Muse

I'm really sorry. I am. I'm sorry. Sounds to me like you're sorry you f***ed up, but not, you know, not for what's underneath it. I apologized. That's what's important. It doesn't matter if you apologize if it's not sincere. Apologies don't have to be sincere. It's just the act of the apology itself. All that matters is if you're acting sincere. That is literally the only thing an apology has to be, is sincere. Oh, God, Will, I completely disagree. Otherwise, it's just words. I'm acting sincere. Of course I don't believe it. TBTL! Last time I checked, audio was the second most important part of the audio-video experience.

So it's the least important part, right? I just wish we'd talk about my hobbies, too. What hobbies do you even have? Not really a hobby, but I'm pretty good at alienating significant others. And I'm going to take tea and take a sip of it and spit it into each and every one of your mouths. Oh, it'll burn me, but it'll burn you twice. Burn me once with tea? Shame on me. Burn you twice in your own mouth? Shame on everybody involved.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

What's that? What's that, brother?

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I feel like a bird shoring over these haters.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia. It's nice to be back home for a few days, and we have had adventurous weather already here. It was lightly snowing when I got up, and then the sun came out, and it was an absolutely beautiful sunny morning, and now the clouds have moved in, and it's raining. In case you were wondering about the weather here, high above the mighty Columbia. You are boring me to death, and I am already dead. You're boring me back to death. All right, fine. Let's get to the good stuff, which is today's schedule for episode 4149 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. A woman has sued a tomato company for the label on their cans. She says, you are trying to trick people into thinking that you are selling us San Marzano tomatoes when in fact you are not. Well, we know you're good at lying. It's one of those stories that actually has way more dazzling deets than I expected going in. I'm excited to share it with all of you. And then staying in the commerce space, we will announce officially what AT&T is planning on paying the people who lost their cellular service for about seven hours, I think, last week.

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

And I'm also going to be doing the show with one eye on my driveway because I'm getting a bunch of kitchen cabinets delivered from Ikea today.

Things are going to start happening to me now.

And as is always the case, the window is like from about, I don't know, a half hour from now to about six and a half hours from now. So this might happen during the show or it might happen later in the day. And when I say cabinets, I just mean boxes that have unassembled IKEA cabinets in them, which I will then be trying to assemble myself, which will be quite the adventure. This guy's always up for an adventure. He's the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships.

You've gobbled your last ghoul.

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

I need to be very careful today, Luke. I feel a little bit out of it. I really have a case of the Mondays. Have you ever heard anybody say that before, a case of the Mondays?

I haven't, and I think we might want to go ahead and try to trademark that in some way because there could be some real coffee cup potential for that phrase.

But you get it from context, kind of what I mean. It was a nice weekend, but my schedule's off. I woke up a little bit late. I just feel like I'm worried about not being my best as we speak into these microphones. So I need to be careful and not steer the conversation, but steer my part of the conversation away from anything that might be tricky, like mentioning an A-list actor's name or something like that. I just need to, like, I need absolutely...

The classic Walsh pitfalls.

You're going to be trying to avoid those. Saying, just saying common words. I need to avoid trying to say common words on the show today. And if I can achieve that, we should be good.

I'm working with the challenge of trying to decide what my relationship is to the fact that we are now videotaping these shows as well. We mentioned this last week, but we've moved to a new system of talking to each other that allows for us to.

see each other uh which had not been the case for many many years most of the show's life and it also means that these little things we're saying can be the videos can be clipped and put on the internet and uh and we can drive interaction that way but i also i don't think i'm like energetically up for the task of having effectively an hour and a half zoom every day with potentially thousands of people. Like, I can't be on high alert as to what my sort of physical appearance is as I'm doing the show. So I'm going to have to just make peace with the fact that I will probably look silly in some of these videos. It won't be the most flattering angle. The audio quality of the show, and by that I mean what I can bring to the show from a content standpoint on the spoken word side, that has to remain my priority. But I am so, so vainglorious that it's going to be hard for me. There's a little green light in my heart, Andrew. And Jesus lit it. There's a little green light on my computer.

Arms around aliens, right? A little green light in your heart.

I've been listening to way, way too much Coast to Coast AM. But there's a little green light on my laptop that indicates that the camera is on and this is rolling. And I'm going to have to just sort of get used to that and not, like for instance, even right now, I'm not standing in the most comfortable position for me to do the show with you, but I'm standing in the most flattering position. And I don't, I don't think, wait,

really? I'm sorry. Just joking.

I don't think another classic Walsh pitfall.

Maybe I should just turn off my mic. Go back to plan B.

No, but like, I really, I, this, this is probably for me more than you, because again, I'm, I'm just a more,

you have an ounce of self-respect. No, no, no, it's vanity.

And, and it's, It's vanity. It's boastfulness. It's all the worst elements of that. It's not like self-respect. Self-respect would be like, hey, I'm 47. I look like a 47-year-old. The new way that podcasts are done is through this video stuff and just live with it. That would be self-respect. I have no self-respect, but I have a ton of vanity, and I'm going to have to sort of make a plan so that you and I can continue to do the show at the high quality that the TBTL tens have come to expect and then i don't let this video like what i really need to do is just stop looking at the video screen altogether now what i'm actually looking at andrew what i'm seeing are my little audio drops and when i'm you know things like that that i like to play they sure do got that too i've got my little audio drop board up now in my field of vision i can't see you i can't see myself this is really what i should be doing now day in and day out um But again, it's nagging to me that I might be looking especially odd. And that will be the clip of the show that is the most what memeable, the stickiest, the most fun thing to put on the Internet. And then that clip will go all around. We'll have another viral hit like we did with our Reba McIntyre content.

I was going to say, just stay away from any, I guess, Little John investigations until you're comfortable on the camera.

Although, by the way, Lil Jon Investigators does sound like a decent name for your private investigation firm.

I read those series, that book series as a kid, Lil Jon Investigators. It's funny, you know, when we were recording in this fashion last week, and again, nobody's even seen any of the video we've recorded so far. We're just sort of like still kicking the tires on this. you had mentioned I think during the show you're just like it's something along the lines of what you're saying now that like it's a little bit exhausting feeling like you're having a zoom call with me as opposed to recording a podcast and I was like yeah I don't have I didn't relate to that in the moment and I was thinking like yeah that's funny it's not as much of a drain on me and and in all seriousness it's maybe because I have given up on life and I'm like well I look like what I look like that's not true though because if I see a bad photo of me which I see plenty of or like a photo that I don't know is being taken of me and I see me in the background or something like I'm not trying to make it sound like oh I'm comfortable with the way I look because clearly I'm not but in the case of recording this with you it doesn't get in my head that much while we're recording um in fact I pulled a little clip the other day just to again sort of like learn how to edit this stuff and I pulled a little clip of you and I spoofing about something and I didn't know in the moment that we were recording that this would be something that I would isolate and and try to you know edit and in it i'm not looking at the camera i'm pouring myself a cup of coffee from my thermos and i actually sort of enjoyed i know it sounds weird but i enjoyed seeing me i'm like i had no idea this is what i look like when i talk like and there was something kind of casual about it that i didn't mind and you looked good too you were on you were in la you were wearing like your white shirt getting ready to go out to a um to a shoot or something and it sort of had a it had a very for Two very uncomfortable guys.

