Muse

Listen, every day at around 2.30, my armpits get sweaty. Okay. And I used to hate raising my hand in class to answer a question. But one day I had to say, who cares? I have swampy armpits, and I'm going to answer all the questions I want. I'm swampy and I'm proud.

Tina, where are you going with this?

I'm saying just because you think something is embarrassing doesn't mean you have to be embarrassed by it. We all have our swampy pits. My swampy pits is swampy pits.

Have you tried dad's deodorant? It's like military grade.

He gets it on the dark web. TBTL.

I'm a man of few words, but those words will count, and so will my actions. You, like, are definitely, you're the real thing that a lot of people say. So, do you think if you weren't, I mean, if you were less fake, do you think you would be, or you could, or you have a desire to?

If you feel uncomfortable at any time, give me the sign. I keep losing at deals, and I don't want to make a deal anymore. All you have to do is study it out. Just study it out, and you'll see. You haven't done your homework, buddy.

Hey, you know what time it is? It's time to get real.

Well, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Be careful, though. It's spicy. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Oh, my God! He unmuted!

Coming to you once again from Los Angeles, California, where it is an uncharacteristically not great day. It's kind of cloud fog. Foggy, overcast, and not what we signed up for. If it's not sunny in 75, what is this town even doing, my friends? What we're doing on this Wednesday is episode 4166 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. At least I am not in a town in Mississippi where the local dairy processing facility has decided to dump thousands of gallons of milk into a lagoon where it is spoiling and causing people to literally move out of the city or consider moving out of the town. because of the smell of this giant sour milk lagoon. So we will talk about that. Also, time permitting, Killing Me Softly. Have you been saying famous Irish names correctly?

Killian, Saoirse, Eva.

We have the definitive list of pronouncers and some audio assistance as well that we can go through. If we don't run out of time talking to this guy The longest running co-bro of the show Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships He's getting ready for his

Cup of coffee in the big time

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

Good morning Luke I literally just five seconds ago Remembered a story that I think I want to tell you Can I tell you a quick story I was going to open by telling you that I have What was that drop you played Cloud Fog I have a lot of Cloud Fog in my head today Cloud Fog But maybe this will clear it out. This is actually this story begins as something that I promised myself I would not tell anybody for reasons that I think will become clear. It's not even embarrassing.

The sign of a decent story for the show, by the way.

So I think it was two days ago on the Wordle thread where we share our Wordle scores with a group of friends. Our friend Katie mentioned something non-Wordle related, just to let us know, that she had been at the Jersey Mike's having lunch with, I think, a colleague or something and saw somebody come in and just steal the tip jar. Just like walk in and grab the tip jar and then walk out. That's aggressive. Yeah, so that seemed kind of rotten. So she said she had a couple of bucks on her and she put some money in and she said somebody else put in a five. Later that day, I had an errand to run, and I thought, wouldn't it be nice? It was coming off my big bingo win, Luke. So I thought, wouldn't it be nice? Yeah, and again, this is not hero stuff. I thought, you know, I'm driving that way anyway. I'll just pull in the parking lot, and I'll go in there, and I'll toss five bucks into the tip jar. And I didn't want anything I'd already eaten. And so that's why I didn't want to tell anybody it's five bucks. It's not that big of a deal. I'm not a hero. I just thought maybe, you know, these people are working. They had their tip jar stolen. Maybe if other people are kind of hearing that their tip jar got stolen and people are coming and throwing some extra cash their way, it would be nice. Get them out of a couple of jams. So I'm like, that's just a nice little secret thing I can do. So, of course, now I'm talking about it on the podcast, but there's a reason I'm talking about it on the podcast. So I get in my car and I drive up Aurora and I stop in the parking lot and I get out. I look. I'm wondering, will.

the tip jar even be out because it had just been stolen earlier in the day maybe they're going to be more careful with it but I walk in there a little bit confused for a second but I want to spend as little time in there as possible I don't want to make eye contact with anybody I don't want to have a conversation about it so I dip in there yes you panicked and stole the tip jar I took the whole goddamn thing just and then and then I went to McDonald's had the best meal of my life it's amazing didn't tip no i go in there and i i look probably befuddled and probably because i'm trying i think i do this thing sometimes when i don't want people to pay attention to me i do something where i try to make myself invisible but i think it just makes me look grumpy honestly i was sort of replaying it in my head i'm sure they saw somebody almost do you feel there's a facial

expression that you can make that renders this sort of an invisibility cloak i truly believe

that no i know it doesn't make sense and it's just something i'm sort of thinking of right now But like, all I can tell you is I wanted to run in there, throw five bucks into a can and get out of there without having any conversations or anything. But what I think in hindsight, it probably looked like was some angry man stormed in there and then threw money. And I think I even heard somebody say, oh, hey, thanks. Maybe in the background as I was leaving, but they sounded confused, too. I'm not sure. But the question is, why am I bringing this up now? If I said I want to do a little good deed and keep it secret. Well, this is why, Luke, because last night I was playing some darts and I'm listening to the Levitard show as I want to do. Genevieve is hanging out downstairs. She's playing her birds game on the computer and we're just listening to some Levitard. And they're having this whole conversation about tipping and tipping culture and blah, blah, blah. And it's a good talk show topic. We should do that sometime. And then I remember that I did this a couple of days earlier. I'm like, oh, Genevieve, I wasn't going to tell anybody this, but I'll tell you. Did you know that I went to Jersey Mike's and I threw five bucks into the tip jar? She's like, why? I'm like, well, because Katie sent that message that said that somebody had stolen the tip jar. And I was kind of headed that way anyway. I just thought it'd be a nice little thing. But I'm not trying to make a big deal of it. She's like, that was Jimmy John's. That was Jimmy's John. That is why I tell that story, because if somebody was even confused for a second in my original version of the story, when some grumpy guy who was trying to make himself invisible stormed into the Jersey mics and threw some cash into the tip jar and then stormed out of there. If that was weird anyway, I thought, well, at least they'll know that, oh, this is somebody who's probably heard that we lost our tips today. No, this person has no idea that a tip jar was stolen all the way across town at the Jimmy's John, and that was the angriest tip we've ever received. So that's why I'm telling this story.

If unfortunately that kind of thing happens so often that they just assume a tip jar was stolen somewhere.

Yeah, maybe you're right. And it all just comes around, yeah.

Truthfully, I'm surprised that doesn't happen more. I remember being a kid and being fascinated with a couple of things. One, that people would just leave money on tables in restaurants and trust that no one else is going to grab that. Yeah. and then also you know that tip jars would sit out there for hours on end with a bunch of money in them and that they don't get grabbed of course thankfully they generally don't but as a kid i remember just thinking wow this really adults are pretty big on the honor system with this because i'm very keen and to snatch some of this money up in fact i may have i don't i don't have a specific memory but i have kind of a vague memory of some time when i was very young i'm talking you know maybe five or something of grabbing I want to say a quarter off of a table or something either because I didn't really understand what it was doing there or maybe I was just being you know sneaky or something but um but yeah I'm glad I'm glad that doesn't happen more often but I'm kind

of surprised it doesn't yeah I mean the tip jar I feel like that's really bold because it's up there where people are working you know what I mean but I do recall being a kid and and also well this sort of relates to something that I'll see in movies that I'm never sure if it's just a fabrication of movies or if it's just representing a bygone time. But even when we were living in a more cash based society, when I was a much younger man or even like kind of coming of age and going to coffee shops or going to restaurants with my friends a lot in like late high school or whatever, that idea of somebody in a movie or TV show just gets out their wallet, throws one bill down on the table, and then walks out. I've never had that experience where it's like, oh, I don't even have to wait for the check. I don't have to do the math on this. I don't have to kind of get change and then figure out what the tip is. It sort of seems like in movies, and I'm sure this is just something to keep the plot moving along, or like I say, it's from a bygone era, but it seems like nobody ever needs to know how much they owe the bartender or the diner server or whatever it is in a movie. They just, when it's time to go, they just take out a bill that's always... is perfect and lay it down i wonder if we tipped less back in the day and so it was it's because you know most of of my wanting a specific amount of change is well that's because i guess i don't want to over tip like it's because the bill was 14 and i have a 20 and i'm like okay six is a little much here so maybe it's i'm going in the opposite direction but i was going to say it you know maybe it was the case that like you know i don't know bacon and eggs was 95 cents and you just threw down a dollar yeah you know kind of like i wonder if it's almost the case that we were less people the servers weren't living off of the 20 strict 20 gratuity the way that we've now shifted away from the business owners paying their employees and now we the uh the the customers of the world are not only paying for the the stuff we're buying but we're also helping subsidize the existence of the people selling us the stuff and we are now slipping into this tried and true talk show topic although there's a very funny comedian i think we're going to be seeing more of and um i'm actually not sure what pronouns they use but their name i think is robbie hoffman and i've been seeing a lot of robbie hoffman on tiktok and they are very funny they appeared to me to be the heir apparent to um fran lebowitz oh really like intellectual dry very very funny very unapologetic, very New York and this comedian Robbie Hoffman was on the subway there's some kind of a new show that I'm seeing on TikTok where basically I think it's called like Hot Take or something and the idea is the host and somebody who is funny and entertaining get on the subway and ride around

