Muse

Tell me, just what is it that you want to do? We want to be free. We want to be free to do what we want to do. We want to be free to ride. We want to be free to ride our machines without being hassled by the man. And we want to get loaded. And we want to have a good time. And that's what we're going to do.

Well, wait, baby, let's go.

We're going to have a good time. We're going to have a party. Yeah!

T-B-T-M.

Guess what day it is. Guess what day it is.

It's Friday, Friday. Gonna get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend. Jalapeno!

B-bop-bop-ba-da-boo. I'm easily... I don't... Do you follow?

All I know is this violates every canon of respectable broadcasting.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Friday edition of TBTL.

Memories are made in your mouth.

The show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. you want showmanship you got it coming to you once again and for the final time this week from los angeles california we are it's like i'm walking on sunshine looking at a beautiful sunshiny day this is good i'm very fortunate i feel very privileged to get to do a little vitamin d reset as part of my work because of course i live in the pacific northwest where we don't Get enough of that stuff, but down here, it's... Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. And then right as the smog and traffic threaten to overtake me and my sense of happiness, it's time to depart back for the Pacific Northwest. It's a sweet little deal I've got going here. We've got a sweet little show. It's episode 4,148 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. And I think we may have done it, folks. I think we may have found the new restaurant in America that my friend Andrew Walsh would probably be least inclined to go to. It's a restaurant within a restaurant. Interesting profile in the New York Times of a new restaurant in New York called Frog's. I actually haven't made it. I'll be honest with you. If I could get on the list to get in, I'd probably try to go. But that's how I'm wired differently than my buddy, who is also the longest running co-bro of the show. maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he is getting all ready for this weekend and ziggle zag it let's get back at it he's gonna bring that energy to the program right now he is andrew walsh and he is joining me good morning my friend good morning it's happening luke right

outside my window i am watching my neighbor seth cut a hole right into the side of my garage and the most amazing thing about this is seth is not the guy we hired to install this door this is a different neighbor that's weird now that right there that is being helpful that is a good neighbor it's it's again there's a big wily coyote size hole no uh seth our neighbor who also is uh a carpenter and a woodworker and all those things is um and electrical because you said he was moving a junction box yeah you know i it occurred to me i don't i guess i should say contractor i stumbled there i wasn't sure what you would say i mean handyman is a term that is thrown around but i feel is handyman a bit dismissive i feel like it's just i don't think handyman is i don't think

there's anything about being a handyman that should make somebody feel less than but when you say someone's doing handyman services what i tend to think is doing things that fall below like rewiring stuff and more like hey uh we have this um uh you know a towel rack that's been loose and bugging us in the bathroom forever. Can you come in and drill some new holes and put it in or something? That feels like handyman stuff. Hey, can you put our address numbers up on the side of our house and make sure they're nice and level? That all feels like can we put a dog door in? That's handyman stuff being like we're going to actually be moving wiring and we're going to be reinforcing rafters and that all feels more like contractor stuff

to me. Yeah, so I guess contractor is the right word to use here, but again, it does live just down the street from us and is a hell of a guy and I'm watching him right now with a what do you call it's like a circular saw he's putting it up against the wall right now I don't think you can hear it it's not that loud but it's right outside my window and I'm fascinated by it Luke I don't know I hope this is okay content for me just to narrate this

I've only been doing

this for the last, what, 1.6 years on the show, just narrating the construction going on on the little cabin? I guess if I'm making any mistake here, it's biting your rhyme.

Well. Not staying in my own lane here. That didn't go

unnoticed, but I stand behind it as good

content. It's really amazing though, just to see somebody drilling right through a wall. Well, so you say

drilling right through a wall, but he's not using a drill

for it. No. Genevieve corrected me on that yesterday. We had a little tete-a-tete, the right term here i heard some noises going on you know in the garage from my studio yesterday afternoon and i said to veves oh it sounds like he's starting to saw and genevieve said no that doesn't sound like a saw that sounds like a drill to me and i said don't you dare drill splain me and her response was well you can hear like the way it's starting and then stopping like that that means it's a drill and i was like i don't think you understand what don't drill splain me means because you just continued to drill spleen well actually there is a very big difference in

this i i think i have probably gotten fairly tuned into that because of all the stuff that's been going on at my house forever and ever now mostly my dad walt b just somewhere else in the house while i'm either legitimately working on you know one of my job things or just hiding from him because you know i don't know i just don't have anything particularly useful to say and also

it's a one-person operation you got an archie comic book tucked inside of a textbook for some

reason and you're reading it under the covers i mean that does happen every once in a while it's not i don't hide in the house but i will sort of hide up in the madrona hill broadcast center because what he's doing is a lot of stuff that really is just a one-person job like he's he is drilling holes through something like you know we're running something some pecs or some wiring and the thing that needs to happen before you can run that is like let's say before the the sheetrock and stuff was up you just have these kind of open walls you just have all of the studs in there and you're drilling through it to make a hole to pass something else through and my dad's move at this point is to uh without like kind of unconsciously just grumble not even with word not even with words that are um specific words it's more just like sound just like like every time you get up or like you know what i mean he doesn't even know he's doing it and and it makes me feel like i should be helping him but then when i go i mean i am i want to be very clear i'm paying this guy uh i'm i'm i'd be curious to maybe offline i can find out if i'm paying my actual father more per hour than you're paying your actual contractor slash neighbor be curious to see what we're what we're laying out for this stuff i will say seth is cutting us a great deal but so like we are drilling you a great deal don't drill explain me so like drill baby drill so we um so there will be times where it's like i'm just like i could be in the house like working on my computer but he's going uh uh or like he'll drop he'll be like trying to screw something in and then like the screw will fall from where he's trying to use it and you know what i mean like this will have like one of those things that happens constantly when you're doing construction work of like small frustrations and he'll just be kind of like letting out these sounds of exasperation and i'll say dad can i help you with that like is there something i can do in a bit no no i got it i got it but then he'll just go back to like low-key making these sounds that make me feel like this is the last thing he wants to be doing so then i'll just go hide somewhere else on the property from him and let him do his thing be doing that and i think you know this and

And I'm saying this not even as a question, but as a statement, because I just feel like the more you describe your dad, the more I'm convinced that, like, we're the same person. Only I have no skills, like putting his skills aside. We're the same person as far as I feel like how we maybe navigate the world. And like I am somebody who, especially when I'm working, will like kind of mutter and grumble. In fact, right moments ago, before we started the show officially, I was trying to put together a little piece of production. And I'm guessing you heard me down the line kind of doing because I was in a hurry and I'm like, OK, move this over here. Oh, God. And I had just gotten off a frustrating phone call. And I think that that is probably if you were nowhere around, he would still be making those exact same sounds.

And I know that. And that's why I've at this point decided that I just let him kind of foam off his his feelings and let him do his let him do his thing. But that also means I usually go hide. Hide is the wrong word. I usually, I have hidden from actual contractors at my house. I have legitimately gone like in my bedroom and closed the door and been like, I hope that they don't have any questions for me because that's, that one feels almost weirder to me. And I don't know why, but when there are folks that, again, I'm paying people to come do their job, which is to work on the house. But me just kind of, me just eating a tuna sandwich and kind of glancing. at like the internet on my phone while the other people are working makes me feel so deeply lazy and just like that i'd rather just be doing that somewhere out of everyone's sort of field of vision so that being said uh you're having the exciting experience of a human door hole being opened yeah on and and and then is it it's going to get framed in have you picked out the door have you and veves went and purchased the door and you're going pre-hung seth uh bought the door

It's pre-hung. Veeves told him the cheapest one that works because this is like we were just talking on yesterday's show, like long term plans is to maybe even tear this little building down at some point and rebuild there. So we're not like investing majorly into a cute door. And so I think we got a door for like, I don't know, under three hundred dollars pre-hung. I saw it on top of Seth's van. He's going to I mean, if things go right, I mean, we we may see this whole process unfold during today's show. he's now cutting amazing the other side of the door as we speak i mean and of course if i end up seeing a hole in the wall during today's broadcast i am going to have to run and pause the podcast run outside and then tell my joke wait we've changed our mind it's gonna yeah yeah slay

will you do me a favor though do you have a voice memo phone on your android a voice memo function i do i would love to hear a recording can you just slip in your pocket like it's a sting operation it's a comedy sting operation where you just have it in your like kind of breast pocket and then i we can hear seth's response to your hilarious joke you know

the last time i heard a story about somebody who said please keep your phone on speaker the whole time it was about somebody getting scammed out of fifty thousand dollars and now i also by the way

do need you just for safety's sake to withdraw some money from your account and put it in the shoebox. I'll be picking it up later. Okay, sounds good. Now, I will warn you that, my friend, you've entered a world of pain, which is called discussing contracting with me, because I have so many thoughts. One thing is, the installation of a door, in my experience, it's the opposite of how I think Hemingway described going bankrupt, which is another thing that's on my mind a lot these days. Hemingway said, it happens very slowly and then all at once. And the installation of a door is the reverse it happens very quickly and then it slows down so the cutting of the hole that's so it's great it's like oh my god look at that used to be a solid side of this garage and now it is a hole and then you kind of get the door the you know the the pre-hung door you get it all kind of in there and then the real work begins of the shimming out of the door of the futzing with it at least if you're walt like because uh to get a door to just open and close without rubbing on the bottom or the top of the door frame, lining up the hardware of the door handle. All of that stuff is precision work. At this point, my dad and I have now installed one, two, three, four, five, six, six doors at my place, I think. I'm always like, oh my God, this is great. This is going so fast. We're ahead of schedule. We're on time and under budget. And then at some point, it looks like it's done, but then it will be three more hours of frustrated grunts from Walt before finally the thing is working the way that he's hoping it will. So I'm just saying, prepare yourself. It's going to be really exciting. And then you may see Seth out there just dinking around with it for a long time.

Just muttering under his breath, Luke should be helping me with this.

That doesn't mean that he's trying to run up the bill on you. That's just how this goes.

Sounds good. I was going to say when you talked about that, I guess, idea that like when somebody is doing work in your home, you tend to sort of retreat somewhere. I do the same thing. It's not out of guilt. You described it. And I think it's a little bit different because you have family involved in whatever. You have a million projects going on. But for me, when we do have somebody coming over, whether it's to literally just kind of drop off and install the new refrigerator, something simple like that, or having Seth here doing this, or any kind of person coming into my house in that way, it is awkward. It's not guilt for me, but I do feel like I just need to get out of your way. You're the expert here. I shouldn't even be around this. I haven't earned the right to be around this project or whatever, and it's a weird thing to explain. And I'm sure there are people who are much more comfortable and not because of their because they have some grand knowledge of the project, but who are just like, can you imagine somebody who would let's say you have a contractor inside your house installing a door, let's say an internal door, just sitting there like on their phone, like sort of like eating popcorn and watching them do it. Are there people out there who can act that way?

