Muse

Obviously your kid needs a male role model. Because I'll be honest with you, he's soft. Weak and soft. Because he's four. Because he's your son. No, you spend all your time reading books and looking at numbers and letters like they mean something. They do. Do you know how to read? I get by, all right? What do you know? You know, like... Red means stop. Great. Green means go. Good. Yellow's the other one. TBTL! Well, you have found my flabbergast button, and guess what? You've pressed it.

Do you eat chocolate? Yes. Do you drink soda? Yes. Do you eat fatty foods?

Yes. And a lot of people ask me, are you eating cookies late at night? And I say, of course I am.

What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution.

That must be weird for you, huh? Kimmel's now the new king of late night, and you're still doing a pod cart?

They say, you snooze, you lose, but we snossed, and look what we lost.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Welcome to the internet. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. I'm an activist and house party enthusiast. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia, where we are looking at another absolutely stunning gorge day. California got sunshine. It's a shame we have to be indoors to do the podcast. Can we have class outside today? I guess I am technically the teacher or maybe the co-teacher. I guess we could do that. You know, we're already here. Let's just... Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. Let's just go ahead and get underway with episode 4175 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Because I have a lot of anger to express related to the Comcast Corporation. My battle with Xfinity around watching the Seattle Mariners games that I'm now paying for, it continues. And my anger is really hardening. It's ossifying into a diamond of rage. Holding grudges is just another word for having standards. And I'd like to try to process some of that if I can here on this Tuesday. And I'd like to talk to this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

I think my sense of time is messed up today. I'm coming off of a bunch of strange dreams. I slept kind of late today, and I had those intense kind of action-packed, I don't even know if they were stress dreams, but very, yeah, they were. Let me just make it clear. They were stress dreams.

What was happening?

Well, I don't think that I want to take you on that journey, because I don't think I can make it make sense, and I want to have just an ounce of respect for the listener for once in my gosh darn life. But it was the type of dream where- Well, we do have a whole sound effect for it, you know? That is true. I mean, do you have it over there?

You look like a dream catcher came to life.

Wow, this is the long dream court.

Yeah, it is. Take me to dream court, baby.

Man, that song goes so much harder than it needed to.

That's so good. That and Muppet babies.

It really is. That's a real certified banger.

It's pretty good, man. It's pretty good. And didn't we listen to – they reworked it but kept the sort of structure of it for the new Night Court, right? I heard somebody promoting their TV show recently. It might have been your pal John Cryer, in fact, saying that it comes on right after Night Court, and I thought I was in the 80s again.

Oh, right. He's in that new one, I think, where he's like a cuck.

Ha!

I don't know what the premise of the show is.

I hope you said cook.

Yes. uh it's night chef where he is a cook no i i get this i know nothing about this show except i think like his his ex-wife is remarried and he's friends with the new guy oh they all live together it's

based on a true story that's right yeah it's a couple that the ex still lives with them for the sake of the children um i don't think they use is he the ex or is he the new guy i have i have no idea um but i it was a passing reference but the the fact that it was coming on after night court But I had to like and it was John Cryer saying it. I had to sort of do a double take on that. But I don't I honestly don't want to get into the details of my dream. Suffice to say, it had some like kind of recurring elements of dreams of mine, like rushing to get to the airport, getting lost in parking garages and administrative buildings and stairwells and stuff like that. And like running around. This one was intensified, though, because guns were involved. I had a gun. A police officer had a gun. the police

were called there was a something i don't know if they were called or if i was speeding or what happened there then i was trying to get the gun onto a plane legally i wanted to legally do it in real life for new listeners i don't own a gun i'm not a gun rights activist at all but it was a it was just a strange very high-paced dream where i woke up and i said to genevieve wow that was an intense dream i won't go into detail but it was intense went back to sleep and it continued like picked up right where it left off so i am coming into the show today having just woken up but feeling like i've just been through the ringer emotionally and with adrenaline and the reason i said it feels like my sense of timing is off is because before the show and i'm just going to say this before the show you said really briefly hey do you mind pausing i just need to um before we get going do you mind if i uh use the restroom really quickly which you did and then i started to adjust my camera and i feel like you you were it felt like you were gone for 15 seconds before you came back and i commented on your speedy well here's the thing it was one of those things where

i had to go a little bit and i thought do i have is this something that i want to hold for 1.5 hours right but it wasn't a full-on situation it was like it was it was a mini it was a mini

situation you're probably a little nervous i get that when i'm nervous yeah exactly it's like when