and the person being interviewed has to give their kind of hot take on something and what I think is funny is that they're both talking into metro cards which makes no sense these are not a microphonic device as just like as if you're singing into your hairbrush sort of exactly exactly i think that's a funny conceit at least the two videos i've seen they're talking into their metro cards but robbie hoffman was was was basically saying you know that they are not going you know that they have gotten to a zen place where they have absolutely no shame about hitting no tip on the screen and then flipping it right around really because that screen flip and not no tip ever i mean and this person robbie hoffman's point is not that they don't ever tip it's that we have now built in all of these tipping potential moments for things that just were not tip based before and where you know again the a much better outcome would be for the people who are working at these places to be paid a living wage and you can build it into the cost of what we're doing but putting it into this kind of gray area of like now i have to tip the guy at sherwin williams who who sold me a giant bucket of paint because the the the tablet screen has a thing for it you know i mean that's not an exact example but things like that things that are are interactions that didn't used to have any any sort of tipping component it's now been thrown up often on those little tablets that we're often signing with our finger and robbie hoffman was saying that they have absolutely no embarrassment around hitting no thanks and just spinning it back around because i will tell you this if i'm in a moment where i'm feeling a little bit less than flush if i haven't been recently just absolutely dominating the bingo scene at the eagles um and i don't and let's just say it's an interaction where i'm like i don't feel like this is a tipping interaction and i can't give you a good example off the top of my head but i will tell you this if the tablet is asking me if i want a tip and i'm saying no i am not spinning that thing back around to the person who has to input the information you're just i am homer simpsoning yes i'm homer simpsoning right into a hedge right

right on out of that situation bring your own hedge that's right like um and so that that's

next level to to basically be able to stand on business as the young people now say and just go i don't feel like this is something where i should be obligated to provide gratuity in addition to what i'm paying and i'm okay with you knowing that flip that little flip that little tablet

screen right back around i really am struggling because i hear people say that a lot and again i was listening to that other podcast yesterday and they were just going on and on and on and Somebody specifically said, like, I really dislike the the action of flipping the tablet. They're like, I don't care when they come to our table with the little device and you choose or something with the flipping it around that disturbed one person on the podcast. I don't I don't really see that. Another person has complaints like I don't like it because they instead of like making it easy just to write in your own tip, it starts at 20. It's like you want to do 20, 25 or 30.

30% and he feels like cheap if he always goes with the lowest one but 20 seems like good to him or whatever so all of those things I understand even if I haven't come up against them but one thing that I am hearing a lot about that I don't have at least that I can think of now any personal experience with is being in a situation where it seems like somebody wants me to tip them but I don't think it is necessary in that case like you use Sherwin-Williams you threw that out there and You even said that's not a specific example. Yeah, that did not. I want to be clear.

That didn't actually happen. I stole the tip jar from Sherwin Williams.

Well, you should.

Only because of their plan to cover the world in paint, which would be very destructive environmentally. I don't know if you've seen the trucks. Yes, every time I see that logo. The implication of that would be devastating for the planet.

I remember years ago, I feel like I was even working for my dad or something, and I was on the road somewhere, and I saw that logo. I'm like, oh, I like that logo. My God, that is dark. my god it's very much the plot of a super villain yes you're covering the globe in a toxic chemical called latex paint what are you doing yeah um but anyway i uh there's one place i can think of now that's like a little um it's an interesting place i kind of like these weird in between places there's a place that um is mostly like a little convenience store quickie mart it's where literally i'll buy incense it's the only place near my house i like to burn incense and they sell a little bit of cents i'll go in there every now and then i'll just say this get your namcha yes it's a1 hop shop it's up there kind of on greenwood luke you probably know greenwood and and 150 or whatever where lenny's produce is yes we didn't go deep enough into the specifics of seattle geography and businesses yesterday but anyway i'll go in there but it's one of those places where when you pay for what you're buying on the little screen at the cash register it does say tip no tip 15 20 or 25 and i always hit no tip because i'm just buying a six pack of beer and some and some incense you know however in the back they also have a little bar with like maybe six stools

and a big screen oh yeah you like to go watch the baseball games there or something i found myself

doing it once or twice because i was again sort of in between things it's like it's not the most comfortable place but i like the fact that i don't know i just i think it's kind of an interesting i've never been in another city other than like seattle or places in the pacific northwest that has these little in-between places that are mostly a store but you can go in the back of the store and have a beer on tap and watch a game with like neighbors like it's kind of interesting it's not totally my scene but anyway all of that is to say when i'm just getting a six pack of beer first of all this place and while i do support them they're a local business all of their beer is at least one dollar more if not like three dollars more than everywhere else i'm talking about like unfortunately i know how much the six packs i buy are across town i know the cheapest

place to get them you're like you're like becca with bananas i hope she doesn't hear this but she the other day was like i can't believe what's going on with the bananas at trader joe's and i really did channel my inner lucille bluth i go i mean i couldn't tell you what a banana cost she goes they went up by four cents per banana that is because she's the cleanest eater i've ever met And she eats bananas and makes healthy things with them and knows exactly the price of a banana. And I've never felt more out of touch other than when I meant to say Nag Champa and I said Namcha. Oh, I knew what you meant, yeah. I know, but I've been getting a lot of things wrong lately and getting very nicely corrected by the listeners, so I'm trying to cut down on that. Yesterday, I think I was trying to say ethylene or whatever the technical term for alcohol is. And I think I misstated, and I said the thing that's in antifreeze. Oh, okay. I was not familiar with antifreeze. It's just because I watch too much forensic files here in the hotel, and people are often trying to kill their spouse with putting antifreeze in things.

I don't like that. It's like, why are we drinking more of this blue Gatorade? You love Arctic freeze so much. Also, why is Arctic freeze a flavor? You simply have to hydrate, honey. Right. I like that Gatorade at some point said, they're not even flavors anymore. They're just ideas. Glacier rush. Like, I don't know. What flavor is that? It's Glacier Rush. What does that mean? I don't know, man. It's antifreeze. So anyway, at that one place, that's the one place I can think of where there's an opportunity to tip. And I don't consider it to be a tipping situation because I'm buying a six-pack and a Nog Chompa.

And they're probably using their POS system, which, by the way, I feel like whoever named that had never heard the term piece of shit.

I wasn't sure if you were just saying POS or if that's a point of sale.

No, it's called the industry term is the POS system. I mean, whenever I hear that, I just think, yeah, point of sale. And the industry has fully embraced it. And I just want to say, you clearly didn't grow up in the Northwest because when we said something was a POS, we definitely made a piece of shit.

Yes, and they usually are.

But I'm sure their point of sale system.

It's probably the same one that they use for where the beer where you could sit and have a beer. And so that would be a tipping environment. And so because of that, you know, you're you're getting that offered to you when you're just buying stuff. Yeah. And, you know.

And well, that's what I wanted to say. So, like, and I'm not trying to put you on the spot because you said that you can't think of any examples in your life right now. Like, you know, people call the voicemail line 206-414-8285. I would like to know, like, what are because I kind of keep on hearing people refer to these examples in life. It's like, why am I tipping for this? Whereas for me, it's like when again, I don't get out much. So maybe that's part of it. But it's like for me, restaurants, bars, coffee shops. I've always tipped in those situations. I get very nervous about appliances being delivered and whether or not I'm being generous enough. We had a couch delivered a few months ago and I can't remember what we tipped, but I always feel you know that I've cracked the code on that. Right on the on the appliances and large items. Yeah. What's that cash app, baby?

Yeah. Yeah. Like, my problem was I never had any cash around or maybe it was like $3 and I felt embarrassed. And one of two things happens. Either the person says, yeah, here it is. And you just cash app them $15, whatever you want to do, $10, $20. Or they say, nah, and then they just leave. And then you are the hero because you tried to tip via cash app. It works its way out one way or the other.

For me, it's not. I actually usually have a decent amount of cash. So if anybody ever sees me on the street, they should definitely mug me.

Yeah, they see you coming out of the head shop on Greenwood that you like to go to.

That's right. Wait, the head shop on Greenwood? What are you talking about?

Well, isn't I mean, it's a place that sells incense. I'm assuming they also do. They sell bongs.

Oh, no, no. A1 hop shop. No, no, it's not like that. It's like a little it's like a little convenience store for some reason. Like they sell cans of soup. They sell and then they sell a little bit incense here. They know they don't. It's not like a paraphernalia place or anything like that. i don't know why they happen to sell incense but it's the only place i know of that happens to sell it it's more of a beer shop like it's a place where you go in the back and they have shop they have all kinds of like you know beers that are you know all kinds of ipas that you wouldn't drink and stuff and i bet you they have a selection of high-end beers but i just buy my stuff but no no that that's not the vibe of that place but for whatever it's worth yeah um i can't remember what i'm starting to say oh i don't usually have issues like if something's being delivered i mean again And this is weird, but like between if Genevieve wins it, wins it, bingo, she'll tuck money away somewhere. She's got a bunch of money squirreled away in the house. It's never like we don't have money to tip the people who are delivering something. It's like, I don't know what is proper. I don't know what the proper amount is. And I never know if the whatever we gave the last guy, though, I think he did the sign of the cross as he accepted it. So I guess it was. Oh, wow.

