Muse

Do you need wood? If so, please stop calling me Larry Wood Store. My last name just happens to be Wood Store, but not every Mr. Baker is a baker, and not every Mr. Wood Store owns a wood store. All right, my phone number is 832-746-WOOD, because it's easy to remember. Also, I do own the website, woodforsale.com, which lets you browse a great selection of wood. Add wood to your shopping cart, fill out a billing address, click checkout. But that was just a project for my web design class. I like wood. I love web design. Doesn't mean I own a wood store. TBTL!

I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said, you have reached the end of your free trial membership at BenjaminFranklinQuotes.com.

Here I've been talking with the most intelligent people in the world and I never even noticed. Hoo-ha!

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We are legitimate and we're churning out mega mega stars And it's a show that actually you see great things happen to these kids And I love it and I think that it's going to be around for a while

Alright, hello, good morning and welcome everyone to a Tuesday edition of TBTL The show just might be too beautiful to live

I heard about that thing on the AM radio

My name is Luke Burbank, I am your host, coming to you from the Madrona Hill broadcast studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where you may already be able to pick up in my voice that I am a little under the weather today, battling some kind of a head cold type situation, had me up last night with a runny nose and congestion and discomfort. It was one of those things where I was just uncomfortable enough that I couldn't get any good sleep, but not uncomfortable enough that I wanted to fully commit to going downstairs in the freezing cold house and getting some kind of, I don't even know what you take for that, cold and flu medicine or something. So I'm going to try to get through today's show, and you're going to try to enjoy it.

Nausea, cold sweats, hot sweats, involuntary trembling, dead hands, numb lips, fingernail sensitivity, pelvic discomfort.

Those are just a few of the ailments I'm currently suffering from. This is episode 4,150 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. And not only am I under the weather, but I'm attempting to do something that is right at the edge of my abilities. Not at the edge of the abilities of most people, but for me, it's been challenging. I am trying to put together an entire kitchen that I had delivered yesterday from Ikea. Let's take on projects that we know we can't do and do them! You know, they don't bring you these cabinets fully assembled. They're just in boxes, and then they have names that I'm not familiar with, and then you take them out, and then you look at the directions and try to assemble them, which is what I spent a lot of last night doing when I wasn't hacking up a lung. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about AT&T and what they think seven hours of you losing your cellular connection is worth to you, the consumer. Oh, and we'll talk to this guy. Longest-running co-bro of the show may be best known for his depictions of, well, I'll just let the tape tell you. He may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships capturing their grace and power. It's power. Okay, I'm going to really remember that next time. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Look, that tape you played from, what about Bob, the cold sweats, the hot sweats, all that. It reminded me of a cryptic email that I received last night that I'm not even sure. I'm honestly not even sure if I should bring this up on the show, and I'm not even spoofing when I say that. I'm quite serious.

That generally means it's good content. That's a good content alert.

I just don't want to put you on front street, but I don't see how, I don't know what's going on here. Were you emailing with a listener About having a numb hand

Unless I did it During some kind of Lunesta Inspired sleep event Or Wait did I have the colonoscopy yet Is this the recovery room

Say something racist Make me mad Listen to the listener at the end of yesterday's show If you want to know why Luke said that That's a callback I don't have any memory of that conversation Okay, I am going to read to you directly from an email that we both received, let's see, yesterday evening, a little before 9 p.m. I'm not going to say this listener's name because, well, I'm just not going to say this listener's name.

Hey, you know, you don't have to explain why you're not going to say the listener's name.

Subject line, 5%.

numb hand okay now is this so far any of this sound like something we've talked about on the

show numb hands no but you know what we do talk about on the show a lot is how bad our memories are that's true um although i feel less bad about it now because i was listening to fresh air last night and uh and terry gross was interviewing a memory expert who was i actually thought of you andrew i was like i need to forward this to andrew because what he was basically saying is that the fact that we all of us struggle sometimes to remember a specific name of someone or whatever does not necessarily indicate we're in cognitive decline he gave a really interesting and very comforting uh sort of scientific and i guess neurologic explanation for what our brain is doing when we're trying when we're grasping for something like that and it's not that we're not smart it's not that we weren't paying attention it's not that we're in mental decline it's it's other stuff going on i thought i need to forward this to my friend andrew first of all when you

first said i should forward this to you i thought you meant because this guy was going to tell you how to remember things you dingus um but now that you describe what he was talking about i think i heard the same fella on um on the media was this sort of in the context of joe biden yes you kind

of messing up somebody's name and well he wrote an op-ed piece i believe uh kind of addressing the robert her report which which and and and i believe his his assessment of of the way the report was written he said he couldn't you know tell you specifics about joe biden he hasn't had a chance to you know diagnose him or sit down with him but he felt like the report was really off base um based on what he knows about how human memory works and what he sees from joe biden um and i just would when every time he said joe biden i just substituted andrew walsh right and

the idea being that like you know calling the president of mexico the president of egypt is not the same thing as forgetting that there is a Mexico literally what he said literally what he

must have written in the op-ed and then literally what he said to Terry Gross and probably what he said to either Brooke Gladstone or the other new host of that show don't you feel though that

people should hear the stuff filtered through us like sure he's got an op-ed he's on various public radio shows but the best thing is for you and I to try to recall with our bad brains oh hey I was speaking of bad brains I was reading you an email 840 you're not talking about the musical

work of greg graffin lead singer of bad brains oh i see uh 841 last how's that for passing a cognitive test remembering the lead singer of bad brains yeah but when you want it too bad

it's kind of a is it a bell curve is that what i'm thinking of here i'm not sure when you start really pushing just bad brains information i also don't think that that guy is the lead singer of bad brains he's like a roadie no i think he's in a different band okay anyway keep going all right put that on ice for a second five percent numb hand is the subject line that came in at 8 41 last night and then i don't know how to say this but you've probably said it before on the show ray nodes syndrome question mark does that sound so the email just begins with no introduction ray nodes syndrome question mark fingers got pale and numb question mark typing this through a migraine that makes it so i can't see typos question mark sorry it might be a hipaa violation to include Andrew on this. Ha-ha.

