love it. Love is love is love. You know?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So I thought that commercial was pretty funny. And then the other one that I thought was interesting was the drumsticks ad. And the reason I thought it was interesting was not for the reasons probably that they were. I thought this idea of some kind of sort of like, I don't know, cartoon, animatronic stop-motion character called like Dr. Umsticks. Yeah. think that was very great but what i thought was interesting was they cast eric andre as this character on a plane who clearly i think needs to shit their pants and i think that's very on brand for eric andre but only if you know who eric andre is and his oeuvre so it was i felt this kind of interesting nod where he doesn't you know he doesn't have he's you know eric andre's on this airplane and he needs a doctor he's kind of in his seat he's kind of shifting uncomfortably the way you might if you're having a stomach discomfort that really means you really want to go to the bathroom right now and need to go to the bathroom and then he's asking for a doctor and it's like there's this thing that's ice cream related and then everyone's eating a drumstick and they're like not giving one to eric andre or whatever that was all like fine whatever but i just thought i think that that was not an accident they cast eric andre a guy who regularly did stuff like that on his show as the guy who's basically kind of about to crap his pants am i overthinking it

well i mean i made an assumption about this commercial so i have some pretty strong feelings about this commercial okay because i had read about it before i saw it last week when we were doing our preview show and the description seemed really funny to me i actually think the joke so here's here's the premise there are a bunch of people on an airplane uh eric andre says i'm having you know stomach issues he's all he's grabbing his abdomen and somebody says they're a doctor on board and like kind of a real doctor starts to say i'm a doctor but then somebody else says uh I am Dr. Umstick and I thought the idea of having like having a new spokesperson named Dr. Umstick to advertise drumsticks I thought that was a very funny play on words I was just like that won me over immediately and then I watched the commercial I'm like wait Dr. Umstick for absolutely no reason is a little doll um just hanging out amongst human beings for no reason other than weirdness and then like everything after that I was just like, I thought the rest of the commercial was shit, frankly. Having said that, I'm not somebody who watches a lot of Eric Andre. It's on my list. It seems like the type of stuff I would – every time I see a clip, I'm just like, I love this show I've never seen. But I kind of assumed, and I'm trying to Google on the fly here, did Eric Andre direct that? Because I assumed that they might have had him come in to make a commercial for them the way, you know, like, CeraVe handed the reins over to Tim and Eric.

So we should talk about that a little bit more, too. But I don't know the answer to that. But that's an interesting journey to that commercial, because I think because I didn't know any of the lead up. And I'm with you. Like, I think if you would have had some person portraying, like, it reminded me too much of the, like, Little Penny, the Penny Hardaway shoe commercials where you had, I think it was like Chris Rock voicing this, like, little kind of puppet version of Penny Hardaway. and like I don't know just it just it it felt silly to me then the whole commercial just felt like one of those commercials where they thought random equals funny yeah exactly whereas you know random can be very funny but it's like you have to kind of know what you're doing and then so

speaking of random that is funny I don't think he directed it by the way I think that was just

a wrong assumption on my part but like um I did not actually believe it or not I didn't really get to watch the CeraVe ad because I think it was pretty early in the show and I don't think we were even there yet or I was like you know I was looking at something else so what but you texted me that they had really like neutered this the Michael Cera makes CeraVe ad what what happened

well here's and I'm looking to see if I can find the exact link that I believe I sent to Genevieve last week so I didn't I don't think I knew about the CeraVe ad or I hadn't I hadn't seen it I think i brought it up on the show on friday because i had read about it but i hadn't seen it and then i don't think we played it on the show but immediately after the show i looked it up so obviously there's a skincare um you know cream yeah which becca has like every product like when

i got doing this done doing the show with you on friday because i was doing it from becca's house i like said yeah i guess there's this michael cera ad for something called the cerevay she goes oh you mean this and she just like presented like 11 different containers of some sort of

cerave stuff so obviously it's popular yeah and um and so because michael cera's name is you know similar whatever we talked about on friday there's a whole like sort of viral campaign leading up to the super bowl ad and i i'm looking to see here if i can find the the video that i watched but the one that i watched on friday online was like over a minute long it was actually a weird time it was a minute 15 so i had a feeling it wasn't going to take up that much space on the super bowl that's an odd time and usually they cut these things down but the opening line of it was something very funny something along the lines of i'm michael cera and this is my cream and you know that's just like a slightly of like provocative and like i believe the first line as it aired on television was something like i'm michael cera and i want you to see something that i've developed or something like that oh are you kidding me now i'm getting those aren't direct quotes i'm getting that a little bit wrong it wasn't like i'm michael cera this