That must have been a good amount. I here's my big issue with that now. I and this this probably reflects poorly on me I always feel like I need to make sure because it's usually two guys I need to make sure that guy number two sees that I'm tipping guy number one for both of them it's a really big part of the experience because and again that shows a kind of a level of mistrust that I have that I'm not proud of um but it's I I don't know I just I'm I am concerned that if I give cash to guy number one and guy number two is not around guy number two may never know there was cash in play i know as if they don't do this like you know

20 times a day or 25 times a day i'm sure there's a system but you want to gather them together and like guys i have something really important to say here's a tip i'm giving it to one of you but it's for both of you i hope you'll work it out in the truck yes i and it's a whole timing thing so

i'm walking around with like a sweaty 15 in my hand that i'm just crushing over time as these guys are running stuff up and down the stairs and then just waiting for the moment when they're about to leave and then usually what happens is i mean ideally it's it would be the final flourish everything would be in the house they're leaving and like hey here's some a little bit of money for your help and your time thank you very much and then they're just they just ride off into the sunset but usually there's at least one to two more steps after i sweatily hand them the money which is well you also need to sign this right and also this and um can you make sure to fill out the survey that's going to you're going to get texted a survey right after this right could you also and then there's then i don't know why that's weird to me just to then stand around continuing on with the transaction i want the i want their gratuity to be like job well done uh and and enjoy the rest of your day but something about there being a little bit more

paperwork after that which always feels awkward yeah for some reason that that tipping exchange for me is very awkward in the moment i don't know why i'm just giving somebody money that um i don't know i i hear from other people some people think oh no no that's not necessarily a tippable thing if like you know somebody this home depot hires some people to deliver the new you know washer and dryer or whatever it is some people don't i don't get the sense that

those people get tipped frequently yeah you know i don't think in in the northwest now in new york i actually did a many many years ago i did a story for And. PR about this. I think that there are, I think there are places and particularly New York is the place where the tipping culture is so strong. If you live in a, a big kind of, uh, you know, sort of door, a doorman building, as they would say in New York. So a building where you've got, you know, a staff that works kind of a front desk area of the, of the building, et cetera. If you're living that life, it's pretty likely that you're doing a lot of tipping out that you tip out your hairdresser you tip out the the mailman you definitely tip out the door staff this is around like christmas time right and it's just a known thing there's just a lot of tipping that goes on you get out to where i am in the rurals in southwest washington i don't think that those guys that are dropping off an appliance are typically getting i don't think people out there are really thinking about this as a tipping experience so um i think it probably i mean i'm guessing at that i don't know but i just i've talked to my neighbors i don't think that they've ever had this conversation that you and i are having with anyone ever they don't worry about it i don't think they were i don't think it's a thing that they think about for one second in their life uh at all they probably think yeah i work hard for my money also these appliances cost me more than i wanted them to now they're at my house and uh let me just continue on with my life They're not sweatily holding on to $15 trying to make sure that guy number two is observing the money going to guy number one. This is not the headspace my neighbors are in.

I don't care if one of you gets eight and one of you gets seven or if you just do $7.50. I mean, you guys just work that out.

You work it out, but I just want you both to know that this happened so that then there can be a conversation in the truck later.

I guess you did mention like barbers or stylists. that is another thing i guess that i would add to my like list of yeah those are typical tipping experiences for me that doesn't feel new to me now the price of those again i go to rudy's like you luke and i was surprised at like yeah some of these are like i've been going to the same person for the past i don't know three or four haircuts now um and i like her as a person and the haircuts are fine um but uh but like i realized they're like 50 bucks and then when they flip that thing around i think the lowest you can tip is 20 which i would do anyway you can probably do custom tip you can you can always do custom but i mean i would i would do 20 anyway no matter what that works out to be but i do sometimes i leave that place i'm like yeah and again i don't want to be cheap about it it's a very i think i mean of all the jobs like honestly i'd rather if you think about somebody who had to um pour you drinks for an hour or somebody who cut your hair for 15 minutes I'd still think that the person who cut my hair for 15 minutes, like that is somebody who deserves a tip. You are up in my shit. You know what I mean? Yeah, and it's upsetting. I've been near it before. Exactly. Deeply troubling. We've been through something together. So I tip there. But it is one of those things where I start looking at like I have less and less hair. It's not like I've looked that great. Like am I splashing out a little bit too much? Not on the tip, but on the whole experience now. She always offers to give me a, you know, like a wash, a hair wash at the end. What do they call it? do you want a shampoo and i always say no but i guess if i really wanted my 50 bucks worth i could

take her take her i mean there honestly that is a very relaxing yeah that's the maybe the most cared for that i feel in my life oftentimes is the the the hairstylist cradling my neck like a baby bird supporting my neck whilst whilst yeah that's it the order is when becca uh hears that i like something and then gets it for me or you know it's usually something healthy she's like oh we should these ginger shots are a really good way for you to start your day as opposed to the alcohol shots that you like to use so she'll get me a bunch of those and i feel very cared for in those scenarios i feel very cared for when you fake laugh at my jokes and i feel also very cared for when the i do opt for the shampooing and the person is getting the water warm just the right amount of warmth on their own hand yeah they're testing the water so that it's not too hot or too cold yeah it's a very but i i've actually been meaning to tell you this andrew because for for you know for two guys our age are talking about haircuts and hairstyles takes up a surprising amount of room on this show um usually because i've been i'm going to that chain rudy's and i have some sort of fraught interaction that leaves me wondering if i handled it right or they handled it right or whatever well you know what i have started doing now because again i live out in kind of middle of nowhere i have started and it actually started really when i was in new york a couple of trips ago because i needed a haircut i was recording some stuff for cbs and i hadn't had my haircut in a long time and i just got up in the morning and i was like any place where they have you know clippers and scissors that will see me in the next hour is where i'm going and i ended up going to this little kind of barber shop that was

run by a bunch of, um, guys. I think they may have all been from like Iran originally or something. Um, and the guy did a great job. And so it got me thinking, maybe I don't have to go to like a hip stylish place. Like when I was, the evolution of my getting haircuts was my dad cutting my hair when I was a little kid, which was torturous. Cause he did not understand that you need, he would get a spray bottle of water but it would be so cold he didn't understand that you need like you you can't just like run the water out of the tap and actually he didn't even have a spray bottle he would have a bowl of water he would dip his fingers in it and then like flick it into my hair the guy's a sign painter sure he'd only recently come off the commune he was he was no warren badey in the movie shampoo like he did not know what he was doing um but he gave it as best try then we started going to the supercuts training center where the students the future supercuts hairstylists uh would be learning how to cut hair we were technically considered models but um we never got our vogue cover shoot it was more like here's here's people

learning how to cut hair the supercuts way and then as i got older is everyone handsome boy

hair cuttery yes and um it was i know you like hair cuttery famously the story of when the woman was shaving a giant heart into the back of my head and just saying i know you like there was

a real language barrier i've told you this story uh if so i'm afraid i don't remember it i'll try

to give the two minute version when i was in i think i was maybe about to go into eighth grade um i went to the uh it was the beginning of the school year i don't think i'd eat maybe i don't know if i'd even we'd even started yet but i was going to the supercuts training center uh our whole family was there getting our hair and i mean the kids anyway and uh and the um this the i wanted my hair to be cut like a guy from new kids on the block named jordan knight okay i thought jordan knight was the coolest guy in the new kids on the block i first of all i thought the name jordan knight was incredibly cool pretty good yeah um he had what we called in the day a step cut and a step cut was kind of this idea that the hair on top is kind of longer and then about midway down your head there's a pretty pronounced difference between the kind of length the amount of hair so it's it's sort of almost like a like a mushroomy thing but then it then you go down to kind of your hair being shaved and it was very in style in i'm gonna say the like late 80s or something in the um let's see what would the maybe please don't go girl i'm trying to think of which new kids on the block video it was particularly actually maybe it was the um the one where he's wearing a batman t-shirt which i also thought was freaking sweet so i go into the training center and i i'm trying to say to the person cutting my hair i kind of want it to do this thing in back where it's more hair on top and then it kind of comes into a little bit of a point because this

is how jordan knight's hair looks it comes so the step thing comes to a point in the back

it doesn't always but he had his kind of coming to a point and i was trying to go with an exact reproduction because i figured if i had jordan knight's hairdo everything else would fall into

place absolutely i mean the second you said eighth grade i tensed up because like it's just like what i mean seventh and eighth grade are there more difficult years to be entering a school with something you know i mean where you're just like more self-conscious yes um there there it's it's

It's not a great environment And so all I remember is This woman again There was a pretty big language sort of barrier And I just remember Her saying over and over again Oh yeah you like You like And I remember seeing that she had The kind of The part of like the clippers where they just Do your like you know your sideburns and the base Of your neck like the clipper That is unguarded as it were and is just what you use to make something have no hair on it yeah yeah yeah and i was i remember even as a kid thinking i don't know if that goes on the part of my head that she's working with right now and somehow in the translation what she thought i was asking for was her to shave into the back of my head an entire patch of skin in the shape of a heart

Luke, I don't think I knew this story ever. None of this rings a bell. Other than, like, I think I knew you went to this facility to get your hair cut. This is astounding. So is it, like, straight up, like, almost like, because I remember from around that same era, like, people getting the Batman symbol shaved into the back of their head. So it's basically like that, only it's a heart.

Yes, yes. It was regular hair, you know, on my head, except for a chunk on the occipital lobe of my head was skin. straight up bare skin shaved into a heart and so okay this is interesting because i thought it was

just going to be the outline of a heart with some no no hair in the middle so the whole thing is a

big whole thing okay just a shaved bald patch of of area on the back of my head surrounded by hair

in the shape of a heart so obviously i need to hear how you handled this and what the reaction was but let me ask you this is this the type of thing that if the right kid with the right confidence had done it and wanted to do it it could have been an amazing statement that could

have been like could anybody have pulled this off with the right swagger i don't think so okay i mean i i i think it well first of all it was yeah it was more punk rock than i was going for maybe if you hung out with a different crew than i did like if you if you were some kind of you know if you were hanging out with the guys that would eventually form the band the prodigy um where he had like everything shaved except two like horns of hair maybe that crew would have dug it the fire it was not i don't i couldn't i couldn't imagine anyone pulling it off and i knew that there was a problem because i think the woman's name was patty i can actually text my mom and ask her there was a the kind of the um the dean of the academy of hair at the super cuts was this lady named patty and you know the students would change but she was always there and um and she was kind of in charge and she was you know she would come around and she would inspect everyone's work and she would show them how to do things and stuff and in fact the whole move was and my mom if we had her on the show would 100 confirm this the best outcome would be the person cutting your hair was timid and then patty had to jump in and just give you a full-on real haircut because at that point you're getting a premium supercuts haircut at a at a at a free at a supercuts a discounted rate of i think zero dollars so as opposed to somebody who's learning how to cut your hair you're getting the person who's the best at cutting hair in the whole situation but sometimes it had to go off the rails a little bit before patty would jump yeah that's meatball surgery that was a dangerous game dano right exactly yeah i'll just tell you this was one of those things where she definitely had to jump in i remember the look because you know you're sitting in a mirror right and i remember seeing her come over because there's like 10 people in this room getting their haircuts and i just remember seeing the look on her face in the mirror as she got closer to me it was just a look of complete horror you know what you know