I have no idea what that is referring to, but I sure hope that person is feeling better.

Yes, I think so, too. Maybe that is the migraine that is, and possibly the migraine medication that is. But I was just so confused. I was like, what is the, we weren't talking about any numbness on the show, right? Again, as far as we know.

I'm the person who just misattributed Greg Graffin from Bad Religion to the band Bad Brains. So I don't think I'm really here to weigh in on what if we talked about numbness of the hands or not.

OK, anyway, well, there you go. I hope that person is feeling better. And I don't think you broke any HIPAA violations unless you look. I thought maybe you were I literally thought that, like, maybe you were having an email with a listener and then they decided to loop me in at the end. They BCC'd me at the end. But I guess not.

No, I'm not very. Unfortunately, I'm not as up to speed on the TBTL email account that as I should be. So the chances of me, I mean, it does happen, but the chances of me and a listener interacting directly out of your earshot is typically not the case.

And then looping me in at the end there. Yeah. So anyway, well, that's what I got going on.

I got a bigger problem than anything you could even imagine right now, Andrew, which is I have a blackberry seed lodged in. Have you noticed that I've been working this toothpick really hard?

Yeah, I saw you. You're kind of really digging away over there. I have. It's not one of your little picks. It's not one of your flossy picks, right? It's just a toothpick.

It's just a regular toothpick. I've actually expanded that whole universe, by the way, my things that I jam into my mouth to try to keep my oral hygiene at its peak. I picked up these things that Becca just had them sitting around her house.

called like doctor they're like a doctor's floss brushes are you have you familiar with this product i don't think so no these things have absolutely changed my life of late they're plastic and one end is you know just kind of a pointy kind of uh but but flexible little i don't know what you'd call it kind of almost blade that you can put in between your teeth but the other side of these things is a very very fine and tiny brush like something a microscopic chimney sweep might use a tiny tiny chimney sweep it's so it's so it's like honey i shrunk the dick van dyke and it's so the brush is so um it's so tiny that you can literally brush it in between your teeth in the in you know between your teeth and your gums it is so much more i mean i'm also doing the floss picks but it is so much more satisfying than floss because the floss is one kind of experience but these brushes it's like or have you ever here's exactly what it's like have you ever cleaned out a dryer vent with one of those brushes that you put on a long snaking no i would love to do that i would love to do how is this not come up on spotless this is one of the most cathartic it's a big project because what you're doing is you're pushing out the lint that has collected in the you know like the pipe or whatever the venting that's going out from the dryer out of your house somewhere sometimes that can be kind of a long thing depending on how your walls are set up etc so they make these these it's you know it's just a round brush that's on the end of like you screw together this black this plastic very flexible like you know piping and then you just push push push and all of a sudden this massive thing of lint and whatever goes out the vent it is just phenomenal do you know this is that of teeth

one of the most disappointing moments of my life and there's been many was when we moved in this house and we were having a lot of issues with our dryer now it was an old dryer it was on its last legs we knew we had to replace it but i also was convinced that that like um the problem was being exacerbated by a buildup of lint i just got it in my head that that must be it both in the machine and in for our in our case it's a very short tube that goes out the back of the machine and then out the wall luckily um and so i remember i think i might have even been recording spotless with hannah and then had this idea you know what that dryer is probably working overtime because they probably never cleaned out that tube that duct work right i'm going to go upstairs i'm going to clean it out from the from the outside in and the inside out um and so i take it all apart and it was just clean as a whistle oh fine as a dandy and i was just like this is one moment where i wanted a mess i wanted it to be so you wanted an explanation for the problem exactly

and instead it was just really nice in there you're like thanks a lot previous tenants or maybe previous owner this was the thing you decided to focus on the one thing that could have helped me but i may be a person andrew who can just no longer be trusted to eat blackberries because this is what happened. You know, I've got that colonoscopy coming up.

Oh, yeah, you can get blackberries, huh?

Soon, but I'm trying to really, you know, while I can't. I literally had this thought in the store the other day. I was getting some blueberries. There were some blackberries right next to it. I'm trying to eat more healthy stuff, and I'm trying to keep it around my house more so that when I'm feeling snackish or I want something sweet, I go grab a handful of blueberries instead of a free chocolate bar from Alaska Airlines for being gold 75k i never told you the worst part of remember when i was flying back from las vegas not this most recent trip but um it was when i was doing the story about the city of las vegas and the super bowl and everything wayne newton and i told you how i got on the airplane and a guy got on the plane and had too large of a pack to fit in the overhead or under his seat and he wanted to switch seats with me so he could put it in this sort of weird area that existed near my seat and i don't like doing that and i was particularly put off because i realized that he had been there for a gun show he had with his military style backpack in fact a lot of the people on the flight i realized i started looking around and it was like oh my god these are all these are all gun people the part about the story i forgot to tell you was because we switched seats i'm sitting there and the flight attendant comes over and hands him a chocolate bar and says thank you

so much for flying with us because she thought he was me wait because of your it wasn't oh that's right i was gonna say it's not because he was in the military he wasn't in the military he was in some sort of paramilitary it sounds like i don't i don't yeah i don't know what his military status

was at all but they thought he was me they they gave him the chocolate bar i know this because is when I... fly on Alaska Airlines if I am not upgraded. This is how they work it out. If you are not lucky enough to be put at the front of the plane through like an upgrade, if you're in coach, if you are forced to fly coach with the hoi polloi, they give you a chocolate bar as a thank you for your service to their airplane company. And so this guy just thought, cool. I guess they're just giving out chocolate bars on this flight. And I just didn't want to get into it. I didn't want to go. I mean, what would you do? oh i considered it just snatch it i was about to go that's supposed to be for me wayne lapierre i mean but could you imagine that was like that was actually the cherry on top of that story was i had to move seats which i hate doing i had to move seats to accommodate a guy and the very pack was probably full of gun related literature i mean this was i don't think he had weapons on him i don't think he's allowed to but like i i saw that backpack as related to the situation and in all of that he then gets a free chocolate bar this would be better if he also then

