Muse

Okay, so we are going to inject you with enough propofol to temporarily kill you, but then we'll bring you back with adrenaline so you don't have any...

Up, up, up, up, up. No spoilers, no spoilers. And one more thing. You're not going to sue us, are you? Oh, no. Litigation is for the middle class. Aspik, you're going to love dying. It's hilarious. It's like being John Malkovich, but you don't have to go to Jersey.

TBTL!

brother who are you what are you doing i'm with the news dude i had a dream that

janine garofalo was running like an ice age apocalypse survival boot camp in my backyard

for children we will not listen to your dreams we are not saints i can get tickets to uh to nonsense because i really want to see that before i die it's their nuns and they sing and there's a lot of improv you are a really good actor thank you thank you well you know

it's just living truthfully and imaginary circumstances and whatever enough about me

what's uh what's on your schedule well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live i'm so excited about this show my name is luke burbank i am your host it is weird it is beautiful it has a plot that goes in fascinating directions coming to you from los angeles california where california got sunshine it does got sunshine today it is an absolutely beautiful tuesday here in la la land and i feel

I'm warm and I'm levitating.

And I'm excited to be here and excited to bring you episode 4,165 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. When we're done with the recording today, I will be heading off to Santa Monica to introduce, introduce, well, I'll introduce myself to a person I will be interviewing who is a break dancer or a breaker as some like to refer to the art form who will be participating in the olympics

on behalf of the united states i'm the president of rap music and i need to work with you right away

and if if history is any indicator on this when i do these kinds of stories where somebody is doing something that is difficult or challenging or unusual there's usually the participatory part where I try to get participatory. And I'll probably end up trying to do the inchworm or something at 47 years old. I don't know. It's not going to be good. Although there is, I guess, I just heard from a couple of listeners who said there's some video clip of me learning how to beatbox, which is exactly to this point, that's been viewed millions and millions of times. Not because of me. I'm kind of background to the whole thing, but, you know, maybe there's some kind of some there's some golden them thar hills of me doing things that I'm bad at in a very outward facing way and letting the Internet mock me. That's fine. I'm cool with that. That's what I'm doing today. What my friend Andrew Walsh is doing. He is getting mentally prepared for his big cup of coffee in the big time on Friday. He is going to be doing a major media event.

I'm like seriously excited. I'm kind of shy, but mostly excited.

He's going to tell us about that. And we've got some other stuff to discuss as well. Hey, speaking of my good friend, Andrew Walsh.

You and I are showmates, dude. I got your back. I'll make sure nobody f***s with you.

He is the longest running co-bro of the program. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. And he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning. Do you still have that – this is such a bad idea.

Do you have that drop that you just played about, I don't know, a minute ago of I'm warm and I'm levitating? Is that still accessible? Yeah, sure.

I've got it. I feel warm and I'm levitating.

So I know a little bit about that drop. I'm going somewhere with this, Your Honor. I know a little bit about that drop. I'll allow it. That was a sort of some, it was from a video that went viral of some comedians that were making fun of sort of street magic, right? Were they making fun of David Blaine, right? And so I know that that voice is not who I think it sounds like right now. But before the show, because you and I were just talking about various things, the comedian Eddie Pepitone came up. And I would like you to do an exercise with me, if you will. And I can see you now, so I know if you'll be following my instructions. Will you hover your mouse over that, then close your eyes? I know you need to align your mouse over it, then close your eyes, and then play that again. I'm doing it. Picture it.

Eddie Pepitone saying it. Tell me if you think it sounds like him.

Okay, I'm picturing the Bitter Buddha, which is one of the nicknames that Eddie Pepitone has. By the way, I might be able to... Oh, wow. Sorry about the... Yeah. It's a... We've got a serious legal situation happening here on the mean streets of, I guess, Westchester. The Westchester area of Los Angeles. I might be able to see Eddie Pepitone if I were to stare north over the San Gabriels Over to the San Fernando Valley I could probably see Eddie Pepitone right now Because I think he lives up there Anyway, I'm picturing Eddie Pepitone The comedian Eddie Pepitone Saying this line that I believe is actually uttered by Mikey Day, current SNL Cast member And one of the two skeletons that dances behind David S. Pumpkins I'm just giving a lot of context here More context than you really need

Sometimes I think you should leave Does he have any connection to that show? I don't believe so

You're thinking of Mike O'Brien

who does the calico cut pants. Sorry. Yes, I do. Oh, we're off to a good start.

Each, Andrew, each night, right when you finally fall asleep, I silently enter your bedroom and I study your brainwaves. And I make notes. And then on the show, I know exactly who you're misthinking about.

Exactly.

Okay, so here we go. I'm closing my eyes. You can see this, Andrew, down the line on the Riverside program. By the way, I think I'm going to help out with a local podcast in Portland. that's created by a couple of um folks that used to work at opb um uh who who i'm sort of acquaintances with and they said hey we do this local show in portland and we wonder if you would jump on i said yeah i think i can do that is it remote and they said yeah we use a program called riverside and i was like yeah i'm aware yeah i'm aware yeah okay so you can see me over the magic

of riverside and i we've been using zunes and some patched together walkman for quite some time and We finally said, you know what, let's just get ourselves an iPod. And now everybody's like, oh, yeah, we use iPods, too. And we're like, yeah, we're part of the iPod generation as well. Yeah, we get it, okay. Yeah, like everybody uses Riverside. We were using two cans taped together, and there's a duck in the middle for some reason.

By the way, now you've sent me to eBay seeing how much a Zune is currently going for. Zune MP3 player. How much do you think a Microsoft Zune with 80 gigabytes of storage space and a new battery is currently retailing for on eBay?

Well, I'll bet you it's not nothing. Because think about this. I was just trying to find an old piece of technology that plays my micro cassettes. And most of those are going for like $300, a couple of cheapos for $160. Now, those are going to be more rare because they're a product from the 80s and 90s, mostly, and Zunes were from the mid-2000s, but also pretty rare. I'm going to say that a Zune, I'm going to say the cheapest Zune you can find on the secondary market is $215.

Holy smokes. The first one I'm looking at is $189.99. I should have stuck with my instincts. And the second one I'm looking at is $219. I'm going to say you got both of them right

Alright, okay, sounds good Give out a couple of answers Impressive, very impressive

I'm wondering if people If this is because There's something having to do with the technology Where people somehow have their music Saved on their Personal computers And can only offload it onto a Zune Or if this is just because there's some argument That the audio fidelity is better Or it's just one of those nostalgia plays i'm telling you though i'm looking at this microsoft zune uh and it's to be honest

with you not terrible looking like no it's very cool looking actually i never had one but i had

kind of holding up like yeah it's a giant digital screen and i mean let me put it this way this particular one that i'm looking at if you if if i went to if i heard about uh you know the latest from ces or whatever the electronics shows are that are down in um uh down in las vegas every year and you hear about all the new thing if somebody said this is the hot new you know media player thing and i just saw a picture of this i would think yeah okay like it doesn't look horribly

antiquated to my eyes no it is it was it's always been a very kind of simple clean design i got to give him credit for that because i think i was making zoom jokes before i'd seen one just you You know, not that I'm not that I'm out to hurt Zune owners feelings, but just like, you know, just that that that classic joke of it's the it's the also ran. It's the Bing. Sorry, Microsoft. But the same is true of those Microsoft mouth. Those Microsoft phones. Genevieve Genevieve and I talk about them because she had to do PR adjacent stuff for that. And actually, the Microsoft phones were not.