It had a very comfortable vibe, I thought. You know what? That's a really good piece of feedback and a good way to look at it because I'm with you. Like, when I'm watching things, I mean, this is the, I guess, irony of all this. If I was watching something like this, I would want the people making it to be in their most relaxed state and to be doing normal people stuff. Not, like, you know, sort of ring lit to within an inch of their life and, like, you know, giving face. like i'm just staring into the i'm trying to like turtle and be like this is you know because that's not that's just not very authentic so i think i just need to and this will be a good journey for me of kind of just further trying to demolish my ego you know i mean that seriously like i mean that in both the the literal sense and that i still for some reason have somewhat of an ego and in the kind of more like buddhist sense of like am i going to go through the rest of my life hoping to cling to some tiny semblance of either youth or appearance or people perceiving me in a certain way or am I going to just kind of make peace with the fact that we're all bags of meat and we're not all going to be here forever and the bags of meat are kind of going to be sloughing off of off of us I think John Green says you know we're just basically a series of tubes. And the tubes just move stuff around internally.

Is there a middle ground on these, by the way? Can we go somewhere between Vainglorious and Bags of Meat? There's gotta be something between them.

There's like getting all this Botox and too much work, and then there's just like, Andrew, you're just a pus-filled sack of meat tubes. If you can hear me jiggle twice. And we have our first viral content, Andrew. That's the other thing that i'm worried about is um the the best moments that happen on this show and the moments uh are also usually unexpected you'll say something that'll just really crack me up or we'll just find ourselves somewhere that we did not intend to go to and that's probably the stuff that also will potentially resonate the most uh with with viewers of these clips that we're going to be releasing um but i want to make sure that we're not trying to manufacture them in any way or that You know what I mean? Like that I'm, I don't want to be, I'm already in my head enough as it is. I don't want to be in my head about like, oh, was that the moment? Was that the moment that we're going to put out on the internet? Oh, did that just, did we just, did we just McIntyre again?

There is nothing less funny than me trying to be funny. I think you know this story. I'm sure I've told you this before because it was such a formative moment in my life. I don't know if you recall it though.

Was it this weekend when you told your garage door hole joke to Seth?

I did tell the joke, by the way. I think he's heard it before. He didn't even pause. Wait, what? We had a door installed. I'm sorry, my friend. I do want to tell you my story from college. In a minute. So last we talked, there was a neighbor.

TVTL breaking news.

A neighbor cutting a hole into the side of my garage.

A contractor who lives in your neighborhood.

Yeah, but it's funnier to say a neighbor was cutting a hole in my garage.

And there's our viral moment.

So anyway, yeah, he was installing a door, but there was no door there as of rap time on Friday. Yeah, a door fan. And so I was able to live out my dad joke dreams. And I went out there while there was a big gaping hole, but no door yet. And I said, Seth, we've changed our mind. And he didn't even think twice. He just said, oh, yeah, no problem. Like that was it. Like, he's heard it a million times. He's a contractor.

Did that kind of ruin your day? Like, did you sort of slink back to your studio to post the newsletter? I did.

I totally Charlie Brown did. Totally. Just my stature or my, what do you call it when you have good posture? My posture slumped. I was going to say, by the way, loving the door. Haven't really used it that much yet. Walked in and out of it once. Locked it. Unlocked it. Did that whole thing. But actually, it hasn't had the huge impact on our lives that I thought. because I haven't needed anything from the garage, but that just happened to be the weekend, I'm sure. It's going to be so nice not to have to open this rickety garage door that could fall off its tracks at any moment. I was going to tell you one of the most formative and literally instructional moments of my life, but is also one of the most painful memories of my life. And I'm realizing now I haven't told this story in a while and I'm sort of forgetting the details of the second part of this, and that is a good thing. That is a good thing because this is such an intrusive thought of a story. Um, but I had some sort of a public speaking class in college and I, I think it was, I don't know, it was probably like my second year of college. And I think I just decided to get into like audio video production as a major. And I was just starting to sort of figure out my college path, I think. And so I take this class and the, we, our first assignment is to give. don't remember the details of the assignment but we have to give you know like a three minute or a five minute talk or presentation or something and i couldn't i think we had to sell something maybe or sell the idea of something and i was in the grocery store the night before the assignment and i saw one of those little books like the size of a reader's digest or an archie's double digest it was a digest basically of baby names you remember how i used to see those in the grocery store all the time like you'd flip through like just baby name books i guess they don't exist anymore with the internet um but uh i was like i'll just take this and i'll just build something around this and i don't remember the details of it i wasn't doing it as a bit i was just like i gotta sell something i'll sell this baby name book but somehow my presentation on that was inherently funny and it was probably the first and before tbtl only time in my life that i had a room full of people just like laughing really what were you saying about the baby names i was taking baby names and then making racist jokes about them okay yeah i can see why that was hidden in the late 90s no i honestly don't post that i don't remember honestly i just remember the feeling is john don't post that going to become i think so that's a new term yeah john don't post that is probably merch we really need to make merch that says john don't post that i love that idea um i don't remember the details of that i wish i remembered more of the details of

the good part of that because this honestly sounds like a pretty good bit for tbtl although now it is more complicated because i think the way that we talk about baby names particularly if we're talking cross-culturally would be a whole different conversation um and and would have a lot of potentially racist implications if you're if you're agog at what people decide to name their

kids you know yes in in my defense i really don't think that's where the humor lay or lie I would be surprised

even in those days from you if that was the joke get a load of these names

and also like again whatever presentation I was going to give I wanted to be charming I wanted to give off a certain appeal or whatever like that's part of the deal but I was not going into this being like I'm going to slay you know like I was very surprised that people were laughing and it felt so good and I rode that high and again the jokes probably had more to do with like me trying to seriously pitch a ridiculous product or something like that um so anyway that was great that was speech number one i wonder if you

if you were i love that this is where we're gonna be on uh monday february 26th in the year of our alert 2024 me trying to guess what the premise of the joke was in your public speaking class

and i could never confirm or deny like i don't even remember i could see a world in which you're

because you said it was public speaking you're supposed to be basically selling something i think like what's it going to cost to get you into this jacob right yes like you're pitching these this Bryson yes yeah you know on there you know what we have a deal right now on Ambers that's funny my man we are over we are overstocked right now on Jacqueline's and my manager is out of town this week and I'm able to make you a deal I wonder if that was the joke I don't know I don't

know exactly what it was I don't think it was like me trying to be a carnival barker I think it was just me like trying to sell the sell the premise of this book and people found it funny and then And here's the deal, though. Here's where it got dangerous. Oh, my God. It felt so good to have a room full of people laughing. I'm like, wow. I wouldn't know, but it sounds amazing. So then speech number two. I can't remember. I think I did a. Oh, gosh, who's the. I literally think speech number two. I gave a profile of the former Fed chairman who was also Alan Greenspan. Yeah. Who also went to Juilliard. Did you know that it was like a clarinetist or something? Yeah, so he sort of has this interesting back story. I don't know why I'm doing – he was the sitting Fed chairman then. I think he was like Fed chairman.

He lived very large, and I feel like Janet Yellen's Q rating is lower than Alan Greenspan's was. Or we were just real big nerds because, like, I just – my guess would be if you surveyed most of the 15-year-olds in America, they would not – most of them would not know who Janet Yellen is. But I feel like we knew who Alan Greenspan was.