I mean, there are people that have that kind of confidence. I saw one in the elevator today. he got into the elevator it was me and one other person were

riding up from the first floor. He got in on the second floor because he'd been at the gym and he looked like it. And he had his AirPods in and he was just fully in a phone conversation. Ah, yeah. How you doing, you old son of a gun? I know, I know. It's like Santa Fe all over again. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah. Honestly, by your standards, it's not bad, buddy. Not bad. Like, he could not have been in any way less aware that there were two other people in the elevator or even like in any way affected by our by our presence yeah and like that's the kind of person who could eat popcorn while a contractor was working in their house someone who is i think on some level broken inside and does not perceive other people in the world that's funny i won't

nitpick i do feel like one is just rude i mean you know how i feel about that kind of behavior like just talking on a phone loudly in public like that especially in enclosed space like that's so rude. I feel like there's a way, though, to be a not even confident, just a person who's comfortable enough in their own skin and in their own house to like just sort of hang out while people are doing work and maybe, you know, not engage and maybe not be engaging in any kind of rude behavior either. But it's just like, yeah, I'm going to sit here and watch TV because this is where the TV is. And it happens to be where you're working and not getting in the way or anything, but not feeling like I better find something to do in a different room.

Yeah, I'm sure there are people that can do that, and it does not create all kinds of anxiety for them. I am just not one of those people. Me neither. Also, there was that time that I was in a bathrobe and kind of, you know, I'm not saying I was hoping something would happen, but I'm just saying, you know, I was lonely. I was in my bathrobe. I was hoping maybe some kind of sexy scene could unfold, and they were like a hard no on that. Charlie Rose in it. There's been a lot of, no, no, no, I was full, believe me, I was it was I was everything was contained within the robe. But, you know, since then, it's never really been the same between those contractors. OK, but beyond all that, or in addition to all that, you actually wanted to report on something that just happened to you. It didn't involve sexy contractors. This was like last night or something. This was yesterday. Yeah.

So, well, I'll go. I'll start back a little further back because me and my dad, we can't start a story where it gets interesting. We have to start with where we were born. No, I don't know. A couple of months ago, I finally made an appointment to get my eyes checked. I haven't had an eye doctor appointment since 2020, Luke, which is ironic because my vision is anything but 2020. And even when I got these glasses back then, it was the first time I ever got like kind of not bifocals, but progressive lenses. Transitions? Yeah.

Is transition and progressive different?

I think so. So I think transition, I'm wrong here.

Oh, maybe that's where they turn into sunglasses, right?

Yeah, I think so, yeah. But anyway, I was so, it was the type of thing that isn't that hard to do, like just make an appointment and go in. There was a period when we were transitioning between American public media and our business where I did have to kind of get my insurance stuff all in order and everything, but aside from that, it should not have taken me three years to make this appointment, and it's something I really needed and am excited about. As nervous as I am to go to the doctor, going to the eye doctor is one of the places I'm not nervous to go so anyway I just finally sit down a couple of months ago and I look I look to see who my the doctor I went to last time it looks like she's moved on to someplace else so I'm like oh I think it was in this medical building though in Northgate so um I call them up and I make an appointment and I say you know it looks like the doctor I had there is no longer there but I would uh like to make an appointment with another optometrist or ophthalmologist I don't know the difference um and they're like okay and so they take down all my information they make sure I have the right insurance blah blah blah that was a couple of months ago about a week ago I get a you know patient check-in it's like all through the my chart portal they already have all of my information because all of these things are interconnected now and I'm like okay great and then yesterday Luke was the big day I was very excited so I drive to the medical building and I park and I do notice I'm like you know I thought I had been in this building before but either I'm parking in a different parking lot or this is a different building in this complex or something and i go into the front desk and um by the way fully masked in there i wasn't sure if all medical buildings are still doing that but like not optional like you had to be masked thank goodness i still carry a mask in my coat at all times uh first time in years that i've had to do that um and anyway so i talked to this very nice woman at the front desk and she's like kind of getting me sorted out and i say i'm here to see dr greenley and she's like greenly and she almost actually she hasn't heard the name before which I don't know what's up with that and then that's never a good sign no no there was just like a and she was very nice I'd like to say again but um she checks me and she's like okay so you're here for okay so you've seen this doctor before I'm like no I've been here before but I haven't seen this doctor before this oh so you're uh you're establishing your care with the doctor and I'm like uh sure you know like that's one way of putting it but I'm thinking I'm just getting my eyes checked and then uh we finished up our paperwork or whatever she says go right back there to the waiting room I'm sitting back in the waiting room and I'm just like looking around and something is off like something is off and so I look up the doctor's name again and she's an internal medicine doctor and so i'm waiting there and i'm getting more and more like sort of concerned almost a little bit steamed how did i call a facility and clearly make a doctor appointment for my eyes yeah and nowhere along the way did somebody realize hey we have this

guy booked with a gp like i i a nurse is it possible that they were just thinking we should

take the long way to this you should go through the anus through the gutty works up the neck inside the brain and then back out through the eyes you know what i can see andrew because you

and i now look yes do you see the look on my face uh those eyes are working well enough for you to see something's happening on your garage there's a hole in the garage it's you want to go do your

joke it's the shape of a door no i'm too shy now really i want to hear i mean i mean the good news is that the hole's going to be up there for a while so you could make the joke after the show

after the show on Monday. Yeah, I'll report back on Monday. No matter where we are in the process now, if I say we've changed my mind the joke works because it's

Yes, exactly. I mean, you could honestly call him next week. I mean, the joke, it's like a fine wine. I mean, the joke just only gets better with age, I think. Yeah

in fact, I could, it doesn't have to be just once you know, I can tell it to him today I can follow up with some texts and phone calls later, maybe maybe rejoin up for uh facebook and but so but so you you you called the place and you said hi i

need to make an appointment to talk to an optom an ophthalmologist i think the optometrist might be the person at where the glasses are actually you know where i don't know i don't know the

one is i think one is a more it can do surgery like maybe an ophthalmologist can do surgery

yeah the ophthalmologist one i know that to be the like maybe like it's maybe like psychiatrist versus psychologist psychiatrists can prescribe drugs and psychologists cannot there's some kind of a breakdown between optometry and ophthalmology yeah but anyway you said i need that i mean they

said okay i mean clearly there was some confusion and that's why you know i was so so let me put you back to where i was and then we can go back and sort of um well diagnose this whole situation and and talk about how much is maybe on me because i i will say in the moment i felt none of this was on me um I'm waiting in this waiting room and I'm looking around and people are like going in like there's there aren't like photos of eyeballs on the wall you know or diagrams you know there are no glasses for sale and by the way this is a thing and and this might not be we have people who work in this industry and maybe I'm being dismissive of them but like a few visits back I went to get my eyes examined by somebody who was a doctor but like just in the back of a small glasses store called Specs in the City. I don't know if you're familiar with Specs in the City and Roosevelt. And it just reminded me.

I'm a total Samantha.

When I was a kid, I went to one place, which was more of a doctor's office, to get my eyes examined, and then I would go to another place to get my glasses. And I know that they sort of combined those now, but there was something so, and now I've called out the name of the company, and I shouldn't do that, but I don't want to accuse them of not being a real doctor because they work in the back of a glasses store, but there was something like that that just felt like everything was just being pushed towards, well, you're going to buy these glasses today or that, and I was just like, no, I'm just here because I want to see a doctor, and I don't want to see a doctor in a store. I want to see a doctor in a doctor's office. I want to buy things in a store. So that is why I was looking specifically for a place that didn't have, like, you know, didn't see me as a patient and, more importantly, as a customer. Customer of a special, yeah.

You don't want to walk in and find a cartoon owl wearing a lab coat who's trying to sell you two glasses for $129.99.

Exactly. Having said that, I do want to see a real owl who is human size wearing a lab jacket checking my eyes. That would be incredible.

Call the news if you see that.

Exactly. I'd say, I've changed my mind. You have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the hole in my wall. Anyway, so I was looking to get my eyes examined in an actual medical building of some sort. And that's how I ended up at this one place in 2020. And that's why I ended up in this other place in 2024. Now, my mistake was I had told these people I have been here before. And I now realize that this is not a place I've been before. is a different medical center. I think I went to well, it doesn't matter. I don't have to hold up the show by trying to remember the names of both of these places. And I'm not going to name the place that I went to yesterday. But I will say this. I'm waiting in the waiting room. And then I realized this is wrong. I am in the wrong damn place. And I'll tell you what, I shouldn't have made it this far into the process. I shouldn't be in a waiting room before we all realize that they didn't set me up with an eye doctor a nurse comes out calls my name I said hi I think there's been a mistake I am here to get my eyes examined is Dr. Greenlee an optometrist or is she you know does she practice internal medicine because I'd you know I'd looked her up on my phone while I was waiting and she's like oh yeah no no no wrong place like and I'm like well what's going on she's like well you got to talk to people at the front desk about this I'm like yeah I do you know obviously it's not the nurse's fault so I go to the front desk and I'm now talking to a different person than the woman who checked me in and this person's a very nice person he's very very friendly but doesn't seem to share my concern with their system that led me to see a gp when i called to get my eyes examined like i feel like somebody somewhere should have caught this before i'm

literally being called into the doctor's office you're midway through the full rectal probe exactly you realize this is not the ophthalmologist i was already there you know like well this is i mean i i'm not even kidding andrew this is how my brain is broken my thought would have been i would have also been confused and annoyed and then i would have been like well i guess i'll have him do a gi check i'm here like i would have gone with internal medicine i'm not kidding you i would have been like i drove over here i i i've waited here i signed up it's apparently covered by my insurance to some degree I let you know what put me up on the jacks check the oil I'm here like I literally would have gone through the fluids I would have been through I would have gone through the internal medicine whatever it is out you send me to any kind of medical situation a podiatrist yeah can you take a look at these dogs sometimes I have I think I might have bursitis like just I would have just gone with it and then you know scheduled the eye thing too in addition but I would have