Thank you.

is my skin cream i feel like it was even one more word in there when i read the times piece maybe yeah i'm not sure but either way so and then it ended up being a lot shorter but um and it's really bothering me that i am not finding and i don't know how i sent this to genevieve i want to find the original link because it's very tim and eric i didn't know when i brought it up on the show that it was directed by tim and eric and then once i knew that and then watched the whole thing and that humor definitely came through i loved it the original so it actually so the original one actually is funny and good i thought so yeah were you disappointed by it no i i've

still never even seen it that's why i'm saying oh you know what he says human skin is my passion

okay is that a different time in the ad um i think that's a different time in the ad here's what the

here's what the new york times is again i love that i'm speculating i think i didn't ever really watch any of it human skin is my passion mr sarah says at the beginning of the spot where he scales a mountain before appearing in a boardroom with a bunch of suits and doctors and lab coats is that Is that what ends up happening roughly on the TV version?

I think I found the 1 minute 16 version. I think this is the one I watched. It's really hard now because it's after the Super Bowl and there's a million different versions going around and the SEO is terrible. But I think this is the one that I watched online on Friday.

I'm Michael Cera and I'm pleased to announce that this is my cream. CeraVe. Oh, you didn't know? Generosity.

the truth has been hiding in plain sight so the at the beginning it's very kind of like gauzy shots of him talking directly to the camera through like linen and things it kind of evokes

an old perfume ad from the 90s i am seraphine can human skin truly be this moisturized

he's getting a massage from himself now he's on the face of the mountain He smears some cream on the mountain

Let my cream hydrate you

I like this

Skin

Now he's talking to a dolphin who says Your skin looks moisturized, Michael Cera And he's going to respond, in dolphin Narwhal?

Is it actually a narwhal? I don't know, that's what the Times called it I'm going to go with them, but I'm not even looking at it Uh, I don't know, actually. Don't narwhals have horns?

Narwhals stand up for a woman's right to health care, right? I'm getting it all.

We finally got a good narwhal joke.

I'm getting it all confused. Three essential ceremonies. All day hydration. I'm telling them our story. Sarah V. Developed with Michael Cera V.

Now he's in a boardroom and he's showing it off to the creatives.

I just think it would be really nice if people think that I make this. So that's my thing.

My favorite part is when he just looks at, he just has a conversation with the jar of CeraVe that he's holding where he just says, I'm telling them my story, or I'm telling them our story. And then he just stares at it for a while as if he's hearing the response from it that we don't hear. Anyway, I thought it was a good job in the long form. I was just surprised. I think on the broadcast they changed that first line not to use the word cream.

Probably so. Now, one of the other things I mentioned in the Times write-up of it on Friday that we were referencing, I think, was something about how on Reddit or something, there was a comment from years ago saying, How has In like a CeraVe Subreddit saying like How have they not hired Michael Cera to do these ads Or something like that's like a total missed opportunity Or whatever If that played I don't know but if that played Any role in the origin of this that's also Pretty funny to me Anything else jump out At you that You think is worth What did you think of the I have a hunch but I don't know what did you think Of the Duncan commercial with Ben Affleck. It got me.

Oh, nice. Yeah, that's the type of over-the-top celebrity and already building on last year's commercial with J-Lo. It was definitely over-the-top, but honestly, Matt Damon is just so good. He just makes me laugh. And when he said, how do you like them donuts? I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.