Yeah. Now, keep in mind, this is college just for the just I wasn't 15 at the time. But you're right. Even at 15, we might have known you heard about that on the news.

You know, Alan Greenspan is going to like raise interest rates or whatever.

Like it was just a name that we sort of knew about, like a kind of a cult of personality for such a dry character. But he had those glasses. Right. Like he was. Wasn't he also married to somebody from NPR? Oh, I'm not I'm not sure about that. Would that be a conflict of interest?

possibly um but anyway yeah decide to go in and also wait while we're on abc andrea mitchell not uh not npr but it did have three letters in the name so uh also we i feel like our generation

really knew our um surgeon general a lot better the guy with the beard oh c everett coop c everett coop like we haven't had like Like, those two figures really made an impression on our generation, I feel like.

Yeah, we need our Surgeon Generals to have, like, comically ridiculous facial hair.

Yeah, come on.

That'll really stand out in the mind.

So, anyway, I think you can kind of guess where this is going. I stand up to give my presentation on Alan Greenspan, but this time I have written it to be funny. And I don't remember what the first joke was. But, like, I got up there and, Luke, you know what I did? I paused for laughter. I'm cringing thinking about it. Oh, boy. I got up there. I said one line, one opening line, and then I paused for laughter and the laughter never came. And then there was, like, one uncomfortable little, like, pity chortle from the back of the room. By the way, pity chortle. It's just you don't want pity chortle. You can give it to, I think, pigs. Do pigs eat pity chortle? They do, actually.

Pigs are much cleaner than people think, and they eat a lot of pity chortles.

They certainly do. Anyway, I just remember standing up there and waiting for the laughter that doesn't come, and then being like, oh, no, that's the rest of my speech. I've got a bunch of jokes in here. I'm like, what have I wrought? And again, the first time, I wasn't trying to be funny. The second time, I'm like, I'm a real funny guy. So my point is, the least funny thing in the world is me doing funny.

You were wearing a carnation on your lapel that actually squirted water. The classic sign of comedy.

I had a bike horn. They didn't. I'm like, I'm here to talk about Alan Greeney Greenspan.

Take my quantitative easing, please.

Hey, that was a good joke.

I don't know. Were you trying to be funny there? It just comes so natural. You know what that's like sort of conversationally or presentationally? It's like when you think there's another step and there isn't going up the steps and you you you go to go on another like the last step and it's not there. and you're like you're like out of sync and then but you're but that's the beginning of your time in front of these folks and you kind of never get back on your right footing i that's right i that is usually when i follow the time tester tradition of just speeding up and just yeah racing through so any chance any even tiny lingering chance of some comedy being wrung out of the next whatever many minutes is now killed because i'm so thrown off that i'm just like get me off of this stage as soon as possible yes i'm just remembering now you too can hire me for your event by the way

lukeburbank.net i and i think i've told you this i had to do a stand i literally had to do a stand up bit for a different class in college do you remember that yeah and didn't that actually go pretty well it went really well i can't i think the premise was like if i were king these are the things i would change so basically it's like observational with that framework essentially i just remember like this isn't even funny luke i mean i might have tried to make it funny somehow i mean i certainly hope so i remember the teacher gave me a good grade and said i didn't have to take the final exam which i don't know like that seems like you're really i think this must have been a summer class or something like that and the professor was probably stoned so anyway i had a

professor walima muhammad who taught the swahili class who was so high we think it was like a long class it was like it was like it was um like an intensive you know so it was maybe three four hours a day so there was a break in the middle and god did things get easy after the break every day we would just be like okay good he seems he seems exceedingly chill right now

i remember the weird rumors we would have in in college and like weed culture was so much different then too because it was you know illegal in most places well it's illegal everywhere um and you know people were sort of just discovering it and so I remember there was some professor and I don't think there was anything about his demeanor that would make me think that he was a stoner but there was a rumor that like if you look at his thumb it's always black because he's packing bowls which I don't think that makes sense because why would packing a bowl I mean maybe if you're rearranging the weed after you've already started it yeah yeah and that's what I was saying something

that was was he lighting foil that's a whole different energy he had a whole like sort of beaker tube system oh yeah he would often come in wearing like a hazmat suit right exactly a lot of classes were in a van you're like unzipping himself from that and then he'd have his tweed underneath it with the uh elbow pads but you know what i'm talking about the rumors about people

are like dude oh yeah next time you're in mr jansen class look at his thumb it's black man that guy's a total toker and it's like that none of that holds up to scrutiny yeah i'm trying to

maybe if you just if you used a lighter a lot right maybe the yeah i guess but i mean that would he could also just be a person who smoked cigarettes yes exactly yeah i i don't i don't think it's fair of us to um try to i i am willing to say that my swahili professor was high as a

kite though and i would have been too his behavior not smell not no just based on his exceed his

exceeding chillness.

and also the fact that I would have needed to have been high to teach me in that class because I was a horrible student.

Did you say what the topic was? Yes, Swahili. Oh, that was the language. Jumbo. Gotcha, gotcha, yeah.

That was famously in the world of the show. I've told the story many times, but that was the class where, and kids, don't follow my example on this. This is bad, but when I went to the UW, you had to do you know you had to do a foreign language class to graduate like it was part of the requirements and I had tried I had tried Spanish and had failed out of that I had tried Swedish and had flunked out of that one and so I heard Swahili was like pretty easy to take and I had a friend who had taken the class the previous summer and she gave me she was very meticulous and she gave me a binder that had every single pop quiz every homework assignment it was basically the answer key for the whole class again i'm not necessarily proud of this but uh i was um so for the first quiz um the quiz that we were given matched perfectly the quiz she had given me and so in order to try to curry favor with the football team many of whom were in the class with me i basically distributed the second quiz and said hey i've got the answer key and then the second quiz bore no resemblance to the quiz that we had basically were using to cheat in other the second pop quiz or whatever was completely different and everyone failed it that story is

only better if you're like i tried to curry favor with the local biker gang exactly like pulling out

chains just spinning them around right right right it's like here's um four or five six four 320 pound individuals who i think i'm getting in good with and who i just it endangered their college and maybe pro football career going forward with my attempts to, you know, be a cool guy.

There's some guy working at Les Schwab right now who, like, should be a starter or should have been a starter in the NFL.

Do you know that I worked Les Schwab into a commentary on CBS Sunday Morning the other day, and I was kind of half expecting to hear from them. I don't know. I mean, I don't think this is journalistic of me. Like, I'm not doing it to get free beef. But how often is Les Schwab Tire Company getting mentioned in front of 8 million people on national television? I thought that, I don't know, I thought there might have been a little bit more noise from the Les Schwab Corporation.

Like you get one of those care packages and you open it up and there's like tires inside. It's just one tire. Yeah, it's one tire.

With like applets and cotlets and things inside the tire and like a bow. I legitimately don't want anything from them And I also would never Try to talk about a Product or a company in order to Get something from them, I mean legitimately that's like A thing that gives me kind of a weird feeling But I did, basically What happened was I was trying to make a joke about Valentine's Day and about So the commentary was about people Saying I love you to each other And how that's a good thing to say, basically And something about this Card, I made this sort of told a story or made a joke about the idea that you were giving your significant other a Valentine's Day card that was clearly something you got from your friends at Les Schwab Tires and you had just crossed out happy holidays from Les Schwab Tires and written in happy Valentine's Day and I think that probably the editors everybody in New York thought I just made up like a pretend entity called Les Schwab Tires because I was kind of expecting them to go I don't know if we want to use a real company for this but like nobody stopped me and then it just got on television

And that is so much funnier than like, I mean, what would Firestone or Goodyear? Well, actually, those are tire makers. So I'm trying to think like there's something very funny and specific about Les Schwab.