like then like somebody sits down next to him and ends up being the love of his life you can just totally see you're a real sliding door situation or maybe an inflatable tube situation in this case hey can i ask you a question about airplane etiquette because a friend of ours continue working on this blackberry seat posted something on instagram today sounding a little bit put out it sounds like our friend who will remain nameless and might be the person who sent in that email before was sitting uh in the window seat on a flight today or last night uh it must have been today because i think it was a light issue and the person who's sitting either in the middle seat or the aisle seat asked him hey can you close that shade where are you on that If you're the window seat person, do you have to take orders from the other person in the row about the status of the shade? No, but what do you do that? Then what do you do? How do you how do you decline that request?

I think you say, oh, I just really love looking out the window, which is I've actually said that to people because I really love looking out the window. And one of the main reasons that I try to get the window seat is because I like to just stare out the window at, you know, the amber waves of grain at like whatever. Like I'm I don't care what it is that's happening outside. I find it visually interesting. And and I think that the acknowledged the acknowledged rules of the air are the window seat is the captain of the window. They have the captain of how the window relates to that row. And the opposite is sometimes what you should say. You should say I'm the captain of the window because that goes over. Because, like, I have had the opposite happen many a time where, you know, we're taking off and I'm maybe in the aisle seat or the middle seat or whatever. And the person on the window just shuts it and just, like, starts staring at their screen or goes to sleep or something. And that bums me out because I'd like to be able to see what's going on outside. I find it, as I said, interesting.

But you respect their status as captain of the window.

Exactly. You know, them's the rules. but I did then but I do judge them now sleeping is one thing okay sleeping is in fact Becca and I were flying from Vegas on Saturday so her brother's birthday was on Friday he turned 50 Jeff we had a wonderful time for a couple of days in Las Vegas but of course my mom was turning 70 and my sister was turning 40 on Saturday this a mere week after my daughter turned 30 I was like can we agree to not have any more gigantic birthdays please for a little while? This is really, this is a lot of pressure, but we, so we got up early on Saturday morning in Las Vegas and flew to Seattle to go to this birthday, get together for my sister and my mom. And I was in the middle seat, Becca was on the window and I was a little bit, uh, you know, tired from, we got up early and I know we had the window open, but what I noticed was sometimes she would move, She would inadvertently move her body in front of the window And it would like you know Cut the light off And it was so much easier to sleep And then she would move back and I'd be like I had a sort of retroactive Sympathy for people that are trying to sleep Maybe on an early flight and they want to shut the window Maybe it's helping them sleep That's one thing Here's what I don't get And here's where I get really judgy on people We're on an airplane It's taking off The person on the window just shuts the shade And then just stares into the middle distance Or just stares at their phone or whatever And I want to say Is your life this interesting That it does not fascinate you That we are in an aluminum tube 30,000 feet above the earth That we are doing something That less than 1% of the entirety Of the human population Has ever had a chance to do We're flying over Mount Rainier We are flying over We are

we are currently touching down in frankfurt germany whatever it is like the the idea that a person would just be uninterested in that not sleepy not like needing to close the shade because they're tired and it helps with the light that i kind of get more now and more so now than ever but if you're just closing it because you're like that's not something i'm interested in we're flying by the grand canyon and what have you done for me lately colorado river like i don't

understand that kind of person. Hmm. I, I, I, I would be less judgy myself on that. I just think it's people have various sensitivities to light or whatever. Sometimes it's just comfortable to like not have, if you do want to look at your phone, not have that glare, but I dig what you're saying. But I have a question for you going back to the etiquette thing. If you are, let's say that you have the window open and maybe you don't care and maybe I'm just digging too deep into this, but let's just say you have the window open, but you're not actively looking out the window in that moment but you might be glancing from time to time you just like the experience of having it open or having the shade open but the person happens to like kind of ask you in a moment where you've been looking at your phone or your device or looking down and now they say hey would you mind closing that and you're like you know what i really like looking out the window do you now feel more pressure to not look down at your phone and instead like sort of more almost performatively or actively look out the window? You mean possibly touch the tips of both fingers? I was actually literally doing that while I was talking.

Yes, I do. I absolutely feel that pressure. I mean, I don't know if that particular scenario has unfolded for me, but I will tell you that if it did, that's how I would feel. I would then be basking in the majesty of Tulsa, Oklahoma by night.

Yeah, right.

And I say that with peace and love to our listeners in Tulsa. Oh, look at the top of that wing. God, that's a good wing.

Yeah.

Oh, man. Yeah, this is some good staring, my friends. No, but I have this one, and then we can move on from this, but I have this one, like, my very back top, I guess, molar on the left side has a little space in it. And it's not, you know, it's not a cavity. It's not anything that needs dental attention. It's just the way my tooth is shaped. There's just a little kind of pit in it that if I eat anything with seeds, inevitably a seed ends up in there. And it's exactly the size, the hole, the opening is about exactly the size of a blackberry seed. And every time I eat blackberries, this happens. And it's a good two days of worrying this thing with my tongue and other implements before it finally comes out. And when I finally get it out, it's such a relief. and I think I've got to not eat blackberries, I've got to chew them on the other side or something. But here I am once again.