this is like this is like a war movie where somebody gets you know shot or or you know get shrapnel in them and their buddy comes over and the buddy has to pretend like everything's fine no no no you're fine but you gotta like you can't look down you can't look at their wounds you can't reflect on your own face the horror that you are seeing on their body yeah it's like

captain's courageous when uh spencer tracy's character is caught up in the rigging of the ship and he's basically been he's about to be severed in two and everybody knows uh that he's not going to survive this and and uh captain disco played by lionel barrymore and and mickey rooney and um freddie bartholomew i think who plays uh the the the kid it's an adaptation i think of the um rudyard kipling book penrod but anyway there's a scene just like that where basically we know that when we cut this cable loose man manual is played by spencer tracy is gonna die because this thing's gonna come apart and he's gonna be he's gonna be no more um and so the conversations they're all having with him where they're trying to be peppy yeah it's actually a very emotional scene it's not quite where the champ is it's not quite ricky schroeder telling john voight you know that he loves him in the champ but it's pretty close a little freddy bartholomew crying and and and and what and man and now this is where the this is where the analogy breaks down because in this case what's really happening is spencer tracy's character is comforting the kid Spencer Tracy knows he so I've actually kind of gone to it I've I've managed to pick an example that's the complete opposite of what you were describing well I didn't I was not unlike the heart on the back of your head I was unfamiliar with this tale as well so okay Captain's Courageous I can't recommend it highly enough point is yes so the dean comes over she's she's trying to hide the horror on her face as she looks at this my memory is she literally just took away uh-huh i don't even think a word was spoken my memory is she literally walked over and just placed her hands on the haircutting equipment removed the stuff from the woman who had been cutting my hair and just like stepped into the breach you are relieved of duty she also took away the clippers at the woman

and kept in an ankle holster right had to take off the little badge yeah yeah turn in your name

tag and your clippers and also your ankle holster clippers you will not be working here any longer and unfortunately the what what became the evident was that the only way to fix it so that it would grow out i guess better was to just shave my entire hair was now they had to shave all of my hair kind of just except the very tippy top of my head to that level because because it was not going to ever grow out normally again so they had to basically shave everything down to skin everything became the skin heart except for a little tuft of hair on top of my head and then

it was like enjoy the first day of eighth grade with that look and was it commented upon like was your hair so outrageous that it actually was noticeable or were you just an eighth grader in

your head about this um my memory of it is that i was actually given a like dispensation i was allowed to wear a hat at school which was not allowed so it was bad it was bad i believe it was so bad that the staff said we'll let you wear a cap but all they had was a pith helmet that you had to wear so it was it did not it did not spare me the bullying that i was hoping

but it did deflect some of the blows which was nice i think somewhere in all of that and you

can imagine why now that i've told the story i think i kind of started to think negatively around those just the kind of place where you get your haircut that's either a great clips or a sports clips or a hair masters or a super cuts just one of those kind of standard places in a strip mall that you go in and you get your haircut and you i i sort of thought well i need to go to a more elevated experience like a rudy's where the people you know there are maybe a little hipper if you will and they're playing cool music and they've made a collage out of various images of the the actress divine or what have you um i thought like this is my scene and so for 20 years i would go to that kind of a scene and i've just now started i went to the super cuts in vancouver washington amazing andrew incredible like five out of five stars first of all i don't have a complicated

like well i mean 20 bucks geez louise and also you have a more you say you don't have a complicated a haircut anymore maybe by your standards but by my standards you i mean you have hair i mean

that's kind of the difference between us but i have it down i know exactly what to tell them i do a number four i have them do a number four on the side the clipper guard and then i just say and barely anything off the top please because they're always going to want to cut when i say and i'm fine with the length on top they always go well i'll just give you a micro trim which ends up being the exact amount of trimming that i want i get my haircut about once a month and I now know how to explain what I want to any person who is an even remotely competent haircutting person and I went to the um so I went to the super cuts and then I think I went to the great clips or something in like in the town close to me most recently and in both cases I got an absolutely fine haircut for 20 bucks there was the the there was kind of a line the second one that I went to because it was a Saturday but the first one that I went to there was literally I just got online i put my name on the list i had other errands to run i drove in the person was very nice she sat me down cut my hair was 15 minutes a tip to five 25 bucks i'm out the door i was like this is this is how it should be it doesn't have to be as as fraught and complicated as it has been for me over the years of dealing with this kind of boutique situation where the price is going up and up and up and again i think that the people cutting hair is a very physical job we have you know farin our friend is a stylist and we've got other listeners i think who work in the industry it is a very physically demanding job and i think people should be compensated uh well for it it's an important job too it gets into our own sense of you know our sort of how we feel in the world uh that being said i was like where have you been all my life super cuts because i'm now watch i'll i've now jinxed it and the next time i go i'll have some traumatic experience that i can talk about on the show but for now i'm like i don't think i don't think my hair i don't think my hair needs or deserves a 50 experience i think a a good old fashion 20 clippers number four tape like uh round round the base what do you tell them well i guess you don't get your hair around the sides really shaved do they ask you if you want it squared or

rounded your neckline they sometimes ask but they haven't asked in a while and now i've been going to the same person for a while and what she does is and this is I was just about

to mention this i mentioned this to you a few weeks ago like i everything you just said about going to like a more of a like kind of a super cuts or whatever is actually a little bit tempting to me not because i have fraught interactions at rudy's i actually that's one of the things i pay for i always just like i like the people there i like going in there like the smell of a rudy shop um but specifically the person who's been cutting my hair the past several months does this thing where she takes the old the hot shaving cream like not everybody has this but she has a little dispenser of hot shaving cream and then uses a straight razor and then it's round I don't go for a square cut but she kind of rounds it out but uh the just that sensation that lasts about 45 seconds is almost worth the 50 bucks to me but honestly like that is the thing for me it's just kind of like I have less and less hair my only instructions to barbers these days are like scissors on i say well no the opposite i i honestly will say this i'm like just do scissors short you know clean it up scissors short but do not do anything that makes it look like i'm trying to hide my balding like i don't care that i'm balding what i care about is looking like i'm trying to hide the obvious fact that i'm balding that's embarrassing to me well i think

your hair looks nice honestly and um and uh so whatever you're doing it's working and but i guess yeah i'm i'm i'm sort of uh i'm enjoying having a much because for a long time there was a whole scheduling thing and when i lived in portland it would be kind of like trying to figure out my day and then now i actually think i don't know why we're spending so much time once again talking about this one particular hair care chain but i think they've fallen on hard times because they it went from being the case that like if i got up in the morning and i was like i'm gonna get my haircut at this place but i hadn't made the decision a few days previous there were no slots it was a whole thing i'd have to maybe go to a store that was out in you know gresham or something like that is not the case now they have nothing but appointment times open and they're now texting me do you ever get that experience with a company where you're like okay i'm getting the i'm getting a whiff of desperation off of the number of sales texts that i'm it's also i've been buying a lot of like you know items online that i you know whether it's an entry rug or a particular i don't know piece of furniture and all of these places now particularly if you if you go through um instagram or whatever or that's where you see it they're all like hey do you want 10 off sign up for our text thing and i'm always i always think okay and then i'll just once i get the 10 off i'm just gonna like stop you know i'm gonna tell them to stop sending me text i never do that i always forget so every day when i get up my inbox and even my text messages are just full oh no i don't do that messages from these weird companies that i bought an entry rug from going like here's our latest you know look at these spring deals and you know what i mean just like constantly like chirping at me and i always want to say calm down this is not a good look that's interesting i don't

have that exact experience with um text messaging because i don't i don't think i shop at those same type of places that you do often but i will say this you you started that by using rudy's as an example and i'm looking for it now i do think that i even got an email from rudy's today just saying like hey you know like i got my haircut i think about a week ago maybe it was it'll be a week ago tomorrow so not even a full week but then just today i just got a spring cleaning sale on bundles at rudy's and 20 off and like what oh i see they're selling like merch or like you know the shower bombs which oh i guess that's an alternative to a bath bomb okay you got my attention body bars whatever but i'm just kind of like i guess i've never opened them before but i have had a little thing in the back of my head thinking why are you sending me marketing emails for a haircut like i'm gonna get my haircut when i need my haircut i got my haircut six days ago that should be in your system why are you just kind of like do you think i'm just gonna get like

an impulse haircut they're like you're gonna be like you know what that's a great point i should get my haircut today even though i don't need it because of how yeah i think they're trying to gin up some business but anyway you're right i'm i'm i'm enjoying a i'm enjoying a more low-key uh and relationship with my with my haircut situation so i might i might follow you on that one i'll let you know just give it a thought um just if if the lady starts saying i know you like bail run run for the hills 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

hey let's thank some dazzling donors these are the people keeping us in super cuts money uh with their support for the program they're donating a dazzling amount of dough i was talking to somebody on the shoot yesterday about the podcast, and this happens all the time.

trying to explain what TBTL is and how it still exists. And it's hard to explain to people. They don't have a frame of reference for it. This is a very unique business model that has somehow worked for us thanks to folks like Carolyn Carlin, who is in Edina, Minnesota.

Is it Edina? E-Dina or is it Edina?

Well, I'm looking at the pronouncer that looks like the E's are small and the Dine is big.

Well, that would mean the emphasis is on the Dine, but the E. Yeah, Edina. Edina.

Edina? I can't. I feel like it's either Edina or Edina. But Edina?

Well, I could be wrong. This pronunciation comes by way of John Sklaroff, who wrote it in here. And I want to be clear here. I don't know that I'm right. So I'm not arguing. I could very much be wrong here. But I just think that if it was U-Dyna, it would be U-H-Dyne-U-H, but specifically E-Dyna. So I think that it's not an U, but an E. But again, I'm just basing that on the text.