To me. And of course, I, you know, I'm borderline obsessed with that company because they it's very local to the northwest. It's very regional, I should say, to the northwest. And Les Schwab, you know, famously was like a rancher. And so in the early days of the company, one of the enticements that they offered was free beef from like his ranch. And then that just continued on. And if you grew up in the Northwest, you just remember these free beef TV commercials that were always running. And the place is pretty unchanged when you go in these days. It smells the way that it smelled when I was a kid. They've got free popcorn and and like bad coffee in a paper cup. Like it's just a real throwback to my childhood in the 80s growing up in the Pacific Northwest. So anytime I can work it into something, I'm I'm happy to do so. But I'm just wondering if anyone at Les Schwab Tires corporate was like, hey, did we just like did an email go around? Hey, someone's talking about us on CBS Sunday morning. Someone's mentioning us.

I didn't realize how kind of micro regional they are. I figure that they were across maybe the West.

I consider my appeal to be micro regional.

They don't even get so far east as Spokane. Like it is a very I mean, they have it looks like they're not in Idaho or Montana.

I always assumed they were.

Well, according.

to a very quick um map search it looks like you know maybe central washington like a little bit a little bit east of leavenworth is about as far east as they go which is really um that first of all that surprises me and secondly i just want to say uh if this is accurate and secondly i want to give them a shout out here maybe i'll get a free tire we all can get one free tire will be good

if we can get if if you can get vives to get a free tire and i get becca then we've got you know

four times we got four tires and then we can share them um but they do free tire repair i think i mentioned that on the show recently and you know i was i realized outside my home that i had a flat there was like well i don't know if we knew at the moment that there was a nail in it i think we realized it then so i'm putting the donut on i have a neighbor that says take it to les schwab they'll fix it for free i'm like okay whatever old man and then i uh and then i take it to les schwab they're like well okay we'll see if we can repair it i leave they call me an hour later like we're able to repair it come pick it up and i i got out my credit card to pay and they're like no sir this is free and i'm like well how can i repay you and they said bring us snacks sometime and talk about it on your podcast yeah so i never brought him snacks but you guys should all bring

your les schwab tire professional snacks i i'm again it's a such a it's such a smart idea because a just the airtime that they've achieved now on tbtl over the months um and also just the way that i mean becca just got her new tires there recently it's just the kind of thing if you're if you know you know and if you're from the northwest it's just like okay so yeah they when if and when i need new tires which i probably do right now that's where i'm going why because they did a like what would have probably been a 40 repair on my tires at some other point and did it for free they loom very large in my mind to the point where i'm writing them into cbs that's right commentaries i am i went to the dump yesterday andrew i really thought you were

breaking there luke because i have to itch my ear but i'm scared if i itch my ear it'll end up on the internet don't post that john okay i'm gonna scratch my ear john don't post this luke's transitioning into another topic i'm gonna scratch my ear nobody sees this okay here we go i was at

the dump yesterday um and the i i've told you before that i'm i i kind of am fascinated by this one element of this of the of the dump near my house because i've never seen this anywhere else which is it has a conveyor belt. Oh, wow. It's throwing all your stuff onto a conveyor belt. It's not probably the one you go to and the ones that I've been to in the past. It's, you know, like a big container that's parked presumably on a trailer of some kind. You throw all your stuff in there and then it pulls away or it gets put on a truck or a train.

You know what ours is like? Ours is interesting because it's more like a... What would you call it? Like an arena where a gladiator would fight a lion? Possibly? Wait, that's not how it worked. I don't think they pit the lions against the gladiators. Either way, it's more like a big gladiator pit. And you throw your stuff over it.

I love the idea of you just, like, throwing a washing machine in there and just going, like, thumbs down.

Yeah, thumbs down. Kill it. Right. And so you throw it over the edge, and it falls about, I don't know, I'm bad with, like, 10 feet or something. And your stuff crashes down there. And then people come along with, like, kind of earth movers or whatever and, like, kind of pile it up. It's interesting.

Yeah. Okay. So that sounds really fun, honestly. It is. God.

It's no conveyor belt but it's fun

Well the thing is I don't love the conveyor belt for the record Like I'm stressed out about it Because what it is is like Everyone is getting It's on display Whatever it is you threw out Like I have constant agita when I'm there That I'm throwing things in the wrong place Or on the wrong pile Why does that man have so many marital aids That he's throwing away

They're making all kinds of funny noises

It's just underwear with skid marks and marital aids um no but like uh like when you're throwing i i am constantly worried that even though i'm trying to follow the rules i'm somehow disposing of something that's not okay to dispose of or i'm throwing it in the wrong place and when you're throwing it into a big open sarlacc like you're describing it just goes in there right but when you're dumping on a conveyor belt it's just going along and everyone who's like down parade it is it's like trash on parade and so my the worst case scenario was happening yesterday which is i show up i'm the only person there and the worker dude is just standing south of me on the conveyor belt like he's scoop he's like got a shovel and he's basically like picking up stuff that fell out of people's cars that didn't make it into the conveyor belt but really what he's doing is he is standing there able to observe everything that i've thrown onto the conveyor belt and this is my worst this is my worst nightmare because he now is in a position to analyze everything and it's like should i have thrown some cardboard on there there's technically another place for cardboard but the problem was this cardboard's not clean cardboard it's got all these like sticker like not stickers you know

what i mean though it's hate packing tape all the packing tape it still had some pla

It was like it wasn't I wouldn't have felt comfortable throwing this cardboard into the clean cardboard recycle area. But is he going to look at it and be like, dude, this is not where the cardboard goes. I was dumping a trash can of like old cut up pieces of wood and there was some sawdust and other things from construction. I'm assuming that's cool, but it's just like, I don't know. And this guy has just got nothing to do but analyze the trash that I'm throwing in. Luckily, he didn't get he didn't seem to have any. it confirmed my theory that those people generally speaking except for the one time you got hollered at Andrew generally speaking I don't think unless you're unless you're throwing something on there that has literally like a um kind of hazmat symbol on it and it's glowing green yeah right like a chud or something like short of that I just don't think they care I think they're just like whatever dude because the guy couldn't have been less interested in what I was putting on the conveyor belt except for this one thing which was as I dumped this garbage can this plastic like rubber made garbage can and dumped the stuff the lid came off i was trying to catch the lid and the lid went onto the conveyor belt now i could have reached down and grabbed it probably but also i'm i was sure that that was going to get me in trouble i feel like you're definitely gonna hollered at yep i mean that's like one of the main things you're not supposed to do is re-enter the trash chute like they i've assumed that that's like a big safety hazard so i wave at the guy and by the now by this time another couple cars have pulled up so i can't just like walk over i'm like waving to him and i'm like trying to point at the garbage can lid that's now moving down the conveyor belt towards him and away from me and i'm like part of me was just like i just don't have a lid anymore that's fine i'll just live the rest of my life without this rubbermaid lid but then i was like don't be a baby like ask the guy if he can grab the lid he had like a rake with him anyway i was like he'll just pull it out of there get the lid back because it's useful it rains a lot out here And if you start to fill one of these Rubbermaid things up with like construction debris outside and you don't have a lid on it, it will soon just be full of water and a billion pounds. So this is all the calculation that my brain is doing as this lid is moving down the conveyor belt. And so I'm like waving, waving, waving. He has to take out some like air pods and I'm like, can you get that lid for me? And I'm assuming he's just going to like either pluck it out himself or he's going to reach down with his rake. Like, no, he has to pull a full-on, oh, like, stop, stop the show. Like, he had to do a full, stop the show.

