Muse

Uh, excuse me, Mr. Lavender, John Tesh is here.

Oh great, send him in. Okay.

Knock, knock. Hello.

There he is, Mr. Entertainment tonight.

How you guys doing? Hello, everyone. This is my brother right here, Dave Tesh. Pleasure, pleasure. I did not know that you had a brother. Oh yeah, you know, he's not just my brother. He's also the genius in the family. Meanwhile, I'm blushing. Okay, well, let's see what we got for you. We've written a song that we like to call Round Ball Rock. Now, it started as one of David's poems here, but then it just grew into something bigger than both of us could ever imagine. It's me on keys and Dave singing. Can you believe this is our job? All right, fire away. All right, ready to do this? Yes, I am. All right, two, three, four.

Ba-ba-ba-ba-basketball, gimme, gimme, gimme the ball, because I'm gonna dunk it! Ba-ba-ba-ba-basketball, gimme, gimme, gimme the ball, because I'm gonna dunk it!

Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba

Stop that!

I'm sorry. I think we probably, we weren't clear. We actually meant, could we hear it with just the music?

Oh, um, I defer to you. I, uh, my gut is no. Yeah, it's T-B-T-L.

Guess what day it is? Guess what day it is?

It's Friday, Friday. Gonna get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend. I saw a woman psychiatrist, and she said it was OCD, one cool dude. And she understands the way I think right now. And everything's cool. Everything's cool, pathetic. Everybody's happy. And I'm happy, too.

Sweetie, have a good show. What you do is so important.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live it is indeed marvelous an irony free zone

where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts my name is luke burbank i am your host oh yeah

coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where we are looking at another absolutely gorgeous day spring is springing all over it's almost it's almost too good tomorrow night we're going to be doing the 20th anniversary celebration of the Live Wire radio program in Portland the show is sold out it's very gratifying but I'm wondering if anyone is going to come indoors to see this thing because what happens in the Pacific Northwest when it finally gets nice is most of us immediately strip off all of our clothing and just walk directly out into the sunshine and kind of lose our damn minds some of us are asked to put our clothing back on very quickly i'm one of those people but um we'll see what happens this weekend it's going to be a nice one and this is going to be a nice episode it's episode 4163 in a collector series let the fun begin uh we tried to do this yesterday and we ran out of time maybe that was maybe that was lucky because what i'm going to do today is truly unprecedented on the show i'm going to intentionally insult my friend Andrew Walsh but he is going to remain unaffected by my slings and arrows I am courageous because he has an article from Time magazine on how to deal with people saying insulting things so we're gonna test that out plus it's a Friday so we'll do a little music for your weekend and whatever else pops into our little heads here uh on this beautiful friday uh speaking of my good friend andrew walsh he's been getting ready for the uh the the insult segment of the show and of course he's getting ready for the weekend two of his favorite days of the year

i got one kidney one lung a half a liver and a pure heart he is the longest running co-bro of

the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships and he's joining me right now good

morning my friend good morning luke i don't know if it's been disconcerting for you on the video screen here to see me sort of touching my microphone in sort of a weird way during the intro of the show i i'm wearing new headphones like the same style headphones but they're new and so they're they're clamping to my head tighter and like the the ear pads are nice

brand new and i'm just now realizing that that's what's been going on with me because i've been i started singing along to the intro tape the baba baba basketball situation but i thought my microphone was open and i think it's just because i'm hearing the the resonance of my own voice coming back in my headphones because they're so new and clamped onto my onto my fat head and so

you also you you switched up some gear this week yes everything and i know and and by the way i i'm And if it sounds like I'm being, like, if I'm having a go at you, that's not the part of the show we're in. I am going to have a major go at you later. I was going to say, don't make me— This is not that.

Because I need to refer to my list of comebacks if we're doing that right now. Yes, exactly. Don't break those out yet.

This is not me having a go at you. But it's definitely something that kind of lives in your head a bit when you switch up equipment. But as a person who last week had to, for a couple of days, kind of ride herd on the recording of TBTL, I totally get it now. There's kind of a lot going on, actually, and I'm in one place, you're in another place, there's audio drops, there's music. It's a fairly complex thing that's going on here, even though if you were to tune into it, you would think, it's just a couple of guys chopping it up. So anyway, I know that it's something that can be intense for you, but also for good reason.

Yeah. Speaking of audio adventures, I'd love to tell you about something I got into last night that is a true emotional journey for me. I'd love to hear about it. I feel like I'm already sort of kind of overtaking the show at the top here. I know that you had a big night last night that actually involved interacting with human beings. Should that take precedence over my basement experimentations?

I don't think, I don't want to, listen, I don't want to frame things in that way. That like, just because I talk to humans and you talk to DartBot, somehow my stories of Thursday night are of more value. I will say that it was really nice to get to tour the new studios of KNKX. there on um western in seattle and also to hang out with my friends from prx which is a distribution public radio distribution entity they they're the folks that get live wire out on the radio and also it was fun was there were tens there and i got to see kate and chris and uh and nate and chris's partner and it was uh yeah it was it was a very fun night um but i will tell you this is what i guess being old is becca and i drove all the way up there they were nice enough to get me a hotel room um right around the corner from pike place market and uh we we got in there we got trained a change we went over to the event the event wrapped up at around 8 30 or so and we were walking back to the hotel and we both looked at our watches in fact this was the way becca described it we got back to the hotel room she was in a kind of very nice outfit i was in a little sort of suit thing and without even discussing it we both changed back into our regular clothes started packing our bags up and started walking towards the elevator to get in the car to drive home and it was only as we were halfway back to the car she goes you know we never even discussed if we were going to stay here tonight or go home we just both kind of knew i mean we had had a conversation earlier in the in the night like it might be you know we both had pretty sort of packed days today but anyway i guess that's being 47 is just kind of like yeah we could be staying in this nice hotel room which was which was cool and that hotel the state hotel i'm it's very cool place and looks out on pike place market but it was like but i could also sleep in my own bed and i could also just you know be ready to go for this friday so anyway that was my thursday night it was really nice to see everybody at that thing at cankex particularly uh the 10s so thanks to

everybody who came to that that's cool i heard those um facilities are very nice they've been

in there only a few months right maybe six months holy smokes i i think i'm willing to say the best

view in public radio which is important i mean to me it is actually to you it really is who you're

talking to that's the number one way i rank a public radio station right is it programming no is it listenership no is it is it listenability no is it the view of elliot bay and the big wheel yes and boy oh boy is that spectacular there at knk was my new best friend uh kirsten kendrick there absolutely and she mentioned she mentioned uh running into you at the hilltop tavern oh really she did you you coming in and saying that you did not know you were going to a kind of a social get-together uh like of the scope that it was her memory of things were that you walked in with somebody some mutual friend i think it was amy woo right amy woo invited you out to something i know more about your life than you do and that's okay her version of the story is

is amazing correct is amazingly incorrect i mean i mean there's amy

woo was involved but we did not walk in together certainly i believe you were invited by amy woo

yes truly yes you came out to the thing and when you walked in what she thinks you said was oh i

didn't realize this was a whole thing i don't remember that what the big confusion about that meetup was i knew that i was amy who lives in chicago now uh was in seattle um celebrating her birthday with with some friends who also work in the public radio industry and so i didn't know that i was meeting up with amy and a few of her friends to celebrate her birthday uh over dinner and drinks um what had um shocked me was i had taken the e-line to get there and the e-line made it seem like you just you know you take the bus down aurora and then you get off oh this was where

you had tromped yes the various off-roading yes situations to get up to queen anne google maps

official way to take the e-line then to get to the hilltop tavern looked very easy like you get off the e-line and you walk less than a mile what i didn't realize was the first part of that mile maybe the first quarter or half mile you literally have to go into the woods behind some sort of a motorcycle repair shop or something the guy who runs the shop came out and said oh yeah you got to go all the way down there then you go up this this really steep narrow path like literally um blackberry brambles ripping my shirt and i'm going to meet people i don't know for drinks and dinner along with Amy on the day of her birth. And I get to the top of the hill and I'm sweaty and I'm dirty and I've got blackberry brambles on me. So I remember being shocked about that. But the fact that Kirsten remembered me at all is a win.

She did use the terms disheveled. Yes. And unkempt.

And weirdly, she used the word portly, which I don't even know. Like, why would you body shame me like that? Unnecessary. Totally. What are you, Robert Herr?

Wait, what is that? That's not germane. That's the guy that said that Biden was there. Oh, oh. elderly man a kind and elderly man with a bad memory did kirsten refer to me as a kind and

elderly man i would take that she left out kind oh a portly so that was the last time that you

socialized that's the last time you've socialized above ground what was happening last night in

your subterranean layer um so i've told you about this um before i think uh back in college i started saving my answering machine tapes back in the day and answering machines were actually run on tape before they were all digitized and they ran on those small little microcassette yeah the microcassettes I guess and also I use those microcassettes as you know and we have talked about on the show somewhat recently I always had like what we called dictaphones or little microcassette recorders that I would put in my pocket I mean even before I was in radio I just loved playing with this kind of stuff and so I would carry it around with me and sometimes record me and my friends doing shenanigans and this goes back to like the 90s but I was always especially interested in the voicemails because I started instead of just taping over these things like most normal people do I started labeling them and throwing them into a little bag and then thinking someday I will go back I don't know when but someday I'll go back and I'll listen to all of these voicemails that were just random voicemails left from relatives grandparents parents are you coming home this weekend you know friends trying to get me out of my awful studio to come see some show and I was always locked up I've always been the same person Luke just locked up in my in my little studio avoiding social contact and so I was like but these are like real little slices of life like more than like kind of sometimes I describe like you can take a photo to to kind of have a memory or to preserve a memory but what I find more interesting are the sort of accidental photos or things you catch in the background.