Get yourself a tooth condom. You just put it on before you eat the berries. We've been giving this medicine to Professor Bananas, which I think I might have, Professor Bananas, by the way, is my dad. No, our older cat, who's been a little bit sick lately. But doing a little better? As of last night was like the first night where it started to seem like things might go back to normal, which is good. So, yeah, it's been kind of a long, kind of exhausting two weeks of kind of looking at this cat. And also, Vives and I are supposed to be leaving on a trip pretty soon, a little vacay. And so, I mean, I know how privileged that sounds. Like, get better, cat, so we can go on vacation without feeling guilty. But, like, everything has been so up in the air and having to keep the two cats separate in the house and not knowing, like, maybe instead of our friends watching, Do we have to get more of a caregiver? Like, can we both even go on this trip? It's been a lot of a lot of questions. So we're pretty relieved last night that if things continue to go in this direction, we should be all set. And hopefully Bananas is feeling better. And she's been very cute with us. And so hopefully she's getting back to normal. But we've been administering this. I would say like it's a medicine that spurs her appetite. It's like an appetite stimulant. Yeah. Stimulant. And it's strange, though, because we apply it to her inner ear. And I've heard this from other people as well. Like I thought that I thought because we were also giving her some anti-nausea medicine. I'm like, well, that I could see going in the ear because, you know, inner ear stuff like balance.

Equilibrium.

Yeah, exactly. But no, that's not it. It's the appetite stimulant that goes in the ear. And what we have to do is you take a little tube of it. It's like a tiny it's like a mini little tube of toothpaste. That would be the perfect size for your mini toothbrushes, actually. But don't put this stuff in your mouth. and you're supposed to there's a little guide on the box that says draw a line on your finger about this long and so you're supposed to draw a little like line of this medicine of this kind of this little gel on your finger a very thin line and then you rub it in her inner ear but you're not supposed to just use your regular finger because god knows where your finger's been right so it also come

with these little finger condoms that you have to put on your finger. And honestly, that's my least favorite part. It makes me very self-conscious and uncomfortable putting on finger condoms.

Don't put anything smaller than your elbow in your cat's ear.

That's what they say.

That is really surprising that the application is in her ear. Have you considered trying it on yourself? Just putting it in my ear to see? Yeah, just to see what it does.

I should eat more. That's the one thing that the doctor always tells me.

Yeah, right. you're dangerously underweight

alright let's

we've got some dazzling donors to thank and then I do want to tell you about my new favorite content creator Andrew who I spent a lot of time with in the last I don't know 24 hours so let's do that

we was hoping for some razzle dazzle razzle dazzle that's right man razzle dazzle

on your mark get set now ready ready go everybody razzle dazzle

All right, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the generous folks who are dazzling us with a donation of dough each month, and we are exceedingly grateful for that. It's how we can do the show. And thanks to the generosity and the support of these people, I feel, Andrew, a personal responsibility to take to the airwaves, even on days like today when I'm battling a variety of illnesses as previously demonstrated in the audio from What About Bob?

Just dedicated to the craft.

I am. For the love of the game and for the love of Jill Jarris, who's in Lakewood, Ohio.

Jill, my old stomping grounds of Lakewood, Ohio.

And my new stomping grounds of knowing how to say Jill's last name.

Yes. So it says it rhymes with Harris or Ferris. So it's Jill Jarris. I think we've gotten that wrong probably every dang time.

I believe I've been saying Jill Jarris. Oh, really? Going for the French? Kind of something, anyway. Jill, thank you. All you have to do, I just want to mention, if you would like us to pronounce your name correctly, is go ahead and hit us up at the Dazzling Donor level where there is an input for the pronunciation of your name. Jill says, hey, friendos, long-time donor, first-time Dazzler. Congratulations for going independent and ensuring TBTL keeps making hashtag content that makes me feel less lonely in the world. Aw, Jill. Congratulations to you on us and finally knowing how to say your name when I'm anxious or frazzled TBTL is there to delve into the minutiae of life. Well, Jill, you obviously when you wrote this, you hadn't heard today's show where I was picking a blackberry seed out of my teeth. Minutia. I mean, that word, it does not mean what you think it means. We get to the universal through the deeply personal. OK, that's what we do here.

Embedded seed.

And it really helps. Thank you. I'd also like to remind everyone that it's an Olympic and Paralympic year. If you love the games, I invite you to listen to my podcast called Keep the Flame Alive, a weekly show about the games. During Paris 2024, we'll have daily coverage. We're accredited media and we'll bring the excitement of Paris directly to you. Note, Luke and Andrew, you have money worries. Try being an indie podcast with a very expensive trip every two years. Holy smokes, Jill.

they're traveling to cover the paralympics bro we need to have them on yeah that sounds cool

i am a big uh well i particularly the summer games i get really into them i can feel this

is a year i'm going to get into the summer games the tbtl summer games or no no those i actually

could take early okay but the the olympics and the paralympics like certain years uh or certain times around you know because obviously these are things that happen every two years the winter and in the summer um i remember when it used to be every four years and then that year had both of them and i just couldn't handle that dry spell in between oh i thought you couldn't handle the deluge no i loved the deluge i want that to be i wanted there to be the olympics every single year i was a kid who really watched the olympics and was really into it because it's just good television like they they're they've really kind of dialed in the storytelling aspect of it um But then they switched it to where you never had to wait four years. You only have to wait two years. It does make sense in that way. But I'm also, yeah, I could see this. I mean, it's Paris, which is so cool. Like I could see this being, the other thing that happens for me with the Olympics is if I have a contact point, if there's a particular athlete that I've taken an interest in or a sport. In fact, I'm going to be working on a TV story about breakdancing, which is now going to be an Olympic sport. I believe I'm going to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado to watch some break dancers. But anyway, if I get kind of interested early on a particular Olympics, be it winter or summer, then I just kind of every becomes my like default TV watching that night. There's just something very... pageantry of it all and everything i like and now i like that we have a 10 jill jarrus who's going to be in paris hey it's jill jarrus from paris i wonder if jill's thought of that i don't know i

mean we have some branding opportunities did you know that in in i think i think it's this year's like games in paris that they're adding a um desperate housewives quiz as one of the events I think the TBTL summer games are actually having an impact on the Olympic summer games. That's kind of cool, knowing that we're kind of impacting the culture.