gone with the gi well i already have you know like that that's why the woman at the front desk said oh you're here to establish care you're here to establish your relationship with your internal medicine doctor and i i was just i was confused by her language there i already have that situation set up i saw my doctor a few months ago in fact i'm supposed to make some follow-up appointments like i'm not going to mess around with that i also don't like getting poked and prodded but i come back to the you know front desk and the fella's like you know he's very very nice but just saying yeah you know um you know you have to have a referral now to get your eyes checked I'm like that doesn't from your from your doctor me and I guess what he was sort of saying is maybe I called to get my nothing he was saying directly addressed the issue you know what I mean like he didn't know what to say but he didn't quite want to apologize and so he just kept saying well you need a referral so I was thinking like maybe in his quote-unquote explanation he was saying well since you don't have a gp here we need to set you up with a gp so that then the next time you can get your eyes checked but like i don't need any of that i have a gp like it was just such a weird like non-explanation from a very nice person i was trying so hard not to be rude to him i was just like well how did i get i said at one point like how do you think i got to this point where i'm standing in front of you right now before anybody realized that they booked me for the wrong doctor he said i don't know and he's you know like and i said i really cannot i don't want to be charged for this and he said well did you pay when you came in with a co-pay or anything i'm like no but i don't want my insurance to be charged for this either and he like tip tapped on his keyboard a little bit he said okay i've canceled it you won't be charged i'm like i know i'm going to be charged for this or the insurance will be because i'm sure if you cancel a doctor appointment within the five minutes of it starting usually that is not um just taken off your bill we'll see i'm going to keep an eye on that but here's where i feel a little bit justified i decide i'm going to do something that i don't do all that often which is open up yelp my yelp is i need to i need to start reviewing yelp review of a lifetime i need to start reviewing things that are sort of mid because right now my yelp is all like five stars or one star because i'm only going to yelp when i'm highly motivated by something right when i really want. I bet you that's fairly typical. I'm sure it is. And for the record, I always try to make sure that I have more positive stuff going on. I don't want somebody to go to my Yelp page and just see a bunch of negative reviews. But before I even wrote a review, I wanted to see what are other people saying? Well, this medical facility that I went to, this specific branch of this medical facility here, kind of in my neighborhood, has 2.7 stars on Yelp. And a lot

I'm sorry. reviews it's not like three and so it's like don't you think that 2.7 stars is pretty bad for a

medical facility it is although i would what i would want to try to do is cross-reference that with other medical facilities and is that a typical rating because i mean yes that's that seems low but on the other hand is it because when we go to oftentimes if we go seek medical care it's because things are not going great for us and so we're more inclined like how many times did you go to the doctor and just think that was so awesome i just loved it when they digitally penetrated me to check for polyps you know like it's i'm wondering if it's an all-around not great kind of situation to be in which leads people to rank it lower than say when they go to red robin which i'm pretty sure the place you went used to be a red robin probably i'm not kidding if it's If it's on the Northgate Way side of that mall over by where the Azteca used to be, or maybe still is, I swear to God, that area used to be the movie theater where I saw Batman, and also it was a Red Robin.

Well, there's some I will say I was a little dubious of your theory there, but I just went to like my I just went on Yelp and looked up like my care facility that I usually go to in Ballard, which is like a it's a well known like, you know, kind of chain of hospitals and care centers around here. And 2.4 reviews, only seven. I'm sorry, 2.4 stars and only seven reviews. So all of that is to say, you might be on to something there. Maybe doctor's offices and this type of thing tend to maybe lean low. I thought they were going to be more like people like, hey, I really love my doctor. So I'm going to gush about them. But I will say this and this is I still feel a little bit vindicated here. This facility I went to yesterday that I was angry at so many reviews, so many like way more than the seven that this one has and so many of them were like people are sweet here but the front desk has no idea what they're doing like so many people who were just like complaining about like the incompetence of the of the staff and again not even like piling on about them well there were some that claimed that the staff was really really rude to them but you never know who the writer of the review is what was going on that day i will say from my experience the folks were really really nice both the woman who checked me in and the person who kind of gave me a non-explanation but I do think there is some major incompetence going you can't call a place to book an eye doctor appointment and end up two months later being you know escorted

to a GP's office right and then have it be the case that I think it sounds like what you wanted the front desk person to kind of acknowledge later on was that this is clearly a there's some problems with this system and if they're saying well actually this is because maybe this is how it's supposed to work because you need to get a referral from a gp you need a gp to look at you and hold up two fingers and go how many fingers am i holding up and then if you say the wrong number then they're able to refer you to the ophthalmologist the idea that the person at the front desk nice though they were didn't recognize that this was a serious breakdown in the system was was was for you kind of troubling might be overstating it but like you wanted them to say oh yeah clearly there's something about how we're doing this that's not working yeah unsatisfied

or unsatisfying maybe is a word we're looking for there but and again logically i understand why they can't do that and i don't want to come down too hard on this guy who didn't have an explanation for me because what is he supposed to do first of all like i say i want to give him a lot of credit He was very pleasant while I was – obviously, I had little squiggles coming off of my head. I was so steamed.

You should also, by the way, see a neurologist about that.

Yeah, I know. I have a recommendation in at the same place. And also, like, what is he supposed to say? It's a medical place. First of all, I'll bet you there are very specific rules about – like, you can't just say, wow, wow, one of my colleagues really effed this up. You know what I mean? Like, what is he going to say?

Man, we really put you in some amount of medical danger, the kind that could be resolved through some sort of, I don't know, lawsuit.

Exactly. So I don't know exactly what I wanted, but I did write a review of the place. What did you write in your review? Let me just see. I'll write it. It wasn't especially entertaining. I try to keep these things entertaining. I was still pretty steamed when I wrote it, but I try to keep them short. You do not want to write. you don't like i looked at some of these other reviews of this place and they were so long and

they're just and then this number one thing yeah the number one thing that lowers my confidence level in a yelp review is if it's too long i immediately start thinking okay this person's

dealing with some stuff so i will you know i'll let y'all judge me this is not you know again this isn't this is not my best self i don't think it's my worst self either though that's a different Website but here's what I wrote I One

star i gave it one star i made an appointment by phone to have my eyes examined by an opt by an optometrist a month later i show up and check in at the front desk not until i'm being called into the doctor's office does anyone realize that they booked me for an internal medicine physician not an eye doctor the staff was friendly but had no explanation or concern seemingly that they that they would have made such a mistake they just kept saying i need a referral from my gp to get my eyes checked as if that was the reason they booked me for a completely wrong thing it was dot dot dot

stunning oh now hold on now listen one quick second on this and i don't i don't want to side necessarily with the folks at this um at this facility or clinic but i guess is it possible that it really is the rule that iCare is a referral thing and where their mistake was was when you made the initial appointment nobody said to you okay look here's how it works with us to get iCare you actually have to see a GP first I know it's kind of silly that's just the system that we use and therefore I'm going to book you with a GP and then they're going to give you a once-over and then they're going to refer you to the the iCare if they would have given you that explanation is it possible that they were actually following the protocols but they failed to give

you that explanation i truly don't think so because like i mentioned this is and it's all complicated i was also just sort of mad at the system as well i just sort of feel like the healthcare system is just so goddamn broken for those who just need healthcare um but i feel like not i feel like i was mentioning before that like this medical center i went to yesterday where the mistake was made is somehow tied in loosely with my network of care with this broader brand right and so they had access to everything they should they should see who my primary care physician is and again nobody on the phone said that i think you know what i mean like nobody would have said if somebody on the phone said oh okay well who is your primary care physician you need a referral if you don't have one we'll set you up i think what happened was somebody on the phone just messed up they didn't understand that i was trying to make an eye doctor point wrong box they did something wrong and then and there was some miscommunication and maybe and this is where i want to be really honest if there's anything that like kind of points back at me here it's that i was under the impression i was calling a facility that i had been to physically before and i now realize that it's nearby but actually a different building that is not directly associated And so when I called and said, I was a patient here, but my doctor is gone. I need to make another eye doctor appointment. Like, who do you have on staff? There's no doubt in my mind that I made it clear that I needed an eye doctor appointment. But I do think that I might have confused things by claiming to be an existing patient. And then maybe the person on the other end of the line just was just like trying to get through her day and just didn't understand it or missed something like probably the original sin was in that original conversation between me and the person on the phone a month or two ago. But so, you know, I don't have a recording of that. That's why you're going to start recording all of your phone calls, citing them in your Yelp reviews. Right, exactly. So anyway, I do think, though, that I should not have gotten that far down the line before anybody. And then it was me who had to realize that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I'll admit that maybe some of this is on me. Maybe I should bump this up to two stars, but I was, like I say, maybe don't yelp when you're mad.

I don't know. But, like, the other thing, though, you kind of explained this, but maybe it went a little over my head. Was it the lack of photographs of eyeballs? What really tipped you off when you were sitting in there that it was that this was not optometry, that this was general practitioner?

going on just a few other people who were in the um waiting room it just um they there are a lot of older people in there with like clearly like i think medical issues that it didn't just i've been in a lot as funny as i i've been a lot of doctor's offices and in a way it almost made me embarrassed that i didn't see the signs earlier but there was something about this waiting room that it was just very clearly i'm not in an eye doctor waiting room here it just that'd be an

Interesting, kind of slightly morbid, but interesting game. Quantum leaps someone into the waiting room of any number of specialist doctors, and you have to try to figure out what waiting room you're in.

I feel like I and most people could probably nail eye doctor and orthodontist. Orthodontist is like big time, right? Because they're always – I feel like orthodontist offices and it's been – I mean.

literally several decades since i've been in one there's a lot more like you can like you can buy this special retainer or this there's more like kind of flash for sale in the waiting room got

you there's a lot of people just wearing headgear yes right exactly yeah do they even do that anymore has headgear been completely i don't think i've seen a person of any age in headgear in the longest time and that was a pretty big part of like childhood there was always a one or two kids in headgear when i was in like elementary and middle school don't you remember that yeah

i had some too and the funny thing is i was only required to wear mine at night but i actually do remember wearing mine around sometimes what a weird kid now that i think about that like i think that like you have very nice teeth though oh thanks i want to talk to you about this you know i know that you have um the little gap between your front teeth what is it diastema diastema diastema um and you've talked about that in the show even before i was part of the show i remember I didn't remember that it was something that maybe, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but I was talking to our friend Phyllis, who has something similar, and she'd mentioned that you were like, you had insecurities around that? Oh, yeah. Now, you had braces as a kid, though, right? I've seen photos of you with braces. Okay, so you didn't. You don't know the whole orthodontics thing.