i used to play baseball for the green greenwood boys and girls club the positive place for kids and when i was in the hole or even the double hole which we called snake eyes i would feel like i had to pee so bad they put the kids in solitary it was the special housing unit it was the shoe wow no the um on deck was you know you're the next you're in the batter's circle and then in the hole is you're about to go on deck so you're basically two away from hitting and then Snake Eyes is you're on deck to be in the hole. I see. You're not in the hole, and you're not on deck, and you're not batting, so you're basically four away, which if you think about it, there's only nine hitters. You're almost always going to be approaching Snake Eyes. That's nice. Yeah, that's nice. There's just not that many positions where you're not Snake Eyes, because that's half of the people in the lineup, four. So then in

the hole means you're probably standing on the steps of the dugout if your dugout has steps.

And if you're me, you are feeling like you have to pee so badly yeah and then as soon as you go up and take four to five pitches without swinging the bat which was my entire move that season and you run to first base because they walked you because they're children they're terrible at pitching it's smart man and um it's a money ball and then immediately the your the need to pee goes away yep yep i get

i just had that when i went on the radio a couple weeks ago i had that feeling if i had just gone to the restroom and then i was nervous and i felt like i had to go again but i told myself there's nothing in there anymore andrew um but anyway then you you did your intro today and that felt very speedy as well it seemed like i was being introduced and it really truly feels like i'm in a bit of a time warp how long have we been recording has it been like two hours yet or two minutes 1.5 hours wow yes time is messed up right now i guess i should tell you more about

my dreams uh andrew i am i had to videotape what was going on with xfinity yesterday and send it to you so you didn't think I was just trying to come up with hashtag content for the show because this whole situation with me trying to get root sports working on my television it's moved into parody it is moved into some sort of a sort of a comic play about a guy who is the forces of the universe are working against him when he's just trying to pay his money to a major corporation to watch his baseball team play baseball like i called them yesterday which i didn't want to do because i had already gone online i had uh you know activated the extra special account and uh and it was it should have kicked in but it wasn't and so yesterday at about four o'clock i called them and i got on the phone with a guy you got on the phone with a guy

congrats on the phone with a guy not to brag no i'm being serious i mean at xfinity that that's

that's an accomplishment in and of itself i i and this and this is what happens with these kinds of things i thought that oh my goodness i'm talking to a human well this is going to get worked out like i've i've managed to do that most uh unusual of things which is found a human being who works for the comcast corporation uh this guy was a little interesting andrew i actually made notes of the things he said to me while we were waiting for various things to process now i mentioned already it was about 4 p.m i called him and he while we were waiting for something he said did you grab your coffee today okay which has to be a training thing like there must be something going on at comcast corporate in whatever country this person was

in my guess was this person was not stateside where they're like if there's some downtime it might break the ice to ask the customer if they've had their coffee today huh maybe i've never gotten that i hadn't either until yesterday uh and then uh i said uh well yeah it's four o'clock here so i had the coffee a while he goes me too okay he said i have to have my coffee right and i said yeah yeah that's sort of how i feel and he said oh that's great did you get him started out of wine no if i'd have known if i'd have known that this wasn't going to work out i would have been three drinks deep during this conversation so then he also uh at some point uh said you have too many devices connected to the internet and i was like first of all how do you even know that secondly second of all i don't think that's the case and also i literally looked

around provider this is a cable provider i know it all comes well they also do my internet yeah they do the internet i know it kind of comes in through there but that is that is the stupid that is the stupidest thing i've ever heard in my life we can't serve you a specific channel you're getting 180 channels hey andrew have you had your coffee today it's wine o'clock somewhere because i'm about to whine this is crazy that is the stupidest thing i've ever heard you're getting clear cable television on 180 channels or whatever it is 85 plus you're trying to add well that's what you're adding right and now but the the one i think i'm adding technically i'm adding 60

channels oh geez because i was already getting 125 plus and now i'm trying to get to 185 plus

but the reason this new channel that you just signed up for has not kicked in about what now we're past 48 hours at this point in your day you're kind of on day three uh you said this is like a this is like a comedy maybe it's like 12th night maybe on the 12th night you end up getting the the the cable that you paid for what a ridiculous thing to say well it caught me off