It's tough, though, because we have to embargo. What we try to do is we don't want to ruin it for the evening broadcast of the TBTL summer games. So we hope that people won't listen early. And then that was a complicated and kind of nonsensical joke about when the Olympics is in a place where the timing is really funky for America.

Right. And let me ask you how you feel about that, though, because you and I love live broadcasting and there does seem something like old fashioned about the NBC network clinging to like trying to like not spoil it and time shift the games and everything.

Right. In the modern world. Yeah, there's versions of it. So, I mean, the games are going to be in Los Angeles at some point in the not too distant future. That'll be obviously a slam dunk. And then there's like Paris. OK, it'll be it's going to be delayed by probably seven or eight hours. Then there's other ones where it's happening at four in the morning, you know, and that way, like sometimes it gets really, really out of whack where again, I don't, I'm not a Jill Jarris on this. I don't follow it this closely, but there are years where there have been years where like the results are coming in and you're seeing it in like on CNN.com and you were planning on watching it that night, but you're already finding out what like the, the U.S. women's soccer team did.

Right.

Exactly. And you're like, oh man.

I was taping that right and then NBC was taping that for me exactly I was trying to avoid it

anyway Jill says I love the Olympics because they encourage excellence and they're one of the few events that brings the world together in peace if you've never watched the Paralympics do the athleticism is amazing and it's what's uh it's what's possible when people adapt you can Find our pod at flamealivepod.com on your app, flamealivepod.com or your app, excuse me, or your app. So go check out flamealivepod.com, the podcast that listener Jill is doing from Paris. And by the way, Jill, if you hadn't have thought of I'm Jill Jarris from Paris, you're welcome.

You're a Jarrisian.

Maestro.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go.

Everybody rattle, dattle.

We've also got to thank Angela Barrera in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Body of Christ. Cheers. You brought it up. By saying Corpus Christi? I mean, I just mean Angela brought it up. It seemed weird for me to say body of Christ, but I mean. It is. It is the town. I didn't bring it into evidence, yeah.

I've had some fun times in Corpus Christi in the early days of Becca and I dating like very like too early I happen to have a work trip for Texas scheduled doing some sort of filming I think and other things down there well it's just filming it wasn't other things and I said hey do you want to go on a do you want to go on a trip and she was like that sounds like a questionable idea sure and so we went down there and I remember driving to Corpus Christi I wanted to find somewhere warm it was you know it was a it was the winter time still and i wanted to find somewhere warm and corpus christi was uh the a place that that promised to be kind of relatively warm it's kind of down there on the gulf coast and uh my god we drove through a hail storm to get there that was unlike anything hail and rain rain to a degree that it was like every car had their if a car was trying to drive they had their hazards on and most cars had pulled over like not even Pacific Northwest like boy it's one of those crummy days where there's a lot of water kicking up on I-5 this was like you know this is an incredibly stressful situation to be driving in a rental car with a person who you aren't have not been dating very long and trying to show courage under fire and um we got through it just fine I I handled it relatively okay Becca didn't freak out like she was like you're gonna kill us and I didn't you know it was a it was a bonding experience early on and i thank angela barrera and the weather patterns of corpus christi texas

do you remember and i'm not trying to compete with your memories with becca but do you remember um when you and i i think we were on a trip where we rented you and becca were on a trip remember when becca and i were on a trip um no you and i were and again it was in texas why we're going we go to texas we get assaulted by the weather because you and i were in an rv and we were so close to or five. final destination after driving all the way from Seattle down to Austin. And we were probably like a half hour away from our destination.

Hadn't we swung by like the Lyndon Johnson, like birthplace of Lyndon Johnson or something? I feel like we were coming in via a historic town on the outskirts of Austin.

I don't remember that detail, but then the hail started.

We were somewhere near Austin when the hail began to take hold.

Whoa. And I started to get really nervous. I'm like, this is going to cause damage to this. like what is our responsibility for this rv because like it was like yeah like things were cracking down on the windshield and on the roof of this rv i mean it was so we pulled over and just sat at the side of the road for maybe 10 minutes or something while we were just pelted with like

golf balls i had totally forgotten about that but yes i remember that and i remember being like did i get the insurance for that i think i probably did because it was apm that was funding What I could say now is, if it was a TBTB production, questionable at best. That's why it's up to you and John to really look out for this operation now. Angela says, hola, friendos. I couldn't help but take a bet on Luke and Andrew as they embarked with John on this new phase of TBTL by stepping up my donation to the dazzling level. Wow, thanks, Angela. Yeah, thank you. Really appreciate that. I've been a listener since the beginning as a carryover from the BPP days. Wow, Brian. Angela, I don't even know how Angela heard about the Bryant Park project. I did not realize we were trending in Corpus Christi, Texas, or wherever Angela may have been at the time. Yeah, wow. We were on, I believe, one radio station that was in, like, Vermont.

Wait, really? Aside from NYC?

We weren't on NYC, that was the problem. Really? I didn't know, but I must have only listened to that show online. Yeah, we might have, no, I don't even think we were on the AM, we might have been on the AM version of WNYC not the like the you know they had a couple of frequencies and we might have been on like a sub sub sub frequency of theirs we weren't on the big show because that would have meant they stopped playing Morning Edition for us

oh that's right it was supposed to be an alternate to that it was supposed to be an alternative

to Morning Edition which was which was madness if you think it was Morning Edition is probably the most popular program on any public radio station which station is going to swap that out for for for me and allison stewart and win rosenfeld on the ones and twos yeah it

would have to be um yeah i i mean yeah they must have been looking at like maybe markets with a second station so that they could provide alternate and it's interesting too because it's not even like competition from coming across the street it's kind of it's internal competition they're like we have the most popular radio program in the world let's create some internal competition for and see if we get stations to swap it out. What an interesting...