What does John know about Minnesota, though, honestly? I don't know, man.

We'll have a meeting with him later today and sort this all out.

Carolyn, would you mind moving to Phoenix?

That would solve so many issues.

You've done so much for the show. Could you do one more thing? Could you just move to Phoenix?

You're going to love this. You're going to love this. I realize that as of the beginning. What did Patty say? You're going to love this?

Yes. You like. You like. I think you like. I realize that as of the beginning of this year, TBTL has been part of my life for over 15 years. Has this show existed for 15 years?

It's impossible because I'm barely older than 15. I'm just getting started here.

The guys and Jen and Sean before them have given me countless hours of bedtime sedative yeah now that's a good that's a that's a good uh catch phrase for the show tbtl bedtime sedative this is not a statement saying that i think i tell

interesting stories i do not think i tell interesting stories having said that i think it would just be hard to fall asleep to my voice i feel like i'm just when i go back and i listen to this show it's like listening to like a like a goddamn nails on a chalkboard it's like a it's like a machine gun trying to tell a story when i talk sometimes

it seems like a disrupt slumber everyone's different you know some people just find our voices uh and the way that we talk a real some real knockout drops well i guess carolyn is one of them love it uh a fun uh and a bedtime sedative and fun listening when i restart the pod cart the next morning and the community has wormed its way into being an important part of my life this community will worm they will worm their way into your life i have both virtual and uh irl friends from this connection and i'm enjoying expanding my connections from just the minnesotans and mom's group to the book club and now the crafty tens okay nice i'm into that um you all are such a warm and supportive people you've been there with me through the loss of both parents, the transition to being an empty nester, the quiet dissolution of a long-term marriage, and now the delights of being an independent person living into my true self. Well, that's good, Caroline. Yeah. Carolyn, rather. I'm glad that you're feeling like your true self. That's an important thing. Thanks to Luke and Andrew for the years of content, your humor, your ability to openly share the ups and downs of your lives, and your pod pet stories. You provide the framework for all of this. Power out. oh thanks carolyn thanks carolyn and thank you for pointing out that we do create the framework for this i feel like the tens get too much credit yeah i'm sick of it me too man it's like all they do is take care of each other and mail each other cards and root for each other and buy each other's products and shop at each other's stores and things and then and then we get like none of

the credit and i for one i'm sick of it we just get all their hard-earned cash in the form of dazzling donations by the way speaking of cards this has been on my mind i want to um say thank you to everybody who sent in uh valentine's cards to us to the po box last month i've been meaning to give that shout out that was really really sweet and again thanks to i think jamie organized it um uh this year with some help with uh from cheryl so thanks everybody for doing that it does

warm the cockles um of your heart you really need to finish that sentence oh where else would i have cockles i don't know i don't want to think about it nor does nor does carolyn fair she's got a carolyn is busy packing for her move to phoenix okay let's not distract her with your cockles

thank you carolyn maestro on your mark on your mark get set get set now ready ready go

Hey, look who it is. It's Beth Wright of Seattle, Washington. Beth says, my message is for my 10 friend, Julie, and all the 10s who are family caregivers. Caregiving can be really hard. TBTL was critical in keeping me sane when I cared for my dad, so thank you. I'm going to plug the very blunt Caring Generation podcast with episodes like my mom is crazy and caregiving ruined my life the podcast validates feelings and gives advice to make hard decisions the podcast says the quiet part out loud there's also a caring generation community led by expert pamela wilson including a website with tons of free resources and a facebook support group the support group gave me daily encouragement and real advice caregiving for my dad nearly broke me he suffered from terminal cancer and untreated depression there was no local support group and my therapist sucked i felt alone and sad much of the time the caring generation gave me a lifeline to caregivers and tools to work through the roller coaster of caregiver feelings google caring generation and check it out can you imagine andrew if somebody ends up on greatest generation accidentally and it's just a lot of star trek talk and they're going when does it get to the caregiving part right like uh but um that that's an i mean that is an incredibly important yes part of life that is taking care of others and taking care of family members as they you know kind of maybe move towards the end of their life or may just be in a state where they need care and the idea that there's a podcast i mean we do our best beth to be obviously a caregiving podcast and i think we do a pretty damn good job sure of course there are people that are specifically talking about what you go through as a caregiver and it sounds like they're doing a show called the caring generation although i will be honest with you my mom is crazy could also be a tbtl episode name right i mean that's a i'll say what's up though i would never

put you on front street like that i never i never put in our uh titles or descriptions if i feel like it might attract the eyes or ears of anybody that we might have been talking about even lovingly

Smart, smart. Oh, man, what was the one you did the other day that I think I texted you about? Oh, you did text me. That was yesterday.

It was VoIP. Staring into the VoIP. Staring into the VoIP. That's right.

That's a very, very good title, I think.

I'm glad you liked it. I literally had it typed in the system, the VoIPs are back in town, which made me giggle, but I actually think staring into the VoIP is better. I'm glad I made that last one.

No, I think it's fun to say. Well, Beth, thank you very much, and shout out to the folks putting together the Caring generation uh podcast uh thanks also to carolyn out there in edina for now uh for supporting tbtl we couldn't do this without you hello and welcome to top story all right we have to talk about this this is not um a stinky town in mississippi or irish pronunciations but it is very important to your life and to mine because i'm curious okay so you i want to say maybe a month ago we were having a conversation you said hey i want to flag something i want to put something on on your radar um that you told me that you were going to be participating in uh the friday round table on seattle's kuow radio this is the thing hosted typically by bill radke uh it's a very popular segment a very popular show each week um and it's a kind of a it's called the weekend

what did i call it i think you called it a round table i mean it is a round table but for people

who listen yeah it's the weekend yes weekend review and uh and and it's something that well first of all when i'm in seattle and i happen to be listening to kuw i always enjoy it i find it to be very informative it's just and it's a fairly standard sort of part of uh kind of public affairs programming i think a lot of public radio stations will do this they'll have in local journalists or people that kind of know about the news they'll talk about it uh it's a pretty simple formula but it's a really good show and i didn't really realize this but i i don't want to put words in your mouth but my sense is that being a panelist on week in review has been something that you have thought about a lot and kind of looked forward to it maybe happening but now that it is happening now they have reached out to you you're feeling a bit apprehensive a bit

I am feeling a bit apprehensive. I am. Yeah, no, and you nailed it. Like, there have been, I am not somebody who I think often feels anything close to entitled. Like, honestly, I'm not trying to sound like a hero. It's just, like, not something that I feel like, oh, I should be doing that, or that's something that I would be good at, or what have you. Because I don't think that way. That takes.

what they call confidence having said that um the week in review is something that a lot of people i know have been on including you you know our friend hannah who i do spotless with and various people and i think in the back of my head somewhere i was kind of like i you know i i could do that that'd be nice to be asked to do that you know and this gets a little bit personal luke and don't take it the wrong way but i re i think i might have even had that feeling somewhat acutely i'm going to say maybe probably like five years ago or something maybe even did i even have my own no i didn't have a radio show across town at the time but i just remember it was like i was back in seattle and this is a while back but i remember like you were living pretty far outside of seattle and they were having you on and we were talking about in tbtl and i was thinking like i have so many thoughts on so many of the issues that are facing seattle today and i can't remember if you were even in the state at the time i think you were in the state but it was just a and i was kind of like oh that'd be it would be nice if they asked me to do that and again i'm not trying to put you in the middle of that but it's like it was a rare sort of i asked them like specifically to not include you no no that that that is fair because then that just and i stand by that that

devalues your product which is why i wanted to do it of tbtl i weirdly i did also ask them to include john sklaroff on their list of potential talking heads so that was a long time ago that i

had that really brief moment of confidence that was about every six or seven years i get a i get about a 15 second burst of confidence i'm waiting for it to i need it to come around again quickly because okay so in the time that passed uh kow started a podcast which we've talked about on the show um hosted by our friend trish murphy um that is kind of a they do a similar thing it's a daily podcast that covers issues in Seattle and they do sort of a similar thing on podcast only where they call it Casual Friday and they have a couple of people come on and you just kind of cut it up about news stories and hopefully lighter things although it tends to sometimes not be so light and I've been on that podcast now doing that Casual Friday thing maybe I don't know has it been 10 times now seven times I don't know and when I joined them I always joined them by zoom and that started maybe about two years ago around the time i moved into this house and the first time i did that luke i was so nervous you could hear the shaking in my voice and now keep in mind i'm sitting at my desk talking to people on zoom behind the microphone that i use every single day to talk to you right and again not that i think it was good

but i have experience on the radio too yeah you had your own radio show yeah yeah which is and And also, I say this, I'm having my 15 seconds of confidence here, Andrew, so let's everybody buckle up. Yeah, good. But I would also say that it would be not unlikely in my mind that TBTL has as many, if not more, listeners than the KUOW podcast project. I don't know that to be the case. I don't know what their numbers are, but I'm saying it's interesting to think that, you know, you and I do this show every day. And there are thousands, I mean, we joke about having no listeners, but there are thousands of people who hear it. and I don't get the sense that it creates any anxiety for you or much anxiety.

You probably wish it created a little bit more. I mean, I'm saying something would be nice. Roll it a little bit hotter on a Monday.