bad or the windows phones or whatever they were called the the interface was actually kind of slick with these big bold like i don't know if you did any press for them luke or any like kind of promotions for them but the interface actually was really cool it's just that nobody made apps for them because everybody was on the iphone so there was no competition but in an alternate universe they were not they were not terrible devices no in fact i had a couple of them i gave

one oh you i want to say to my little brother one of my little brothers i believe was the was was the lucky recipient of like a zune from me because when oh a zune not a windows phone oh okay no when i first got to seattle and was doing tbtl as a radio show somebody at microsoft put me on some kind of i guess local like celebrity or influencer kind of list or status and somebody from microsoft reached out and said would you like to come over to the campus and we'd like to gift you some stuff oh okay and they gave me an xbox they basically just wheeled out a cart and it had an xbox on it it had like multiple zunes it had like everything that needs more than one zune well i'll tell you who apparently needs more than one zunes more than one zunes is um one of these people that's left a comment on dr sparky123 who's selling the zunes on ebay great product item is like new decent price fast delivery great ebay or i've purchased many of these zunes from this seller and will continue to do so as long as he's selling them i use for my audiobooks how many zunes are you burning through yeah that's a good point on your audiobooks like i mean how you must be listening to audiobooks at a furious pace if you have to keep you gotta you gotta keep an air and a spare just like get keep the zunes coming as i burn through my audiobooks

now of course everybody is still by the way i want everybody to know that luke's eyes are still closed he has not opened them yet yes excuse me and we are going to get back to the but before we get back to that now that we're on um anachronistic um technology i have to tell you about something I read today that you might have read as well that irritated me, and I simply don't believe it. And I'm sorry, I'm not trying to besmirch the byline of Michael Levinson. I don't think that Michael Levinson made this up, but there was something that was in the New York Times today. I read it by way of the Seattle Times that I do not believe. And the headline is, Landline Users Remain Proudly Old-Fashioned in the Digital Age. Now, do I believe that people love their landlines? Absolutely. In fact, I am somebody who, like, cherishes as we've talked about extensively on the show even last week i i love um old technology i've been listening to cassette tapes lately just not because they sound better but just because it's a fun nostalgic thing for me so the fact that people love their landlines for all kinds of reasons i believe here's what i don't believe is the lead into this when millions of at&t customers across the country briefly lost their cell phone service last month francilla jackson of Fairview Heights, Illinois, said she picked up her well-worn Southwestern Bell push-button landline phone and called her friends, quote, just so we could laugh at the people who couldn't use their phones. Why, isn't it great that we can talk and have a great conversation, she recalled saying. We had a good laugh. You know what? That's bullshit, Francella. Francella did not, like, go online and realize that a bunch of people's cell phones. I didn't even well, not that you should compare yourself to me when it comes to knowing what's going on in the world. But like I didn't even realize there was an outage until later because I'm not an AT&T customer. You're telling me that Francilla Jackson, 61 of Fairview Heights, Illinois, said that she heard the buzz that people couldn't use her phone. So she started using her landline to call multiple friends so you could laugh at the people who couldn't use their phones. Why isn't it great that we can talk and have a great conversation? she said again plural to multiple people a bullshit she was like she called up her friend

edith and was like are you have you been to is it down.com lately right yeah can you believe it can you believe all these idiots with their cell phones that are down right now according to the website that we both check on a daily basis i mean i'm guessing like a party line because it said she got on the phone with her friends like come on she said Hawthorne 253 you know the other thing is I'm guessing that Francilla is on a VoIP anyway right I don't think you can even I don't think you can even have a a proper landline anymore or at least it seems unlikely that the phone companies are putting the maintenance and upkeep into traditional phone lines You I'm talking about the thing that comes down and then wraps around that kind of glass beehive or whatever. Like, you know, that kind of that. I just don't think there are enough people using that kind of technology anymore for it to even be worth maintaining. My guess would be if you have a phone in your home that's attached to a wall that you press the buttons on, that is probably voice over IP at this point. It's probably connected to your internet provider, which I don't love. Like I do, I am also very enamored with the idea of, of an old fashioned, you know, analog, I guess you would say landline telephone number that, that, that will is, is independent of like a power loss. You know what I mean? If the power goes down, the phone still works, all of that stuff. I've said this on the show a bunch of times, but what I really, if I ever, if I were to have one of those phones, the key part of the whole thing would be that it has a very, very, very long. cord on it between the receiver and the phone unit itself because the the great joy not even the great joy of life but a thing that i think anybody who grew up in our era can associate with is there was maybe like we had one phone i think we had literally one phone in the house and it was kind of sitting on this little table you know um right in the dining room right when you stepped into the dining room and of course it had a little pad of paper near it and all that stuff and it had i think it had a pretty long cord and the deal was you would because there was no privacy you would get the phone you'd be i would be talking to tracy durye my eighth grade girlfriend who i never once spoke to in real life but i would get on the phone with her after school after seeing her at school but being too nervous to talk to her i would then go home and then call her and i would take the actually the entire phone and i would go around the corner and i would try to like find some privacy and the idea that you have the phone with a very very long cord or what a cable so that you can go around away from everyone else and then talk to your friends or talk to this person you have a crush on or whatever that is for me i don't know who i'm gonna i mean honestly i'm an adult i'm allowed to talk to whoever i want on the phone i don't know why i want this to be the case but if i ever get a landline it's gonna have a long ass cord on it

so i can go get privacy from people when i talk to my girlfriend and some of the um the the the

coils on the phone would like somehow revert to the opposite way and you'd be nervously talking and trying to get that thing yes to revert the right way we had fidgeting with that most of our phones were wall mounted i'm not trying to brag about that um because i was worried about your phone like if you pull it too hard it's falling off of that table but we had a nice little red one that was like kind of curved it was like a real 80s style phone you know not the kind of the 40s with like the distinct ear part and the mouth part but instead it was like one like it

Well, that would be weird if you had one of those.

Well, oh, I'm sorry, not distinct like the kind that you would, I'm sorry, not the kind from like A Wonderful Life or something. I meant not even like a reporter's phone from like the 1970s on their desk, but more like it was like, it was just one round. It was like the shape of a comma, sort of. Do you know what I'm talking about? So kind of like that. I know exactly what you're talking about. And that was mounted on the wall. But then down in our office area, we had this little room that wasn't used for much. My parents had a desk in there and we had, again, I'm just really bragging about how wealthy we were, but we had Encyclopedia Britannica sat down there. Oh, my God.

I think we had I think we had the A's. I think my parents got talked into creating a lifetime of knowledge for their family. But then I think they defaulted on the payments after like the first three.

We didn't even get to the end.

We didn't even get to like whatever. A, Z.