That legitimately made me laugh. Those sunglasses on Tom Brady made me laugh. Yeah, right? The way that they, I have to say, Tom Brady in that ad, i think i think the two standouts for me in that ad were tom brady and j-lo i'm not kidding like just the way that they styled tom brady made me laugh and then i thought j-lo was very believable as a kind of annoyed girlfriend or annoyed wife i should say yeah and if you people

don't know i don't have to get in the whole backstory of this but last year um dunkin donuts because like there's a famous meme-ified photo of Ben Affleck holding Dunkin Donuts many many many yeah yeah it's very very Boston right and so I think they set him up in a Dunkin drive-thru window last year and had a bunch of people drive through and then be surprised that they're being served donuts and coffee by Ben Affleck and so this year the premise is hey you know oh and J-Lo rolled through the drive-thru while he was working and so he's this one he's he is hanging out with Matt Damon he said hey listen it's okay she visited me at my work last year and so you see uh matt damon and ben affleck dressed up like some sort of crew along with tom brady they call themselves the dun kings which again like wordplay works on me so i thought the dun kings was pretty funny and they like kind of come in like a crew into j-lo's studio while she's like mixing something down and they what do they do they try to perform do they perform or are they just representing i'm trying to remember but they don't rap, do they?

No, I think that they're like, the idea is they're there to get on the track, to get on the record. Right, right. And they kind of do like a little bit of a song or like 10 seconds of a song. And then, you know, Ben Affleck is like, you know, yeah, so put us on the track or whatever. And then I forget who's there with J-Lo, some other musician who I was kind of surprised they got on the track because they didn't seem that, it's like Fat Joe or something.

Oh, I don't think I recognized whoever that person was.

Well, I guess because, right, like Fat Joe and J-Lo have a song together. But anyway, there's like a real actual artist there, and he and J-Lo are kind of like, you know, basically like, J-Lo is just ready for Ben Affleck and his friends to leave so she can get back to her work is essentially the premise of the commercial.

And Matt Damon is clearly doing this against his will. He's just doing this because he says, you know, I'm friends with Ben. I said I would do anything for you, but like this is it.

this is anything i won't go yeah i think that's a pretty clever line you remember when i said i

would do anything for you this is anything right exactly so i honestly think that did make me laugh a couple of times was because i just think that matt damon can really deliver a line i also thought that like that beyonce verizon commercial wasn't as bad as i thought it was going to be they teased it like going into a break the like the whole phrase like break the internet i'm so over that like i'm so over that uh and they're like beyonce is gonna break the internet after this i was like oh god damn it but the thing is it's easy to forget that she's just a good actor and she's so like comfortable on screen this is i there's no need on this of all days for taylor swift take any to take any strays from me but like it just reminds you of what a comfortable presence from a diva on stage like there's something about like there's something about beyonce's comfort in that commercial and like her act and like oh yeah that's right she's a real actor like she can pull that off so in that over-the-top montage of her trying to quote-unquote break verizon or break the internet while the premise did nothing for me i was just like oh yeah that's why you're a queen

b um i just learned something andrew i have a little uh tbtl breaking news for you if uh if i might tbtl breaking news i was going to like make a joke and say of course the commercial that won the super bowl and that changed the entire course of this country was the rfk junior ad

and now we're all going to vote for him i couldn't i i didn't recognize the face and i was like what is this viral camp i thought i i thought we're all supposed to look it up later it was for

i honestly thought it was i didn't realize i saw the ad such an idiot i was watching that i'm like

i don't get this i saw the ad from across the room and i was like you have got to be crapping me right now like he thinks this is going to move the needle and then of course the breaking news is this headline from time.com robert f kennedy jr apologizes to family for jfk style super bowl ad this is from this morning apparently he had nothing to do with this ad so the ad was very much connecting him to his family legacy and the legacy of kennedy songs right were those legit

Old campaign songs from John F. Kennedy

Maybe so, again I couldn't hear it I was across the room, but I could just see it And it was real, lots of kind of, you know Lots of what looked like archival footage And The Super Bowl ad received a Now I'm reading from time, a mixed reception Online with some of RFK's supporters Appreciating the nostalgia He basically Said Let me get down to the part He basically apologized and said he had Nothing to do with this ad Which is wild to me Because who then He said I'm sorry if the Super Bowl advertisement Caused anyone in my family pain The ad was created and aired by the American Values Super PAC without any involvement or approval From my campaign I love you all Now what's wild to me About that is and we don't need to