I think they also just didn't understand at the time how big On Demand was going to be. Which, I mean, no one understood how big On Demand was going to be. By that I mean podcasting and stuff. But what happened was that show, The Bryant Park Project, was a pretty big failure because we were trying to... Everybody had to be there at four in the morning to make sure this show was going live at 6 a.m. for one station in Vermont.

I mean, literally, it was while Steve Zind gets ready for his air shift. Exactly. Vermont Public Radio.

And like, I don't even think we were on Vermont Public Radio. I think we were odd, you know, like again, like some kind of maybe we replaced one hour of Amy of Democracy Now with Amy Goodman or something.

But I just hope there's one person out there who enjoyed my Steve Zind.

I bet you there's a lot of people. We've got a lot of this show. This show has a lot of listeners in Vermont, and I'm sure that they're all high fiving each other right now. Yeah. But primarily Steve Zind But they were spending on that show I forget what the number was But I want to say it was in the neighborhood of $20,000 or $30,000 a month Just on cab fare Because we had to get in so early That the subways didn't operate yet At that hour of the morning And it was obviously unsafe For people to be walking I don't know if it was unsafe or not But NPR had made the decision That in order to minimize their legal risk Everyone that worked on the show got a basically town car escort into work. Good grief. You had people that I think the majority of the money being paid to them was in town car services. Anyway, it was a bad idea all around, but Andrew, here's the thing. It hooked Angela Barrera in to TBTL. And here we are how many years later? Many years later. And Angela Barrera of Corpus Christi is sponsoring the show. She says, thank you so much, team. for all the content, companionship, and comedy through the years. Good luck to all, and please, more Star Trek references. Kapla?

That is obviously... Klingon word that means... God, I hope it's not Spanish, or you are big time coming out of a colonoscopy.

It means... It's something that you yell victoriously after your first full conversation with a Klingon. Whoa! Success! I see. Okay. Kapla! It means success.

That's good. That's all the Klingon I now speak. It's Kapla. I wonder if Angela is aware of listener Navia's thorough exploration

of the star trek universe exactly check that out on youtube because i follow her on instagram now

and i get to see a lot of like i'm gonna be honest with you i still don't get most of the references but that's like being a new tbtl listener you don't get most of the references but you just like the hang exactly i feel the same way well thank you to our dazzling donors

for making tbtl possible today hello and welcome to top story so i uh i got that

kitchen I keep saying a kitchen delivered I mean the appliances were already here Andrew but all of the cabinets that I ordered through Ikea which is a pretty actually complicated process involving a lot of like geometry and measuring and stuff and floor plans and the like and then they just put it into this big very complicated system and then it's kind of a supply chain deal where it starts just like every day I'm getting a note from Ikea going you're you know such and such is out for delivery today because of the vagaries of, of how this stuff works. Now it's all coming from different, some of it's coming from FedEx and then one panel will be coming from like I yesterday, right when the show ended at a truck pull up and these two really nice gentlemen were unloading a bunch of stuff, a different truck pulled up different guy, someone who's I think probably a freelancer who gets, you know, hired a contractor gets hired by, by logistics companies he just had a different stuff a bunch of stuff from ikea it's all for the same kitchen two different trucks the guys don't know each other to deliver different like pieces of cabinet and things like that it's a very it's the they become friends they did speak spanish to each other whilst in the house i did know that and i was like these are very likely some guys who have had somewhat similar life experiences of doing this kind of work and whatever so i kind of dug that they were comparing notes the first two guys kind of laughed when the other guy pulled up because then they were everybody were all like it was sort of like the two spider-men pointing at each other now there are two of us you know the guys so it was a good vibe out here but it's just it's just so strange how that all works now you know it like how that makes sense the other thing was the when i was out of town you know and i put up that whole awning situation to try to protect the original stuff that was going to show up which was just a cabinet or two um those cabinets when i opened them that were sent via fedex that i had to pay 75 of shipping out of my own pocket for which seems like a bad system because it was like they were kept somewhere else by ikea where they could not be put on one of those trucks the corners were all bashed up which was really frustrating and i call ikea and they're just like yeah we're just sending you another one no cost to you just keep the ones that are broken oh i'm

sorry so the actual corners of the cabinetry were busted up i thought you meant of the box and it made you nervous but no you actually had damaged goods and what you learn about this ikea stuff is

it's you know it's it's it's it's it's medically fragile from a starting point like you know it's particle board or press board or whatever we call it now and it's like it doesn't take a whole lot so what happened was peace and love to the fedex guy but he was probably like oh this is heavy i'm carrying it down these stairs just like put it down in a way that just bunged the corner so as i was opening this stuff it'd be like fine fine then the corner would just be like completely destroyed so i called ikea expecting this to be a complete nightmare so easy they were like okay we're sending you a new one march 4th and i was like what do i do with the old one i'll just throw it out whatever and then i'm like okay well this is definitely makes sense from a financial standpoint. Right, yeah. You charged me I had to pay the $75 the first time around to get this thing specially sent up from like Sacramento or something but now you're just on my on my honor which I have very little of, listeners would know on my honor, you're now just resending these things to be at no cost

Okay, alright, Ikea. And now you're selling slightly used

Ikea furniture. That's what I'd like to, that's mostly what I'd like to talk about today is I've recently come into possession of some scratch and dent Ikea material. I was about to

ask you about scratch and dent if you don't mind a quick aside because um that term came up on the spotless podcast recently and hannah and i were unfamiliar with the term scratch and dent and i was about to ask you you know you grew up in a pretty thrifty family was that a big part of

your culture scratch and dent absolutely are well and also just the scratch Scratch-and-dent section of larger stores that weren't overall a discount store. So my Uncle Mike worked at a place that used to be called Jafco, and then later the name was changed to Best. Just Best. It's an interesting naming convention, but it was basically like an electronics store.