Yeah, just, I don't know. It's been described as professionalism. Maybe look into it. No, but it must be something about doing kind of the same sort of thing but just with a different group of people that can, you know, that just it feels unfamiliar and you want to do a good job. and and so that's that was something that you're saying you started out also feeling a little bit of anxiety i'm guessing that's gone down now yeah a lot of anxiety about it and i think there's

reasons for that first of all it's a sense of control you're in somebody else's space you're not kind of dictating the conversation also like i mean god love it this is a i love this gig that

i've had with you for 15 years now or whatever we just learned 15 years but like you know i can

turn the conversation into what a lummox i am or what you know what i mean like i can i can just lean into being bad at it or something and then make a joke about it like i feel like you're not a bug i mean i know that i'm really talking myself out of a job here i gotta be careful it's not like i don't care about tbtl but like the people who are listening to the show are on board with the bullshit that i am putting out there you know what i mean and and it's for the for the good parts and the bad parts and they roll with it but when you're like okay no we have topics we want to talk about what's going on in the legislature we want to talk about the city council and we want to talk about you know whatever whatever issue you know usually I'm always kind of like well hey you know there's a Mariner's topic you know I'll try to throw things out there I'm more comfortable with but that's sort of why I get nervous and also it's not even for me I'm never really even I'm talking about when I'm guesting on somebody else's podcast I'm usually not even thinking about the people that is being broadcast. I'm just nervous because there are other people in the room, and I'm a shy person. I know that maybe seems like I'm in a weird line of work for this, but, like, I am. Like, when you and I did the Big Flop podcast a couple of months ago, which you can find on your podcatchers, you know, I was with you.

I would just mention that that's our second promotion of the Big Flop for anybody who's scoring at home.

Oh, somebody might be. um and so anyway like i don't think like i was nervous doing that um but that was because i mean you were there but i didn't know the host and like you know i'm just nervous at a dinner party meeting somebody for the first time so there's just like social anxiety that goes into these things now that i've done the podcast with kow enough times um i i'm i'm not going to say that i i don't feel a little anxiety going into it but i'm more comfortable with the surroundings it's not as new to me it feels like there are fewer like um pitfalls that i don't know about because i've done it a few times you know going into kow first of all i haven't walked into a radio station and been behind a live microphone in a long time there's no editing you know it's a it's a it's a live show and talking about like the listeners i'm not even i don't think i'm going to be thinking like oh my friends are going to be hearing this on the air it's just like i'm going to be in a room with three professionals talking about things, I feel like I'm going to be out of my depth very quickly on any kind of issues of substance, sort of. Or if I feel strongly and am read up on those things, I worry that I'm going to be so nervous that I'm not going to be able to be articulate. In fact, I've been thinking about something. I'm really nervous about going in there to do the weekend review on Friday, and it occurred to me I am mostly nervous about how nervous I'm going to be, which is such a mind F. Like, how is that? But I'm like, I am nervous that I'm going to go in there and I'm going to be so nervous that I'm going to have that, I've discussed it with you on the show before, sort of that, like, out of body, like, sort of like my head is floating a little bit. Like, my nerves can really get on top of me in situations like that. And I just want to be a good boy. Like, I live for approval. I want to go in there and for everybody to think that I did a good job. And I already feel like, I mean, believe it or not, Luke, I am already thinking to the moments afterwards as I'm going to be trying to talk myself off of a ledge, a proverbial ledge of beating myself up.

Have you ever considered taking beta blockers?

I have been – when I have these conversations, people always suggest that to me, but I've never actually –

I have never taken them, but I know we have some mutual friends, people that have done performative things where they've said that they took them because they were getting that same kind of feeling of anxiety that felt kind of not within their control. And people swear by it I don't know Maybe a thought, I'm not sure I know what you mean About that feeling of Nervousness That takes on a life of its own Or whatever you want to call it, anxiety Where you're just not in control anymore of it You can't talk your way out of it Or talk yourself through it And I know what you mean That feeling of just like You're just making sounds with your mouth But you're just kind of not really present for it i've had that experience you know in certain scenarios um i don't get super nervous on this anymore but the first few times i did commentaries for sunday morning so like this is like you go to this studio and there's all these people that just their you know whole job is to run the teleprompter to do that classic like five four three two and then they don't say one that's when you know you're really working in tv they don't say one yeah and and I remember sometimes kind of seeing these words on the teleprompter and thinking like I'm not even like I'm not even aware of what I'm saying right now I think my mouth is saying the sounds of the words that I'm saying on the screen but like just being it's a very weird anyway I can identify with the feeling that you're describing and I guess I'm just wondering do you have any techniques that that have worked like what did you do before the first Andrew Walsh show because that's a big one too like you know before your first radio show how did you kind of calm yourself down or did you

you know I don't know I don't I'm not somebody who like leans toward whether it's prescribed and healthy or not prescribed and unhealthy I'm not somebody who usually thinks about like sort of chemical answers to these things if that makes sense you know what I mean like I know you joke around about like you know you joke around or you kid on the square or whatever but like obviously the early days of tbtl were a pretty like fun boozy adventure having the show meeting of you know margaritas across the street and like that's not i'm never comfortable with that like whatever it is like i have some like i'll be honest with you i don't i accidentally bought a bag of like like basically pure cbd gummies a while back i didn't know i was buying cbd gummies i thought I was just buying THC gummy.

which you know you'll actually you'll you know you get an actual buzz off of like smoking a joint or something but cbd isn't supposed to do that for you but i've always been a little bit confused as to what cbd does i think i had eaten a couple of these things a few months ago i was just like man i don't really feel i don't feel stoned i'm just kind of hungry and so i i've heard other people say oh you know t you know cbd can sort of take the edge off on things too but i'm like i don't want to be experimenting with i mean i really don't think that clouds your your cognitive processes at all having said that like i just feel like whatever i'm going into face i'd rather i'd rather just do it as clear-minded as possible so i mean i know people have mentioned beta blockers i don't really those are prescription only though right so i don't i think the see i

don't know the answer to that i'm wrong about that i can get you some from hymns and also we You can take care of any other issues you're having currently.

Suddenly I'll need to get my hair cut again because I'll have it. But anyway, yeah. So anyway, I don't lean towards that stuff. One piece of advice John Curley gave me one time was, you know, find a scent that you like and sort of bring that with you. And I remember.

Oh, yeah. I've heard that.

This is a bad example, though, because that's one of the most embarrassing moments of my life is I brought like a sprig of rosemary from my rosemary bush when I had to. I had to moderate that Beuri and round table, which is, I don't know if I want to, I blame the Rosemary for the disastrous performance that I put on that night.

I don't know if this helps at all, but one thing is it is not on you to carry the hour of content, right? And I think the more you remind yourself of that, the better you'll be. Like, I don't know who else is going to be on the panel with you, but they always get in some really good talkers and people that have lots of opinions and thoughts. And in fact, sometimes in my experience, I don't want to say it's a competition, but it's almost like, depending on who you're lined up with, you could be sort of almost competing for airtime, right? So if you just consider this first one out for you as you, you know, just your job, I would say your job this first time through is to just try to, as much as you can, enjoy it, make yourself comfortable. If you add in a little bit of conversation, great. But this one to me feels like for you, a way of getting used to the experience of being on the show and being in there. Like, in other words, I don't think you should set up the goal of like, I'm going to have the most, you know, sterling insight into everything, or I'm going to get off all these great jokes. By the way, the other thing I'll say is you are very good at these things. As much as it like kills you as much as it takes like a year off of your life like you're entertaining at these things there's a reason why they're they have you back to do the podcast there's a reason why this show that you and i do is has some amount of fandom there's a reason why you had your own nighttime radio show because as much as you don't internalize it you are good at it and you're i was talking to somebody recently who met you somewhere and one of the things that that i was saying to them i go it's the most interesting thing with andrew because everybody loves you and everybody loves hanging out with you because you're a really funny, thoughtful, interesting person. And then every time you're done hanging out with people, if I were to ask you how it went, you would say terribly. But no one has the experience. You wouldn't be able to reach me because I'd be in the dark place for a while. Nobody who hangs out with you is experiencing you the way that you're experiencing you. And it's an interesting dynamic because I know that I'm charismatic. I know that everyone loves being around me. I know that I have zero flaws And it's just an absolute, unalloyed, positive experience being around me for everyone all the time, including my ex-wives and Camaro Kev, who I have tried to fight on Aurora, leaving Goldie's once. But all that is to say, like, I know that what your insecurity in your brain is going to do to you is independent of the facts of the case. But the facts are that you actually are good at this, even if you're out of your body. You are good at it. and also I don't think I think you should just you should basically consider this like your first at bat in a major league game it's you're not trying to hit a home run you're just trying to like get used to the smell of the grass and the and you know the the speed of the game and stuff like I think if maybe if you think about it like that maybe that lowers the pressure on you a little

bit like this is not the last time you're going to do this show it's the first time you're going to do the show and it's a learning experience and that's what you go into with the mentality of I No, no, maybe that would make you feel a little bit less pressure.

And at age 47, I really am kind of like the Ryan Court in this situation. Exactly. I've been in the minor leagues for a very long time. I'm going to get my little cup of coffee.

In that if you roll a baseball out into the newsroom, somebody will keep it for years and go, this is my Andrew Welsh baseball.

Exactly. Well, the irony of this is, like, you sort of just nailed it. you said you know think of this as the first time because here here's where let's let's just review the journey and the irony of all of this the journey is andrew thinks he should be invited on to uh kow's week in review great that doesn't happen for about five years then that happens and andrew instead of being happy is just immediately just miserably nervous about it they actually reached out to me in january about this so it's been like a long time thinking like I think when I got the email from the producer asking me to be on the show, I told you about it and I said, oh, this is something that I've always wanted to fail at.

So that was immediately my reaction. Have you considered opening with that line? Because I think that's a killer line.

So the trajectory is me thinking, me being on my high horse thinking, hey, I should be on that show. And then them inviting me on the show and me thinking, I don't belong anywhere near this show. me two days away from going on this show and thinking the only way I'll be happy is if they invite me back onto the show after my first performance, because that is the only way I will know that I didn't totally screw it up. Well, I do think that they'll invite you back.