These are effectively audio candids.

Yeah, and I just sort of felt like these voicemail messages someday will really mean a lot to me. And now a lot of those relatives have passed, you know, and I think about my grandparents or whatever checking in on me. And so I've always thought someday I will dig that bag out and I'll go through them and I'll run it through my audio board and digitize it and listen to them. And, you know, I've had these thoughts since I started keeping these tapes in the 90s, and I've never done it. I've never, like, even dipped my toe a little bit into it. I'm like, one of these days I'll be in the right mindset. Nostalgia for me, Luke, is a complicated beast. Like, I love it. I'm somebody who Genevieve says it's my favorite drug, which I don't know, man. There are a lot of good drugs out there.

Yeah, there's definitely, you know, a couple of horses in that race.

I indeedly do.

I'll have you know, I didn't buy any of those over-the-counter prescription medications in Mexico. It's so tempting.

I'm still carrying around Mexican Xanax.

Are you really?

I'm not a person who ever recreationally or through a prescription consumed Xanax, but there was something about the fact that I could buy it there at the airport and I couldn't buy it here. That's how my, you know, probably unhealthy side of my brain works. I'm like, here's a drug I don't really take, but some people abuse this.

can get it here without paperwork better get some and that also underscores the difference in our taste of our tastes in medications let's just call it that because i am you know and the of people like i mean you have these little you know quote unquote pharmacies all over the place and they're all just trying to get like i went in there for a tube of toothpaste and the woman like held out this like menu she's like well don't you need like a lot of like cialis drugs which come on i know i'm an older man but like but they're just like they start with the boner pills and then they're like you know what about this what about this what about pain pills or whatever and like i had to like keep on looking at like the the stuff in the in the more like pain pill category or whatever i'm just like no i don't want to do that and then genevieve looked it up she's like yeah somebody like it was at atlantic weekly or somebody had done a report literally looking at the drugs in in puerto vallarta i read that did you it was literally where we were saying and it's like even those are just so packed with fentanyl we're just like just terrible like yeah whatever the

like thing looks like it is there is a really really high chance that it's just made out of all kinds of bad for you even worse than what the like you know eli lily is actually trying to do

with the product exactly so anyway i put myself out here as being a dirt bag on front street but the point of that is i did not succumb to the temptation i didn't buy any of that stuff so nostalgia still in the running as one of my favorite drugs but i was starting to say that it's a it's a dangerous drug for me because it will turn on me it will get on top of me you know i love it i love going back and looking at old photos or hearing old voices but it can give me such a almost oppressive sense of wistfulness wistfulness sounds like such a light thing but it can it can almost like the memory can almost feel oppressive it can almost feel physical pain i mean which is really hard to explain i think i'm just i think maybe i'm a sensitive soft boy luke um which is probably why they're trying to sell me those pills in mexico um but anyway last night senior soft boy is that a show title or does that move us further away from being a family friendly show um last night eggplant forte that might be the show title um anyway um all of those say i think you know where i'm going with this last night i don't know what it was i was doing a bunch of production work i was doing like video editing for the tbtl stuff this weekend and i was just sort of in a mode where i was like okay i'm done with my work i could go play darts i could go play my damn baseball game on the video game um but i was like no you know what i sort of i i you know it might have even been there was a chance that you were going to come here to record the show with me today so i had your oh right i had your aux cable ready i don't know what it was but like i'm like i'm kind of like because i've been messing around with my studio and everything i'm like i have this aux cable why don't i dig out one of those old so i have like two or three microcassette players in storage in this box that i call it's just a cardboard box that is packed to the brim and i call it the museum of archaic technology it's got all of my old like cameras and like but mostly audio equipment mini disc i might even have a dat recorder in there i don't know about that old cassette players like just all oh like every uh ipod i've ever owned which I think started with maybe the second generation and just like a bunch of old technology that I still think is beautiful in some ways, but serves no purpose. So but this thing is in the bottom of this little storage area that we have that is kind of hard to navigate. So it's one of those things. It's not like, oh, I just grabbed this and I plug in the aux cable and I start recording them. I start pulling out all these boxes of nonrelated stuff. And then I start like kind of cleaning out the closet a little bit as I'm digging further and further to get to this box slash museum of archaic technology. I finally wrestled that thing out of there. I find the bag of cassettes. They're right here, Luke. You can see them on the camera. Yeah. Some of them have labels. At one point in college, possibly while high, I also, like, I think I transcribed all of these, like, back in the day. I used to have a log of every voicemail on these. I've lost that, apparently.

But I haven't listened to them since that era. And then I find my two micro cassette recorders. I'll hold one up to the camera for you here, just for you, Luke. Oh, yeah. And this is like the desktop style that sits on it. It almost looks like something like maybe in a PI film from like the 1960s or something. This would maybe sit on the desk and they could record their notes into it or something. So I'm pretty excited. Like I found the tapes. I found the technology. I put batteries. One of this one here, I had left batteries in there probably from the early 2000s. So it was so the batteries had like kind of half exploded in there.

So I think George, they're George H.W. Bush branded batteries.

And they were and they they had become weapons of mass destruction, ironically, because there was like, you know, that there's some yellow caking. There's caking all over it. So I had to take those out and contact those of them. I mean, no. out of i mean literally overflowing outside the cover of the battery cover so that was a weapons

of mass destruction yellow cake joke oh yellow that was what that was that was some of the bunk information it's i'm making a lot of really good comedy today the kind that needs a lot of explaining

and that's when you know it's a good joke no yellow cake was a good joke i just thought it wasn't i just thought you meant that um that yeah i regret that i apologize for the george hw bush

What I was trying to think is, what would be a funny thing?

It also would have been W, not HW, I guess.

Which, well, true. Yes, you're absolutely right. I was picking the older Bush, but then I was making a joke about something that happened during the younger Bush's time. So there's so many ways that joke was bad. But what I was trying to think of was, what would be something that would be funny and anachronistic about these batteries that would tie them to a certain period of time? You know what I mean? That would just make no sense? Why would you even do that on a battery? like just it was a battery you know it was basically like a a crystal pepsi battery or something just like right now that's what i was going for but i couldn't and instead of just recognizing um that this was not going to be a win for me i instead pushed through and completely derailed the show i apologize please back well this story i microcassette chat i feel like this

this story derails itself so i'll skip to the end basically colin powell was testifying before

This story will self-derail.

No. Anyway, so, yeah, I even had to clean out the kind of acid that comes out of the battery. But anyway, I get my machine cleaned up. I start with the other one, the one that's more like a portable dictaphone. It doesn't work at all. I hit play on it.

Even with proper battery support.

Proper battery support. And this was not even the one that had the batteries explode in. And I hit play on it, and I hear the motor whirring inside. But none of the wheels are moving. I'm like, of course, that's what happens to all of these cassette players. This is why Walkman are so expensive to buy, because the plastic or like the belts inside the rubber or plastic belts just probably become brittle and just break. And so I'm like, oh, shit, I hope my other one works. So then I pull out this one, the one I was just showing you that kind of sits on the desktop and plays mini cassettes. And I hit play on that and kind of the same at first it started making this like kind of screaming sound, which I still don't quite understand. it almost sounded like a like radio interference or something that was very strange and then it stopped doing that but it would only play the cassette at like I don't know quarter speed I put in one random I'm glad you weren't on those zannies yeah and so I try rolling it in and it's like it's not even a voicemail it wasn't labeled so I thought it was going to be voicemails but it was actually from like 2001 I was recording Genevieve and her roommates in their last night I have no recollection of this, but it's their last night at their old apartment that had meant a lot to them and where a lot of like kind of big life events had happened to them and they were all moving out. Yeah. And this was in Boston and Somerville. And and so I was trying to listen to them sort of be I must have just put the tape recorder in the middle of us and we're all talking. So it's like terrible mic quality. It's just an and it's slowed down super slow and it's basically unusable. I'm like, maybe if I roll it in at slow speed, I can kind of digitally speed it up and like kind of fix the pitch and everything in post, which got me a little bit closer. But it was honestly just terrible, just terrible sound. And I realized literally for decades, the earliest cassette here is labeled, I think, 1995. It says just like random recordings around Kent. Here I have miscellaneous recordings, 1998 and 1999, phone messages, summer 2000. And like, I've always been kind of an archivist like this, but it never occurred to me that when I finally got the gumption to sit down and confront my past and like create, I really thought this would be a fascinating audio archive project for me someday. I don't have, it's not the tapes that broke. The tapes are fine. I can't play them on anything. And so I immediately go online and I start looking.

Yeah, I was wondering, what's one of these, what's this going to run you? One of these dictaphone type deals.

one i could find is used for about 150 130 bucks which is again if i want to i can spend that and this is something that i've been wanting to do like literally a quarter or almost half of my life now but i never thought it was going to take an investment of that and that is trusting that if i buy one of these things used online that it is going to operate the way they say it's going to operate the ones that are probably more trustworthy look like they might be um like kind of overstock from back in the day but those run four hundred dollars luke four hundred dollars for a lot of these things and i'm like i can't believe this i thought for sure the tapes would rot i thought i thought that would be my problem it never occurred to me that i would sit down and i wouldn't have a way to play them back i don't know i feel like there's some sort of weird analogy in there somewhere but i'm surrounded by these little cassette tapes i'm ready the body is ready the spirit is willing you You had finally gotten yourself emotionally in the place where you were, like, ready to kind of delve into this, and then the technology lets you down. I mean, at this point, I feel like you sort of have to try to – you need to strike while this iron is somewhat hot, right?