It's not related. I was confused there for a moment. Not Best Buy. There's a Jafco plumbing in the area. That's probably just a coincidence, probably no connection.

No connection. I was also very young at the time, but what I remember was it was down, I think, in South Center, and my sense was it was kind of an electronics type of deal, like what we think of maybe as a sort of a Best Buy, or maybe an appliance store of some kind. What I know was, it took us a long time to get a microwave in the Burbank family, and finally, there was a microwave that was scratch and dent that I think my Uncle Mike might have seen, scratch and dent at best.

I was going to say, how scratched, how dented?

uh fairly dented on the side i'm sure walt did some kind of you know popping out of whatever the metal was but that was how we got our microwave and i remember that being a really feeling like a big day in the burbank household like we had a microwave but it was because of scratch and dent so we were yeah i was very aware of like the idea of scratch and dent as a kid it seems like a

microwave let's let's just make sure the things that close are closed you know what i mean like Do you want radiation? I don't know how microwaves work. Never mind. I was just going to say, like, you just want to make sure that that bad boy is sealed up, right? Before we hit go on it. We hope it's not so dented that the seal is broken. It's leaking. Yeah, right. You're staring.

It's not leaking.

It's overflowing. You're staring at your hot dogs cooking while your brain scrambles.

So it's I have so much to say on this and we don't have endless time today. But the long and the short of it is much has been made of Ikea's system for kind of, what am I trying to say? Ikea's system of having furniture that can be assembled independent of language, independent of a background in like furniture construction. kind of like their whole thing is that they and they've had many years to perfect this now this idea of basically making something with the with the tools both to assemble it and also the hardware that holds it all together that theoretically you could you could drop it into a fairly evolved community of chimps Allah when that big monolith drops in 2001 I guess those were maybe cave people or something But like the idea is that like Almost anyone could do this And I've put together IKEA furniture Before my buddy Cotter used to say the first Piece of direction should be open a beer Like you're going to be here for a while But I've never really tried to put together Something on the scale of this kitchen And what I will tell you is that They have not perfected the directions I know complaining about IKEA And the assembly is this is not novel Content but i was really struck anew last night at how kind of actually not easy it is and the drawings at time the illustrations which which again are purely visual there were so many times where i like you know i have to use glasses now when i'm looking at stuff like that i was literally like looking at it like it would be like these wood pegs right that you kind of tap into these series of pre-drilled holes the problem is there's six pre-drilled holes on one of the edges of this cabinet and there's three pegs that need to go in and they're kind of telling you which of the six you know of the six holes which three need the pegs because the other ones need something else yep but the actual illustration of it is shockingly small and actually kind of in the background like it's i should actually take a picture and send it to you yeah please do like I was going are they like this seems like a critical thing I how is this not like it needed to be much more explicit than it was and what I realized is I am not alone in this there's a whole genre on YouTube of people putting together Ikea furniture and in particular Ikea kitchens because of how unhelpful the directions from Ikea actually are that makes a lot of sense because

those directions as since they've been trying to make them universal which has been the totality of my experience with ikea stuff in trying to make the instructions universal it makes it harder for everyone to follow a little bit you know what i mean like everybody can follow it eventually but it's a more difficult process because of the because of the lack of language right or a specific language so it makes sense like i mean the majority of things i go to fix around the house. My very first stop these days is YouTube.

university right like that's that's cliche at this point as well i was thinking that maybe this would have been a good opportunity for ikea to sort of like say you know what we'll make the videos we'll produce slick little videos because that's the best way to actually show people how to get these things made but i guess if you have an entire community of youtubers out there doing it for free you don't need ikea to do their own specifically branded ones i don't know it may just

be that these people have better search engine optimization it may just be that a guy named runs who i've been watching just has better seo than ikea because my beginning of the journey was ikea kitchen assembly or whatever but this guy's voice is so soothing andrew like this is my new favorite radio host even though this is more i guess video but take a listen to this dude

So in this video, I'm going to tell you about four or five things you need to pay attention to if you're installing the suspension rail and using the instruction that comes with the rail, because it's not all good. So keep watching. And why don't we add it? Please subscribe to my channel right there.

It's not all very good. It's not all very good. rons is a guy i don't even know where he is in the world but he has basically figured out that like there are a lot of things about the ikea kitchen assembly that just don't even work in a normal house like uh the fact that well i'll just have him kind of pick it up here before we get to the topic of this video i just oh by the way i love this too this is a warning about literally lacerating your leg with some of the ikea material rons has included a photo of a major gash on his leg oh geez or as he describes it a gap that happened from this ikea kitchen

assembly before we get to the topic of this video i just want to share a warning with you because a few years back i was not paying attention while hanging the rail and while i was handling it in order to cut the rail in two, I hit my shin. And as you can see in this picture, it left quite a bit of a gap on my leg there. And I had to go to the emergency room to have eight stitches to close up that wound and a big band-aid on. And I don't want this to happen to you. So please pay attention when you're handling the rail. Really good advice, Rans.

Are you developing a parasocial relationship with it?

Hugely. because he points this out too the whole idea of this rail system is you put the cabinets together and then you're supposed to install this railing that the cabinets then click into if they're the uppers and even if they're the base cabinets it's supposed to keep them all kind of level and sort of where they're supposed to be but Ranz points out quite wisely that it's based on the idea that your house is totally plumb and square

and nobody's house is like that well in general for a care it's a prerequisite that the walls and the floors and the ceiling are absolutely perfect that means the floors are horizontal the ceilings are horizontal and not sacking in the middle and the walls are flat and vertical and if you have a house and you've been checking out your own room with a level you will see that That is not the case. I have never seen a house that was absolutely perfect according to IKEA standards.

This is making me feel a lot better about my actual house, which is not perfect according to IKEA standards. Yeah. So, first of all, I would trust Ranz with my life.

In some ways, you are.