No, only from afar. I got lucky that my teeth are pretty straight, other than having this gap in my teeth. But even just that little bit of my teeth not looking like everyone else's or at least the kids that had had braces made me – everything made me feel self-conscious when I was a kid. Very little has changed, by the way. Everything makes me feel self-conscious as an adult.

Even the teeth, the tooth gap? Because I was going to say, yeah, it's charming. You don't want to get rid of that.

I've relaxed on that one because, A, what am I going to do about it at this age? And, B, I've received enough feedback from people in my life saying, no, it's like – And if I see it in someone else, I don't find it in any way off-putting. So I've kind of like mentally adjusted to it. But definitely there would have been a time when I was a kid where if I could have snapped my fingers and had braces. And again, spoken as a kid who never had to actually go through all of the hassle of braces, which are famously really bad. You know, they're uncomfortable. They hurt your mouth. They cut the inside of your mouth. It's all of the stuff that goes along with them. I had this sort of, I guess you could say, privilege of not, I guess, really needing braces or glasses, but desperately wanting to have both headgear and thick glasses. That was, I really, in fact, the Hey Dummies video this week, everything is really about optometry on the show. This is optometry week on TVTL.

It is, weirdly.

In the Hey Dummies video, I was making it here in the hotel room in L.A., and I was reading the question from the listener, and I had to put on my new reading glasses. because it's gone from, like, it's not great for me to read. It's a little harder to read, my phone and other things without the glasses, to, like, pretty much I need to put them on now to see the print in a way that I can read, you know?

But they're also very stylish glasses that you got at, like, an art museum, right?

I bought them in the gift shop of the New York Public Library. Or the library, rather, yeah. But, you know, what's funny is you're talking about the kind of where one gets glasses from and if you're buying the glasses from a – if you're getting your eyes checked out at a place that also sells you the glasses, they've vertically integrated the entire process, right? They're going to diagnose you and then they're going to provide you the solution. And there's something that feels better about going to an eye professional who has no dog in the fight of, like, what glasses you buy. I went and actually got – this was maybe a year or two ago. i went to the mall in portland and i went to the warby parker and i went to the eye doctor in the warby parker and i want to say this eye doctor was very professional very clearly somebody who was you know trained and and had a diploma in whatever version of it whether it was optometry or ophthalmology and um the thing that's kind of funny though is i got those glasses from warby parker they were probably not cheap you know and i wanted them to be sort of stylish i'm going to start wearing glasses they got to be kind of stylish they don't work as well as the plus one readers i just bought in the friggin gift shop i now find myself wearing and i'm wearing them in the in the hey dummies video this week i'm just wearing these straight up readers that i just bought at a museum gift shop they're they're better they work better than the warby parker ones where i did all the lenses this one or this one this one or this one i don't i don't know what to say about that other than yeah i just the readers are just kind of working for me better

than the other one you know i'm i believe the glasses i'm wearing now are from warby parker or something very close to that like glasses usa and we've seen like that industry change hugely since like you know me growing up like going to a physical store and getting these glasses that were really expensive And now like the price point is way down and you can have all these options. You can get them online. Whenever this topic comes up on the show, though, we always hear from we must have optometrists in the audience who are just like who write in to say, like, please stop using those services. Like I'm telling you the way like really where the focal point on the lenses are aren't right. Like you can get the glasses cheaper, but I promise you they're not as good for your eyes or whatever. And so I don't know if those folks are still listening. Maybe they've given up on the show by now because I haven't heeded their warnings. But, yeah, I wonder what what they kind of make of all of that. But I certainly I feel like I made another appointment in a different place to get my eyes checked. And I have that appointment tomorrow, by the way. So I'm looking forward to that. And I lucked out like I didn't have to wait a long time because somebody canceled an appointment or something.

But it's an otolaryngology office, right?

I think so. There's a big tooth on the sign.

That's good. That's definitely a Dr. Johnson Spine Clinic where you'll be going to get your eyes checked. Well, I'll be curious to hear how that goes.

Oh, I was going to say, I was looking at other places, though, and I was like, I literally, I know people talk about getting their glasses from Costco, but I could also get my eyes checked at Costco, I realize. And again, if anybody's done that, I'm not judging you or anything. But for me, I don't want to go to Costco to get my eyes examined. I want to be in a doctor's office. I also have other issues with my eyes. They're pretty whack.

The tough part, too, is when they sell you the glasses at Costco, they're those novelty, oversized fun glasses. And that's the one style they offer. So, I mean, that right there is just it's all about volume there.

Genevieve said, we should go to Costco. And I'm like, I only have two eyes I need examined. Not more than that.

Hey, let's let's thank some dazzling donors and then and then dip into a restaurant that I I feel like you might give a two star review at the highest. I'm excited to tell you about this place called Frogs in New York. I'll keep Yelp open then.

We was hoping for some razzle dazzle. Razzle dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle dazzle. On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. All right, let's go ahead and do that.

Let's thank our dazzling donors today. These folks are donating a truly dazzling amount of dough each month. It's vital to the mission of TBTL. The mission of TBTL is to end global loneliness, but a secondary and almost equally important mission of TBTL is to pay me and Andrew and John salaries to do this for our job. And we can only do it thanks to folks like Jesse LePage, I don't know if I have seen a pronouncer that I am more fond of than the way Jesse clarifies the pronunciation of his name. Jesse, like the former Seattle Mariner and Cincinnati Red, Jesse Winker, and LePage, that sounds like the page, as in the song, Turn the Page, by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band.

Yes. Preferred pronouns he, him. Yes. Thank you.

And the Jesse Winker reference makes sense because this Jesse, Jesse LePage, is in Cincinnati, Ohio, which was the place Jesse Winker was playing and having great success before. He did what a lot of folks like to do, which is come to the Mariners and then suffer through statistically one of their worst seasons ever.

Was it statistically one of their worst seasons ever? I didn't know that.

I mean, Jesse Winker, he played very—

Oh, his season. I'm sorry, not the team. Yes, yes, his. Yeah, yeah, he was terrible.

We call it pulling a Colton Wong.

Yeah, I know. Well, he was always a wild card. But anyway, yeah, I don't know where Jesse Winker is now. I think he might be in Milwaukee, but Jesse LePage, Cincinnati, Ohio.

I'm sure he'll be bouncing back, and he'll be putting up career numbers again right away, which, again, is usually the—that's kind of the way these things go. Jesse LePage has been putting up career numbers and supporting TBTL for a good while now, though. I know that. And Jesse says, Hi, friendos. I'm grateful that I was able to donate as a dazzling donor in last year's TBTL-a-thon. Luke, Andrew, and John mean so much to me, and their delightful ramblings help keep me sane in this not-quite-sane world. I'm also grateful for our wonderful community of tens, especially my fellow holiday card senders. I even received a card from the Czech Republic, for goodness sakes. Shout out to Daisy. Sounds like we have a listener in the Czech Republic named Daisy. Yeah, I guess so. This is all news to me. Yes. I mean, the the the community of tens and all of the the different fun stuff that folks get up to as a group in terms of card exchanges and helping each other out is just incredible. I feel like we learn about this from the listeners. You know, there was a long time ago. We were the central part of this, but it has grown into its whole own thing involving people in the Czech Republic named Daisy, apparently. That's right. Jesse says, keep what you're doing. Keep doing what you're doing with.

you have enriched my life and the lives of so many oh uh how about a live show in the greater valley city ohio area one of these days i see jesse's in cincinnati he can get he could get over there to samasky's pizza yeah i mean that is where we'd have to do it right i think so i need

to check out that mortify you to your very core i that i don't get hung up on specifics here i'm I'm not exactly sure the relationship between my friend Lenny Samosky and the Samosky Pizza place. And so Samosky Pizza, there is a connection. But like Samosky Pizza is not a place I grew up with. It sort of came about after I was gone. But the idea of just doing a TBTL live show in Valley City is an interesting idea. Like the school that I went to, the elementary school, there is now some sort of like a child care center or something. And, like, it would be interesting to, like, find my old third grade classroom and do it there if they'd let me.

Yeah. Liverpool Elementary, right?

Yeah. Good remembering.

Didn't you have a – wasn't there a frog jumping contest or something?

Valley City, home of the frog jumping contest. Yeah.

That's very apropos because we're going to be talking about a restaurant called Frogs. Oh, yeah. On the show coming up. But, Jesse, watch this space. We should figure out something in Ohio. But I want to be clear, Andrew. I don't want to make I don't want us to choose something that's going to give you kind of complicated feelings because I like I would probably not feel comfortable doing the show from like the home of my friend Peter Williams who I grew up with just because I know that Randall and Diane would be sitting there being very supportive but also I'm sure deeply confused as to what has happened in a career sense for their son's childhood best friend like there's a There's a thing where this gets like if we were doing this in Ohio and it was a bunch of people from your past and you were having to be sort of on in a way, you know, in front of people that you knew from various stages of your growing up years. I could see that being a lot.

Yeah. The Valley City question. And again, I'm bogging this down too much. But the Valley City thing is a little bit interesting because it's so far in my past. You know, I moved out of there in seventh grade or after seventh grade, I think. I think it would actually be more embarrassing to do it in like the west side suburbs of Cleveland where like I where I grew up, you know, where I came of age and I still have more people in my life from there. It's like Valley City. Nobody would know who the hell I am anymore.

I don't even know if I know what if we did it from the Erie Screw Company, the Lake Erie Screw Company.

Now you're talking. Now you're talking.

OK, Jesse, print it. Cut it. That's what we're going to do. TBTL live from the Lake Erie Screw Company in 2085. That's right, down near you. Maestro?

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, dattle.

We're also thanking donors Asha and Cameron Little. Those are names we've seen many times on this list. Wonderful, supportive, long-suffering peeps. And they are in Taos, New Mexico. And they're saying, hey, last year we asked Luke and Andrew's advice on where to live. despite their totally inaccurate perceptions, we chose Taos, New Mexico. What did we say about Taos, New Mexico? You think I know?

I don't know, but apparently we were... I mean, you asked us where to live.

I must have brought up a lot of silver and turquoise. That's what I think of when I think of Taos, New Mexico.

Maybe, yes. I don't know what we said, but the offensive stuff was said by you. I know that for sure.