And this part of the show talking politics, but it's seven million dollars for an ad on the Super Bowl. Who, how, who, who, who signed off on that? This is a bad use of seven million dollars. You're not moving the needle on RFK's nomination for president. Like you're not, it's just not going to happen. And there's just so many better ways to spend seven million dollars than on a just do it completely wasting it in this way. You're not the person. I mean, famously, I said Donald Trump wasn't going to get the nomination or become president. So who knows? But like, it just seems like a weird use of seven million dollars for a bunch of people who are presumably relatively smart. Some of them somehow got seven million dollars at some point. And then someone was like, you know, we should spend this on a Super Bowl ad. It just feels like you're lighting seven million dollars on fire. You're more of a retail politics kind of guy I mean I'm telling you I'm telling you there are In my mind if you said 7 million dollars To try to get Andrew Walsh elected president I would be like let's I don't even know what I would do I'm no James Carville To be a snake you have to think like a Carville Is what I always say But you know what I mean To me what's weird about this is that A number of people got together in a room and said Yes this is a good way for us to spend 7 million dollars of our war chest to do this thing either they think he might get the nomination or they think it might raise his profile enough for subsequent things it's just a weird use of the money for me yeah and i feel

like it's these like kind of almost third party style candidates and i'm again i've already embarrassed myself by not realizing that that was rfk in that commercial i couldn't i thought it was a viral thing that i had to go look up later i thought they were trying to sell me oh believe me he doesn't believe in viral of all terms for me to use oh how about the pfizer commercial by the way that was kind of interesting yeah um although oh did i put this did i share this online or i just send this to you or vives but also the nostalgic um vw ad i yeah i always think it's so interesting when a classic company like that like obviously like kind of celebrating the history vw and like especially you know in america in the 1960s people have such good feelings about the bug you know the the vw bug and everything but it's just like it is so ballsy so ballsy for a company that was started by hitler that was started by hitler to say you know what we're gonna do celebrate our history in this commercial it's like i feel like they're leaving out one or two really important parts of their history also the huge emissions scandal where they just right lied to the government and its customer and their customers so um anyway uh i don't know what i was

saying end of story we were saying that we're both voting for rfk we're certainly voting for rfk yeah

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 right emails or vmails oh yeah okay i wasn't sure what i was gonna do here but now Now, we're going to spend just a little bit of time on this, okay? Okay. We got a sweet voicemail from listener Catherine that was prompted by kind of, I think it was maybe me going to that model train show recently and just talking about my love of small-scale things. And so Catherine left this voicemail about kind of discovering something along those lines in her family, which is really sweet. But I also, something happens at the end of this that I want to really put under a microscope and see if we can figure out what it is. But let's listen to the voicemail. But definitely keep your ears peeled for the very last moments of this voicemail.

Hi, this is Catherine in Ann Arbor. Kind of on the things that scale and miniature dioramas and such talk, my grandpa had a bunch of siblings. and the youngest one was like almost 20 years younger than him but they were super close and but he lived in North Carolina so I didn't really see him much he was an adult years after my grandpa had passed I went uh on a road trip down and we stopped by to visit him and I'd never been to his house him and his wife didn't have kids and had about maybe a three or four bedroom house and it was just all little dioramas like built-in shelves around the fireplace with little scenes pedestals with little scenes it was such a like it was such a wonderful thing to learn about him because you know that like little hobbies didn't really come up when you know we were like chatting on the phone or something yeah so i i don't know i i think about that a lot when you talk about like things you love and now he had something he loved but never really mentioned it until we got to like go there and spend some time with him anyway

Just been thinking about my great uncle She started talking about that a few weeks ago I'm kind of dead living, sorry Bye

What was that? I think that was She's been watching Bubbles for the last four months Bye What is that?

At first I thought it was a bait You think that's a cat? Oh, unquestion

Hold on, play it again Bye Bye Bye When you slow it down When you enhance, enhance, enhance it almost becomes like a weirder sound than when i was listening to it in context in real time it

just sounded like a cat i thought it was a child at the very end but then i'm listening again well have you ever seen eraser um anyway it's either uh it's either a cat or a cabinet door that needs a little wd-40 yeah it could be that or it could be like maybe just the sound of like trying to grab something on your phone like maybe a finger going over the microphone i mean that's that's a

stretch anyway i was possible that the caller made the sound possibly i realized that i make i i'm not gonna be able to reproduce it here but as i was um this morning coming down a stairs and i had my laptop with me and then i dropped it at the top of the stairs thankfully the stairs are still carpeted in fact the whole upstairs is carpeted in a truly awful brown carpet that i look very forward to replacing at some point but i dropped the laptop and it bounced and then it was going towards the top step which would have led it all the way down a flight of stairs and even though it's carpeted like and even though these computers are supposed to be somewhat okay durable it's like i was like basically this computer's life flashed right in front of my eyes and i think i went ah i made some weird sound that was not for anyone's benefit except me and i realized that i think it might be the sound i make when stuff like that happens like if unless I was doing the show with you last week Or two weeks ago now and I spilled all that coffee And that was a different sound But if I'm totally by myself I'm not trying to do the show with you Or I'm just completely alone But something bad is happening and it's freaking me out I think there's a specific kind of shriek that I make