Instead of waiting until 2042.

Well, first of all, the price isn't going to go down.

That's true. And the belts aren't going to get better.

Right. So I would say right now you were probably, I would say, go ahead and buy one now because it's, it's only going to be more money over time. And also you've, you've sort of done the hard part. And there are about a hundred things in my life that are like this, but, but different. Some piece of some letter from someone or piece of mail or email or conversation that I have mixed feelings about opening and that I walk around all day kind of thinking, not that this was looming this large in your head, but you know, just something. where you kind of you you think I got to get to that and you don't get to it for some reason and that some reason is usually because we have some kind of sort of low frequency feeling of like this is going to be complicated I'm not sure how this is going to feel for me by the way I so identify with what you're talking about with this idea of listening back through old voicemails or old voice memos or things I mean I think and I'm not quite I'm not nostalgic as you in the exact same way But I definitely think if I had had some sort of archive like that and it was like, I'm going to go back and listen to tapes of Addie from when she was young, leaving me a message or, you know, I'm fortunate that my parents are alive, but like, you know, exes of mine, friends of mine, just like this idea. And I think for me, it's part of it is because I don't feel very young anymore. I think if I were to listen to things from my late 20s, whatever those things were, it would be hard for me because I would feel a deep sense of loss over not being in that version of my life. And that's not because I don't love the people in my life now. I really do. And not because I don't love my life now because I actually am in a pretty good place at the moment. but it was such an amazing thing to be for me anyway to be 27 in the world and to just feel like everything was potential and just the sound of that in my voice or the sound of that in other people's voice or something that just teleports me back to that moment in time I think it would

be very complicated for me yeah it's really and you and I I think had a conversation similar to this recently because it's and I think you feel the same way so I don't want to make it sound like i'm misinterpreting what you're saying but for me i wouldn't i wouldn't trade my life now for the the age i was here i mean this is like literally the night this is late 90s so this is college and then you know early 20s when i think about those early 20s when i'm you know first meeting genevieve through our friend paulie who you know still a close friend of mine in fact i was that's right i was texting him at like 10 o'clock and had him scrounging because i've got some of

his I was gonna say does Paulie have one of these seems like a guy who'd have one he's like I got

four of them uh three of them are in Frances's room and she's sleeping right now but I'll check on those uh and so like he's so he's both so excited about this and but also like I don't know that his will work any better my plan go oh what I was gonna say was I agree with you that like there's something that this nostalgia that takes over me is like I said before like kind of oppressive or almost like a kind of a sweet pain sort of but it's not like I want to go back like i would not swap my life now my life i think has gotten better every year since probably 10th grade i don't know if that's true or not i mean things come and go like the you know like there are there are always um you know pros and cons but generally speaking the autonomy the agency that i have today as being a person of a certain age in the in the in the um kind of in the relationship i'm in given my financial situation like i don't i would not want to go back to my 20s where it's like one car breakdown on the highway could impact the the rest of my year you know and now i'm talking about buying a you know plunking down 150 bucks on a potentially broken micro cassette

player you know i mean ironically a broken belt would have been the source problem in both scenarios exactly you nailed it larger than the other so yeah you know that when your fan belt would start

to go and just be like yeah yeah it's super high-pitched squeak and then you come up to the stoplight and your brakes are squeaking because those are going like everything is just going on that thing so anyway i i agree with you like hearing it gives you a sense of like of who you were at that age and there's something about it that is so overwhelming but on the other hand i wouldn't logically you know swap places with that version of myself so anyway here's my plan going forward. I think I'm going to before I just

buy one of these things online because sometimes and i truly do believe this sometimes with me the journey is almost better than the final product um and so you can tell from this story

probably um which has no power out listen you're talking to mr this is the good part exactly this is my new mantra dude this is the good part and here it is you just mentioned that

it's springtime and so like i think everybody i got my hair cut yesterday and like everybody's just like the barber everybody's just in this like joyful mood because the weather has turned as you described at the beginning and so i'm thinking like you know garage sales are going to be starting pretty soon oh yeah um i can go to my favorite antique malls around town i can kind of make this a mission to keep an keep an eye out for it and that's always kind of a fun thing the summer of the micro cassette yes and then what will happen is what always happens is eventually i'll just give up and buy one online but i want to at least like try to kind of have an adventure of maybe if paulie's uh cassette players don't work for me then i'll uh i'll go hunting and kind of make that a mission for a while but i think i'll keep these things out i don't i'm not going to put them back in the box because if i put them back in the box i literally

might not ever do this project i realize i just think it's pretty cool that you had the and again this might speak to your sort of your your deep sense of pre-stalgia like that you had a sense back then that this was something that would be meaningful to you down the road. Because I mean, again, I just said that it would be complicated for me to check back in on my life in that way from 20 years ago or 25 years ago. But also, I wish I had the option. I wish I would have thought to retain stuff like that. I think we're at a perfect point to thank the donors and to get into the next part of the show. So let me just add on another 20 minutes here. I think I'm with you that I wouldn't trade. The actual current version of my life is in very many ways what I always dreamed my life would be. Like I am fortunate to have people who love me. I have a girlfriend who loves me and is amazing. I have an incredible child who's grown and it needs less from me as a grown adult than she did when she was five years old. I my job is to talk into microphones and and and get to more or less just kind of you know be myself and I've sort of monetized that enough that I can make a living like all of the things that 22 year old Luke would have been like dude wow that is your that's your life like you this has all come together for you in this way that's that's been really fortunate with various ups and downs that have been narrated on this show over the last 13 years. So my life as it currently exists is actually really, really good. And I'm so fortunate to have it. I think what I miss is my mentality from that era, the way that my brain, it just, I just, I just feel like my default setting was happiness. And again, that's its own sort of privilege because there are plenty of people in their twenties who deal with depression and anxiety and a lot of different things. I was so fortunate that that wasn't part of my experience and I must have had bad days in my 20s but I can't remember any of them I just remember generally kind of like you know most days getting up and just being sort of like well let's see what happens and it didn't take nearly as much for me to feel happy that's the other thing I didn't have you know I didn't have any money I drove you know old beater cars that had the fan belts that were always on the verge of snapping I you know i didn't have a lot of resources i didn't have a lot of uh agency at the jobs that i was in i was usually in pretty starting out position and none of that bothered me somehow like that's what i miss about being that age was i everything just felt i just think things kind of felt more okay to me even though on a certain level they were less okay and now things are more okay for

me but they feel somehow less okay interestingly that is that might be a big difference between us Because I don't think I mean, I don't know if I've ever had a carefree day in my life, but like I've always been somebody who's been wracked with anxiety and me describing how I feel like in many ways I can make the argument that my life gets better with every passing years because I can because my job has been honed into this is my job. me talking to you and even like the worst day of my job at tbtl is still better than probably a medium day at almost any other job i had that's not fair like i've i've gotten that's not fair i've gotten to work in radio like i love radio i loved being a producer this is one of my least favorite parts you know absolutely no absolutely but um but even still like when i even when i was a young like kind of more ambitious sort of like booker for public radio shows or even executive producers it was still like even though i loved where i was i loved working in radio was still like i gotta wake up do i have this guest Oh, my God. You know, I mean, there was built in pressure all the time. And that goes. Yeah. And that's on top of just like just the general being of me being anxious about this or that or that. And so I don't sort of look back at anything as being a carefree time, definitely a younger time and definitely a, you know, a headier time in some ways. I've definitely eased into my my middle age. I did want to just mention one more thing, and this is not going to lead us on a huge tangent, I don't think. But you had mentioned it was it was interesting that when I was a younger person in college that I would have this idea of saving these things, these tapes. And I think a big part of it was I was new in public radio and it was like unlike anything I'd heard before. And of course, I'm just getting into this American life and I'm going to the radio station and dubbing myself cassettes and coming back and collecting those cassettes and being obsessed with it. And I was looking at these cassette tapes last night and I saw one of them, and this might have even helped spark the project, was one of these tapes has me calling in the Dial-A-Song, the They Might Be Giants Dial-A-Song, which I 100% got the idea from This American Life, right? And so I think I was like in this mode of both being a pre-stalgic, as you mentioned, but also really getting into this idea of just like audio and found audio and raw audio.

So all of it is potential content or archival or has value, which it really does. I mean, that's something, too. You said this wasn't going to be another tangent. We should get an editor, Andrew.

Boy, that really lived in your head. I don't know if you can see this.

Well, this is why I really need to hear about ways from Time Magazine to deal with things that feel insolent. In fact, you know what? We should let's just do that. And let's get into this basically slugfest. that is going to occur in just a minute or two here on TVTL. God, I hate this job.

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.

Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the wonderful, generous folks keeping TVTL going. Last night, there was a fun moment where our friend and 10, Kate Muller, was, I think, sort of a little bit trying to express to the CEO of PRX, because that's what I was there for, was to talk about PRX stuff.

Which is the media company that sort of distributes Livewire.

Yeah, it's the distribution company, the public radio exchange. and um and uh and and kate was trying to be like yeah you know i've been listening for years and then i started trying to explain it and then at some point and i just realized this is this is better kept between us uh-huh trying to explain tbtl its longevity the business model kate reminded me by the way that she was on an episode of the show when we were still a radio show where jen had the idea to just interview a number of our listeners who were named kate oh that is a good

idea to get a great you gotta give a great segue idea like she just apparently noticed that we had

a lot of people named kate listening so we literally just brought three people in based strictly on the fact that they were named kate and ended up like how's that going for you that's so interesting the other thing she said was i believe we also had to bring food

so in other words kate said that she as the listener had to bring food as the content as

the person who was coming in and basically generating free content for us also needed to bring us food somehow, which also really sort of checks out. Yeah, sounds about right. How the show worked. Anyway, all that is to say, we're this weird little thing that only exists because of our incredible listeners and supporters and folks like Jim Acbina, who's in New York City. I see.