100%. Shout out to any New Mexitans, says Asha and Cameron. This year, by the way, Taos actually sounds lovely. I don't think I've ever been to Taos. You and I have been through New Mexico very briefly together, right? Didn't we stay in a hotel across the street from the isotopes? Or was that a reporting trip I was on and you weren't on that one?

Luke, I can't remember. I don't know for sure. I remember talking about possibly being an isotope country when we were planning something. but I don't remember staying somewhere and putting eyes on it.

Maybe I was just staying in Albuquerque for a night or something on my way somewhere. That might have been it. I'll bet you it was that, yeah. I've heard Taos is lovely, though. I'm surprised that we said something about Taos that was kind of a disincentive for Asha and Cameron, and then they overrode that and went out to Taos and are loving it. Anyway, well, I'm glad you're loving it. This year we want to use this space to share a message from some of our friendos. Okay, so now I think the message is shifting into the voice of some folks that are in a band called Little Rumor. Do I have that correct, Andrew? That's my understanding here, yeah. Okay. Hi, TBTL. We are a Seattle band originally from Alaska called Little Rumor. Please don't let too many listeners check out our music because we have no following.

and we want to keep it that way. Very smart, Little Rumor, folks. I love it. Kind of an anti-whisper campaign. Very, very clever. Good idea. This is going to work, I feel. We have a new single out. It's called No Pressure, but we know that your time is valuable. So here is all of our music played at the same time, so you can decide if you like it. I can't imagine this wouldn't sound glorious, Andrew. So this is all of the music of the band Little Rumor kind of smashed into one song or at least some amount of time and we're going to listen to that

now luke i listened to the first few seconds of this yesterday what i'm going to do here is i'm going to hit play but you are in control you let this play as long as you can handle it and then you tell me when to stop okay okay okay stop stop stop that's funny yep good that was it i think you

heard all you needed to hear i get it yes i absolutely get it i will say that the band's

music though when you hear a sound like that you're like it it was so i guess the word is awful uh you expect the worst of this band and then when you go and sound unlike a mr bungle record from the 90s i love mr bungle loved i don't think i can go back to that um but uh I will say, what a great way to prepare somebody to hear your good music is by playing that sound, because then when I played their actual song, which we'll play at the end of the show for music for your weekend, you're going to be very, very pleasantly surprised at how beautiful it is.

Very, very savvy. I'm telling you, I don't know what the folks in Little Rumor are doing in addition to playing in the band, you know, that their quote unquote day jobs are. But I hope it's in brand marketing. Yes. This is all very, very smart. This is very, very well handled by them. we do have a new single out it's called No Pressure we just played that kind of compression version of all of their music if you'd like to hear the new single here's the link and then the message says once again the band is called Little Rumor but please don't have too many people check us out so we will have just the right amount of people hearing the song No Pressure at the end of the show because we will use this as the listener suggestion for music for your weekend coming up in a bit in the meantime thank you so much asia and cameron and also jesse for making uh tbtl possible today hello and welcome to top story i'm guessing you didn't have a chance to see this article yet andrew um about this new restaurant in new york called Frogs. Nope. Um, but I just, I just want to tell you about it because it's, it's, I think it's one of those things that kind of points out the differences typically in how you and I tend to, the things that we tend to go in for. I saw a notice about this place and thought this sounds delightful. And then the more that I started reading about it, uh, the more I thought, boy, this would not really be a place that Andrew was super duper into. Uh, the restaurant is, uh, called frog club i keep calling it the wrongly calling it frog it's called frog club it's in the west village and it uh opened fairly recently the owner is a woman named liz johnson who also co-owned a restaurant in la called horses that was really popular that has kind of gone through a whole thing where her and her former husband split up it was very acrimonious they were the co-owners and co you know chefs of that restaurant that whole thing is its own in a certain kind of like intersection of hipster culture and food culture the story of what happened to the people married who were running horses in la is this whole other subplot but she is now at frog club in new york and i will say uh the the only online presence really of the of the place is this youtube video that they released that's shot per like sort of perfectly in the style of like maybe a 1990s public television cooking demonstration uh-huh can i play you a little bit of this yeah i mean this this part's actually kind of this is pretty good so um it's imagine it's just that kind of like 90s sort of vhs sort of level footage of of this restaurant and the narration everything's really

good here. Now we go into the restaurant and we see the chef Liz Johnson standing in the kitchen. Liz Johnson, chef and owner of her own restaurant in New York City, has elevated Manhattan cuisine to impressive heights. One of the early principals in the new Nostalgia craze, she has moved from

beyond that in scope and in execution and packs them in a frog club witness her first course a black and white blini with creme fraiche and a cetra caviar our first dish we're going to prepare

is our black and white blini it's a large pancake that we make using two different types of so she

goes on to make this bellini and then of like it's basically a kind of a cooking demo but not one one that's in any way useful doesn't really help you make the food but they really do very much nail a certain kind of look and sound i it's a video is like 12 minutes long but then if you skip to the end of it i also really kind of liked the end for one small detail i would i'll see if you notice the same small detail that just delighted me about this video so this like the

ending credits and whatever frog club is now open Monday through Thursday reservations can be made two weeks in advance on the net at www.frogclub.nyc

but the credits are exceedingly long as a bit I think as a bit did you notice though what I

thought was a nice little detail maybe i was first of all so far i mean this is probably it's not a restaurant for me but i'm delighted by all this production stuff i love that he called it the net is that what you're that's it yeah yeah yeah i love that yeah that's great exactly that was like

my i thought that was a a great little detail anytime we can work the net yes into something

about the internet these days um he could have said the information super highway would have been

pretty great too um so this place is it's one of those things where it's like you go to their website and there's like almost nothing on the website of any use it's just like a very intentionally i don't know what would you call it sort of fallow place but there's like an email address that i think you can email to try to get on the list to get in it's got this really i mean this is a restaurant that's like hip in a way that is so far beyond my ability to sort of like conceive of things like the the murals inside are of all like of all of these frogs but they're like smoking cigars and just like engaging in like human behaviors but as frogs they released the 10 ways to get 86 from the restaurant this was the restaurant released this list on their own instagram page um oh i will mention also andrew this was the part that i thought you might get a little bit like maybe eye rolly about when you go into the restaurant they take your phone and they put a sticker over the camera on your phone because you are not allowed to take any pictures inside the restaurant there's somebody whose job it is to make sure that your phone is essentially non-functional as a camera while you're in there yeah um i am not

somebody who takes photos of my food and i kind of don't love the trend of that so you know that's where I am on that but yeah telling people like yeah that seems pretentious to do that I understand what they're going for in a certain way I think but like yeah that seems that that turns me off big time saying I'm gonna put a sticker over your phone especially because if I were to walk in there which they wouldn't let me but if I were I'd be like dude I'm not gonna take a picture of my fucking food anyway sorry for the swears like I uh like whatever I would be very put off by that Having said that, I also, in some of the very lowbrow places I go for lunch, I wish that there were more enforced policies about not disturbing the people around you with your bores cell phone behavior.

That's more like playing, like watching an entire TV show with no headphones kind of deal.

Like I told you the two women who were watching Martin on full blast on one of their phones at a teriyaki joint.

You so crazy. Ways to get 86'd from Frog Club. number one no call no showing for a reservation so if you do that apparently you will be 86 and if you have not worked in a restaurant you're not familiar that's like you're permanently banned 86 is a kind of it's it's a flexible term because it can be we ran out of something we're 86 on you know oh really yeah yeah 80 we're uh like it's kind of kitchen talk for we're 86 on the you know fish of the day or something we're out of it but you can also mean you're never coming back to this place you are 86 from this place do you know i didn't know that because

one of the fine establishments that i belong to the lake city eagles club um there used to be a sign that said talking politics will get you 86 i always thought 86 just meant kicked out i didn't know it meant kicked out and you got your burn notice i well you know there i'm i'm guessing

that the different places have different definitions maybe in some places it's just a temporary ban like for that night maybe someplace it's a lifetime ban i did go to the coffee shop at the seattle art museum recently with ad actually that's not true it was not it's

It's a different coffee shop, but it's next to the art museum. And I had really been jonesing for some coffee on this particular Saturday. And I was really excited about it. And I went in to get this coffee. And the guy said, yeah, we're 86th on half and half. And I thought, that seems like a fairly critical part of the coffee experience. I know you drink your coffee black. But I feel like it's a pretty normal thing to want to have. Like, running out of cream at a coffee shop seems, A, avoidable, and B, like, you're really dropping the ball there.

I have several follow-ups on that. First of all, did they not have any other kind of true dairy creamer there?

They had milk.

They had milk, but not half and half. Okay. Yeah, and I took the milk. And then maybe some nut milks or something, I don't know, or oat milks or something.

I don't think they – well, actually, you know what? They might have – you know what? I didn't inquire about that. And they didn't – it was weird. It was like, I guess what I'm trying to say is sometimes when a coffee shop is too highfalutin, I get very intimidated because, I don't know, I feel like I'm not 100% clear on the difference between an Americano and a drip. I kind of, like, when I order an Americano is when I want to make sure it's really hot because I feel like they're making it for me as opposed to it's already been maybe pre-made, so it might be able to get them to jack the heat up on it. But I just don't know what I'm doing in a coffee shop, and so certain ones like this one that had kind of like a real fancy piece of machinery and the people in there seem fancy, I don't know. It gets in my head.

I was just going to say, but the other thing I wanted to say about your little coffee shop experience there was until this very moment, I did not know that 86'd mean we're out of something. So if somebody at coffee shop said we're 86'd on half and half, I would have no idea what that person would be talking about.

Half and half was in here talking politics.

Yeah, was it talking politics? Sounds like half and half. It's like right down the middle.

Yeah, right. Number two thing to look at you, 86, from Frog Club in New York City. Taking photos inside. This includes bathroom selfies. See previous comments. That's one of those things where I think most of us peace-loving people kind of recognize that there is an annoying selfie culture that has sprouted up and it can be too much. Particularly like you're waiting to use the restroom and someone's in there composing the perfect photo of themselves in the restaurant. It's easy to slide into this notion of, like, are you really experiencing what's happening or are you experiencing it through the photograph some months from now? But that being said, I do think policing or, as they now say, gatekeeping people's behavior or gatekeeping your restaurant from those who would like to take a selfie in the bathroom seems a little much to me. Number three, way to get 86.