Yeah. You're like after Alabama, there were no more states. that's all I know but anyway downstairs is where we had more of an office phone again mounted to the wall beige like hospital beige color and more like kind of more traditional looking phone and that one had the really long leash on it because I would carry I would pull that off I'd go down in the office for like the private conversations but then I would wander around the room or whatever because it didn't have a door and that thing was like super super long and that's the phone that I believe I heard the white album on for the very first time I wasn't allowed to Did Tony play it down the line to you? The very first time I ever heard everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey was over that office line. He held it up to his boombox for me. Yeah.

I love that story so much.

Yeah.

And, you know, I'm tempted here and I'm going to fight the temptation to descend into kind of a nostalgia that somehow says, well, that just wouldn't happen today because it probably would. You would just be FaceTiming or, you know, people that are younger are just using different ways. ways to share experiences with each other, but there's something about that way of sharing this. I mean, it's arguably one of the worst ways you could have heard the White Album and just like sonically, but I love that. I love the time commitment between the two of you.

The lake. What else have we got going on?

Everything about that story just absolutely charms me. Yeah. I had a weird thought the other day about landline technology, which was I was kind of wondering for people that still work in offices and go to their office or their cubicle or whatever, their workspace, particularly when it comes to like, I don't know, I was thinking of like public radio producers, which you and I both were for some number of years. do do you think do people still have phones on their desks and is that the number they give out to people and i i for some reason this is what i was thinking if i were to have a desk job again like that i would really want to have a regular phone on my desk that i could dial out on i love that tactile sense when i was the booker on this show called day to day actually down here in los angeles i used to sit at that desk all day long and just like hammer the phones just calling people calling people calling people trying to get you know convince people to come on the show and i don't think i would have enjoyed the experience as much if they were calling me on my npr issued cell phone even though that's a way more practical thing because the phone goes with you yeah you can you don't you're not attached to your desk like it's silly to be attached to a physical location to try to do this job that's not about geography and yet there's something that i found i'd come in in the morning i'd get in at like 5 30 a.m or something and i would sit down at that desk with my cup of coffee and I would like grab my phone you know that was sitting in the corner of my little workspace and I would just start start dialing and dialing smiling and dialing and like I don't it would have felt different if I was on my cell phone again I know that I sound desperately out of touch but I'm just I was sort of wondering do people do you think people that work in offices are still using some kind of office phone system at their desk well the funny

thing is i'm now just realizing it's been a solid 10 years since i worked at um kcrw down in la i guess i left that job in 2015 but it was probably around this time spring of 2014 oh no i think i changed their name to santa monica is sorry it's not kcrw anymore no that makes more sense

that makes a lot more this morning i made my decision about which los angeles-based public radio station i was going to listen to based on how annoying i find the term laist i know i know i listened to kcrw this morning instead of kpcc because i just find the laist thing to be in a

front do you feel like morning is becoming i don't know different or eclectic in any very standardized very very standardized that would be my show morning becomes predictable morning remains predictable would be the name of my show but i was going to say i did have a landline there And I think I used it sometimes. I wasn't doing quite as much smiling and dialing as the other producers, but there were definitely times that I would do that. And I think if I was sitting at my desk, I would probably default to using that phone. But I also know that it racked up all kinds of voicemails that I didn't check enough. So I think I was telling people to call my cell phone line. But I do remember one day hearing this voicemail, which I've played for you a bunch.

Hey, this is for Andrew Walsh. Andrew, this is a public relations office calling out of Hollywood. Erwin Zucker, Erwin Zucker PR. I sent you an email last week. I'm following up to see if you can use a relationship expert, Dr. Nicky Monte, who's written a brand-new book called Our Love Matters. Is this suitable for Madeline? Let me know if there's an opening, even if it's just a few minutes on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, because Dr. Monty has a big event, big retreat seminar in Encino on Saturday. If there is a possibility of doing a few minutes by phone with Dr. Nicky Monty, please call me immediately.

Okay, that just warms the cockles. I know it always sounds like Mort to me.

Did Mort predate that message? He did, yes, yes. Andrew, if I had to, what's the over-under? The over-under is, let's see, the over-under is 11 inches. over or under the width of erwin zucker's glasses that he was wearing when he left that message for you is it are they are they if you measured them would they be more than 11 inches or less than

i'll hammer the over on that i believe i mean god that's that is i love that voicemail is

absolute perfection absolute perfection and i think it stood out

to me because i you know this was again this was during my stint there which was 2014 2015 i i don't remember the exact dates but um you know your mort stuff was going back to the early you know the 2010s i believe so it's just a it's a type i guess but i love that voicemail so much uh okay so eddie pepitone so go ahead you're gonna close your eyes should i play any eddie

pepitone for people before you play that i you can but i'm a little worried andrew i don't want I don't want to let any of the air out of this balloon. I'm worried that it might undermine your argument. But I could be wrong. I could be wrong. Why don't you play some Eddie Pepitone? Play some Eddie Pepitone.

I'm randomly playing this. This is from his special, which is apparently fully on YouTube, For the Masses. I have no idea. I'm needle dropping this. It could be majorly inappropriate.

I promise you it will be surreal. It will be surreal and potentially dark.

Yes, but hopefully not inappropriate. Just want to hear his voice here a little bit. Rats. That's the audience laughing. That's not him laughing. Here, he's going to be the guy who's talking.

And they would gnaw at him. And he liked it because he made him feel.

Okay, so this is a little bit of his voice. Of course, I feel warm and I'm levitating. You didn't hear that a little bit?

I do hear it a little bit. I do hear it a little bit. Can you play some more Pepitone, and we're going to go right into Mikey Day.

I'm going to go into a place where he's not talking about somebody getting in the virus.

I do literally have my eyes closed for no reason right now.

No, the reason is, I asked you to. Here we go. I'm moving ahead. Just don't be about somebody being eaten by rats this time.

I'm saying to me, we don't care that you owe everybody money. He's kind of doing a voice here. Doesn't mean a thing to us. Doesn't mean anything to us. We're trying to be family friendly here, Andrew. You are great, my friend.

Okay, he's kind of doing a voice there, but go ahead.

I feel warm and I'm levitating. I can hear it. I can hear it.

Yeah, that wasn't the perfect example. Anyway, that old forever now. Can you relabel that as Eddie Pepitone saying, I'm warm and I'm levitating in your system?

I can relabel it as person that Andrew and Luke spent about 11 minutes before the show trying to get to. Because we went around and around and around trying to remember who it was you were referring to. And it turned out it was the comedian Eddie Pepitone

I mean I thought you were just talking about the journey We just went on We are according to my clock 28 minutes into the show This began with me saying Hey I'm going to play some Eddie Pepitone You play that drop We have covered so much ground Can you imagine if the show had an editor?