That's sort of over by, is that by Jersey, sort of?

It's the gateway to Hoboken. Okay, gotcha. is how I describe it to a lot of people. Jim says, Hello, imaginary friendos. Long-time donor, first-time dazzler. Hey, thanks, Jim. It's an honor and privilege to be able to contribute to the podcast that got me through some pretty major life events, providing the right balance of distraction, levity, perspective, and micro-cassette talk. I don't know how he knew that was going to happen. That joke never gets old. I want to dedicate my message to celebrate my sidekick, Smiley, the French Bulldog from NYC who is celebrating a decade on Earth this year. I think today

is Smiley's birthday, by the way. Literally today. Happy Blur's Day, Smiley.

I'm just imagining Jim and Smiley toddling down the streets of New York City where I'm guessing, I don't know what the weather is there today, but it just feels like it's spring all over the country. I hope it is.

I'm just imagining Jim and this French bulldog walking along Central Park West, and I'm loving this image. I don't know if any of it is based in reality, but it's working for me.

And this is the soundtrack as they're walking down their dune, their strut right down the street.

Does Smiley have sunglasses on? Maybe. Maybe that's too far. I don't know. like tbtl smiley is a source of joy to me and my partner chris and we are so grateful to have him in our lives here's the many more years of kisses snuggles and parmesan cheese what i'm guessing that's related to the dog but i would also accept uh smiley's had some major health issues throughout the years and while we were fortunate enough to be able to provide care for him there are a myriad of others who need help and love road dogs rescue is an organization that helps rehab and rescue bulldogs and puppies who need that extra love and compassion uh you can visit their instagram at road dogs or their website road dogs.org to learn more about this wonderful organization so if you are um somebody who if you're somebody who would like the the dogs of the world and the dogs of america to have a slightly better life particularly those that need rehab and rescue go ahead and check out road dogs.org and jim thanks for supporting tbtl thanks for supporting

your old road dogs luke and andrew maestro on your mark on your mark get set get set now ready

ready go everybody rattle it's clive mccartney who's in fort lauderdale florida is clive one of our um expat brit tens well the name clive doesn't make that seem unlikely i think how many negatives can i doesn't not not make that seem unlikely andrew i think i could see a clive clive's pretty

that's a pretty um anglo name yeah i think clive might have it might hail originally from britain

clive i'm gonna write a whole backstory for clive he just got tired of those cold wet winters in the midlands and said i have got to get to fort lauderdale florida where it is warm he was like

i'm sick of these weather reports from kermit the frog here wasn't kermit the frog always doing

weather reports from a foggy london i remember him wearing that trench coat which may have even been made by the company london fog do you remember that i forgot about that was a big thing in our childhood yeah if you if you saw someone in a trench coat it was probably manufactured by the company London Fog.

Yes, I forgot about that. I had a London Fog, I believe.

I will be on eBay right when the show is done, seeing if I can find a London Fog in a men's large. Clive says, hey, every day, every ding-dang day, I'm grateful for the TBTL folk, for the never-ending quest to cure global loneliness, not to mention to find the ridiculous in the mundane. More Florida tours, please. we need more of you guys down here in the sun boy clive if i would have read this two weeks ago i'd be there um unfortunately we are now getting something we call the sun out here in the pacific northwest and it means i'm never going anywhere again ever for the next three months that is a real hazard of i mean i think you're much less driven by these sorts of thoughts andrew and these sorts of calculations but i i've been thinking about trying to do maybe a trip this summer I haven't been on like a vacation vacation where you you know you go away for a week or two in kind of a long time mostly because of this remodeling project which has been time consuming and expensive and also the schedules of the different job things I do I just haven't done like a good old-fashioned like hey we're gonna go to Europe for a week or something and I'm really wanting to do that this summer I was side chatting with our friend broadcast Barry to try to figure how to maximize airline component of all of that but anyway all that is to say that um uh part of my calculation is also god do i want to be somewhere that's not the northwest in the month of like july or august no don't waste it that's the whole best time to be here in my opinion with the weather but otherwise i guess maybe you have to just go travel in like i don't know when is the right time to travel like if you want to go to europe and you go again these are all very first world conversations and problems but if you wanted to go to europe and try to pick a time it's not nice in the northwest it also might not be nice over there yeah so there again i'm so much more obsessed with is it sunny out am i getting you know the the vitamin d that i'm looking for etc than you are i think but but yeah it's like i really want to go on a trip this summer but i also really don't want to miss two weeks. of the like three months that it's actually nice here yeah i mean genevieve definitely has a rule

and i and i agree with it too because i i love seattle you know getting out of seattle during the rainy season is nice but like genevieve's rules you don't leave seattle during the nice season because when seattle is beautiful what are you even doing it is truly one of the most i mean i i just love this area and i i think when see when the weather is nice here it's truly one of the most beautiful places on earth or at least that i've been i love it here and i love being at home too so we do not travel when it's nice in seattle plus with ty france's reworked swing i mean there are going to be so many mariner w's i'm kidding i'm you know i don't apologize for this i am feeling i am feeling optimistic and i don't want you to apologize and i feel fun and i i'm filled with joy you know it was a kind of a tough off season i got very mad at at uh mariners ownership and rightfully so and everything but that is sort of spring training has sort of washed that away and i'm hearing some good stories out of peoria and i am so excited for baseball luke

without clive one of clive's specific requests was please don't obliterate my dazzling donor message by going into baseball talk but i want to ask you one question and then i want to put 30 seconds on the clock i saw a um text fly through our sports text chain about like a rebuilding season and i was going somewhere i was in the middle of something and was that a

reference to the mariners or the seahawks i i don't know that came out of left field i think and i believe that was our buddy durst who said that and i think he was talking about the seahawks because it's also that there's it was like we just went into that free agency frenzy and i i don't follow off-season football at all um and so i i don't really know everything that's going on but I think that must have been a football thing. Okay, I can handle that.

I'm already emotionally prepared for that. Yeah, yeah. But I was kind of bummed because, again, I was somewhere distracted, and I just see, like, rebuilding season, and then someone pipes in. I think it might have even been you as a joke, and I do like this joke. We're taking a step back from the winning continuum.

Pressing pause on the winning continuum was the quote.

Which was a thing that the Mariners guy, DePoto, I think, said.

I don't think it was DePoto. I think it was another exact. It might have been DePoto. I looked it up to make sure I had my quote right. in the sport of baseball it was definitely the sport of baseball it was definitely a mariners exec it might have been to podo it might not have been but it just yeah i saw this literally i'm

probably like walking through the airport and i just bing uh oh rebuilding season and i'm like wait did something happen in peoria and bing pause on the winning continue i'm like this baseball season's already over i didn't even i haven't even learned the dude's names yet no i think i

stepped on dur's comment because i really wanted to make my winning continuum joke it was a good i'm pretty sure that he because it doesn't make sense it only makes sense from a football

perspective okay i can live with that i can live with that don't take this don't take no don't take my baseballs away from me not before it starts we have no we have all summer to be angry

i was like this is a new record right we haven't even started and i've already learned that we

suck yeah right right right no okay good clive i'm sorry that i'm i'm sorry that we besmirched your message with that but i'm also proud that we kept that within like three minutes that's kind of Speaking of records, Clive would like us to spin a record, Andrew, at the end of the show. He says, hey, if you can make a music request to happen, please play La-Di-Da by Tedeschi Trucks Band.

Okay, I don't know that song. I haven't even vetted this, so I hope it's not absolutely filthy. You know what's funny?

I have been seeing that song. I'm familiar with the Tedeschi Trucks Band. That's Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi. And they've been I believe they are maybe married In real life and also have been collabing Musically for a long time And for some reason I feel like I've been seeing this La Di Da song Popping up in places on TikTok I'm not sure if it's having a moment If Clive is just slipping it into my algorithm My For You page but it's working This is kind of on my radar So we will absolutely play that song During the Music for Your Weekend component So Clive thank you so much and thanks also Jim Up there in New York And happy birthday, Smiley. Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right. We've got this exercise that we've been talking about for a couple of days now where you and I both saw the headline by way of a news aggregator. something to the effect of what how to how to deal with people saying insulting things to you

this is very specifically according to therapists which i thought was interesting how to respond to an insult according to therapists as written up uh in uh time magazine okay so uh what we decided

i needed to do was come up with some insults for you andrew and then you will deploy the

Thank you.

responses that are you know sort of verified and certified by actual therapists as a way of of absorbing an insult and having it not get to you so

badly right yeah and I don't think we ever matched up because I know you prepared some insults now it look I didn't realize there were so many of these there are it looks like about 10 or 11 responses how many insults do you

have I've got one two three four five I've got six and only big four of them

are good okay and then you and maybe you can maybe free uh freelance some as well if we want to get through all of these i'm not sure but um are these insults that we can can we somehow role play so they seem natural so that we're not setting it up can we kind of like no can i absolutely not i

can't just start talking there's nothing natural about these insults that i have for you well i

want to at least try to role play on this a little bit um and then because i i really you know the the therapists recommend these um responses but then there's an explanation of them and i really want to I really want to use this exercise not just to see how well you can burn me but to see what we think of these responses in reality if somebody were to insult us so you know here I am talking Luke at any point you might want to interject and you know say something that could be potentially hurtful to me I'm not I'm not sure all right here we go um hey Andrew what's up

Boy, we got the long drum roll in there again. That's way too long. Hold on.

You're looking for a different drum roll. Hey, Andrew. Hey, Luke, what's going on?