I'm sorry. I know you're trying to get through this, but can I ask you about that a little bit? Because I'm trying to figure out – I'm trying to examine my own feelings. If I was in, like, again, let's say a rare occasion that I go to a fancy restaurant, right, and they say, maybe they say when you're making the reservation or maybe even the person who takes you to your seat just says, just so you know, in this restaurant we have a no photo policy, that wouldn't turn me off. Like, putting the sticker over the phone cam or whatever would really irritate me. But if they just said gently and once we have a no photo policy in the restaurant, thank you. And then if there was a sign in the in the bathroom that said, please, no photos, it can lead to I'm trying to think of a better word than 86. It can lead to, you know, you being, I guess, 86 from the restaurant. I don't think that would bother me too much, but it would definitely have to be about the approach and the way they communicate that.

Yeah, I think I have mixed feelings on it because would and it's also probably very generational. I think that like there's a certain person, you know, who's much younger than I, who just they just they just kind of live their life a little differently because of generational differences. And if I want to slide into a really annoying kind of OK boomer type of stereotype, it's like, yeah, a bunch of a bunch of young people like kind of standing where I'm trying to walk because they're trying to do some kind of a photo and whatever. Like that is that something that gets on my nerves? Yes. Do I think telling people no cameras and like we're going to put a sticker over your phone camera is a little extreme? Yes. It's like I would like the behavior to moderate itself on its own. Or like you said, with a kind of gentle bit of like, hey, we just asked that you kind of lay off it with all the like the photos.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. By the way, I don't know. I assume that you can't see yourself right now on the screen if you're reading this article. But like if you ever wanted to be in a noir film, this is I mean, you are in some bright sunlight. You have the shades, like the blinds half closed, and they are cutting across you horizontally. Like you are a stereotype in a noir film right now. It is amazing. I'm trying to use the phone.

I'm trying to now. Let's see. Sorry. I know I'm off mic. I'm in the hotel room, and while I am very much enjoying the sunshine, I started today by saying it's fun to get a little bit of that in my life living in the Pacific Northwest. Now it's too much. And it was making it hard for me to even see the computer screen So I've now pulled these shades, but I think there's still

light coming through so i'm guessing i still look fairly sam spade-ish yeah it's really cool oh good okay well let's see here hold on now well now now i think i have to i don't even know what screen that would be on on my oh there i am oh yeah it's not like a wolverine or something it's

not quite as pronounced as it was before but yeah you definitely look like a dame was about to walk

in on her getaway sticks look at those gams by the way thing number three that will get you 86

calling them getaway sticks yeah and dames and dames actually okay rule number three how to get

86 from frog club in new york city being rude or inappropriate to our team especially tony

that's pretty funny that got a good touch good yeah they're good so they're pretty good they

knew this now they do have this they do have they have this figured out i don't know what the story is on tony but i'd like to know i'm they've piqued my interest uh number four thing that will get you 86 from frog club in new york city stealing or stealing from or vandalizing the restaurant i think they have a lot of of like you know tchotchkes and stuff i guess there's the ceiling is a bunch of like plates that are hung from the ceiling kind of in this weird kind of metallic like hook system. So I don't know if it's that people want to steal the plates or, you know, I don't know what's on each and every table, but you cannot steal from or vandalize the restaurant. That will get you 80. I mean, that one seems pretty straightforward, but I'm wondering if they're, I mean, when you have a really buzzy restaurant, like this is, I'm guessing this is probably the buzziest restaurant in New York for the next couple of weeks anyway. You probably also have people that want to grab the centerpiece or something because it's like, this is from Frog Club. Yeah, and that

that is yeah you don't want to do that don't steal from restaurants uh number five way to

get 86ed from frog club touching the memorabilia thinking about touching the memorabilia i don't know what the memorabilia is and i don't know how that's different from stealing from the restaurant but i guess if you touch the memorabilia or if you're thinking about touching the memorabilia i think i think what we have here i mean i started this by saying This is going to be Andrew's least favorite place. I feel like what's happened is because you're bought in on the kind of basic sense of humor of the people, none of this stuff is annoying. Whereas imagine this restaurant is like Tony Macaroni's on Staten Island. And if you're even thinking about touching that memorabilia, forget about it. We're like, we don't like that guy. But the folks that are putting this place together with their funny video, when they say thinking about touching the memorabilia, we laugh because we've already we're already kind of we've we've we've sort of we're in we're all in for what they're doing. Well, that's not true. We're not all in for it. But we're you know what I mean? This is how perception works. It's like all of this stuff could be annoying, except we decided at some point we sort of like the vibe. And now we're into it. And you know what else is?

and I just realized like the irony of something here when you described that ceiling to me I was like oh that sounds cool but I don't know if I'm picturing it right so I go online to look for photos of it and there are none there's some frog club associated with some university in Alabama and now I'm really intrigued like I actually really want to know what the inside of this place looks like now and but they're being so withholding by making sure nobody takes any photos and by having a very very minimal uh web presence they really now even schlubby old andy

wants to go in there and see what's going on well they they there was a new york times piece about it and i believe like the basically again this is just it's it's it's sort of like what that uh little rumor band is doing that we're going to play at the end of the show yeah it's like the new york times shows up now in any normal restaurant's life that's a big deal but liz johnson the owner of the restaurant uh and and head chef i i believe like the i forget how the reporter described it but she basically almost refused to answer any questions or allow any photos like which is very very clever because yeah you know of course that only that only uh is even more intriguing for people uh number six way to get 86ed from frog club in new york city lying about it being your birthday also a pretty good one pretty funny yeah that was for a long time a go-to joke for me i would i would love to particularly if you're in a kind of restaurant where they're going to bring out a hat you know there will be singing if you wanted to kind of like just give your friend or your date a little bit of a of a good-natured ribbing you might mention uh subtly to the staff that it is their birthday sure get yourself a free little dessert with a candle get a free dessert have a funny moment happen apparently if you do that if you lie about it being your birthday uh you will get 86 from this place uh number seven way to get 86 from frog club in new york city canceling a reservation more than thrice okay i don't i'm trying to figure out the person who would have i'm guessing this is a coveted reservation at this point who would have and then cancel a reservation at frog club three more than three times what was

the first rule again wasn't that also about cancellations that was no call no showing for

a reservation so if you make a reservation you just don't show up that's grounds for 86ing or if you keep making reservations and then canceling them and remaking them more than thrice that

doesn't irritate me i sort of feel like if you truly have a long waiting list of people trying to get in there and the restaurant business is obviously very complicated and then at this level i think increasingly complicated and that's speaking as somebody who hasn't seen the bear um i understand why i understand why that would that could be that could be detrimental to your

business if somebody keeps screwing around with you like that yeah i think my guess would be that it eats up a lot of time of somebody who's doing the scheduling. And I mean, if they wanted to really get around this, they could do what a lot of restaurants are doing now, which is you did, they just take your credit card. And if you, I guess if you, you know, if you were to, what they're trying to account for here is somebody who is changing the reservation, you know, with enough advanced time that they're not on the hook for anything, but they just keep kind of changing their minds or changing their schedule. Number eight, the things that will get you 86 from frog club in New York city, becoming dangerously intoxicated that one is i mean yes but also i don't know we we actually just talked about this on the show i think on the thursday edition of the program which is the question of over serving on the one hand i feel like you know if you're a grown adult you really should handle your business and you should uh refrain from becoming dangerously intoxicated but also this seems like a small restaurant where they're i don't know what do you think like i mean And if the same server is bringing back your 11th, you know, double tequila shot, wouldn't they be kind of aware that this is going in a direction that's not good for anyone?

Yeah. And legally, they are on the hook for that. I'm not against this rule. Well, I guess this is a list of ways to get 86ed, not just stop serving. I wouldn't. I mean, that. Yeah, this one doesn't belong on the list, in my opinion. I just sort of feel like this is legally they can't. You're not allowed to over serve. You will get in trouble as an establishment if you've done that. And, Luke, you and I are friends with some people that we've seen who've reached a point in their intoxication where a bartender has had to say no mas. Like, that is something that happens from time to time. I would say that isn't for 86. Stop serving the person when you see that they're visibly drunk. That is legally your responsibility.

Sometimes, Andrew, I've been that friend of myself.

You were the person I was talking about.

who's being told uh you've had uh you've had about enough sir um number nine the number nine thing that will get you 86 from this restaurant this was an interesting one to me requesting a free meal just i'm wondering if that's more is that like a is that a shot across the bow of various influencers like food restaurant influencers and journalists and people who who might, you know, say, well, I'm going to come in and you'll feed me for free and then I will

do a tick tock about it. That's a really good explanation. I didn't end up there. I couldn't figure out what that was about, but I'll go with you on that. That sounds about right. And I do think that would be irritating because, you know, first of all, professional reviewers, like in the classic New York Times style, who did you even mention the other day? Ruth Reichel, like going undercover, like nobody's asking to get free meals. In fact, they'll probably return to a restaurant several times possibly in different disguises and pay for those meals and try to blend in and be as normal as possible to give an honest review that was the tradition well now all

food reviews go through keith lead you know who that is no very interesting story actually we probably don't have time to unpack all of it but this there's this guy named keith lee he lives in vegas i believe and i think he was previously like a mixed martial arts fighter and he has just started doing these like restaurant reviews where he just would be sitting in his car and he would say like you know I saw this place online or whatever I heard about this place and I'm here in my car and I've ordered it and then he would just eat it and kind of describe you know if he thought it tasted good or not or whatever he seems like a likable enough guy I can't figure out why this took off the way it did it's a phenomenon like we're talking tens of millions of views if Keith Lee sits in his car outside your restaurant which he can't do anymore by the way and and reviews your place it will be like a line around the block for the next two weeks like he can't do it because somebody will spot him and recognize yes he has to send in now like family members or he has to send in you know somebody to like uh buy the stuff and bring it out to him because if particularly i think in vegas where he's based out of but now probably in a lot of places if he walks into your

and what he does it's usually like mom and pop places it's a lot of that kind of like uh you know a restaurant that maybe is a labor of love for some people and maybe a dream and it's not really taking off and and so they've reached out to him or someone has reached out on their behalf saying these guys would make really great you know meatballs chopped meatballs or i was gonna say like you know uh chopped beef sandwich or whatever like it's a you know some family run place it's in some strip mall in summerland and they make really good stuff but they're like you know not making ends meet and then he'll go out there and eat something from there usually like it and then it's like game changing at least in the short term for these folks but anyway that's the keith lee experience gotcha um we're no more ruth reichel ruth reichel is is is yesterday's news now it's all about keith lee sitting in his car um here's the number 10 way the 10th way to get 86ed from Frog Club in New York City Kissing the chef without her consent

Yeah, fair

But here's, Andrew Here's the dazzling deed on that Do you know what one of the items on the menu is? No For $1,000 You can kiss the chef Oh my goodness And the day or the night that the New York Times Was there writing their kind of review of the place Apparently someone had already Availed themselves Of that offer They had paid $1,000 to kiss the chef on the cheek.