Like a train in the movies in the 1940s?

He had to radio someone that he was going to stop the show. Oh, geez. And there's literally a red, I'd never noticed before, there's like a red handle, like a pull in case of emergency thing. first he had to get on his walk and be like we're C-14 and we are shutting it down and then he had to pull it and then it went and everything came to a stop and then he's kind of trying to reach for it but he can't get it and the guy next to me goes oh you're trying to get that lid and then he just goes onto the conveyor belt the civilian next to me and gets the lid and hands it to me first of all totally emasculating me like you were trying to be a good boy this is what I get Andrew forever trying to be a good boy i was trying to follow the rules i was trying to not go in there and uh and instead i just looked like a little scaredy cat who didn't want to go down there because and the other guy did not get yelled at he just i am shocked by this story i would think that they would have

such strong rules around like you nobody even reaches onto the onto the track let alone walks out onto it i can't believe that that person isn't in dump jail right now i i wonder what they make you do in dump jail you don't want to know like i um breaks over stand on your head

now that my friend is a good um but uh yeah i then i just felt so i again i felt like i felt bad this guy had to go get my garbage can lid for me and what i wanted to say to him was i would have gotten that but i did thought that they were going to freak out but i guess they don't freak out about that or at least this one dude was not and now i will mention the conveyor belt had stopped so maybe that was part of it maybe once the conveyor belt has stopped

all the rules go out the window or something that doesn't sound right i think if you i think if you what they've set you up for this is classic they laugh at your first speech and then they don't laugh at your second the next time you're at the dump and this happens you're going to try to reach

out and grab that thing and everybody's going to yell at you well i was as this lid was falling in there it was really the sum of all my fears every time i do anything there it's it's just basically one stop short of your phone falling into a pit toilet at a state park which is the number one nightmare and we've covered that I feel like we may be the go-to podcast for people falling into toilets trying to retrieve their cell phones this is not that but it's on the way towards that town

I don't want to jinx myself here but i had a realization the other day this is the weirdest thing that could possibly make me feel happy or relieved or whatever the feeling i had was um but i was using my phone and it's like a galaxy s10 so i think those came out in like 2018 or something so um i remember like a while back thinking oh i need a new phone but not remembering when i got this one and then looking it up and realizing oh my phone is still too new to get a new one like that seems a little bit it seems a little uh i don't know um spend thrifty that now i'm in my head about spend thrift that means that

you're wasting money right i think spend thrift means you're careful with money but it's one of

those ones that sounds the opposite of what it is yeah because thrifty means you're careful with money but if you're a spend thrift i think you're not thrifty i could be what i remember about that

about that term is it's never it's never been what i thought it was right like nonplussed i

heard somebody say nonplussed and use it incorrectly on the on a podcast the other day and I I wrote in I wrote in a long letter um anyway my point is I think you see what I'm going for here there was a there was a time a few years ago when I was like I would like to get a new uh I would like to get a new phone and then I realized oh this phone is not that old like you need to hang on to this thing for a little bit longer and then this weekend I was using my phone and I was sort of noticing all the scratches it's not cracked or anything but it's little scratches and here and there and i'm like oh wait a second i have now had this phone for long enough that if anything happens to this phone i don't have to feel guilty about getting a new one if that makes sense

and so like if i mean that's not how my brain works but i can i can conceive of a brain that

works that way yeah you mean because you like you'll probably just because i'm such a place pretty early early on yeah so i was like but i was like oh now if something happens if this phone falls in the sarlacc pit at the dump or whatever that is still gonna be a bad day for me you don't want you know what I mean it's better to just buy a phone in advance and swap everything but I just sort of had this sense of relief kind of like when you have a new car and you got to be careful not to get any scratches on it but then after a few years you're like you know what that grocery cart is in my way I can nudge it out of the way with my car I don't have to be precious

about this anymore right yeah like you because this is where I think this is where our brains are a bit different in that if you if you lose your phone shortly after getting it you both have to replace the phone and you're kind of beating yourself up in your brain over not being a good steward of your of your new phone or your whatever it might be I just don't uh I wouldn't be happy about it but I wouldn't also take it as and maybe I should take it more as a reflection on me as a person because I do a lot of dumb stuff like that but I don't for whatever reason I just kind of go oh crap well now I got to get a new phone but I don't beat myself up over it

Well, that's why you're the bad boy of public radio and the good boy of the dump.

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. Everybody razzle-dazzle.

All right, let's thank some dazzling donors. These amazing, generous folks are donating a dazzling amount of dough. They're keeping TBTL happening all these years later. 4,149 episodes into this thing And we really do appreciate it And part of how we show our thanks Is we ask these folks if they want to Submit a message And folks like Nicole Giuliani In Eugene, Oregon Have said yes Nicole is clarifying the pronunciation of her name It's pronounced Giuliani Still not related to Rudy

It's a good clarification

It's only getting gooder As the years go on america's mayor man america's crank yeah i i mean uh boy that yeah that's a i feel a certain kinship with him because i also put weird products in my hair to try to look less bald so when he had that i think it was hair dye that was when he was at four seasons landscaping and that hair dye was was going down the side of his face that was of course something that many people made jokes about and i i saw really uh i saw a brother in the struggle against balding there i saw i had a kinship with him it was very humanizing to me like the michael jordan tier of four seasons right uh i don't know how nicole felt about it but here's what nicole wanted to say like many of us i'm so grateful to be able to support tbtl you have been a comforting and consistent friend since early 2009 when i was avoiding writing my dissertation and happy to bring a clever band of folks from my hometown with me while I wandered the streets of San Francisco fast forward to today and TBTL has seen me through a shocking number of life changes you and me both Nicole by the way you've been my ear friends while I rocked babies mourned the deaths of loved ones and a marriage Thank you. and hiked my way back to sanity in my current state as a middle-aged mom-ish type who was less confused by the appearance of skibbity in my third-grader's vocabulary thanks to Luke and Andrew. There you go. It's a service we provide, keeping you current on the cool and edgy things your children are saying. I deeply appreciate the companionship you all and the tens have provided over the years and the community you have created. The world is a better, less lonely place with you and the show in it, despite how confused my 11 may be by how I can stay caught up with so many hours of a show. Yeah, Nicole, I'm also confused by that, but appreciative. I would chart my energy today as confused, but appreciative.

You want to confuse them even more, let them hear part of the show you're listening to. I wouldn't recommend it. No, actually, don't do that.

Nicole closes out with the classic, no mountain too tall and good luck to all. Well, Nicole, thank you so much for supporting the show. And it's always, you know, I'm because of my self-obsession, I'm always thinking about all the changes in my life as this show has gone on for years and years. But, of course, the listeners' lives are also changing and evolving and growing and children are being born and, you know, marriages are happening and unhappening. And like, there's just we've all been on this, you know, for particularly for folks that got in kind of early on this thing. We've all been on this life journey together, which is pretty crazy to think about.