Your mother should have thrown you away and kept the stork.

Hey, flag on the play, Luke. That's the response.

That's your response?

That's my response.

I thought we were still talking Seahawks. I thought we were still talking about the winning continuum.

Hey, hey, hey, flag on the play, flag on the play. That's what Ajita Robinson, a therapist in Bethesda, Maryland, when she's taken aback or confused by the words that rolled out of someone's mouth, she pulls out this sports term, hey, flag on the play. Luke, I don't know if you know this, but in football, a flag indicates that an official believes a player committed a penalty, like pass interference or roughing the kicker. I read that line the other day, and I was like, how did they choose which fouls to list there? Um, by flagging what someone just said, Robinson is making it clear that their words were out of bounds or require further clarification. Folks usually respond pretty well. Like, what are you noticing? So flag on the play.

I feel like I would respond. Here's the problem. I'm going to say this is probably going to be my issue with every single one of these techniques, which is, well, I don't know if I hate them, but, um, I will say that when i'm wound up if i am if i am triggered as a person who let's say is being insulting who like may west is saying to you your mother should have thrown you away and kept the stork i'm already in a triggered state where you saying flag on the play is going to actually make me more

mad well that's why i think that maybe the style of burns you're hurling my way are not exactly the case point that like these therapists are thinking it would probably be more like you're in a meeting with somebody and there's kind of like yeah if we want to do it a dumb way or something like you know i mean somebody who's like maybe in the heat of the moment more casually in a conversation saying something that you're a little taken aback by and again i'm not defending it but i think that would be more the case not like oh the insult dog just made a yo mama joke well

andrew it's gonna be a long segment but anyway you're throwing a flag on the play that i'm making

just generally of these insults so i still like the idea of you having these insults but i think we need to create more of an organic atmosphere for them so here's what i'm going to do for this

next one i think i'm calling a flag on that you asked me to prepare insults i internetted no that's classic insults that's what i have in front of me and those were that's what i'm going to

deploy upon no that's great so here's how we're going to do this next one though we're going to pretend that we're in a meeting which is going to make this even funnier okay we're at an adoption

agency and we're talking about placing kids in homes and someone casually says i don't know about this um this particular client i don't know the mother should have probably just thrown the kid

away and kept the store sure all right let's go on to the next one though but we're in that we're in a meeting luke and we're you know we're planning our uh yeah we're planning our tbtl um tbtl-a-thon here and i have this idea that i really wanted to run by you luke i think um i've been thinking about this i wanted to pitch this to you i think for the tb telephone this year we should all just stay in our respective homes and do as little heavy lifting as possible because i don't want to um you know i kind of just don't want to go on the road this year it seems kind of exhausting to

me oh wow okay i mean i hear where you're coming from i guess what comes to my mind is that um i never forget a face andrew but for you I don't know.

I'll make an exception well thanks but I'm not accepting unsolicited feedback right now

see again and I know I understand what you're saying maybe maybe the borscht belt humor that I'm presenting you with is not helping but let's just imagine that I was like okay fine we'll reframe this I will say hey Andrew um it actually would really help the show if you would step out of your comfort zone a little bit and come on the road if you could leave your basement and your mini cassettes and maybe join me and john on some sort of journey of discovery that would also help

support the program well that's not insulting i think that's actually very gentle feedback you're

giving there i think that i actually thought that i was trying to be terse i was trying i was trying to really get in the role of like in a meeting with you but saying something that was kind of a little cutting that you would then respond i'm not taking unsolicited advice right now what you

would do is be like yeah you never want to leave your damn basement or or uh or maybe something like yeah that's that advice that's just like you that's just like you to not want to leave your basement or okay how about this how about how about you lay on a you should get out more how about that hey andrew you should get out more hey andrew you know what i think you should probably get out more you know what i'm not taking unsolicited feedback right now but thank you luke okay okay are we tonally are we getting closer to it tonally so now when i'm in that

place though i see it feels is the now are the therapists saying that these are ways to respond to insults that will de-escalate or that will help you the person who feels insulted um uh help help you take it less seriously what what do they sort of state the purpose of these

sort of retorts is here i'll give the the um the context for this one uh it says there's a sub-zero chance that you want to hear your great uncle's opinions on your pants size or reproductive choices or dating life sub zero less than zero might have been that way hey i'm not accepting unsolicited feedback right now i think of it as a refrigeration i know i i saw sub zero too and i

thought that was an interesting way of putting it but i want to start using that i mean i think it works yeah it's there's no chance of it it's below zero it's the opposite of i could care less right

Yeah. So they're saying like, you don't want to hear your great uncle's like kind of insulting opinions or whatever, but there's a much greater chance that he'll express them anyway. And in such cases, Robinson suggests replying. Thanks. I'm not expecting unsolicited feedback right now. She says people are surprised to hear someone push back. It reminds them that even though they might be well intentioned, it's still unsolicited. It stops it in its tracks. Plus, she adds, the response isn't disrespectful. So you can keep the peace while sticking up for yourself.

I think that tone would have a huge huge part to play in that like you could say I honestly can't imagine saying that to someone with a straight face and not having it be an

act of aggression no I know it seems very aggressive to me as well like I don't think

there's always in my mind trying to dress it up like if there was a way to say it and be like hey you know I'm just not really accepting unsolicited advice right now um I guess you could try to present it that way but I feel like it's really it's it's that's definitely like what that what that sounds like to me is boundary setting which can be very appropriate and necessary at times but it sounds like a person who's saying i don't appreciate the way that you're talking to me right now and i'm i'm frankly not going to stand for it right right okay let's

say all right here we go got another one another casual yeah so we're just talking we're driving you and i are driving somewhere and i'm gonna i want to i want to uh pull into the rallies you want to go to burger king but i really want to go into the rallies i wanted to go to checkers but

You wanted to go to rallies. And you're like, it's the same place. And I'm like, no, it's not.

Exactly right. And then what do you say?

I say, hey, Andrew, you know what? Some cause happiness wherever they go. You cause happiness whenever you go. Are you okay?

I actually kind of like your insult there. Are you okay? But I like your insult, the response that the therapist. That's Oscar Wilde, by the way. Okay, I was wondering. It says, these three simple words, are you okay? Pack a punch, says Melanie Williams, a psychotherapist in Baltimore.

Pack a punch, yeah, and then invite a punch.

If you ask them if they're okay, they might look at you strangely and reply in the affirmative. Then, William notes, you can follow up with a quick observation, just checking because that was completely inappropriate.

that are you okay i don't know if there are um three more aggressive words you can say to someone

well i mean there are that is like if you go to four one of my favorite insults and this is not recommended by therapists is go back to sleep i've always thought that's a really good insult when somebody says something to you that you're like just turn to them and just say go back to sleep. I just think like

other than calm down I think are you okay is one of the most cutting things that you could ever say to a person

yeah I think that is barbed

I mean you could definitely you could take are you okay and you could stone soup it you could add a lot of other things around it and then take the are you okay out and then maybe have something that you could work with so like you could say to someone something to the effect of like in this conversation I'm getting a sense from you that you're pretty upset and i and i i want to talk about that but i also want to just check in like how are you feeling right now is there other stuff going on that might be causing us to kind of miss each other in this conversation but i just did a lot there yeah that wasn't are

you okay yeah you really need to you know uh yeah i mean i guess you could meet i the way i would say it would be full of barbs but i guess there's a way to say it where you're kind of like pushing back a little bit being like are you okay because that's not the type of thing that you know two friends should say to each other or something like that but it's definitely a pushback for real

yeah no that's uh that's definitely going to end this road trip yeah and by the way i just see you sitting in a rallies by yourself and me sitting in a checkers across the street across

like whatever the whatever the divide in the country is yes exactly the rallies checkers divide and i'm eating hellman's mayonnaise and you're eating market director wait what is the dukes What is the breakdown on that? It's like Hellman's or Quality Best or something. Yeah, yeah. Oh, because Hellman's has two.

And I love this idea that we're just across the street from each other, the national rallies, checkers, divide, and we're eating. But then at some point, if we're going to continue with this sort of cinematic idea, we both just come out of our respective restaurants and realize that we're more alike than we are different.

We embrace.

Maybe I run out of, this is one of those real, I'd like to teach the world to sing kind of moments. Let's just say that the checkers that I'm in is out of ketchup and the rallies that you're in, you are in, is out of Coca-Cola. And I bring you a Coca-Cola and you hand me some ketchup. Yes. And it's like we've gotten things back on track.

Literally on the yellow line in the middle of the road separating these two places. Yeah. Okay. So do we need another scenario? Or do we need a scenario? No, I love these scenarios.

This is the best part.

Okay. So, oh, you know what, Luke? You and I are out on a boat. You've got your boat dusted off. It's off the trailer now, and we're out somewhere maybe in Lake Washington. And you know what? You're driving, and I hate to be this guy, but you're driving a little bit fast for me, and I'm worried about my hat flying off. I'm just a little bit sheepish on this boat.

Are you excited or disturbed by the fact that I'm holding a flare gun and listening to Big Sean?

Exactly. Actually, that was a time where I remember you and Nick Jarn were shooting the flare gun directly in the water and thinking, like, I don't know that I'm OK with that.

I apologize.

Especially because we will need those flares later. And sure as shit, we did break down later. We did have to get towed in that day.