I was going to say, yeah, what are the rules?

And the description was, the account of it was that the chef was blushing. Interesting. There was a $1,000 kiss on the cheek.

And the chef is the woman who's – Yeah, Liz Johnson. Yeah, who already was famous for her other endeavor with her former partner or whatever. Yeah, horses. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, so she's well-known. She's an established person.

Yeah, I think you would say a kind of a celebrity chef at this point, at least for a certain kind of group of people. And it's just interesting because on the one hand, for $1,000, I guess, you know, there's like you get you can give her a kiss. I don't know if the rules are on the cheek or this person just opted for on the cheek. But then also it's a place where both there is a universe in which you can kiss the chef. I wonder if that's a kiss the cook kind of reference. That's like a joke about like those aprons that people used to have that said kiss the cook.

Maybe. It would be funny if they wore those aprons in the kitchen.

This is one of the few restaurants that I can think of where there is a framework for you kissing the chef. But then also, if you go outside of that framework, you're out of there, which, by the way, makes sense. I think kissing any of the staff of any restaurant without their consent probably grounds for being 86. Or other customers. Or really anyone in the restaurant. Although, of course, people will point this out in the emails. One of the first big mysteries that we tried to get to the bottom of as a radio show, TBTL is Mystery Solvers, many years ago, was if it was a hallucination or the Mandela effect that at an ice cream shop called Ferrell's, that if there really had been a thing that when you turned 16, the staff came out of the kitchen. And if you were a young boy of the all the women staffers lined up and the opposite, if you were a young girl and you got kissed by the staff of Farrell's ice cream parlor. And if I remember right, we learned that, yes, that happened.

Am I right? No, I think I'm confusing things. Was this somehow spawned by former producer Jen's husband, Jason? I believe so. I believe so. Okay. Yeah.

And, again, I was as shocked as anyone by the news that, yes, this was a thing. I think we had people that had worked there finally who found us and weighed in on it. But, yeah, that kind of behavior will get you 86th from Frog Club in New York City. Also, I will mention this. The food looks really good.

Yeah. What is that type of food you were describing? Maybe you weren't describing it. The video was describing it. What was she making in the kitchen? I had never heard of that. A bellini. What is a bellini?

It's kind of a savory pancake, and so this Bellini was part of it. It was half and half. One part of it was black. One part of it was white, and the black side had rye flour in it, and the white side had typical, like, white flour. So my sense was that you kind of made, like, it's kind of a savory, like I said, kind of a savory pancake kind of a thing. That sounds good. They also, they do their burger, they do it on an English muffin, which I have been saying for years. is an underappreciated thing to serve a burger on because I think it gets the exact right ratio of bun to burger. I've never been a fan of this trend. And maybe this is starting to kind of wane a bit, but like that trend of we're going to give you a giant loaf of bread that's going to surround this meat for your hamburger. I don't like that proportion. I love a good English muffin on there. Do you, I know that you're not eating a lot of meat these days. You probably still eat like, you know, impossible burgers, I'm assuming, or the occasional non-meat burger.

You know what's funny? A little bit, but I have gone away from, I think, I wonder if this is a typical evolution of someone who sort of doesn't eat a lot of meat anymore. And I'm not a vegetarian, strictly speaking, but I just, it's not a big, big part of my diet. you start off with like oh my gosh i want to find all the things that are as close as possible to the thing that i used to eat and then eventually kind of go and i don't know like i'm i it's very rare that i order an impossible burger anymore i would probably be more likely now to order like a black bean patty or something um where it's not trying to do an impression i will say that those meatballs at that manic meatballs joint were really good yeah and very convincing as a product so um maybe as the technology continues to improve but like i find myself eating less fake meat now than i did when i first started out because i just kind of i'm like i'd rather just either have the real thing or just go in a totally different direction well here's what i was going

to ask you you know me i'm definitely a meat eater but i also just ever since i've been with genevieve we've always kept um those morning star grillers in the freezer just as like a little snack and they're like you know they're nobody would confuse it it's you know this is pre the era of the impossible meat that you would think is a hamburger you wouldn't bite into this and think it's a hamburger but like i heat it up usually on the stovetop or possibly the microwave i will sometimes throw that on an english muffin and then what i was going to ask you was would you also throw an egg on there are you kind of off of eggs because to me that really completes the scene an english muffin with a griller and an egg on it beauty i have just been i was just

talking to becca about this because i love eggs like i like a good a well-made easy over egg actually like maybe over medium egg yep i love it so so much me too and yet i have entered a bizarre phase where i rarely eat just like eggs by themselves like i have a dozen eggs in my fridge i mean eggs are i think in a way i don't want to listen someone will email me about the industry the poultry industry, and I'm sure that it, there are a million things about it that are still not great for the animals. But I mean, the idea about what, you know, an unfertilized egg was never going to become a chicken. So I feel like there's a certain kind of morality there. Like if you're just eating an unfertilized egg, you're not really, you know, you're not ending the life of an animal so that you can eat it. You're just kind of, you know, I go back and forth. I love the taste of eggs so much if i think about it for too long where it came from what was going on with it i get really in my head about it um and i'll go through phases um where i'll be making a lot of eggs for myself a lot of fried eggs scrambled eggs they're also high protein i mean they're like they're they're kind of a miracle food in a way are and yet i will go long stretches like literally year i went to probably two years i made some the other day i made some fried eggs in the morning it was a sunday morning and i was just like powerfully hungry and so i fried up some eggs and made some toast because my dad had left some bread around first i was also thinking i can't believe this is a thing that people do this is magical like having some fried eggs and toast on the sunday morning and then i was like i need to really rein in some of my weird food behaviors because this is completely normal life like this doesn't need to be like a once in a six months treat for me but anyway uh i went like two years probably without having fried eggs at least that i made myself until the other day and now watch i'm gonna be on a hot streak i'm gonna be a real cool hand luke i'm gonna be eating 50 eggs a day my boy says he can eat 50 eggs eating 50 eggs i messed that up that was pretty good yeah all right a little music for your weekend before we are officially done with our tbtl week yes you know i wanted to give a i'm not gonna play anything

by them because i've already played music for your weekend uh i think too many times but i am going to see joanna sternberg uh later on i guess tomorrow night saturday evening at the fremont abbey where are they playing i've never been to the fremont abbey before so i'm really excited to do that it's a great space oh my gosh that's so perfect you're gonna have a blast i'm really excited about that but i just wanted to do that shout out but um for music for your weekend i don't have anything honestly that i have been um really jamming out to recently so i'm going to play for you something luke that i just heard for the very first time this morning i get a lot of press releases introducing me to new music and i got this press release uh for a band called coco and the name of the song is cora lu the only thing that i know that even rings a slight bell to me about coco is that it has maya friedman in it who is from dirty projectors and i remember i couldn't name

a song but I remember Dave Longstreth's project yeah and I listened to a lot of Dirty Projectors I think again in that like an early to mid-2000s era that we were talking about the other day when I was sort of just kind of collecting mp3s and seeing what was out there but anyway we had them on the Bryant Park project oh really oh yeah how was that uh I you know I think it could have been

I think I was very bad well it's been noted by the internet how bad I was at interviewing bands back in those days, particularly the band Sigur Rós, I think that in those days, like the guy who's the lead singer of Dirty Projectors, Dave Longstreth, was is a pretty cerebral guy and also a guy who I my sense was not like lacking in kind of confidence. And I think in back in the early days of me doing interviews, I got pretty intimidated pretty easily and then probably turned in a bad interview versus kind of holding my own and and and, you know, just being confident and comfortable in my role as the host so i remember look the album that he was talking about was i think the record was called rise above and the story on it you probably remember this was that he had found the cassette case for black flags i think it's a black flag album also called rise above i mean that's the song but anyway he basically found the cassette case for a black flag tape without the tape and then his project was to go in and re-record the whole album from memory oh wow so like dirty projectors versions of black flag songs yeah and there's a big gap there stylistically precisely and one of the people who was singing with him i'm assuming

is the person who's in this band coco yeah and again and i want to make clear like i only have kind of vague recollections of liking what i heard by the dirty projectors i'd never heard that story before, and I don't know much about them. But anyway, yeah, so this band is called Coco. This song just came out. I believe it's in anticipation of their second record coming out as Coco, and that record will be called Two, simply the number two. And this song is just a very gentle, mellow song called Coraloo.

What do you want to do, go on a loop? Do you want to see the sky and the water too? I know a place where you can't tell Which is which, everything's blue And I want to go there with you for a long time.

It kind of harkens back to a different time. Doesn't it feel like 70s almost relaxation? Yeah. No, I dig that.

By the way, they're coming to the Sunset Tavern in Seattle, April 30th. 30th oh okay coco is if you're uh if you're if you're foray out to the abbey this weekend yeah um lights a fire inside you for more live music they're also going to be at the turf club in st paul minnesota and also mississippi studios down there in portland oregon so i like that sound a

lot yeah did you see by the way the lineup for zoo tunes i've never been to zoo tunes before but here at no i haven't it's um i mean first of all you know people make the joke about like Boy, back in the day, the Super Bowl only played a bunch of music by old has-beens, but now they're playing the right music. And it's the joke being that we're all getting old, right? And so it's always going that far back. But Zoo Tunes, so here at the Seattle, what is it, the Seattle Park Zoo? What is it actually called? The Seattle Zoo, whatever. The Woodland Park Zoo. Woodland Park Zoo, thank you. They have a summer concert series, which I've never been to. And there's a bunch of folks on here that I haven't heard of before. But they have The Roots coming, The Violent Femmes, Nora Jones, The Descent. Lyle Lovett coming through? Oh, really? I didn't see Lyle Lovett.

No, I was just guessing because I feel like either at the winery or the Zootunes, you're going to get a good Lyle Lovett sighting. But here's where it's starting to get to me.