I wanted to mention something here, Luke. I'm going to take this conversation in a slightly different direction just temporarily. That little bit of tape that we hear at the beginning of the first Dazzling Donor song. We were talking about this on the show the other day, wondering where it came from.

We was hoping for some razzle dazzle.

Yeah. Razzle dazzle.

That's right, man. Razzle dazzle.

I had mentioned that a listener had sent that in years ago, and I did not know its origins or I did not remember its origins. I want to say that listener Sean has our back. Sean is the person who sent that in a long time ago, and it's from, well, we mentioned Motorcycle Gangs before. It's from one of those 1960s motorcycle movies. There were a lot of motorcycle movies in the 60s, right? Yeah. And this one is called The Devil's Angels about a group of hell's angels. So that's what that's from, The Devil's Angels. I have now labeled it thus. So next year, when I forget all of this, we won't have to ask Sean once again.

Didn't you play some audio from The Devil's Angels or you played it for me as a as a demo of something we might do intro tape?

You know what? That all it's so here. I'll just read Sean's thing quickly and then we should think our other dazzling donor. But The Devil's Angels, he says, it's one of those exploitation movies. I guess I I never heard exploitation outside of the realm of black exploitation, but that's not the context here.

I guess it's just sort of a less fun to say than blaxploitation.

Right. Exactly. So anyway, so this is like some motorcycle movie. And he says in the clip, John Cassavetes is trying to appease another biker who's hell bent on some razzle dazzle. That is effing some S up. Anyway, it says that the the biker gang movies were a dime a dozen. And it's hardly the classic wild angels of 1966. And that's the tape that you heard the other day that we played on Friday of Henry Fonda saying, what do we want to do? we want a party we want to oh yeah that one we want freedom yeah so that was also from listener

sean i didn't even know john cassavetes was an actor i mean i knew he was a director but i only

know him mentioned as a director sean addresses that he says that he i mean like sean's got every answer you could possibly want um apparently he would sometimes act in these movies so that he could then earn enough money to direct his films interesting um maestro on your mark on your mark

Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go.

Everybody rattle, dattle. It's working, Amy Shepard. I'm lolling. Amy Shepard of Memphis, Tennessee is our second dazzling donor. And we've got this, as people have figured out, a little kind of place you can enter how to pronounce your name. So we say it right. And Amy writes A, the letter A, and then me. And then just writes LOL. Lol. Like as if probably we don't need a pronouncer for Amy But Amy provided one and also wrote LOL Yes, and then I LOL

Amy is my sister's name Did you know that, that Amy is my sister's name?

I did not know that

Yeah, now you know It's not Ami? No, but she used to have a ring that said Amo Because she was very into Latin And that means love Really? Or I don't know enough Latin Is it I love? I'm not sure I love you started going

I'm not going to try anything hard And you've shifted right into Latin

I'm just dropping Latin knowledge bombs on you.

Ad proximum con we weum.

That's right.

Amy Shepard says, we drove to Orlando from Memphis this past winter, and I got to say, by hour 10, the 11 and 5 were indeed quoting the drops. Heck yeah. The beauty of TBTL is truly the community. Y'all are great, too. because of the perfect...

10 i believe that would be our friend nick i found out what the gray stuff is at be our guest it is delicious chocolate chip mousse do you know i think i can explain this a little bit because i

had a hunch when i was reading this the other day and i think be our guest is a restaurant in the disney universe and nick used to work there nick the perfect 10 used to work there so apparently that is a dish that you can get at a restaurant called be our guest

Be our guest, be our guest, put our service to the test. Bring a heart that's full of wonder and let Disney do the roast. That was a really terrible rendition of the song from Beauty and the Beast, but then shifting into the Disney branded version of it, because they sing a song called Be Our Guest in Beauty and the Beast, but then I think Disney rewrote the lyrics to be about going to Disneyland. Oh, I see.

I thought you were just sort of freelancing the lyrics there.

No, I wish I was that good, as does Amy. Amy says she also learned that the snow is disappointing in New York. Thanks, Dave. And here's to many more years. And thanks for all of the friendos. Well, thank you, Amy. Yeah, thank you. And I can't say I recommend forcing your partner and children to listen to hours and hours of TBTL. But in this case, it sounds like it sort of worked. At least they like the drops.

Yeah, absolutely. It starts with the drops. The drops on this show are like the cartoons in The New Yorker for a young reader.

Yes, and also for me.

And for you. And then we just got to get your family to be listening to the shouts and murmurs. What are the shouts and murmurs of TBTL? Not the Blur's days, probably.

It's me saying, John, don't post this. Yes, there you go. It's wryly funny when I do that. hello and welcome to top story i kind of love this story andrew by the way from the new york times amanda holpich writing woman sues tomato company saying those weren't san marzano's in the can this is it's it's it's important that you get eyes on the cans of tomatoes in question

get your eyes on these cans is what you're saying that's i just want to make sure i say each and every show john don't post this um you know the reason i was tipped off to this story is because a listener wrote in i think we were talking about different kinds of scams on the show recently like internet scams uh but a listener wrote in to say speaking of scams i just realized that and um let's see this is listener patrick and he took a photo of his can of tomatoes and he realized that he's been scammed in the way this article whoa claims yes wait had had the listener seen this article as well yes so patrick patrick forwarded the article along with a photo of his can of these

tomatoes which i will tell you that 100 i would have gotten fooled by this so if you uh have been in the tomato aisle recently or particularly if you've been in like a one of these kind of high end grocery stores that are very popular now um where they'll they just sell kind of not a necessarily wide range of things like there's a great place in portland called providor fine foods that i really like shopping and although you got to take out a second mortgage if you want to no no no no i was expecting more of a laugh there um i call it whole paycheck a lot of these places um uh will sell you know san marzano tomatoes you can kind of picture them I think in your mind they're longer than certainly a typical like regular what would you call beef steak tomato or something that you and they're in a can I've actually to be honest with you I find the packaging of San Marzano tomatoes to be deeply soothing like it it speaks to a life that I could live if I just ate better whole foods it feels like I would be kicking it with um I don't know Giada De Laurentiis or Jacques Pepin or any one of these food people that I look up to sitting around having some kind of a, a healthy lunch of San Marzano tomatoes with some kind of olive oil drizzled over them.

And like a reasonable is basil gets involved in a reasonable glass of wine,

not too much, just enough for a little digestion. You know what I mean? Like this version of my life that could exist if I just purchased more San Marzano tomatoes, Instead, I'm over here just getting, like, a goddamn beefsteak tomato, like, just some kind of, you know, lowlife.

Even the name beefsteak puts it at the lowest rung, right? Yeah, it was dumbass tomato taken.

Yeah, right. So I'm being totally serious. Like, there's just something about the drawing of these tomatoes that – and also the fact that they're more expensive. They just seem classier than other tomatoes. And what a woman Um In Pennsylvania, or I should say the company is in Pennsylvania. The woman is in California. Her name is Andrea Valiente. She's suing Simpson Imports. It's a Pennsylvania tomato seller that for years has been selling Roma tomatoes in cans and boxes. Now, Roma tomatoes are, I don't need to explain what they are, but they're not San Marzano tomatoes. I actually like Roma tomatoes in certain things.