No I can't and I never will

It would just go from the Eddie Pepitone To us saying yeah it sort of sounds like Eddie Pepitone Let's go to a break three minutes in

And then we'd still have so much show We had to do where right now we only have to do about 31 more minutes exactly if you are looking for something to augment your tbtl listening with i cannot recommend the sporkful highly enough you know about this show right produced by friend of the show and friend of me dan pashman they like to say that is a show for eaters not for foodies you don't have to know a lot about food you just have to enjoy the experience of putting food in your mouth and chomping down on it and swallowing it I'm very jealous of this other thing That Dan did a while ago He invented a new kind of pasta It's called cascatelli I've bought it in the store And then made stuff with it It's amazing, it's delicious, it's toothsome It's all the things that Dan was trying to set out to do When he invented his own pasta They talk about all kinds of interesting stuff On the Sporkful Like why is the shallot super special Is there such a thing as halal pork What kind of fast food should you eat on vacation And stuff like that we love Dan you're going to love the sporkful get it wherever you get your podcasts

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 who are making TBTL possible today with their Dazzling donation of dough Starting off with Lisa Claus Lisa says Claus like Santa Claus Seems simple but no one Pronounces it correctly I can see that By the way Lisa is in West Chester Pennsylvania Wow you said didn't you say that you're near

West Chester Los Angeles right now

I'm in West Chester yeah Although here it's one word Like Lisa's in West Chester and here it's West Chester But basically the same place I can see though how people Would be shy about going They probably say Klaus They probably want to say Klaus

Instead of

And probably maybe even that Santa Claus thing is maybe even playing a part in that. Like, well, I'll say Klaus because I'll err on the side away from Santa Claus.

Right. Like that's, you know, that's reserved for Santa and Mrs. Claus.

Right.

By the way, when I send them letters, I do write to Mr. and Mrs. Fred Claus. Fred Claus. Yeah. Yeah. Which goes over very, very poorly with Santa Claus's wife, Irene. Yes. Did you know that Mrs. Claus' first name is Irene?

You're making that up, right?

Yes, I am. I like an imagined history where Mrs. Claus actually was very involved in the early feminist movement. Used to run around with Bella Abzug and had this whole life. Has a whole interesting life outside of just being Mrs. Claus.

Apparently, Mrs. Claus's first name is Gertrude, as first named by James Reese in his 18, exactly, perfect, 1849 short story, A Christmas Legend. Over the years, it has changed to Jessica, Mary, Holly, Anna, and Layla.

I'm, hold on, I'm just also, I'm wondering how I did on my Bella Abzug reference. and is that even wasn't Bella Abzug like a kind of early Abzug early feminist type person American lawyer, politician social activist, leader in the women's movement, Andrew

great, there you go

that was very tepid that was very tepid, congratulations from you

Luke was doing a little victory dance on his side of the line too

you know a friend of mine, my dear friend Evan, who I love to go gunk holing, as we say, on his beautiful sailboat, Seabird. We will go cruising around the San Juan Islands. He reached out to me the other day and he said, hey, is there a video version of TVTL that's like available now since you guys are videotaping the whole show? And I was like, no, and there never will be because I don't, you know, we've got John Sklaroff now pulling some little video clips and things, but I don't think I can handle, like you just mentioned to the uh to the listeners luke's doing a victory dance because he got a bella abzug reference going but you never want to see that i don't think the listeners want to see that no i don't think i don't think i don't think i want to see it i don't think america wants to see that i think i i probably am i probably itch my nose uh you know in a in a way that's a little bit embarrassing i think i think i'm making i'm doing a lot of things that i don't even realize i'm doing physically while i'm talking to you that i would be mortified if that was if we put this out strictly as a video product i'm

always interested on the occasion that john will take a clip of this and you're talking kind of watching what i'm doing because it's true like i'm not thinking about the camera at all times so sometimes i'm staring off into space or like you say itching my nose or pouring a cup of coffee it never bothers me though i think and for what it's worth like when you're talking to me you just seem natural like a guy talking into a microphone i i want i think you're too much in your head about

that I don't think that's my history at all yeah too much in my head about my physical appearance doesn't does not check out Lisa Claus like Santa Claus says hi Luke and Andrew and John I nothing to plug here or nothing earth-shattering to share but I love the show and I'm happy to support this year as a dazzling donor thank you I've been listening since about 2010 when I had a commute for the first time and heard tbtl mentioned when luke was on wait wait i now mostly work from home but i definitely fall in the group that wants episodes to be as long as possible you're welcome today lisa we've gotten to absolutely none of the planned content but we have talked about zunes for 40 minutes and landlines give me all your minutia give me that I'm joking I'm joking That's a direct quote from Lisa I'm here for it Thank you for the content You can never quit Says Lisa Well that just means you can never stop donating Lisa As long as you're able to And you decide to never stop donating We'll decide to never start quitting

Lisa's like our boss in this situation In many ways

I mean could we have a better boss than Lisa I mean, just funding the operation, telling us that our minutiae is interesting. I've never had a boss who said, you know what, Luke? We want more of your minutiae. Yeah, but Lisa's saying that. Yeah, Lisa is saying it. Thank you, Lisa. Appreciate you. Maestro?

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

It's our friend Corey Diamond in Brookline, Massachusetts. What up, Corey? I will. I probably said this last year. I feel like Corey.

Corey Diamond really gives Luke Burbank a run for its money on names that seem like they might have been synthetically created.

It's a great name, man. It's a heck of a name.

It's a solid name.

You've got to live up to it, and he is living up to it by being a dazzling donor.

I mean, Corey is a Diamond-level donor of TBTL. Corey says, hey, friendos, last fall I was listening to show number 4027 while walking across a college campus at which I used to work. When I heard Luke say the words, Lichterveld, I hardly knowerveld.

I remember that spoof.

Which is the title of the episode. I literally, Rob Lowe voice, burst out laughing. The problem was, just at that moment, I bumped into a former colleague. It was a big deal at that college. This is the smartest person I have ever met. Well, other than me and Andrew, Corey. Did you hear my Bella Abzug references I mean who just pulls that out of the air But then has to Gorgle it to make sure that they even That that person's even associated with what we thought They were associated with This is the smartest person I've ever met and who has taught A US president Senators and CEOs And has been on the short list For some very high profile jobs In the government who do we think this is Is it Larry Summers This is Larry Summers Do we think this is Larry Summers

It doesn't say what the school is Oh it's Brookline So it's coming out of Massachusetts

I don't know Massachusetts Geography well what's Brookline What's the likely Do they have any fancy colleges In Massachusetts

I don't think so Well there's Tufts That's about it

Yeah what else I'm trying to think Northeastern and Tufts

That's right. Genevieve used to work for Northeastern. Did you know that?

UMass. I didn't know that. That's interesting. I thought she was a Dartmouth person and then a coming out West person. I didn't realize there was a Northeastern stop in there.

Northeastern was before Dartmouth, I want to say. I think it was before Dartmouth.

That would have made sense because y'all bought a house in New Hampshire. Yes. And Northeastern is in Boston, so it would be likely before that, right?

Oh, yeah. I see what you're saying. Yes, exactly. Yes, yes, yes. She worked at Dartmouth when we had that. But anyway, yeah, so obviously a lot of good schools in that area.

So Corey is – is it possible it's Robert Reich? Although I'm naming people that have actually had government jobs, and I also don't know if Robert Reich is associated with Harvard or not.

Who was the guy who was arrested on his own porch for being black? Henry Louis Gates, was he associated with – he was a Harvard guy, right?

I believe he was a Harvard person. I'm trying to think. I just, I like the idea that Corey is walking through the quad, cracking up at me saying Lichtervild, I hardly knew her Veld. And he sees, let's keep naming Eminent, Harvard.