But who could have known at that moment? That was Andrew. That was my Wolf of Wall Street moment. And I wasn't going to let you take it away from me. We are on a boat that I was the owner of. there we were i was well tuned up we're listening to i don't bleep with you and shooting off flares i that might have been the top five moments of my life you were carefree and i don't think that i

was carefree for once i don't think i had an issue with like you wasting flares or the like i love shit like that actually i love fireworks and whatever yeah i was just kind of like we're on a boat we're drinking whiskey from a bottle you literally don't even have a license to be driving this boat and we're literally shooting flares off so that law enforcement can find us that was more

like i just didn't want to get in trouble i really was i also had hired a plane to fly over the boat that was pulling something that said this guy's drunk and unlicensed with arrows pointing down and that you know yeah may have been a lapse so anyway we're out of the boat you're driving a

little bit fast you're shooting flares in the water i'm like luke i don't know i'm fully

comfortable with this right now uh well i'll tell you something andrew if your brains were dynamite there wouldn't be enough to blow your hat off

i wonder why you're why you feel comfortable saying that to me because i'm drunk and holding

a flare gun and a fan of the work of kurt vonnegut is apparently who said that oh okay i was wondering

where the Vatigate came in there. It says here, I've been reading Slaughterhouse-Five down in the galley. If somebody makes an inappropriate comment about a group of people, maybe it's racist, homophobic, misogynistic, use this line to call them out on it. I wonder why you feel comfortable saying that to me. This is the advice of a therapist named Chris. Tristan Solman in Houston, it makes it clear that you're not engaging in the conversation in the way they expected you to. There you go.

Well, again, I feel like it's boundary setting. And I think that's of the ones I've heard so far. I think that's the least aggressive.

Yeah, but I could. Yeah, I could see that. I don't feel I don't understand why you feel comfortable saying that to me.

And but and also what it does very effectively is it turns it around onto the person. Yeah. So it forces the person hearing it to think about why it is that they said it or why it was. And again, the specific context, particularly around like marginalized people in spaces, maybe where, you know, where people are just saying shit. Yeah. That's out of pocket. You know, somebody saying, I wonder why it is you feel comfortable saying that at all. But especially to me, that's an interesting way to kind of like, you know, get them to think about how they're acting in the world and acting towards you. Again, though, not not something that would be considered go along and get along. Yeah, definitely something where it's like, hey, you know, I don't I'm not comfortable with this. I don't appreciate this. And this is going to stop now. Again, a reasonable way to feel and a reasonable thing to express. But but definitely a boundary setting.

Luke, how many more of those do you have, by the way? Because I need to kind of pace this out appropriately.

I have one more that I think has any potential.

Just one more? I need like three. I need at least two.

All right. Can you come up with something?

I'm going to give you a scenario for this next one. Maybe you want to use your pre-written out one, or maybe you can just wing this one. But you and I now are on an airplane together. We're flying somewhere. We're not flying. We're just passengers on an airline. And I don't know why you're not in first class But we're both back there in coach And we're sitting next to each other And I'm just like a little bit I'm just a little bit more anxious than you Hold on, let me get into the motor This is your captain speaking

Captain has turned on the fastened seatbelt sign Flight 209 are clear for a vector of 324

We have clearance, Clarence Roger, roger What's our vector, Victor? Oh, it's a big pretty white plane With red stripes, curtains in the window And wheels And it looks like a big Tylenol I haven't heard the extended mix in forever. That was the one I made with all the drops. And then Dave Ross added the Sky Jinx woo to the end. Yeah, okay, so we're on an airplane. I'm irritating you a little bit because I'm just a little bit more nervous. I keep on hearing the landing gear, the wing flaps, or whatever that noise is. You've been flying. You're trying to get some sleep, and I'm sort of fidgeting and being a little bit nervous. And then what do you say to me?

Andrew, man What's it like What's it like basically living as an untitled Word document

You should come with a warning label That I've got fire insults Your cousin keeps bringing up politics At a kid's birthday party A friend's sense of humor makes the group feel uncomfortable Luke is sitting next to you on the plane, and he's irritated with you. Whatever it is, to handle these unwanted conversations, a therapist named Gillis sometimes opts for the lighthearted response. Just one name? Are they the share of therapy? I'm skipping around in this article, I believe, on First Reference. I want more therapists to just have one name. Ricky. It's Dobie Gillis, actually. It's Maynard G. Krebs. Work! Gillis sometimes opts for a lighthearted response. You should come with a warning label. It makes people laugh, Luke. That was not the case in this situation. Diffusing a potentially tense situation while letting them know that they're crossing into inappropriate territory.

This really, by the way, what did you think of that insult? That was in a subreddit that somebody just said someone had said to them one time, and I thought it was a weirdly withering insult. I was trying. What's it like living as an untitled Word document?

I was focusing on trying not to stumble my line So I didn't fully process it

What's it like not fully processing my hard work And preparing these insults

I don't think I don't know that I fully get that

I don't either But what it reads to me Or what it gives me a sense of Is like you're saying this other person's life Has never really meant anything Think about just like typing something up quickly To print it out like a word document But you don't even take the time to title it the default setting is untitled like and you didn't even go in and like i know you would we know you're chief archivist of the show and of your life it would be titled 2024-03-15 always starts with the date in that order obviously but like uh the idea that it's someone's existence is so without meaning that it's just they're an untitled word document just like chilling on the desktop somewhere of life without like that to me was actually the most hurtful one of all of these because of what the implications. If they're a familiar with how naming conventions on word documents work and also computers and are like me and are constantly less so now because of the computer I use. But back in the day when I was working on a PC and I was I had hundreds of untitled word docs kicking around because I am not an organized person.

I see. Oh, I thought maybe like, see, I was kind of like, oh, an untitled word doc. That's still full potential there. Oh, that's a nice way to look at it.

I could sort of spin that into a brand new baby word doc. Just born. hasn't scratched yet exactly bonnet you're the bon ami of word docs okay a man okay one more scenario wait one more thing i want to say about that come back yeah that one is actually my favorite but i do think it's probably because of the patriarchy what do you mean this is what i mean by that that one actually seems like a way to respond to people and not make it weird oh the

response not the insult okay i okay i'm sorry i might have said insult but i meant the response

that response you read you should come with a warning label that one i like the most because it is the one that is the least record scratch uh-huh yeah i could see it is a way to kind of like tell the person hey i'm not loving this but without it being completely making everything weird the reason i say that's because of the patriarchy though is because for many many years people like me have wanted it to not be weird uh-huh sure yeah i don't want people setting a boundary and going i wonder why you're comfortable saying that i want people to just kind of go whoa whoa hey you should come with a warning label let's all just keep it moving easy you know like this is the question about confronting the systems of power right right right this world

so you're the most comfortable with it because this is yeah because it disturbs my sort of prime

position in the power structure the least right that's why I like it the most like you know every other one that you read is somebody like saying like stop that you know and like now there's it's like we don't just keep we're not just continuing our fun half after work happy hour moment now now we're taking a moment to really consider how the things we're saying are affecting other people that one I like the most again I'm you know speaking sort of selfishly and honestly here Because it's the one that is causing us to least have to deal with the structural inequities in our world

It's more of a nudge to correct course a little bit as opposed to shutting everything down

And the people who have had to be in rooms and spaces for years and years and years Trying to figure out how to navigate them because they don't look like me Have for years been having to do that exact kind of dance Of like maybe let someone know we're not loving it but don't make it weird Right, exactly And that's the one I'm used to, and that's the one I'm more comfortable with.

I'm going to try one more here, and I know that you're not prepared for this, so I'm going to stall a little bit, give you some time. Do you have one more?

I just dropped my page, but I'm going to just go off of memory on this one.

Off of memory. Okay, so you do have one, and here's the scenario. This is our final scenario. You and I are doing a segment together. That was my idea, and it's actually not going that great.

Okay, that sounds plausible.

You even did a bunch of research, and you came in prepared to do this segment, but I'm sort of kind of ruining it a little bit. I'm being a little bit too wordy. It's just not going the way you expected it to. And once again, I'm sort of dragging the show down. Like, how are you going to handle that? What are you going to say to me?

I'm going to say, hey, Andrew, the jerk store called, and they're all out of you. I'm back, baby!

Silence. They recommend not saying anything at all.

Powerful.

Powerful.

Do you think that's the longest silence on the show in the last five years? That wasn't part of a bit where we were trying to see how long we can be silent.

No, and I wonder if the fact that we can see each other on video helped that a little bit.

Well, I couldn't see you because I've got my audio drops. Oh, really? So you're not looking at me.

Oh, okay. I thought you could sort of see me looking at you. So you knew that I couldn't. I thought maybe you could tell that I hadn't dropped the line.

When I tell you the terror that just shot through me and the different scenarios that my mind played through, I was like, oh, that's weird. The line went down. What a strange time for that to happen.

Or I really got him. He really feels like a jerk now.