That's kind of my, I think, like in the produce aisle, not in the cans. I think Roma might be, it's definitely one of my go-tos.

I think one of the first things that I was ever able to make, like dishes, and it was because a college girlfriend would make this. And again, I'm saying make this food. I'm being very kind of liberal with the definition of making food. What it basically was was pasta, you boil a bunch of noodles, you throw in some olive oil and a bunch of like mozzarella, and then you dice up Roma tomatoes and put it in there and stir it up. And because she made it with Roma tomatoes, probably because that's just like what she had. I thought, well, that's what you always put in this. And so for years and years, that would be a thing that I would make. and I would feel like I was really, you know, some kind of great chef when all I was doing was cooking up some noodles and throwing some cheese on them. But anyway, so Roma tomatoes have loomed fairly large in my mind. Point is, they're not San Marzano tomatoes, and the drawing on these cans of tomatoes that are actually Roma tomatoes that Simpson Imports has been selling, look for all the world like San Marzano tomatoes. It also says SMT on the can. S-M-T, which a reasonable mind would think means San Marzano tomatoes. They look like San Marzano tomatoes. They have S-M-T written on them. But the company says, no, no, no, no. We're not trying to fool anyone with our tomatoes that we're calling San Marzano tomatoes. These are San-American tomatoes.

San-American. So I want to back up a little bit.

And I'm proud to be San-American. San-American.

where at least I know I'm crushed because they're crushed tomatoes. Just like to explain the joke there. So this is where I was confused. I thought there was like a brand of the, and I want to get the terms right here because I had not actually, I don't think I'd heard the term San Marizano before, although I recognized the can immediately. Like I didn't realize that this is like every like good recipe is going to call for this special kind of tomato that chefs like, like it's a balanced taste or everything, according to what I was reading in the Times today. That was all news to me. But at first glance of this story, I thought it was going to be there's one brand and they make the San Marzano, but then there's this other brand and they've basically mocked up a very similar looking can. That is not the case, if I understand this correctly. They used to sell San Marzano in these cans and people love them and they were recommended and they were more they were higher priced right but then about almost a decade ago the company stops putting san marzano in there and just starts doing their own like what do they call it their own blend of roma and plum tomatoes or something i might be getting that somewhat wrong and then americans bro and then and renaming it a made-up name san american so they can change they can keep all of the label looking the same the contents inside are much lower quality tomatoes i mean i still like those tomatoes but i guess they wouldn't be at such a high price point and then they just vary they they take that same sm what is it t yeah but if you zoom in and enhance and

enhance and enhance you see the tiniest tiniest little microscopically written on the on the

tomatoes is yes and american the text is written on the text so on the m you have to zoom in on graphic design is my passion for real it says american on the m which is such american thing

to do i feel like it's so great it's so obvious what they're doing did you see the other defense that the company has put forward this is my favorite cheat they are claiming that the drawing on the can is the it's a hand drawing of a roma tomato that the company's founder did when he was

a child yes that's right because I didn't change it's a drawing or it's like some sort of an illustration and again kind of class I think a lot of people can picture the the the labeling and it's this picture of an elongated tomato right and so I assume that that represents San Marzano back in the day but then when they don't change it they're like oh no it's just a

kid's drawing like they're like because the owner of the company was bad at drawing tomatoes accurately as a child and it just so happened that his bad drawing looked a hell of a lot like a one of these designation of protected origin food products because that's the

about san marzano tomatoes they're like champagne they're like gruyere they're like those things that have to be from a certain region to be called those things i'm pretty sure that tequila and mezcal are also maybe those things like basically designated protected uh whatever products uh protected origin san marzano are those you have to grow them in a certain place to call them san marzano tomatoes it just so happens that the owner of the company as a child was trying to draw a Roma tomato did a shitty job and such that it looked exactly like a San Marzano tomato. And that's why it's on the can. And also they made up something called a San American tomato. I mean, I, you, you almost just have to give it to them on this and that they got away with it for this long. Like they're just basically selling like a lower quality tomato at a higher quality tomato price. It's just I'm legitimately surprised that no one else noticed this, because if you are the kind of person who's out in these streets buying San Marzano tomatoes, you probably kind of know from food. You're probably kind of like, you know, putting together maybe a special kind of, I don't know, pasta dish or a charcuterie board or something where you bought those tomatoes and you had a sense of what they're supposed to look like coming out of there. like and for years they've just been selling these other tomatoes under this kind of like very clearly meant to deceive idea of san marzano which i guess and i didn't even think of this

and i don't want to be the one to voice it can you read my mind and voice it so it comes out

of your mouth instead where in the hell do they get these baby names from is that what you're

thinking that is the voice i used in college by the way you're such a cool guy i was smoking a cigar no i i didn't even really think of this but you're right to point out that the people who use these tomatoes who are true foodies how did a decade go by nine years go by without anybody

noticing this is an emperor has no clothes right exactly did i just read your mind you did like

the idea of that like well then really were the tomatoes that you thought they were that great to begin with you know what i mean like if you can't if your palate can't detect it now but i But that's like such a dumb argument, though.

Is it true that no one actually knows what a San Marzano tomato looks like? Do they even exist? Right? So people are just like buying this can and then pulling the tomatoes out and then using them. And most people kind of being like, that was definitely a San Marzano because nobody wants to admit they don't know what they look like.

Yeah, or taste like, right? Like if there's this market for foodies to buy these high-end tomatoes and then for a decade nobody even noticed, it's like, well, then were they really that great to begin with? But I want to raise that because it does sort of like it sort of felt like the conversation sort of led to that. But I I don't want to be that person who's arguing that, like, all food tastes the same. Like, you know what I mean? Like, just because my palate might not be able to detect a really good wine or because I don't know much about it doesn't mean that it's not real. Like, clearly, like, obviously, I use different tomatoes for different recipes. I don't use San Marzano. I'm not to that level, but like I can't afford that in this economy.

But but do you have San American money?

I have San American legal tender, actually.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

All right, we ran out of time on the AT&T topic. Maybe we'll get to that tomorrow. I just got a text from the fine folks at IKEA. Hey, though, telling me my delivery is 15 minutes away. So this is actually kind of perfect.

Oh, that's great, because I have one 15-minute voicemail. Excellent. for you no um i have a as you as your um steady march towards colonoscopy town yeah by the way

population you population uh my gutty works i just got a update from my uh doctor my provider they said your prescription is ready and i was like a prescription of what and then i looked at it and it was like whatever that's called gallivin or something whatever the thing is that i gotta to take to clean things out i'm actually i have to be honest with you i'm i am debating moving it by a week or two which i don't want to stress out the listeners particularly our friend p fletch the people who are very happy to hear that i'm going you know i'm gonna i'm gonna have everything checked out it's i'm not trying to stall this so as to never do it it's just i feel like it might be insanity to try to do this on the same week that i'm hosting multiple events including the 20th anniversary of live wire and an event in seattle at knkx radio does that seem like a bad

idea to you well you have a busier schedule than me obviously but those events both take place after the procedure right one of them is during the procedure okay well then yes that does seem like a lot i would say that if either one of those for

But I've just never been through this before that I can't speak to what I feel like is I'm going to be on the days leading up to it are going to be I'm going to be fasting. So like on the like Monday, we're going to be doing the show. I'll be on like day two or three of no food. Then I got to get the then we could probably maybe I guess we don't have to bank any shows. We can do a regular show. I can go get it done and then we can do a regular show the next day. But it just feels like maybe asking for trouble to try to wedge in this medical procedure amidst a bunch of other things where I feel like I should try to be in relatively top form or as top as my form gets. But I just want to say if I do move it, I don't want the listeners or you, Andrew, to think that this is I'm just slow walking this so as to not go through it. I just don't I just don't want to be like totally I don't I don't want to be out of it on stage at some point because either of not eating food or because I've just had a camera going, you know, up up the southbound end of a northbound Burbank.