Yeah, I can't, you've already drunken me under the table on this game, Luke. I'm getting nervous. Two to one? Yes. What a sad, what a sad drinking contest. Well, we're getting older.

I just like the idea of Corey bumping into Larry Summers And Larry going, hmm, OK, what is this? What's Corey Diamond laughing about this time? I obviously could not tell this a seam scholar what I was laughing at. So I just said a podcast, which, of course, led to them asking what podcast was then forced to confront the eternal problem. How do you describe this pod cart to someone who has never heard of a TBTL? I said, well, it's two guys who do an episode every day. they talk about their lives and the news kind of and sports kind of and um i could tell they were losing interest so finally i said it's like hanging out with two friends every day there's a really great community around it and listening to it is often the best part of my day ah cory what a kind thing to say and a nice way to describe your experience with the show uh they still seemed confused they do this every day the person asked but then said well we all need something special like that in our lives and we said our goodbyes so thanks to both of you and to john and the tens for helping to make this a special part of our lives every day cory thank you for telling that story and making this a special part of my day for real yes and maybe turning that person into a tbtl listener we'd like to amazing we'd like to welcome our new donor lewis brandeis i was waiting

i was on the edge of my seat i was like does he have another one does he have another one i mean

did i was he i don't even know i mean brandeis is named for a whole other college i believe is named for him. I don't even

think he went to the problem is the only other person i can think of is dershowitz and we don't really we're not really celebrating dershowitz anymore that's another intrusive thought of mine

we don't have to get into it you already know this story one time long before he was as controversial as he was um i was booking him for a radio show but i didn't realize how famous he was and i basically was telling his assistant like no i need to do a pre-interview before i let this guy in the air i need to know what he sounds like and i held my ground on that and i was probably like i was probably like right out of college and they're just like he doesn't do pre-interviews what are you talking about and i was like all right fine then he's not coming on the show then of course i later realized how famous he was and that you know he's pretty media literate

i will tell you that lewis brandeis did go to harvard andrew there you go congratulations

it's a luke oh he's doing the dance what i'm doing he's doing the dance again it's like that by the way luke's victory dance if you want a picture and i can only see him from like kind of the the navel up let's say but he is wearing a shirt so i can't see his navel is It's very much like that little gif of the banana dancing from the early days of internet gifs. What was that banana that was like, it sang a banana song? Do you know what I'm talking about? No, I don't. It was very famous, one of the earliest gifs that people would pass around, the dancing banana gif. I'll see if I can call it up here.

I don't like, you know, Nora Ephron famously wrote a book called I Don't Feel Good About My Neck. I don't feel good about the area under my arms. I don't think it's let's just say I haven't been I haven't been hitting the arms day I have not been going to the gun show at the gym lately and I think it really shows I think things are starting to sort of slouch things are starting to really slide off of off of my bone structure here but anyway the the important thing is Corey Diamond told Lewis Brandeis about the podcast and we're welcoming him as a listener and Lee and we now know how to say Lisa Claus's last name So we did some important stuff here today, as did our dazzling donors. Thank you for supporting the program. Hello and welcome to Top Story. So here's the question, Andrew. Do we want to talk about your big gig on Friday? Or do we want to talk about the Top Stories, which I'm kind of medium on. So I've already told you kind of how I feel about it, which is there's the thing that I'm most interested from the top stories we didn't get to yesterday is just Dollar General getting scaling back their self-checkout because it confirms a suspicion that I've had for a while about, I guess, what you might call the social action that needed to happen, which is we all needed to start stealing more stuff from these stores.

and it's working but um do you think i mean this is this is um i i think risky territory for me to step out onto but i think it's interesting that you know when we think of dollar general or those types of things it's there's actually an economic theory about where those places tend to pop up right they're low economic areas usually yeah and it's not whole foods in you know some seattle suburb that is shutting down these things it is the places where people are potentially the most desperate right or or you know like in a situation where they feel like they need to steal so i do wonder if there's sort of a class thing going on here however you feel about and i'm not saying classist i'm just saying like i i noted that the places that are talking about shutting down these self-checkouts are not like the the places that i usually go right yeah it's it's there's there's

probably my guess would be there were a few factors um and this is i don't think we need to clarify this but nothing that andrew and i are going to say here is saying that people who are economically marginalized are more likely to steal or are criminals but um but it is the case you're right that a number of these different big you know retail chains or whatever you know stores that basically tried to turn all of their operations into self-checkout have found that they're losing a lot of stuff through self-checkout. I consider that to be a form of social protest personally, and I support it wholeheartedly because I've always said, if you are going to make me, if you're going to continue to charge the same amount for the product, but now I'm going to have to do the work of checking myself out, I will never again, as far as you know, purchase any organic fruits and vegetables as far as you know that is my small act of uh of protest

i see those are all non-organic plums you are buying those are i found those on the floor

those are whatever the cheapest ass plums you sell fred meyer are um actually fred meyer is a bad example i think that they still have a reasonable number of of humans checking people out but what i what i thought was interesting was these because of course these companies and you're right i mean like dollar general is one of those one of those places that's that's sort of come into a lot of

of communities and then uh you know in the way that walmart did but in a sort of different way you know walmart's obviously would come into communities and then they would undercut all of whatever the local business was and the local business would leave and then you'd have only the walmart well you've now got dollar general and dollar tree doing similar things where they come into a community and they they're often the only store left because they are able to sell things at this very very cheap rate but then they also want to continue making even more money by not hiring any humans to work at the store so then it's all self-checkout and then people are either intentionally or unintentionally stealing or not paying for a lot of the stuff and now the people at dollar general are having to go back and rethink this because as i suspected if you're going to frustrate me let's just imagine you're already on the margins economically you're you don't you don't have enough money to get through the month the only store you can go to in your town is a dollar general you go there and you're trying to scan your whatever thing you just bought your food for your family your can of something because of the other problem with a lot of these places they don't have their they're sort of almost food deserts in terms of a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and things that are you know healthy so you're trying to scan your whatever shelf stable food from the dollar general and it won't go through and you also don't have enough money in your bank account to support all this i i almost feel like it's the the morally correct play is to walk out of that dollar general with that can of chef boyardee and what they've found is that you know when the self-checkout works the best for these companies when they have multiple employees working at the self-checkout yeah at which point you've almost gone back now to just having like what doesn't work for them they found are self-checkout where there aren't people they're more or less guarding it and so um they're going back to a model where they're well i guess the official rule and this might actually andrew get into something that you and i have talked about a lot before which is what is the amount of things that is too much to take through self-checkout and i think one of their new things at least for the dollar general is anyone with more than five items is going to have to go through now like real person checkout instead of um the self-checkout because i guess i guess they felt like people that had big full grocery carts were more likely to end up uh not maybe paying for each and every item in that big grocery cart i guess is

their calculation i um i'm not trying to argue the the merits of it but i i don't know how like i i think if you were to take a poll of average americans they would side more with you about not liking self-checkout but i was reading this story yesterday thinking like man if they took The majority of my shopping is done at two different stores, one QFC and one Safeway. And, you know, I have a special relationship to my grocery stores. I like going to the grocery store. I like grocery shopping and I like self-checkout. And it occurred to me that if I walked into either of my regular grocery stores and there was no longer self-checkout, I would be deeply bummed. I cannot remember the last time I went through with the, you know, with a regular kind of cashier. And then a big part of it is control issues. I do not like other people bagging my groceries. They never do it right. They always think I want to keep like the like the beer or soda out of the bags. And I'm like, no, no, I've brought heavy duty or not heavy duty, but I've brought tote bags that can handle this stuff. Like if you park on the street, you can't have a million different things that are just loosey goosey. I need it all to go in the bag. Anyway, like I just I do not. And, you know, I didn't hate going through the line with a cashier. But it's just like you're just so dependent on other people as far as how long it's going to take, how long that line is going to take. I rather just do it myself and zip through there. I love it. I've gotten more bold with the amount of items I take through there because I always assumed there was like a rule, like don't do more than 20 items because it's rude to the people behind you. But as more and more of the grocery store becomes self-checkout, I realize they want us to do it all, at least where I go.