Good point. I don't want to get quite a substantial gap on my leg by hitting myself with a rail.

do we see his face or do we just see his hands as we see a picture of him a lot of it is vo

you know a lot of it is just kind of like showing different measurements and and like things where he's so he's he's kind of filmed it and then he's gone back and recorded the voiceover we do see him a little bit he's a maybe a guy looks like he might be in his 50s kind of a shaved head uh you know kind of like looks like a contractor possibly it's i mean his accent makes me think he might be in europe somewhere but i don't actually know where he is i wasn't sure if maybe he's even swedish he might be i mean he may speak the language um right of ikea i yeah i i'm also i'm gonna find this out hopefully by by the end of today's show or no by the end of today i should say but like i'm also i have a um i have a deep concern that they actually sent me the wrong orientation of one of the cabinets and because i put together there's like a really big um it's all called section s-e-k-t-i-o-n that's the name for the just sort of standard ikea cabinet section in my ska band um and so i you know i've got all these cabinets and i put together like three of them last night and one of them which is enormous and has this kind of it's hard to explain but it's oriented in this way that it's like a big kind of rectangular box that one part of it doesn't open at all it's just like it's just like a solid piece of wood and i think that's the corner piece like in other words that's for an area that's going to abut the stove so there's no reason for it to open because it's basically blocked by the side of the stove does that make any sense yes absolutely it's the dead space in the corner it's the dead space in the corner but if unless there's something i don't understand about it it's the exact opposite of what i need like it's the wrong orientation and i may have spent a considerable amount of time assembling this thing that i'm potentially i have to get all of this stuff put together and then try to kind of like place it and go like this goes here this goes here um i i am hoping that i'm totally wrong about this but i have a terrible feeling that this is actually um uh that they i don't know how they would though because it's a very complicated, like I said, process of like the three dimensional design. You meet with someone, they're putting it all together. They're looking at a, you know, the floor plan of the room and they're moving things around. It's real, you know, minority report, enhance, enhance, enhance, et cetera. And they really know what they're doing. So I don't know how it would be that the person would have literally got something opposite unless they like keystroked it in wrong. I'm praying that I'm just confused about something But I, as of right now, can't quite figure out How this piece of cabinetry is supposed to This big base cabinet is supposed to actually work

Maybe a second set of eyes could help too Because sometimes you just get so close to these things Genevieve is usually the furniture assembler in our house But sometimes I can choose assembling kind of a piece of cabinetry For her upstairs bathroom This is a couple years ago now and um she just was like puzzling something out and just puzzling something out and i don't think i mean i have pretty decent spatial reasoning anyway but like i want to make it clear she was working on assembling this thing for probably a couple of hours but there was this one thing that just did not make sense to her about where like the kind of the way that the orientation of the doors opening where the hinge was or something and sometimes just kind of come in and a fresh set of eyes can be like okay flip that upside down you know what i mean it sort of sounds like it could be one of those things so maybe next time Walt is there have him kick the tires

on that yeah I mean I'm hoping that I am just not understanding and I'm terrible with kind of spatial things like this so I'm very much just hoping that this is me but because again it's a computerized system like they very much knew what they were trying to send me I'd be surprised if it was the wrong thing but but I guess I just have to call Ranz and see what he says 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

how have i been doing on on the sniffle alert sniffle watch sniffles are fine good sniffles are fine so far as i've been i've been liberally using my um my mute button to try to keep that

sort of stuff at a minimum i haven't i haven't noticed i will say our internet line is a little bit um janky today as well so it could be slipping through the cracks and so i'll give you a full report after i listen to the final tape today i'll mark every single um sniffle and then i'll give you a demerit for each one good i know that we're a little bit tight on time here but i'm going to take you on a very short how do you feel about emotional roller coasters um short short emotional roller coasters okay i'm up for it we got this from a listener alec uh you and i were talking last week it was a very fun segment i thought you were introducing me to the world of uh club frog or is it frog club frog club in new york city new york city's hottest new restaurant and they have a whole list of like kind of ways to get 86 from the restaurant and it was you know somewhat tongue-in-cheek um and also a little bit haughty but anyway alex said hey friendos alec from brooklyn checking in loved hearing you guys talk about frog club a place my wife and i are checking out this weekend so we were talking about this on friday and this came in on friday i had to chime in on the connection that is uh located it's located at 86 bedford street one time home of the historic beat generation bar slash speakeasy chumleys the rumor has it that this is where the idea of being 86 originated because in the speakeasy days when the cops would show up the bartenders would 86 people by making them sneak out the back door at 86 bedford street Wow. Probably the connection for Frog's Cheeky ADC. list love the show so much we'll report back with with bathroom selfies of stolen memorabilia ASAP those are two ways to get 86 um I wrote back to Alec on Monday I said uh Alec how did it go tell us everything about um Frog Club and uh this is the emotional roller coaster part we ended up getting sick and missing the event that we were supposed to go to there the frog gods must have cursed me for my tasteless joke about stealing memorabilia. We'll try to get there ASAP and do some boots-on-the-ground reporting for you all best, Alex. So I'm sorry. From 86 to 86, Andrew. Oh, that's pretty good, Luke.

Can you tell that I re-found my... I've been unpacking. I'm still unpacking here.

Is that the little beige one with the red top?

No, I lost that one. That one was cute. This one has actually not much to look at, but it's got a good... Listen to this. yeah it's got a good ring out it's got a good nice ring out to it timber yeah exactly um all right well i think that's going to do it for today's program but guess what everyone we're going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you don't forget andrew on thursday

show you get to use leap day william oh yes that's right that's right around the corner put a pin in

that yes all right uh we'll see you tomorrow everyone in the meantime have a great tuesday take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

hi luke hi andrew i am julian i am almost nine year old nine year old nine years old and i have a funny joke for you Why? What kind of, um, shoe does a frog wear? An open toad. Power out. Power out.