As opposed to just yelling the F word or something

Right, exactly It's not an F bomb It's not even a specific English word It's a sound that I make That when I made it today my thought and luckily the computer did not bounce all the way down the stairs it stopped on the second stair down from the top but I realized oh that's your Ned Flanders scream that you make and you're by yourself and something terrible is happening this accidentally gets to something

that has been bouncing around my head for a long time or like kind of living in my head for for years now and it was actually something that a friend of ours and a friend of the show posted on their personal Instagram a while back I've seen other people make references to this before but in In this case, I'm specifically thinking of our friend Cassie Luke, who was on Week in Review a couple months ago. Maybe we can get her back on to address this because I feel very guilty of something that I do, but I swear I do not do it on purpose. When I sneeze, it tends to be loud. If I'm in public, I do everything I can to stifle my sneeze, like literally, you know, kind of do one of those, hold it in. A lot of people don't like that either. That doesn't seem good for you.

Well, no, because I hurt my inner ear doing that when I was a kid.

yeah and then but when i'm like when i'm at home and sometimes i get into real sneezing fits too i don't know what's going on it's i don't think it's a mold issue or something because this is predates us moving here but sometimes something will just hit me and i will go into like a like literally 10 to 25 sneezes in a row you feel like you're going out of your mind i don't know if that happens to you often it happens to me kind of i never i rarely sneeze once anymore

if that's what you mean.

Really? Oh, no, when you sneeze, in other words, you sneeze a couple of times, right? Yeah, it's usually like three. I thought you were saying you've mostly eliminated sneezing from your lifestyle. I've been on this diet. I've been on this low sneeze diet,

which I learned about on TikTok. If you don't sneeze ever, your body shifts into sneezetosis and you just burn the calories.

What's the better show title? No sneeze diet or sneezetosis? All right. So anyway, one thing that Cassie posted and I've seen other people mention this as well is, you know, to to whomever needs to hear this, you don't need to make a sound when you sneeze because there are people who like, you know, and I know I've worked with people like in office spaces where when they sneeze, it scares everybody around them because it's like a gunshot out of the blue. And I understand that some people can be a little extra about it, but when I'm home alone, like there is something that my body compels me, especially when I really need to like, what's the word, excise or what? Expectorate? You will expectorate, unfortunately, yeah. Expel, I think, is the word I was looking for. Like when my body is clearly trying to expel something, it's like my sneezes are pretty loud.

and vocal and I always think of what Cassie said I'm like wait am I doing like am I making that sound because it makes me feel better is this a right is this a choice I'm making because I don't want to be annoying to people but if I'm home and my body is just telling me to do that I feel like

I'm not making a choice there what I need you to do I don't know the answer to your question but what I need you to do and I will commit to this myself the next time if we can remember just in our lives one of us has to sneeze let's both try to do this let's try to sneeze without making noise actively eliminate the noise from the sneeze other than just the you know the sound the achoo or whatever the part is it's like literally not controllable because it's the just the sound waves of a thing happening but like because i'm with you if i'm by myself i feel like i make a really loud sneeze and i don't think i'm doing it for anyone's effect and i don't think i'm doing it consciously as like a this is more cathartic by the way i do love a good sneeze I mean who doesn't Unless I'm driving which is terrifying as I once wrote on Twitter Every time I sneeze on the freeway and live It's like I jumped out of a plane without a parachute And survived I'm amazed that there are not more auto incidents Related to sneezing Because it is a very If you're me anyway It's a pretty sort of cataclysmic event The eyes obviously Close, the body I mean for me now a big issue is Am I going to throw my neck out sneezing

We're making a boat

shoot sorry these are the considerations of a very young very virile man but you know i totally

agree with you that a sneeze can feel very therapeutic it can feel very good like i say when i'm on one of my sneezing jags it almost goes into a sort of delirium where it feels good for a little bit but then it just feels goddamn awful but let me ask you this so a sneeze can definitely feel good a big stretch can definitely feel good but i heard somebody on a podcast the other day say that yawning feels good. Do you think yawning feels good? I don't think yawning feels good to me. I think it makes me think I'm loggy and not feeling great in that moment.