Yeah. Well, not if you go to your local Dollar General anymore. I guess they're going to now be looking. There'll be somebody who's assigned to look at, you know, how many things you have in your shopping cart, and then they're going to force you to go over, which is there's something quite ironic about that. They used to be forcing us to go to the self-checkout against, for many of us, against our will, and now they're going to force us to go talk to the human against our will.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, they may have just put signs up, like the express lanes. I don't even know if there are express lanes anymore. Everything's changed.

Did you see that article about the TSA going to a self-check model?

No, you're just like, no, I'm not carrying anything dangerous. Let me through.

I mean, basically, I think it might be, is it Vegas where they, I just heard about this the other day. They're basically trying like a pilot program where, I mean, I have a feeling that this is a complete. nightmare you think that it's annoying when the self-checkout of the grocery store keeps going off and trying to call a an attendant over because you know you can't scan your whatever you know avocados correctly that is can you imagine when when we think that the um you know the very the very lives of the people on the airplane depend on this thing getting it right but yeah there is a there is a like a um a sort of a beta test in place somewhere i forget where exactly where you you basically go through you put your stuff through this this scanner you stand in some big device and if you do it all perfectly you get the sort of like thumbs up from the machine and you have you've theoretically been scanned properly without any human having to get involved i would imagine the success rate on that is like in the low one percent of of it actually working where you know what i mean like i guess they're thinking if you could if they could really really really get it figured out then you could you know just have fewer tsa employees but it seems like for now that's going to be full of all kinds of problems they're working on a robot that then

wheels around yelling shoes off laptops out of bag i thought you'd like that joke that was just for

you thank you because who was i talking to uh i think it was actually maybe on live wire recently somebody who had written a book or an essay about in this is what they were they were writing about something larger but they mentioned that the thing that's so frustrating about that kind of spiel from the tsa folks is that so many airports have different rules and when the person at the tsa is kind of maybe yelling out the directions or even kind of looking at you like you're a little bit daft because you didn't like for instance there when i go through the security at portland i just hand them my driver's license that's all you need but there are a lot of other places where you show them the boarding pass on your phone and they maybe don't need your driver's license or maybe they need both of them um like and there are some places where it's like everything goes on the everything needs to go on the conveyor belt and there's some place where everything needs to go in one of those you know containers like into a bin yeah even your big suitcase needs to go into a bin sometimes yeah yeah and and i mean this but but it feels kind of like and i'm not trying to drag the tsa folks although i am staring directly at lax here andrew so maybe i've got sky jinx on the brain but it the the thing that i wish i could say to the tsa folks is you all as an organization as a national association of air safety people do not have a consistent policy so for all of us it's always a guessing game based on the airport you're in what the rules are here so if we seem confused it's because it's confusing it's also really

interesting that of all like departments this would be one that seems so loosey-goosey might be an exaggeration ad hoc but ad hoc yeah you know it's a federal it's a federal division department that was set up specifically to save Americans' lives on aircrafts after the biggest...

I'd say make some rules and laminate them.

Right, exactly. Send it around. Every now and then, tap the sign.

Yeah, here you go. These are the rules. I mean, you know, it's just like going into any grandmother's kitchen. There's probably some sort of a signage on the wall. These are the rules in Meemaw's kitchen.

Exactly, yes.

You know, like, just do that level of consistency So that everywhere we go as the travelers We just kind of know what the system is Yeah, exactly But anyway, I guess the reason that the Dollar General thing And just generally speaking, the self-check thing jumped out at me Was because, again, you know me I'm really the Bernie Sanders of podcasting I'm deeply suspicious of corporate interests I feel like they're always trying to make more money on us And also trying to explain to us that it's for our own good whether it's the not washing the towels in the hotel or or whatever and i just think it's kind of funny that they tried to make everyone's life a little bit less convenient i know you you have a system now so you don't mind the self-checkout but in the early days i think it's pretty hard to make the case that the self-checkout was in any way designed for the convenience of the customer i think it was 100 designed because they thought they could save money they would have to hire fewer employees and then people just started nicking you know you know velveta cheese or something and now they're going back to humans because they realize that their system of trying to make us do more work um and still pay them the same amount of money for the products uh has backfired in a certain way at least in certain places and i don't know why i find that delightful

but i kind of do well it'll be interesting to see if the whole like i guess is it rfid i don't know what the technology is, but you know, there are the Amazon stores around here where you just fill up your bag and you walk out and you scan your phone when you walk in so it knows who you are and somehow it knows exactly everything you bought the my only even close um uh like interaction with something like that is in airports where and i don't know if you've done this too luke but like the only thing i'm usually buying at airports these days unless i have a like a kind of a long layover and i'm grabbing a beer and some food is usually i just go to whatever the little like kind of bookstore little mart is i buy myself a bag of pretzels i tend to eat pretzels when i'm flying and like maybe a an orange juice or a water or soda or something and whatever and then you know like some pornographic magazines and then i'll gentleman's quarterly wait no that's just gq but um anyway no whatever you're buying penthouse forum i never thought this would happen to me um but you just set them on a little thing and you don't scan them you don't use the q the qr code or anything you just set them on the little thing it's like you owe me like well let's see I bought some pretzels and a soda so it's like you owe me $45 and then you just pay and so like I'm like oh that is that does feel like magic to me so if eventually you know again it's Amazon they're a tech company they're probably losing money on these stores and they're just like right you know I mean who knows but it would be interesting concept or something if the future of grocery stores is just filling up your bag and walking out that would be kind of interesting too I assume that unless there's some like hitch in the technology you