Again, I do think that you'll do better at this than than you're thinking you will. But also you will, you know, probably be hard on yourself as you traditionally are. But but I'm you know, I'm i'm sure that it's going to go well i'm just i wish i had some better advice about you know i mean i know this sounds crazy and also it doesn't sound crazy this just sounds obvious but like breathing is a big deal right yeah like remembering to breathe because i know that when i get really nervous the first thing that goes out the window is i'm like i will like hold my breath for an hour and i think why am i tense oh i've been holding my breath for an hour or like i'll be driving and i'll just realize that like i've literally been holding my breath while driving or not breathing very regularly because i'm anxious and i just have it feels like all of this stuff going on in my head and if i just do the simple act of of breathing and just thinking about breathing with my stomach it's crazy how quickly it changes my my actual emotional state because of this physical thing i'm doing so i don't know maybe some breathing would help too um and then uh you know hitting teddies and really just hammering the the the the um gym beam afterwards as a celebration like i don't know i mean honestly if there's a day for rolling thunder although i think you have a bunch of other stuff you actually have to do you know i do i i'm not even joking i do

have a doctor's appointment afterwards and i'm kind of like uh it's an eye doctor appointment which i've been needing forever i had two failed attempts last month of getting my eyes checked and now it's finally going to happen i need new glasses so badly that i'm excited to do it but i maybe it's a good thing that I have that because otherwise I probably would just like probably just go somewhere on the Ave and begin my weekend right there. But I'm supposed to, I mean, this is the state I'm in. So, you know, I used to work at KUOW. Obviously, I have a lot of friends who work there. And I was texting with our friend Durs yesterday and I said, hey, I'm going to be at your work on Friday. I'm supposed to do this show. And he's like, great, let's grab lunch afterwards. I'm like, yeah. And I had already written out the words like, by the way, I will try to be as cool as possible but i'm sure i'll be like coming off of like a lot of adrenaline and probably in a very self-hating mood and then i was like just delete that like don't like and that's the one thing that i'm trying to tell myself is don't go into this and i always feel like it's a sense of it's like a i sort of protect myself by letting everybody know how nervous i am because i don't want to come off like anybody and again i don't think i would give this off anyway but i never want anybody to think that i think i'm good at something or that i'm comfortable it's a weird self-defense mechanism but i know that i know that move i but i instead of like and it's a it's a way of sort of lowering expectations or whatever but like i'm really going to try not to do that i'll be honest with you luke i've been thinking about you and a move you pulled one time and we've talked about it although i might in my head misrepresent exactly what you were doing but when you and i went to um saint paul we're still working for american public media this is pre pandemic so this is going back a ways you and i went out there to do some tbtls from the mothership at 8 p.m but also you were invited on um to host some local talk shows right is it carrie miller show or it was at the time so and i remember just thinking like i can't imagine just like again like first of all that's something i should think about too like i'm not dropping into a market i don't even know to host a call-in show about local issues i don't know

about. This is without a working knowledge of how to pronounce Shakopee or Idina. I still don't know

how to say Idina. I think I messed that up. I'm sure half the calls were from Idina. So anyway, but I, so that's one thing, just even remember that, like just compare those experiences. And of course you have a lot more experience. I know I have experience doing radio. You have more experience and more confidence in these areas, but I have to remind myself I'm going on to be one of three.

Three, four voices, if you count the host, during an hour show in a city that I live in and I have a general working knowledge of as opposed to coming in to host a show in a city that I don't know how to pronounce anything or really have to read up on the issues of the day. So already that that boulder isn't as big when I compare it to your experience that day. But also I remember and we talked about this. Your body language really struck me. I was not in the studio with you, but while you were hosting the show, I walked by, and there's a lot of glass, and I could see you hosting the show, and you were doing this thing where your legs were up on the desk like a real Mr. Cool guy.

And I think, Andrew, if you can see me right now, I'm literally doing that. I don't want to disconnect, but look where my legs are. This is apparently my broadcasting position is feet up, which just really speaks to the level of effort I put into things.

But 90 minutes into a podcast that you and I do every day where we're trying to make each other laugh is a different vibe than doing a current affairs talk show, you know, in a studio that's live on the air where you're taking calls. And I asked you about that. And tell me if I'm misremembering this or if you remember this at all. I thought that you had told me that you sort of struck that posture as a like kind of almost purposely to tell yourself to kind of be chill about it.

I think so, because I do think I was a little bit nervous about that. And I think what I want, I would, you know, this has been said thousands of times. I don't even really like this phrase anymore, but the sort of thing of fake it till you make it. I think probably some part of my brain was saying you're nervous. Probably the other people associated with this are a little nervous for you or unsure of how it's going to go. So if you come off, if I come off as completely unaffected by it, like, like totally and completely not stressed in the slightest, even though I kind of am, that will calm everyone down. And then there'll be a point where that will go from being an act to being how I actually feel. So it was kind of one of those things of trying to trick myself into feeling the way that I wanted to ultimately actually feel. yeah um but of course you know i what i remember this just just so you know you're not the only one who is beset by by bad memories i think by the end of that week i was starting to like lose my voice or kind of i was i was under the weather you were saying and i remember i was interviewing it was like in the studio it was like me and i want to say maybe somebody from mpr and maybe a local official or something. And I started having this like coughing fit slash problem with my voice where I could not form sounds and no one else in the room knew what to do. And I swear to God, this was probably the worst minute of broadcasting in the history of Minnesota public radio. And I was responsible for it. It was just a complete and total disaster of, I couldn't talk. They didn't know what to say the producer didn't know what to do so i guess i'm saying there's a limit to your faux confidence that crashed against the rocks of reality that was me having a complete

meltdown on the air that sounds awful but it doesn't sound like it's something that somebody could look at you and say well he's not good at that or or he's not somebody who can handle this that was uh you were sick and you couldn't talk you know what i mean it's not like boy your questions were terrible or you were just like you sounded nervous or there were tons of awkward pauses and you got lost in your train of thought and so people couldn't follow you and they were kind of like rolling their eyes behind clipboards or whatever you had a i mean that's like one of those moments that's kind of like you know god in the machine a little bit yeah i will tell you what

what was my fault was when we just got when i got absolutely wrecked the night before we were supposed to pitch on like this American life. And then I showed up both still probably inebriated and with no voice. And that was my own doing. And our friend Amy Wu just had to look at me like, really, this is, although she had been out with us. So I put this a little bit on her. I think this was a group effort. The other thing I was going to say, I think I was going to say, Andrew is maybe something that you could comfort yourself with is the fact, and this sounds dismissive in a way you could comfort yourself with the fact that no one's listening that closely you know what i mean like you want to you want to do a really good job and you want to be broadcasting at this really high level which you will be because you're good at this but also no one is listening for you to mess up and in fact most people are walking in and out of the room of their office or house you know the people they're they're in their car but they're also trying to punch something into ways like really the the the bar is i don't want to say low but like you don't most people are not going to be scrutinizing every

single thing you say in fact most people are probably half paying attention and i only say that so that you maybe like lower the pressure you're putting on yourself a little bit by by realizing that that people are not listening carefully for you to mess up i um am not trying

to reject your advice or or belabor this but honestly like my sense of nervousness as you say that and i think about how i'm processing this my sense of nervousness does nervousness does not stem from the reaction of people listening on their radio maybe that will come later maybe they'll come when I'm in the room but honestly it's like I don't know why like I sort of feel like I've probably had more good experiences in situations like this than bad but of course it's just the bad ones that stick with me and I think of like I almost think about the feelings I have now of like the when I went in to do my full day of interviews at New Hampshire Public Radio when i was 22 years old or four whatever it was um and like knowing that they were gonna ask this one question and i kept thinking i'll i'll brainstorm that later i'll brainstorm that later and then like this incredibly awkward moment when i was being interviewed by the entire newsroom in a conference room and they asked me like we'll pitch us some ideas for the show and i didn't have any and it was the most obvious thing i was being hired as a producer being interviewed for a producer slot and me just like thinking in the moment you had the entire plane ride you had weeks to think about this and you never got around to thinking about pitches for the show and I babbled for a little bit and it was the look in the eyes of the people around the long table in the room it was that reaction that to this day crumples me the looking into the eyes of people who i respect and who i want to respect me and seeing that i am just saying a bunch of words that don't make sense i got to the end of my answer and i said does that answer your question and the news director who's a sweet man and a friend of mine now said no it does not would

you like to try that again now let me though make sure i understand this you did get the job right don't focus on the details of the story i mean this but i think this is but i i think this is is an important detail because I think it, I think it's sort of germane to the conversation about Friday, which is you have your takeaway from that interview was that you kind of embarrassed yourself with that answer, but a different interpretation of it would be they offered you the job. So you clearly didn't fail so badly in the interview that you didn't, you, you actually got the job that you were there interviewing for. So I have a feeling that you'll, you know, you'll be beating yourself up over various things about how Friday goes, but also you know at the end of it they'll ask you back you will probably the great likelihood is you will have gotten the job you know what i mean so i know that's a larger kind of piece of information that it's relevant to this i think um and i know what you mean you really want the people in that studio to feel like you're contributing and and are doing a good job more so than than the listeners i will tell you this you know i'm coincidentally i'm doing this same show that you're doing the following friday because i'm going to be in town doing live wire that night at town hall and they said hey if you're going to be in town would you want to stop by and i um the main thing that i'm hoping is that i don't look fat when i go to kuow oh gosh that's all i care about that's all i care about is that because i will see i'll see a bunch of people that i haven't seen for probably four or five years whatever the last time i might have been by the station and all as i was on my jog this morning all i could think about was we've really got to we've got to really fix a couple of things before a week from friday i'm not even like the what happens on the radio is going to happen what i'm nervous about is walking into the newsroom and seeing a bunch of former colleagues and hoping that they their opinion of me is that like i'm keeping it together if you want to know how messed up my brain i'm thinking about stopping by the super cuts on the av and getting a jordan knight before i go in there but um so that's where my brain is and i'm not that's not a flex i'm not being like i don't even care about the show i'm saying i have my own hang-up that has nothing to do with the radio audience either but has to do with somebody that i used to work with i'm not talking about a specific person but just generally wanting the people at kuow to think that things are going okay for me that's my insecurity and my hang-up is like wanting wanting them to to be like wow luke does have value as a person because he has flourished since his time being laid off let's not forget laid off from kuow one last thing i

want to say and i don't want to drag you into my thanks of you and that's so funny you are the only person in that scenario who remembers or even knows that you were laid off from kow i was very much 25 years ago you think that's probably but also i want to say for you this is a pretty dope

flex because and i don't want to put words in your mouth or bring up i i know that you you know you you were

in New Hampshire and you were producing this show and you had a lot of good, a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge around public radio production, you end up moving out West because Vives gets this job. And so you're, you know, thinking, well, you know, you, you'd had an important job at a public radio station with a big network of, of, of stations around the state and listeners, et cetera. And I know that there was, you've expressed to me that it was a little bit challenging to kind of come to a new environment and feel like you were a little bit starting over or a little bit trying to kind of maybe reprove yourself when you had had a lot of experience doing this and had a lot of success with it elsewhere. So to go from maybe a little bit of that feeling to like I'm going to be one of the people on Weekend Review, that's kind of a nice little full circle moment, right?