The Decemberists, Built to Spill with Yola Tango. Oh, wow. Waxahachie with Woods. Oh, come on now. Always with The Beths are playing. And Elking is playing, too, by the way. I still kind of – I don't know much about Al King, but I liked that song. That was a huge hit years ago. But anyway, it's just like – How about this, Sierra Farrell? Oh, see, I think I might have skipped over that because I don't know who that is. Who's Sierra Farrell?

August 11th. She's kind of a country singer, I guess you would say, doing kind of roots Americana music. I really like her stuff. Gotcha. But, yeah, I mean, quite a lineup.

Like, I've looked at this lineup.

I've had –

My friend played last summer opening up for the Indigo Girls. But, you know, quite often the list might be one or two shows I might be interested in. But this year I'm just like, wow, some of these were like fundamental to my young adulthood.

Well, Addy sent me a link to a music festival called Just Like Heaven that's at the Rose Bowl Saturday, May. I think it's 18th. I don't have my reading glasses on, Andrew. I can't exactly, but let me tell you the bands that are playing just like heaven at the Rose Bowl in May. The Postal Service, Phoenix, Death Cab for Cutie, The War on Drugs, Passion Pit, Always, Two Door Cinema Club, Fantagram, Tegan and Sarah, Washed Out, Broken Social Scene, Sleigh Bells, The Go Team.

team the go team i only think i remember that you were into the go team i don't think i know they're not the ones obsessed i get them a little bit confused with okay go just because of the name but i don't think i know the go team only from you talking about it they were in fact it was when i

was living in new york i think well la and new york when i was at my uh i was most obsessed they just put out this kind of it's hard to even describe the music it's just unfailingly upbeat I was in a real like junior, senior, the Go team. I was listening to a ton of music that was just like really upbeat, really getting you hyped for a jog. I think the Go team had a lot of kind of almost like cheerleader-like sounds on the records of people kind of like chanting, you know, like exciting, motivational things like we just won't be defeated. But, yeah, I was a big Go team fan. So I don't know. I might have to try to – I was going to say head on down to California for that. I'm in California right now. I might have to stay on down here.

Can you get a deal on an extra night on the hotel?

20% off, baby. Here is the song I would like to play. I don't know if the listeners will like it, but, Andrew, I kind of thought you might get a kick out of it. I have been listening to – I mean, this has been going on for a couple of years, but I've cycled back into just a straight-up obsession with the record Mmm Food by MF Doom, the late rapper MF Doom. I just think – I listened to it this morning on my jog. I just think it's a spectacular hip-hop record. And I don't know if it's because I've been listening to so much Doom that it's throwing me other things that are Doom-like, but this is a guy named Bishop Nehru, who is, I think, maybe 27 years old. He's from New York State, somewhere, I think, outside of New York City, and has been just producing beats and samples and putting out records since age 16. I think the name Bishop comes from the Tupac's character in the movie Juice And then Nehru is a reference to somebody who was an important politician in India Who worked with Mahatma Gandhi So anyway, that's the origin of Bishop Nehru I don't know very much else about him But I know that this song slaps And again, we're living in a time, Andrew where the people who would be roughly the age of our children were growing up listening to, like, I'm sure that this was a person who was listening to a lot of MF Doom, a lot of, like, maybe The Roots a little bit, a lot of Nos. And now we hear, like, what does that sound like when you grow up listening to that and then you internalize it and then you make your own new music in 2024? And it sounds like this, Bishop Nehru, the song is Too Lost. Can you play that?

Boy, you in the wrong place with the wrong one Boy, you in the wrong place with the wrong one

Boy, you in the wrong place with the wrong one Woke up stony, still I need my lighter in the rollie I'm thinking of the nonsense, I hope they let control me I look into the mirror and it's like I see the old teen Trapped in the glass Hoping it cracks So he roams free I start to leave As I'm headed for the kitchen And then I hear a voice And it's begging for attention Like listen Bitches Clear you been tripping I think that you're forgetting Everything that you been wishing Like what's with all the tension It's sunny like glisting Still through the thrills I've been seeing something different And now I'm what you're missing The piece to the puzzle So I'm never dipping Till you gone like shuttles I've been here since days We were playing in the puddles Cause I'm your inner child You'll never see a double It can't be the hustle like carly he got it they say he should slow but he can't ever stop it i feel numb how dead am i got pain inside but i never cry no still blessed so i question why is it still just me myself and i'm too lost all of the time in my thoughts there you go a little bishop nahru too lost oh to quote friend the stew bot that is objectively perfect that is so good right and i almost got i mean this is reductive maybe i always hate doing this but then i do it anyway oh this is you're about

to do the way that i describe all music is what's the other music there was just a second of it i

don't know if it was the almost like a tick tick at the beginning but it had almost a little michael christmas vibe not all of it it doesn't i wouldn't get that ass you high yeah but there's like for a minute which and also that you mentioned mf doom i forgot like you told me about mf doom like a i don't know like probably in the past year or so and i didn't realize that was something you liked and i know nothing about mf doom in fact i think i confuse him with like other rappers kind of of that elk that ilk of that ilk that i am unfamiliar with and now you've made me want

to go back and listen to that i would just say that that record food where every song every track it sort of at least nominally relates to food um which kind of sounds sort of like a you know a gimmick except it's that's not really the point and you'll you know it's not like that's not the driving force of the thing what's the driving force of the record for me are all of these old pretty long excerpts from what must have been like a 1960s or 70s cartoon about mf doom about about dr doom i should say uh-huh and and it's just it's just so unbelievably catchy to listen to because it'll just be like these amazing beats and samples and things musically that are then going underneath these 1960s era very self-serious cartoons about Dr. Dew talking about him like trying to take over the United Nations and like I mean it's just there's so much kind of like there's so many drops in there that it's just it it feels to me like something that's that's very very up your alley and mine um the very first track is actually kind of my least favorite but if you basically start with track number two and then just like do something else and kind of zone out and let it play it's just so so good and and uh yeah i'm i'm i'm pretty

obsessed with it so does he do one of those things where he'll rhyme to the drop that's one of my favorite things some hip-hop artists will do i feel like well again i feel like michael christmas does that i feel like maybe even the beastie boys used to do that i'm sure many others but they there's something about it when like they'll just put a drop in the middle of a verse and then come back and rhyme with the tape i love that yeah it's um it's uh it makes what it really

makes me want to actually do now is go back and figure out where all this dr doom tape is from uh-huh like i want to watch the original show it has here's it has like very strong like speed racer vibes uh-huh you know what i mean if that makes any sense like definitely kind of like that like when they were making cartoons for kids but they were very serious about it these weren't jokey cartoons these were like you know and but then they make these great like like the and it's hard to explain but it's just like there's just a certain kind of i'm also trying to dial some of it up on spotify what i will say for spotify is what they what they've lost me on in terms of paying a lot of money to joe rogan they've also lost me on on being the kludgeist music service ever have you noticed that like if you're ever having some sort of slow internet times or anything spotify is

going to react the most poorly to it i don't know that i've had that issue uh specifically maybe i

just have some kind of discount off-brand account because it's it's the canary in the coal mine of my connectivity if like right now i'm just staring at a blank screen of spotify a thing that i'm paying them god knows how much every month to have for the commercial free it is reliably the least functional website for me or whatever you want to call it web app that i go to but i know

you're having computer issues today as well um if you wanted to play if you want me to play something i'm i'm on food but if you don't know it like what track to play by heart well okay uh okay so here's

the thing too list me the name of some tracks okay i'm gonna skip the first one yeah see the first

and then but like um let's see uh holders one beer do pod holders okay here i'm gonna do pod

holders i don't know if pod holders has dr doom on it it just has a really really great sample

Okay, let's take a listen to this. This is track three.

you go head up with poetry i'm fed up ignore cordon bleu stand up get up lunge for your knife don't forget your potholders hot shit what these old things

I'm about to throw them away With the gold rings that make them don't fit like OJ Usually I take them off with oil or ole MCs as crabs in a barrel past the old bay Hot as hell and it's a cold day In it, working on a way that we can roll away to it Some say the price of holding here is over

The next guy that comes in I love so much Here we gotta just get to the next guy

Is this MF Doom we're hearing now or was that the first voice?

I think this is MF Doom

Now to you and I, a lot of niggas wish to die. You need to hold your horses, there's bigger fish to fry. You're on the list, if not, pick a number spot. Ten and a half Tims is made to kick your bumber climb. I could have had a V8, F-150 quad cab, but I'd be straight. Money comes and goes like that two-bit hussy that night that tried to rush me. Dwight passed the dutchie, so I could calm down so they don't get it twisted. Take it from the fireside, it won't get blistered. listed. Got it. What happened? Oh, it's not lit. These metal fingers be holding. Hot shit.

When I was four, Penn Guard was born in New York, back in 77. Still got Nan in a crescent. The effervescence of Guard's presence is thick. Unlike Vapor, Estorol, extra roll. Word to the baker. Peace to the hard-working gingerbread makers. Looked up and now said, hmm, too much makeup. Poor music tastes 10 years from being grown up. Rappers don't blow up, heads do. Anyway, I just like, and this isn't even really illustrating the doom factor.

This is just, it's like, I feel like the songs that have doom on them, like the old tape, are great because of that. And then the other song is just the production, just the sampling. Just like, I think it's like a perfect hip hop record.

I really got to listen to this here. I'm going to mark it as a favorite.

Please do. Please do. And, of course, we have already talked about this, but we are going to wrap today's show up, and, in fact, wrap up our broadcast week with a little bit of music suggested by Asha and Cameron. It's the band. Are they called Little Rumor?

Little Rumor, and I believe the song is called No Pressure, so I'll get that going here in the background. And, again, it's a really fun—

And remember, don't tell your friends about it. No, don't tell anybody about this. Keep it very on the hush.

They don't want anybody to know about them, much like me in my podcasting career. So, yeah, take a listen to this. It's, aside from the sound that we heard earlier, I think you're going to be pleasantly surprised. It's a very, like, kind of poppy dance number. It's really cool, man.

Okay. That's how we're going to wrap it up, everyone. Thank you so much for being part of TBTL. We'll see you on Monday with more Imaginary Radio. In the meantime, have a great weekend. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Last night had me tripping all over my words again. All thoughts rush like blood up into air. Commutations run through my brain like I'm insane Rewind, run, light all night like Over and over and over and over again I can't see what I'm on I see this love I want to see It makes no difference which one of us you vote for. Either way, your planet is doomed. Doomed!

Power out.