would like that right i would that would be super convenient although creepy but convenient like yeah if if the deal is i can just go to the store and just grab all the stuff and then just walk out and then it just rings it up for me i'm fine with that although i'm gonna be the other thing and we've talked about this recently of when we put our phone number into the system when you're like self-checking out and you like to do it at the end because then it goes like yeah it's kind of it's like tetrising your grocery bill just going like yeah i didn't know we talked about that but i do like that yes i'm always worried like i put mine in first i guess and then or sometimes if i forget and i put it in midway i'll like ask the person to come over and be like is this am i getting half off of you know like i'm i don't know why as a person who doesn't think carefully enough about what i'm spending money on i'm very if if my phone number is gonna get me half off of this thin crust frozen pizza i'll be goddamned if i'm not going to get my half off like um and so i'm always very nervous about that so i feel like the idea that i'm just going to walk around the store throw everything in my bag walk out and it's going to charge me the correct amount and give me all the deals i'm entitled to and and and not also think that i grabbed i'm again i'm just suspicious of this technology in a way that i think it would be i would have a little bit of anxiety that i was getting charged the correct amount um you know which would kind of live live inside me a little bit but that being said i think i'd rather that what i would rather is that then i have to now wait in a very long line because that's the other thing about self-checkout there was a time when self-checkout was the fast option and so at least it had that going for it now because of these places near where i live that have really reduced down the number of like humans checking people out to like maybe a lane now there's a huge line for self-checkout it's like it didn't even it's not even more convenient in in terms of like it's not even speedier it's like now i wait in a longer line than i remember waiting in for the regular checker to then check my own stuff out that's you

know that's a true story and you're standing in that line i mean i assume everybody is like me which is to say toxic af just judging the people who are at those kiosks ahead of you and you're just like have you done this before are you kidding me you just slowly as if you were in a contest to see how slow you could move you slowly scanned all of your stuff and then set it down and then you're gonna bag it all at the end equally as slowly just bag it as you're scanning it people like i'm watching these people i honestly sometimes look around like i am on candid camera which i don't think is a thing anymore i think that was in the 1970s but you're looking around for alan funt is that who hosted that also a harvard grad and also a suffragette right i believe famously so anyway i um yeah like i i stand in that line sometimes because then for me i don't know if you remember that there's this one scene from seinfeld that really sticks in my head where like he's at an atm and there's a woman at an atm next to him and he's like trying to go as fast as possible at the atm he's talking out loud he's like receipt yes no and he's like he treats it like a race i am like that when i am checking out like i'm just like i'm trying to move as fast as possible you know i know exactly and again i have systems i want the heavy stuff at the bottom obviously whatever um and then i mean shit i could go on about this forever what really irritates me about those machines are the ones where if you're buying something like if You're buying wine or beer, alcohol. Some of them let you continue bagging, and at some point...

point somebody will come over and check your id but then there are the other kiosks with which just shut everything down you can't continue scanning until they check your id and usually the beer is the first thing i'm scanning because it needs to go in the bottom of the bag so i immediately am hitting a speed bump i don't understand that why can't they just check us

at the end i'm not sure well you know they also id you for near beer yes i do know that because isn't that strange beer yes because like i i like there's this company athletic brewing they make some stuff that i like sometimes you know i just want to have a crisp refreshing beer but i don't want to have an alcohol beer for whatever reason and i thought it was so funny the first time they came and id'd me for it and it's my theory is they're like we don't want our employees having to make a judgment call because it all looks like beer i wondered about that we don't want some you know we don't want them having to decide does this have alcohol in it or not so if it comes from that part of the store you're getting id'd no matter what even if it clearly says on the box

you know zero alcohol i wondered about that i even had a converse because i was buying genevieve some i think she likes the the heineken non-alcoholic oh yeah those are good like some of that the other day and they they had to come over and id me and i was like oh i didn't know that was a thing they're like yeah and i was actually talking with the with the employee about it a little bit i was like yeah maybe it's just so that you guys don't have to like see somebody walking out with a six pack of beer and wonder, but honestly, that's the, it's the robot who's flagging it. It's knowable. It's the robot. Like if you scan it and the light doesn't go on, then it was fine. Like it shouldn't be that. Yeah. That's the whole point of this technology.

Yeah. That's a really good point. Yeah. It's a barcode or whatever. It should just be like, it also doesn't, it, by the way, it doesn't think an eggplant is alcohol. Right. Right. Exactly.

Or Coke, you know, Coca-Cola. It's looking,

it's looking at everything and going alcohol not alcohol alcohol not alcohol the non-alcoholic beer should just be on the list of not alcohol you know what the thing where i get some agita with this and i i'm i'm sure you can identify with this too andrew now that the self-checkout lines are can be pretty long is when you have to stand down an aisle as part of the self-checkout line so there's a break because you don't want to just be blocking the walkway of everyone but now there is confusion about where the end of the self-checkout line is some people like just swoop

in and then somebody has to be like the line police be like no the line's back here because

it's going halfway down the frozen food section but if you're just like store are you if you're just walking yeah it's called a it's called any grocery store in america right now because you're just like do do do do going down and you see what used to be like three years ago what used to be the end of the self-checkout line which would be basically in the vicinity of the self-checkout kiosks but that's but it ain't 2022 anymore baby it's like you gotta you need to look to your right and notice that there are people that are standing in front of the wild mike's pizzas yes that have been waiting to go and like again it's somebody's gonna have to be the person who tells everyone and by the way i go to different stores like when i used to live in portland the fred meyer in portland it's one kind of energy the safeway and longview different kind of energy when people are explaining to other people that they have been waiting in line. And I'm not trying to generalize. I'm just saying each store has its own kind of like vibe about how that conversation goes down.

Well, the way to the universal is through the specific, Luke, as we all know. What is the quote that I'm trying to – what am I picturing there from Don O'Neill?

Well, I think I might be quoting Don O'Neill by saying to – and I think I said this on stage at Livewire the other night Because I was being interviewed about my particular way of, I guess, broadcasting, and I was using that, you know, to get to the, you know, to get to the universal, you can go through the personal, you know, and this has been highly personal, but I think it's been universally interesting to our listeners.

I'm going to take it even more specific in a way that nobody can relate to, but I just, you can't get, I mean, I realize now the mistake of talking about a story that was grocery store related and realizing, oh, of course I have, the majority of thoughts I have in this world are about grocery store shopping and my experience doing just that. And so in my particular grocery store on Holman Road, it's the frozen food aisle, Luke, you're absolutely right about that. There's this area. I think they have eight total self-checkouts. I only use the four that are in the south side of the store. I don't know why. It's where I park my car, whatever. I've never stood. The other self-checkout line is like a foreign land to me. I don't even know if I speak the language over there. I'm always in the same exact line. I'm by the pizzas, like you say. And then you can see when you're waiting in line, when you're the first person in that line, and you can't be on your phone. People are behind you, and they're waiting, and you have to be eagle-eyed. They're relying on you.

You're the person at the—you're the first car at the red light. That's right.

And we need you to get right out there into that left-hand turn lane.

Everybody behind you is making sure that you have your eyes on the prize because the second one of those kiosks open, then it's your turn. But the way this grocery store is set up is you can see very clearly three of the four kiosks, but then they've parked the cart that is like the heated cart where you can buy roasted chickens that are already warm. And it has this sign that pops out the top of it that perfectly blocks the fourth checkout position unless you're like seven, probably more than seven feet tall. You cannot get a clear line on when the person who's closest to the door is done. And so they also have to have you talk to anyone about this? Have I? Oh, have I addressed it with any of the employees? Yeah, the staff. It's a fair question. No, I have not. But I've envisioned what that conversation would look like. How could I come off as being helpful without being, because my guess is they've heard this before. Also, I don't think people care about this shit as much as I do, so maybe I don't want to come off as a crank, but it is astounding to me. Just take that friggin' sign off the top of the heat cart, and then everything will move faster. You shouldn't have to have an employee tell you when that one is free.