I guess it depends on the situation. I think I associate yawning with a bad feeling because it's what's happening is usually I'm awake and I should be doing something and I'm feeling tired and I don't like that experience. You're driving back to driving. You're driving and you're tired and you're trying to stay awake because you don't want to drive off the road and you're yawning. And in that case, every yawn feels bad because it's another indicator of how tired you are. So in that way, I don't think of yawns as positive. I guess if I have a fire going in the pellet stove and I'm relaxing on the couch and it's already almost bedtime and I let out a good yawn, that could be – here's the thing. For a yawn to feel good to me, I've got to have a direct path to bed or a direct path to napping. like it can't be like I'm yawning and and and what I should be doing is being super awake for the next nine hours it's like if it's something related to or if it's something that's very close to when I can just go to bed then it's probably kind of fun yeah I suppose so yeah

because I always associate yawning especially when you it starts to really hit you hard and you're yawning several times in a row that's always a moment where I'm trying desperately not to nod off whether I'm like you know sitting behind my desk trying to get some work done or Or occasionally going to see a movie and you're way too tired or something like that. That feeling of fighting off sleep and those eye-watery yawns, I hate it so much.

The worst is, and I'm not going to do a great job describing this, but basically trying to disguise a yawn into kind of like a weird horse-toothed smile thing. Where you're kind of like, I watched someone do this the other day. Where was I? I've been so busy with an active life, Andrew. I can't even remember where I was. But you know what it was Once again I did one thing let's be honest I went to this thing at Becca's work That's the one thing I did And I was watching A man and a woman kind of talking At a table let's say it was probably like 8.30 At night or something during this event And I watched her do this move That I was also kind of doing occasionally Which was you're yawning but someone's Talking to you and you don't want to look like you're yawning You don't even want to cover your mouth So you kind of do this like Kind of like weird like basically like a very odd looking smile that's meant to sort of diffuse the yawn but without showing it's like a bad act of ventriloquism you can still see the mouth moving it feels like

i think you should leave sketch actually now that you mentioned that and it might be for season four see tim robinson has that been announced by the way do we know that there's no i'm just hoping

there's a see that was manifesting on my part nice good job but yeah like yeah like that it's it's sort of not fooling anyone but it's it feels like it's being more polite it's just like you want to kind of quietly let this yawn out without letting on what's going on but it's impossible to control your face yeah to the point where you don't look kind of demented right right that's

not that is not satisfying at all that's a bad feeling no it's not okay listeners get at a sneeze Do they have to be vocal?

Yawns? Can they feel good? We've got a lot of listeners who are yawning right now as I continue this on. So probably time to wrap things up. But not without reminding you all that we will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So please. Sorry. Is that the first that you heard that we're doing the show tomorrow?

That was the rudest thing I think I've ever done. I'm sorry, Luke.

What happened? I missed the joke. I wasn't offended by it.

No, it's just, it was so rude because it had nothing to do with what you were saying. I just remembered that my favorite commercial was the To Be Couch Potatoes commercial. And I felt like that was like me yelling during a sneeze. Like, I didn't need to tell you that right now. I could come back tomorrow and tell you that. Maybe. But I just looked down at my sheet and it said To Be Couch Potatoes. And I was like, oh. And then I was like, where am I? I love it.

I love that you're in that much of a relaxed state here doing the show. that was an extremely honest and unguarded view into your mind and how it works. And so I welcome that.

You weren't doing anything important at the moment, were you? As I just yelled, oh!

I was forward promoting that tomorrow we're going to talk about the couch potato ad. And you know what's great is I'll get a chance to watch. I saw it on TV, but I couldn't hear the audio. So I will study it carefully between now and tomorrow, and then we'll talk about that on tomorrow's edition of TVTL. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. Oh! Ha ha ha ha!

Bye.

Power out.