And I think we I don't even think I need to say this, but obviously, John, don't post that, you know, but is there a possibility that, like, through this cleansing process, you're going to be like your best you you're going to be like galaxy brain focused because like you have no toxins.

You've like most of my blockage has literally been a blockage.

That's going to be funny.

That's such an interesting idea that maybe I'll like, I will find, I mean, there's a lot of people right now in the outskirts of Joshua Tree that are pursuing this exact idea of like just cleaning, cleansing themselves and just dining only on sunlight and they move. And sound. They eventually joined the polyphonic spree. That could be me that week. Okay, you know what? Maybe I'll move it.

Yep, yep, yep. Bathing and sound. And what did you say? Eating, surviving on sunlight.

Yeah, sunlightarians or whatever they're called.

Well, oh, I thought you were just making that up.

No, there are people that claim, I mean, that's one of the most ridiculous claims to me, is that there are people that literally claim to exist or to be completely fueled by sunlight and air. And what I would say to that is, well, you are walking around on this planet, so we know that's not true. Somebody's sneaking a plum in somewhere.

Even plants need slightly more than that. Even plants need some water to make that sugar.

Maybe they got water in the mix, too. But there are people, breatharians, and people claim that they exist, that all the fuel their body needs is through breathing. Oh, my God.

I'm a halitocetarian.

It's awful. I always find that to be the silliest claim because it's like, I know you're claiming that you never eat anything, but the fact that you're here to make that claim tells us all that that's not what's happening. There is some amount of calories that are being consumed, and I probably should be more calories.

And not to be cruel about it, but I do feel like this is the type of thing that evolution weeds out. Right. So we probably won't have to worry about future generations growing up with this mindset. Yeah, that's a really good point. Oh, that's dark for a conversation about sunlight. All right. Anyway, as you at some point get your colonoscopy, you were talking about anesthesia and how you and I both get paranoid about like we're going to go under. What are we going to say when we go under? Are we going to see our true selves? I'm worried about what I'm going to say when I come out. Or would you come out of it? Yeah. So anyway, here's a story from Rachel in Pittsburgh.

Hi, dummies. Listener Rachel here from Pittsburgh. And you guys have been talking about colonoscopies and the fear that you might say something you didn't mean to under or coming out of the anesthesia. And I have a story. So embarrassing. I went under anesthesia for a procedure myself. And I've done this before, and I've come out and I've, like, you know, said weird things, but never anything that was, like, bad, right? I was asking for a copy of the records or something that I didn't actually want nor need. But this time I came out, and the doctor was trying to give you, to give me information about the procedure, which is my least favorite part of any procedure is when you are actively coming out of anesthesia, and now they're trying to talk to you and they know they know you can't handle this information but I felt so ill-equipped to respond to them and I was like I am sorry I can't understand what you're saying I need to wake up I feel like I'm just coming out of a haze I was like um how do I wake up and they were like oh just give it time but the doctor's like well I have to leave in two minutes so I asked started I was like well I need to get angry that'll like I need to get angry because they wouldn't let me get out of bed. So I was like, I need to get some strong motion. So then I started asking people to say racist things to make me mad.

I started asking people to repeat Andrews.

college bit about a names book to make me mad and then when my husband was like my child you don't stop asking uh i was like okay fine make it sexist that'll work say something sexist or racist and then i looked at the nurse and i looked at the anesthesiologist i was like i know he'll say something terrible won't he i know it i'm on to him he'll say something come over here and say something to make me mad oh and one of the nurses apologized and like like awfully and the upper nurse said yeah he would i don't know i am horrified about this to this day

so at the so at the end if you didn't quite catch that one of the nurses sort of confides like yeah that guy that you wanted to say something nasty he probably would have said something nasty you're

I'm shocked that the nurse was catering to this drug-induced delusion or whatever you want to call it from listener Rachel. Like, you feel like, first of all, this only confirms my fears. Yes. That people do say weird stuff when they're coming out of this, you know? And I just, I don't know. I wish that I had the mental strength to, like, tell myself something before I go in that's like whatever happens when you come out of this like to like basically gas myself up on

not saying anything edgy like okay you'll be gassing yourself up before the procedure sure

will and then de-gassing myself with some of those other pills but like just i wish i could tell myself okay luke like when you wake up your brain is going to be really not properly functioning don't just just don't say anything or certainly don't say anything that feels like it's anywhere near the line of what of propriety i wish i could like send i could send myself a you know an email or a mental text that when i wake up i remember to just you know keep it light don't talk about your divorce as they say on bob's burgers but i don't think i have the mental fortitude for that i think i'm gonna wake up and i'm gonna be a kook and i'm just hoping i'm not gonna be a cuckoo gets canceled although they will spell both of those with a k which would be kind of fun

luke burbank colon the kook who got canceled that's your new comedy special well i will say this the one thing that i was not familiar with in rachel's story is this idea that there's pressure on you to like kind of both intake medical information and potentially offer information to the doctor when you're in this state that is terrible and then the doctor being like well i've only got two minutes like first of all what a system the the the older i get and the more i have to you know and to a very small degree at this point uh work in the you know like take part in the medical system as it exists in the u.s right now it is ridiculous the the the system is so goddamn broken by the way i felt so seen when a friend who listens to this show texted me after friday's show and said hey that doctor's facility or that medical facility that you're having issues with is it this one because i have been the incompetence there is astounding and i've been trying to detangle myself i had a foot surgery there that in no way addressed my migraine right exactly so i was like yes that is the place so all those yelp reviews apparently including mine are are not uh are not wrong but um anyway it's really ridiculous that you would think like the few times i've had to wake up after a surgery or under anesthetic genevieve has been there because you always need somebody to drive you.

And Rachel's husband was there, apparently.

Right, so isn't it more the responsibility of the person who's there, who's not on the drugs to sort of, like, you know, make sure that all of that information is taken down?

I would assume so. It is strange that the doctor... Also, listen, are we going to trust Rachel on any of this? That's a good point. She's an unreliable narrator. None of this even happened.

She may have hallucinated the doctor. You know what, the only reason that I know that she didn't hallucinate this, well, because she's not a liar, is also because I'll bet you a million bucks her husband hasn't forgiven her yet.

Can you imagine? Yeah, we need a voicemail from, we need to rush him on this. We need to get the perspective from everyone else in the room. We need Rachel's husband to phone in. Then we need the doctor to phone in who was basically outed by a nurse saying he probably would be the kind of person to say something sexist. Anesthesiologist, yeah. So we'll look forward to getting all of those calls.

All right, there you go, 15 minutes.

another day, another victory for the OGs thanks for listening everybody we are going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you so please do join us for that in the meantime, have yourself a merry little Monday and please remember, no mountain too tall and good luck to all

you're both little troublemakers You're both huge in Japan. You probably have a lot to talk about. Go keep things light. Don't bring up your divorce

power out