Have you learned nothing from producing local public affairs radio? you cannot capacity your way out of traffic okay you get that sign down yeah it's just like adding another lane on the freeway people will just clog it up okay the sign comes down and now that kiosk or that you know checkout area is open it's just now more people go to that former arts family center because they now know that there are more kiosks working oh it's so that is the place right

that used to be arts yeah i mean i didn't know that i only know that from you telling me that yeah and now there's a really good oh the um it's a qfc now it's a qfc now you know it's got that

globe outside of it that is almost like the pi that's the og sign from when it was arts but it

does say qfc now um luke i don't know if you would care about this i don't think you would because i don't think you go for these kind of places and honestly even i wasn't a huge fan of them not to speak ill of the dead but both of the um the patty's eggs nests have closed up here in seattle There was the one that was like, there's, I don't know if you knew this, but there was one next to that grocery store that just closed, like, unceremoniously, just like, apparently like, just didn't open the next day, and it's just like closed, and same with the other one, yeah, which again, they were family-run businesses, I feel bad, you know, for the, you know, for everybody involved who, you know, doesn't have a job anymore, doesn't have a business anymore, because I've heard that they were like a really good local family and everything, I wasn't somebody who ate at those places a lot, but it is kind of surprising.

I ate at the Patty's Eggs Nest Often The one that was on Greenwood up there Kind of in like Greenwood Finney area

Oh I don't think I knew about that one

Yeah there used to be one there And then was the one that was on Holman Road Was it attached To the same building That had the QFC Or was it like slightly across the parking lot Slightly across the parking lot In a little stand alone building

Not stand alone It was connected to like the Papa Murphy's and I think there's a couple in a nail salon or something.

If I remember right, I think that there was in that when I was a kid growing up and there was an arts there, I believe there was either a Burger Master or Kid Valley.

Okay.

That was in that kind of area. And I had this sort of vague memory that maybe the Patty's Eggs Nest, I'm probably wrong about this, but that it had sort of hermit crabbed into what had been either a Burger Master or a Kid Valley. which again oh we're just getting we're really gonna it's gonna be a while before we get to the universal andrew because we're getting to the deeply personal um with me but it's like if you know you know if you're from seattle the idea of a patty's eggs nest moving into what used to be a kid valley is possibly the most seattle thing that can ever happen i believe it you would know if it

was a burger master i feel like right don't they have well the burger masters have a certain shape

to them and that's and that's where i again i think i'm probably wrong about this but you know that burger master that's in university village that you'll drive by sometimes when you come down like 45th and you drop down and to the right would be those big play fields and to the left is going to be university village there's like an oil change place and then there used to be a burger

master there yes i think so i think you keep going you'll kind of go into sand point you'll

see there's like a basket there used to be a baskin robbins and stuff oh it's where the baskin robbins used to be okay but like there's a there's a a burger master there which uh it again or is it a kid i think you're thinking if you're thinking it's a kid valley it's a kid valley which

closed i think that was the first kid valley i only know that because it closed oh no let me let me let me you're right you're you're absolutely right sorry that was a kid valley if you keep

down that road will you hit frank's oyster house on the left that's one of our favorite little haunts if we're gonna have a nice little meal out frank's oyster house i'm like very possibly i

don't know if that's if i never noticed that or if that's just newer than my time there but um

it's in a building that looks like a baskin robbins

like uh you're right no you're you're you're 100 right though that that was that was like the og

kid valley and it's gone now i'm pretty i don't want to spread i don't want to spread falsehoods but I'm pretty sure I learned that that was the first one because that particular one closed its doors in the past year, I want to say, although I think they're, I mean, I don't think the other, I don't know if it's a franchise business or what, but I think the other locations are fine.

Okay. Gosh, I mean, if you can't make, you know, a living or if you can't figure out how to make a kid valley in University Village, steps from Laurelhurst, if you can't figure out how to make that, the economics of that work, I just don't know what to tell you. Maybe a Kid Valley where you just walk in and just go into the kitchen and grab any food you want. But as you leave, it just charges you.

You're like, that wasn't organic.

It knows exactly what you got. Like, oh, that's a heart. That's a heartbreak for an old Seattle guy like myself. All right. We should probably wrap things up because I need to go embarrass myself by trying to pop and lock with an Olympic level breakdancer, Andrew. And we didn't even get a chance to talk about what you have going on on Friday. Can we can we put that on the on the list for tomorrow? Because I'm yeah, I'm very curious about your kind of journey with that. You're going to be doing you're going to be doing something on Friday in the radio space that you have been, I think, thinking about for a while and kind of, you know, looking forward to and considering. And now it's going to happen. And I just want to kind of check in with you and see how you're doing.

Yeah, I'm very nervous about something. And now here we are the week where it's supposed to happen. And I'm, I'm actually wondering how I will feel. I have not heard from anybody and I'm wondering if they forgot that I'm supposed to do this. And I would be surprised if I'm happy about that or sad about that.

So that's where I actually know that feeling where like, there's something that you kind of have a pit in your stomach about and in a performative way. And then you think maybe they, maybe they just forgot about it and this cup has been passed from me. And then they usually are like, just like the morning of, send you the prep and are like, all right, we'll see you in an hour.

Oh, no. I know, which is, okay. We'll talk about it tomorrow because I've got a lot of complicated feelings.

Okay, good. All right. And I will give you a whole report on how my fabulous breakdancing adventure went.

Don't lock and then pop. You're supposed to do it the other way around, I think. Oh, hold on. I think. I'm going to write this down. Yeah. Got a lot of tips for you.

Pop first, pop, comma, then lock. Okay.

Yes.

Thank you, by the way. I appreciate that. All right, everyone. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for all of you. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. Go Mariners. And I heard that that's one of the things that Ty France has done is he's now started to lock before popping on his retooled swing.

it's working so you have been reading about that that's great i have been just a little bit of

light research on the topic so anyway i will see you tomorrow please remember no mountain too tall

and good luck to all

hey good morning um sorry i just had like this really i might actually start crying i don't i'm i'm just an emotional wreck but anyway this morning as i was getting ready for work i was washing my hands and then I was like thinking you know there's that drop like another day another something whatever anyways I know the point is is that I a drop came into my head um I clearly am not good at exact you know exactly what the words were but it filled me with such joy I I listen to you guys you know every day and maybe I'm not like always as mindful about how much I appreciate you guys but this morning like something happened while I was washing my hands and I was like oh god like I just really really appreciate you two and then the thing that I loved even more is that I went outside to my husband and I told him like I started saying the drop and then he just like he properly said the whole thing which clearly by now I've already forgotten and that made me even happier because I don't know it's it's just really really fun and special to have you guys and to be able to share it with my husband too and now i'm about to get smashed just kidding but he was swerving in my lane anyways i love you guys and i'm grateful for you both um and i guess i'm grateful for you sir sir i don't know how to do that with three people including john in there and just everyone

going to be obviously but um thank you guys for being here every day for me power out