Yeah, definitely. That's why like what I want is like all I truly want for this is a moderate to severe good performance for me. No, you know what I mean?

Somebody's been watching a lot of prescription drug commercials, moderate to severe.

Good experience. No, like I want, you know, I don't want them to be like, boy, that Andrew had a bunch of, I don't know, zingers or interesting insight. Like, he rocked our world. Like, I don't expect that. I don't want that. All I want is for people to have at least the same amount, if not slightly more respect. But I'll just take the same amount of respect. I just don't want to see people die in their eyes as I'm trying to form sentences on the radio. They really won't.

I mean, you need to understand that your brain is not a reliable narrator to you. You know what I mean? Because, and you know, I, again, I have, my version of this is I always think that I'm a month away from all of my jobs ending, maybe except for TBTL. I feel like we've got a relationship with the listeners where they're pretty supportive. But as far as my other jobs go. Thank you again, Carolyn and Beth.

Yes. Shout out to Carolyn and Beth keeping us on the air today.

Carolyn's honestly taking a pretty big financial hit moving to Phoenix. So it's okay. We can price that in for next year. But like, I constantly feel like I'm going to be exposed as a fraud and I'm going to lose my, my jobs. You know, the live wire folks will be like, yeah, that's fine. No thanks. Or the distributor will say, we don't really want to support this. Or CBS will say that was, thanks for your time. But I have this constant feeling of foreboding. Like I'm going to just get found out. and what you know everyone in my life particularly becca uh will say to me and what people i was with previously what carrie would say to me was there's just no historical indication that that's what's going to happen for you like this is something that is your brain's wiring telling you something that there's just no reason to believe that's going to happen based on prior events and yet i still feel that very i feel it in a very real way all the time and it probably drives to a lot of my behaviors, uh, drives a lot of my behaviors, like taking on way too many projects because I always think, well, this is probably the last time anyone's going to ask me to do this. I, I'd be crazy to say no. And in the, in a similar, but slightly different way, I think your brain gives you bad information about how badly you're doing, like in social situations or maybe it's afterwards, but, or like in this thing, like doing weekend review, like you do really know your stuff. And in fact, I'm always struck by, because you do kind of low key, we're not really doing a seattle politics show or the you know policies in seattle show you and i we're mostly focusing on what used to be a burger master i think that's kind of the sweet spot for this discourse yes but like when it does come up something having to do with bruce harrell or a particular package around um transit or like anything that's just what's going on in seattle i'm always impressed at the depth of your knowledge like you don't it just it doesn't come up on the show a lot but you know what the what the heck is going on in seattle like you're really plugged in and and and so again this doesn't help because your brain is going to tell you what it's going to tell you but but i'm telling you as your friend and as your collaborator that i promise you it's going to be going better in there than your brain is telling you it is going and i don't know if you can hang on to that somewhere but like i promise you you're going to be doing better than you think you are which is the exact opposite of me in most of these situations it's usually going worse than i i used to when i used to do stand-up comedy or try to do stand-up comedy you know you bring this is before everyone had an iphone you bring a little everything comes back to mini cassettes on the show now that's and i had one of those little you know mini cassette recorders and you just put it kind of near a speaker oh yeah and i would get off stage and i would think like oh my god i killed i absolutely i devastated the um comedy underground uh and then i would listen back to the tape and there might be like two good laughs

but like the rest of it was just sort of fine like which was a very weird experience because i left the stage with a lot of confidence like hey that like my brain was only remembering

couple of times when the crowd did really laugh heartily and it was forgetting all the other times when it was pretty quiet in there um so we just you and i need to figure out a way to meet in

the middle of this it's so funny we should really wrap this up we're going so long on this and it's again i think i'm maybe belaboring my um plight here if you want to call it that um but you and i are so opposite in that way because i'm remembering this now and i know i talked about on the time I don't know if this has come up a lot over the years but when I first started as a regular co-host on TBTL again this is you and I are both working at Cairo at the time I think and Jen had just left it's just like an interesting time I'm a huge fan of TBTL and we get to the point where it's like okay you need somebody kind of constantly in the studio and so we made an arrangement. And I remember coming in and being very excited and then leaving every day. And I mean, first of all, me just being excited to do the show every day. I mean, that must have been something to behold for you, Luke. That was the best four days of your life. No, but I remember like being like really jazzed up to do the show with you, but then like ending the show and then being so self-critical you know probably buzzing back home on my little on my little scooter uh that i had at the time the honda elite or whatever it was and just like just thinking this is before i had my own radio show and just thinking like how bad my performance was and then it would be the opposite then i i'd finally say i'd like beat myself up for like four hours then finally that night maybe after a couple of of miller lights or something i'd be like just you got to listen to it just listen to it is probably not as bad as you think and i would listen to it i'd be like oh god that's fine that was all fine it was good that was a good fine show but like and that's the exact opposite experience you had at the comedy underground well and and this is the last thing

i'll say um about this but because it sounds maybe like i'm just again trying to gas you up here but the funny thing about you were about you referring back to the earliest days of tbtl where you and i we're working was my memory of things was that like you were going to kind of come and sit in for i i don't remember it being that we sort of agreed like this is the new permanent situation like before you'd ever done a show what's your memory of that like my memories i had guessed it

on the show a couple of times i talked about running away and getting my my mom on my runaway note and then i think i was also on being magazine sales exactly for like ebsco telemarketing and so you and Jen invited me on so I'd been on a couple of times with both of you I knew you pretty well from the radio station I think at this point I was like a producer who was hopping on air a little bit with you at the radio station and you said I remember the agreement um you said for x amount of money a year um I can pay you this and if you could just come by three days a week Monday Wednesday Friday and I said listen I like doing it anyway I will take that deal but I'll just probably be here on Tuesdays and Thursdays anyway because I enjoy doing this and so I immediately started giving money away that's how i negotiated my that's how i negotiate i'll give you this amount of money if you work three days and i said only if i can work five days and the money

doesn't change final offer what i was gonna say though is like my memory of this was and it's probably in because if i was already saying this is you know kind of the budget for this and this would be the schedule then i guess i'd already decided that i was hoping you would do it i just have a memory of you being on the show in some capacity maybe really what it was was me saying you know like you know do you want to be on the show and and and help me with it etc but in the back of my mind going well we'll see how this goes I just remember like the literal first moment you were the kind of I guess official co-host of the show like at my house in Mount Baker you and I talking me just thinking oh this is going to be fine like immediately knowing like oh this is great This is totally gonna work Like the first, probably the first show When you were technically being paid To be the co-host, right, or whatever I just remember being like, oh, this is totally Great, this is gonna Because I thought, well, maybe there's gonna be Some adjustment period Or there's gonna be some stuff where it's like We gotta figure it out, or we gotta do more of this Or less, like, and I just didn't feel any of that I was just like, oh, this is great So that's the experience I'm having As you're like scooting home thinking like i've ruined it again and it's like i'm sitting there going like oh this guy's great

this is like totally gonna work well that's good to hear because you're actually in arrears for those uh tuesday thursday gigs um yeah i have i've got pretty close records does this explain

some money that's been leaving the tv tv account directly to you is this are we catching up on those unpaid tuesdays and thursdays for all those for all 15 years it's gonna be a while until we get it all sorted out well I you know I'm I'm I'm excited for

And again, I'm excited for you to be I'm excited for you to be done. But again, the way your brain works, I guess I'm excited for you to listen to the show while playing darts at 11 o'clock on Friday night and hearing that it actually went pretty well. I'm excited for you to be at whatever the point is where the reality of the situation, which is that you did a good job, finally impacts your brain whenever that happens.

Yeah. If that happens. I mean, there have been things I've done like this and I go back and I listen. I'm like, yep, that's worse than I thought. So I mean, I hope that is the situation that that we'll be facing on a Friday evening. Yeah. All right, everyone. Thank you for listening. We are going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio. And I want to tell you, Andrew, because I'm going to be here for one more day. I want to tell you about the scourge of this neighborhood. and and it's you're in you're in a neighborhood in la right i think i'm in la i'm in westchester

i'm over by lax and i there's and i don't like i don't like i don't like that this bothers me as much as it does but tomorrow remind me to tell you about the what is for me the scourge of this neighborhood okay interesting and uh and just give everyone something to tune in for tomorrow nice all right uh that's gonna do it thanks for listening everybody um we'll be back tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you in the meantime have a great wednesday take care yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all uh if it is to be said

so it'd be so it is are you all right uh yes uh i merely wish to answer in the affirmative fashion you can speak to us normally okay no thank you sir uh uh so i shall

Can't you say anything in a normal way? The answer, sadly, is not yes. Let's face it, some people have a way with words. Other people, uh... Not have a way, I guess.

Power out.