Or no, I was more like Andrew's probably like really the best you could do was to just repurpose that lame Seinfeld joke. like and he's he's trying to think of a some response to sort of get the nose up on this bit because you've ruined it with the just doing the least doing the absolute least with your insults you prepared that was all going through my mind before i realized oh no the tactic is to

just be silent he andrews quit the show and now i got to go back to that other version of the razzle dazzle song by johnny the rockets who was that i don't i owe the estate of bill

haley in the comments a significant amount and it's honestly the comments that are really have

lawyered up on this yeah yeah so anyway yeah that we were driving home last night and becca and i

were by the way there is an amazing function on um the google app on your phone which i am not i don't really google annoys me because of all the things you and i've talked about about how search is bad now and also the way that it wants to just like tangle itself or enmesh itself in every aspect of my internet life but somehow i got this google thing happening on my phone and it was like hey uh are you are you trying to think of a song you can hum it into

your phone or whistle it do you know about this um i think i've seen it i don't i think i tried it once and it didn't work and then i never tried it again well we had a lot of time in the car to

so I pushed through because you're right I was confused at first I did a I I guess ironically googled how to make this google hum thing work I got it working and it was so much fun really because yeah you just press the microphone and then it says search for song you hit it and then you just sing or whistle or hum into the phone and then it sort of is a you know it shazams your voice and by the way it worked really well so then the game became one of us hums a song into the phone and then the other person is trying to kind of figure out what they're humming but then also once it's found by google then you play it and you do a sing-along to it so uh but the point was one of the songs uh that becca hummed was the song stay by lisa lobe in nine stories oh yeah and it was so much fun to sing and after a time she just goes i wonder how nine stories are doing yeah yeah like what we don't talk about the nine stories enough anymore i wonder i wonder if they're

okay that's a um that's a reference to um Salinger right is it yeah that's a book I didn't write nine nine I'm more of a Vonnegut guy myself um here I got it right here let's let's try this it says search a song uh oops it's hearing me I gotta be quiet for a second and then and you should be getting a display that's like a little rip okay it's it's befuddled it doesn't know that Tim and eric birthday song it's still listening to me right now it's giving me a song oh let me try

that greek i'm gonna try this okay i'm i'm gonna um it thinks i was doing a skrillex song

called f that very repetitive song no matches found oh really i gotta that's not i got a skrillex

song called f that only the real word i got a savage song called freaks and i got a balua beach

song called greeks freaks i do the the little visualization of when you're did you see that when you were singing in your phone yeah it's very satisfying because these little you know kind of confetti pieces or whatever are pulsating at a a sort of rhythm that sort of matches whatever it is you're singing in a way so it feels like it's i think that that's probably just a clever you know software design i don't think it actually is related to what you're doing but it just looks

cool. It does look cool. It seemed to be reacting to when I was making a noise like a real VU meter and so I think it's while it's thinking, it's just showing you, okay, I'm picking up this audio. I think Shazam does something similar. It sort of pulses when it hears the beat.

But honestly, this has come up on the show, you know, that's the test we've got to do. Remember how I couldn't think of that Aretha Franklin song recently but I could hum it. So let's try that. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm Tom Cruise is the lead singer of some kind of a band or Marky Mark is or something. Maybe Steel Panther is a real

band. I didn't know that Tom Cruise was ever

It looks like it's a real band There was some kind of a movie, maybe it's Wahlberg, there was a movie where there's like a touring kind of metal band starring one of those one of those big matinee idols where there was a made up band in the movie and I thought they were called maybe they were called Steel Dragon or something maybe I imagined those dragons Andrew I just don't know

thank you

thank you for getting that I appreciate it

back baby as we like to say on this show hey speaking of music let's do a little music for

your weekend what have you got i have a song i've i've played this guy for you a lot on the show uh his name is old man saxon and he's not oh yeah yeah he's a rapper he's not as i don't think he's like super i don't think he's like super big or popular or well known i'm not sure exactly how big his reach is but like as far as i can tell he does not miss and this is not a new album i don't know what he's been doing recently but i remember when this record came out back in 2021 i played some tracks uh off it for you it's called rothko's chicken and waffles oh my god maybe rothko as a

way of maybe avoiding some copyright there i mean also just a flipping great name yes great name for an album that bring bringing together roscoe's and then also like one of the four american artists that i can name um right yes exactly yeah that's perfect for me because it's it feels highbrow because it has a rothco reference but it's in the brow that i can access because it turns out my

brows aren't that high and is rothco like is it like kind of abstract it's like super yeah mark

rothco he did a lot of shapes yeah it's definitely abstract and it's kind of like um you know it's It's hard to probably describe, but yeah, very famous American kind of abstract painter.

So when I was in Mexico, this one day I sort of had a kind of a – I was just having kind of a bad day. And I mentioned this, I think, earlier when I was talking about my trip.

Didn't you see any T-shirts that said, no bad days? Oh, my God. For sale? I did.

I saw a lot of them. i also saw a bunch of shirts like in our area we were like in a neighborhood oh i mentioned this to you it's called zona romantica right oh yeah like a bunch of gay clubs and none of us would be able to get it out of our heads yeah very very gay friendly area so you didn't see like the kind of bullshit conservative stuff that you see in other sort of beach towns even in mexico when i walked down the boardwalk about i'm gonna say maybe a mile or so and started hitting some of these other kind of boardwalky beach towns there were those like places that had a million t-shirts out and yes a lot of like no bad days no bad vibes but also literally shirts that just said f biden only they didn't abbreviate it f biden and if you like biden f you and i'm just like really like we just are selling shirts that are just like so aggressively like why why are why are these shirts yelling at me from the stand in mexico like because the owners of those t-shirt

shops really feel like joe biden has let down the people in america who were promised full forgiveness on their student loan debt yes exactly um and they just that's that's for them that's kind of

their political third rail exactly so it is weird they're just like and that is pure that is pure market forces right here commerce the only reason like those people don't care those people who are selling the shirts don't care about biden one way or the other it is a fascinating kind of canary

in a very anecdotal coal mine right of just like oh these are selling okay and i was telling you this in in new york and this isn't political but like all the t-shirts now are just like do i look like an effing people person i'm talking about in times square yeah or f you you effing f yep that's just the shirt that's on the mannequin yeah in the front of the store because and why is it because the guy who owns that store is wants to put the f word into the world no it's just it's selling right exactly they're selling i don't understand who's buying it but enough people

that this now makes financial sense but weirdly i was walking down the boardwalk so i had this weird day where I woke up and it was just like a several I don't want to be overly dramatic about this but I'd mentioned to you that I knew my grandmother was sort of failing while I was there and so I think maybe um I had been like the night before trying to communicate with family it was kind of hard to communicate down there um and and it was just like you know that was just sort of hanging over and again I don't want to be my grandma lived to a very ripe old age and was able to pass away in a way that I think a lot of people would hope for um as far as that stuff goes And so I don't want to be overly dramatic about that, but it was just one of those days. But then also I really got in my head. I kind of got stampy at this one place where I went and I had these wonderful tacos. Genevieve, I think, was out on an adventure and I had the day to myself and I just kind of woke up and like I was I don't even want to get into all this. It was just kind of like I had been using my credit card to pay for everything. But then all of a sudden this one day, every place I wanted to go sort of coincidentally told me like no cards, no cards, no cards. So then I had to like find an ATM. We got a bunch of money on that. And I'm trying to – and I'm very insecure about trying to do all the math on the fly of switching, like, kind of, you know, pesos to dollars and, like, what do I tip here? Even in the States, I'm always, like, in that moment of tipping. I'm kind of like, I want to do the math right and, like, whatever. And I consider myself usually a good tipper. But, like, I went to this place that had amazing tacos, and I was waiting for the server to come back because I was going to get more tacos. I've seen you do that before. I've never – I've never done that before. I've never ordered a second round of food in a restaurant on a whim before. And I was just like, these tacos were so good. And they were the perfect, really small street taco kind. And I had maybe four of them and they were delicious. And I just wanted the server to come back so I could do the one thing I've never done in my life, which is say, I want three more of those bad boys. And he just never came and he never came and he was busy and whatever, but he just never came. I mean, that's fine. I wasn't getting pissed about it. But then I was like, man, he's really not coming. So I literally stand up by my table for a while. He's still not coming where I finally, yeah, I kind of I'm like, hey, man, I need to go here. At this point, I'm like, no more tacos. I just need to get out of this place. And now I'm sort of a little bit like, OK, come on. And then he had done something weird with my change. I think I'd finally gotten cash and then I paid him and it was like, whatever. When I think about this, it's just so embarrassing. I didn't mean to get into all of this, but it was one of those things where the meal was very cheap. But then I gave him like 200 pesos and then he just expected like the whole thing was a tip. And I'm like, wow, that would be like an 80% tip or something. But we're talking about small margins, so it's not a big deal. But I just like for such terrible service, the fact that he was – so then I was like, hey, man, you didn't bring me change. He's like, oh, okay. And then he brought me change in a really big bill, so I still basically had to tip him the same amount, which, by the way, was a few dollars U.S. This is the thing. In the moment, I felt a little bit like I was being taken advantage of by this guy who was otherwise nice. And I just lacked agency. And I think that's when I that's when the childish part of me comes out where I feel like both like I feel like I didn't have agency there and it was taken away from me. And therefore, it's moved me to act in a petulant way. And I hate petulant Andy so much.

Like we should have used that in the role playing that we just did. And so anyway, it's not too late. I put on my headphones and I was and it was also this morning. Like I remember I literally Genevieve was on an adventure. So I was going to sleep in late this one day. I was going to sleep in until like 10 or 1030 or something. And then at 920, literally somebody is just hammering on our wall with a hammer. And I thought they were like maybe hanging up a sign in the room next door. It will not end. I come out of my room and there's just some guy who's laid down tarp. I'll never understand why. He laid down a bunch of tarp and is literally with a hammer pounding the stucco off of our wall directly. It's just like moving across the room. And I was like, are you kidding me? So then I had to confront him. He speaks no English. I speak no Spanish. And I just I'm kind of like, is this going to be going on for a while? And he just looks at me and then he ends up like apparently he stops the pounding. But I can't get back to sleep after that. I feel, again, like a little bit confrontational and also like rude to this guy who's actually working while I'm just trying to sleep on vacation. And it makes me just feel terrible. I get up. I go into the shower. I'm under the shower for two minutes and the water just totally turned off on me. And this is like this was not emblematic of the entire vacation. the vacation was perfect it was just like literally this morning i just felt like everything was out to get me you know it becomes like kind of a sharpshooter thing where it seems like every little thing mounts evidence of it sort of being a bad day and so i'm like i'm just gonna go get some tacos and i eat some great tacos but then i'm pushing this point where i leave the taco stand feeling like such an asshole i like i'm not mad at the server i'm not mad at the person who was pounding on my walls i just feel like i'm in paradise right now and i just like kind of haggled over 67 cents maybe like something that's so little but like i'm just feeling my worst self literally just feeling my worst self i'm like what are you doing get out of this mindset and i'm like okay i'm gonna put in my earbuds i'm gonna walk down this boardwalk area so i can go look at some f biden shirt you know but it actually was it's like it's kind of this really nice area and i'm like okay i'm just gonna walk and clear my head and go to that little beach bar that I saw down the down the pathways but I'm like what do I want to listen to I'm like I don't even know what I want to listen to right now but I'm like I better just listen to something that I already have downloaded on Spotify on my phone instead of like messing around with like the data network or whatever and so I just see oh Rothko's Chicken and Waffles by Old Man Saxon I haven't heard that in a really long time that that might be good I don't know if I really want to listen to hip-hop right now and I just put it on and I hit play and this is the very first song and it literally changed the course of my day. Everything started to feel right again because he had a very specific message for me that I stumbled on coincidentally.

Have yourself a drink, relax, kick up your feet, but just sit down and listen. Stop tripping, stop tripping, stop tripping. Sit down and listen. My head been inundated with games, false imprisonment for thoughts I meant to end. Roll up the trees, hold up the feet.

They don't pay, step to them like Debo. Equals for Nito Dunn, ain't no sequel. Keep walking to your ass on the other side of the people. People, this Negro's here to ease your fears, to take up space. This makeup, they can't see nor hear. Rock goes.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Literally got me to stop tripping.

Oh, man. That's really good.

And I did not put that on because I was like, this is what I need for therapy right now. It was a total coincidence. And next thing you know, I'm out of my head a little bit. I'm just cruising down the sidewalk.

This and the Mexican Quaaludes.

I'd be lying if I told you I didn't have a little vape pen on me and that I was going to a little beach bar. And I was just like, roll up the trees. Amen, my friend. It hit me perfectly.

yeah uh the song that i would like to suggest is called life is by the way andrew i really appreciate you sharing that story i mean that like i know you're sort of like we got to get going and and it's a tangent or whatever but like i think people can really identify with that feeling of of feeling like you're having a shitty day but also being mad at yourself over the fact that you're allowing yourself to have a shitty day because most of us probably hearing this show right now are still in an extremely lucky position to be wherever we are and whoever we are and have the resources we have etc right so there's like that kind of dual thing of like i feel crappy and

i also feel crappy that i feel crappy yeah yeah and it felt like i was mad at my i was also mad at myself i wasn't like mad at external factors so much as my reaction to those external factors

yeah um i don't have an interesting backstory about this my backstory on this song is i asked Addie last week hey do you have a music for your weekend because you were out of town and uh I was uh I was like well you know she's got good ideas and then of course she didn't text me till the next morning she was like oh my gosh I'm so sorry I saw this I was meant to text you I forgot but you should play this song by Jessica Pratt called Life Is it's off of her uh album which actually isn't out until May called Here in Pitch so I looked this uh this artist up Jessica Pratt and I have to tell you this is the only song of Jessica Pratt's that I know of but she may already be my new favorite artist based on this one song it is very it's a sound that will be sort of familiar but kind of new it's got some like I don't know almost like Petula Clark in it yeah I'm interested for you to hear this Andrew can you play Life Is by Jessica Pratt?

I don't know. What you think it's for And I can't seem to say it all And maybe I've been insecure The chances of a lifetime I've been hiding their tricks up my sleeve Used to be the greatest I've seen Time, it's time, it's time, it's time I'm talking to you Time, it's time, it's time, it's time I'm talking to you Cause I can't hear my love, cause I need all the wrong

I feel like if I told you that I had just found this song, you know, like on some playlist from Motown songs or songs from the, you know, 60s that just, like, for some reason never hit.

Yeah.

You would believe me, right? I mean, it feels like it's very, very from another era, but it was made recently. In fact, it comes out in May.

When those gentle guitars came in, I was like, oh, this sort of has, like, kind of a vintage sound to it, and then that voice comes in with all that kind of reverb or whatever it is. I love the production quality.

It's also what I love about this is what makes me love Prom Queen so much, I think, a little bit. Yes, very good point. It's got a little bit of that Doomwop-y vibe to it.

Yes. Yeah, great point. Our friend Lini in Prom Queen. Check her out.

This is great. This is objectively perfect, as our friend Steve would say.

Well, the thing that's funny is, Andrew, I was scrolling through Jessica Pratt's website to see when she's going to be in the Northwest, which she will be playing at, I believe, I didn't scroll all the way down, but she's playing somewhere in Seattle this summer. or do look her up, but also she's playing Pneumos, June 26th. But she's currently touring in Europe, and who is she playing with? Joanna Sternberg.

Oh, interesting.

It all comes full circle. Isn't that who you saw at the Abbey?

Absolutely, yeah. That's really interesting. That seems like a pretty vast difference in musical styles. But honestly, I am about 90 seconds into my Jessica Pratt fandom, But I might look like getting tickets for that at New Mo's.

I know. Yeah, that's and then she'll be down in Portland as well. So maybe I'll even go see her there.

So do you know what? Wait, I have a quick question for you. This is the relevant to next weekend's music for your weekend. Possibly there is this musician that I like a lot that a friend of mine who's also a musician in Nashville turned me on to. And this musician's name is C-M-A-T, C-M-A-T. And I think those are her initials or something, but that's what she performs under. And she's an Irish singer songwriter who who like performs Americana, which is like a very interesting sort of swirl of influences or whatever. And she's really amazing. And she is playing in the States. Apparently, she's on a tour supporting a new record and she's playing the I believe the is it the tractor or the sunset? I think the sunset two dates next week, Thursday and Friday of next week. And so I'm like, I'm going to go to this. but everything and i go directly to the sunset website all the tickets for all of their events are just like click here to purchase but for the past three weeks i've been tracking it it's like click here to add your name to a waiting list have you does this mean that it's already sold out but now like it's probably sold out by a bunch of secondary marketers who if i add my name that i

would put your name on the waiting list yeah i'm guessing that it's sold out pretty quickly the sunset's not a huge venue although a great venue and i love it very much i heard they just redid actually um so it's i want to see that but um i'm get i would jump on the waiting list what's funny is and this is apropos of absolutely nothing except what goes on in my brain i have been for a long time really fascinated with this place called pioneer town which is um it was basically a western set that was built out in joshua tree for you know those old western those old tom mix films to go have a place to shoot and um so it was built as basically a fake town but then real businesses moved in and people do live in the area and there's this like legendary bar called pappy and harriet's that's as part of pioneer town and i just love all things pioneer town i'm kind of a sucker for that sort of wide-brimmed desert southwest desert instagramable life and uh i noticed that um that uh is uh how quickly i forget uh jessica pratt was playing pappy and harriets which i love and then c matt is playing pappy and harriets oh so you had seen that name recently that no i was just googling it while you were talking about it oh that's interesting and i just does all roads lead through pappy and harriets in pioneer town outside of joshua tree and i guess it's just one of those things where when you really like something but you also understand how much it fits into the things that a person like you probably likes does that make

you mean that you mean that you start to feel a little bit like a stereotype or that you're being

I guess but not even in not even in a way that makes me like it less or makes me want to change my preferences but just this kind of sense of like well of course they're of course all these things I like are all going to be at some point at this place I like yeah that I think of as being not my special place I don't have any early connection to Pappy and Harriet's but just kind of like yeah it all checks out yeah of course of course these like hip and you know who'll be there the week after that probably that gal that whistles i don't remember her name she's great but like you know it's all it's all part of this kind of energy that flows through the universe and invariably passes through pappy and harriet's pioneer town yeah i didn't know about pappy and

harriet's unless you'd mentioned it before and i'd forgotten but yeah i know that feeling of For me, I guess when I know that it's also like kind of swirling in the culture, maybe I have some like immature instinct to maybe be like, yeah, like like I love it when I find myself in in the trenches of something. Well, maybe that's why I loved Kixi so much. Right. And then like that old timey radio that I like that nobody else really like Dick Clark's rock roll and remember, you know, but like everything like then started to like sort of that started to influence a whole bunch of other stuff I was listening to. but it felt very personal to me and like my own you. sort of thing in that particular moment so I don't know sometimes I might then sometimes if it's like if everybody kind of likes it I gotta admit and I don't like this about myself I might be like I'm like well I guess I'm just another I'm just another one of those people yeah I think I had a lot of

that when I was younger but since it's been so long since I actually genuinely discovered anything I've had that sort of like beaten out of me but I do remember that feeling too in my 20s of being like into a thing and being very very fiercely protective of it and then when it kind of got bigger never missing a chance to tell everyone that i saw the magnetic fields at the original crocodile when there was 20 people there you know never missing a chance i i mean i hate to be that

guy but i was into dick clark before anybody else luke a lot of people were rocking rolling

there were some people that were remembering nobody had put it all nobody had put it all together except maybe the tedeschi trucks band exactly our music for your weekend listener suggestion which comes from clive mccartney of fort lauderdale florida this week the song is la di da by tedeschi trucks band that's how we're going to wrap things up it's going to bring us to the end of our broadcast week and we're going to say thank you so much for being part of tbtl thank you for spending this time with us we're going to be back here on monday more imaginary radio for you in the meantime have an excellent weekend take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

I'm not gay

It don't matter How much today Let's raise our glasses high To this bittersweet goodbye We'll say farewell In the morning

A lot of energy, a lot of motion, a lot of fun, a lot of high-fiving, a lot of smiles. Power out.