guard he was like you have too many things connected to the internet and i started walking around doing like an accounting of like i was like well this laptop i think my phone is on the wi-fi there's a sonos and then i was like oh wait this guy is on a script trying to sell me some kind of other thing while we're waiting i am going you know what i mean and i was like i was like um i have uh i go everything seems to be working fine i go are you trying to offer me some sort of package and he says yes i have great news we can you know we can you can have more you can get unlimited internet i was like oh this is a sales pitch i was like i'm good thank you let's just get this channel working it's like what's the channel called i go it's called root sports it's channel 734 which probably means nothing to him because you know he's somewhere far away um but uh he said okay uh you know I'm I'm upgrading you to the first the first thing he said was I have I have great news I'm able to do this whole package for 238 dollars and I was like that's more than the website told me it was going to be usually they'll try to like you know give you some sort of special promotion which locks you in to some multi-year you know contract he was quoting me a number that was higher than the Xfinity website and I was like that doesn't make any sense I was like when I bought this on the internet like two days ago it was cheaper and he was like well let me check on that and then he comes back with the exact price that the internet told me let me ask

you a question I was impressed that you got through to a human being did you get through to a human being by pretending like you were going to buy something because I've done that before like when you can't get customer support you're like well I know I can get a human being if I punch in the numbers that say I want to buy something send me to your sales department with the hope that then i get a human being on and then they transfer me successfully to another human being is there any chance that you found yourself in the sales department or is that adding is that bringing

too much logic to this situation you know what i did you know how i got through this is insane and this is a life hack it buddy i think i just put the phone on speakerphone while i was listening to all things considered and putting together cabinets in my kitchen and i think that like Elsa Chang so confused the robot that it just put me through eventually because there was a voice happening in the background right that was like talking it was like hi what do we what can we help you with I'm sorry I didn't understand that I need to know what your problem the Xfinity app can hit one for and it was just like this weird noise in the background that wasn't me that was some other human talking about an unrelated topic eventually melted the system down to where it just said, please hold. And then I was talking to this guy who was asking me if I'd had my coffee

today. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. I don't know if that would work again, but it worked

in this. Basically what happened was I put it on speakerphone. I was going to come over and try to hit the buttons and stuff, but then I got caught up putting together this particular drawer. And then I realized that it was just kind of the voice in the background was doing something. to the automation that was getting me towards a human being so i ended up talking to this person and i it was he was like okay uh you know he comes back and then he quotes me the the price that was on the internet which is like all of six dollars cheaper a month but still i was like it's

the principle of the matter and they already have your money i thought you punched in your credit card three days ago am i wrong they have my credit card they've been paid for this what is

he trying to sell on saturday i paid for this um and so uh but then he was in the system somehow i guess i hadn't i don't know i mean it was weird okay he apparently it didn't go through i guess he didn't tell me this he just this guy was on such like autopilot that it was i couldn't get a straight answer from him i couldn't find out if it was like what i did on saturday didn't work i know it worked because i went all the way all the way through the process you know what i mean i put it in the cart i clicked buy and then it generated a response that said thank you for

your order we'll email you when we've approved it and didn't the message on your tv change to something like go here to upgrade and then didn't the new message say something like

your your new changes are in process or something yes when and that was my fatal error was that was when i hung up with him because it was a different error message on the screen and i thought this

means something has happened oh so that that new message just happened last night that isn't what

that message happened last night while i was on the phone with him i see okay and i was like well this isn't this is an improvement because the television is telling me basically uh you don't have this channel but it's because you just ordered it and it's taking a minute so i was like okay good It knows it understands that something is something's happening. So I took that to be a good sign and I hung up with the guy and then spent the rest of the night not having Root Sports and this morning do not have Root Sports.

And still as of this, and of course, we ended yesterday's show in one of the highlights of TBTL history, I think, or certainly history in the past 10 years of you being on the phone, going into the house, turning on the TV only to learn that you were still waiting for your service to kick in. And you're right. If you got an email confirming that the service was going to kick in, everything should have been fine. But if you hadn't called and if Elsa hadn't gotten you through to a human being, you would still just be waiting and waiting and waiting. And you could have gone all summer without ever realizing that your order didn't actually get processed.

But here's the thing, Andrew. I still don't have Root Sports. Yeah.

But you have a message that says it's coming now. Before, you didn't even have that.

so that's exciting good for you congratulations thank you um i mean it's i really was going through various stages of grief last night um not just because uh the mariners uh let the um guardians back into the game in a way i didn't see coming but because i was like could i i really was thinking maybe maybe this is a sign from the almighty to just sign up for fubo tv like can i get msnbc on demand in some way and can i fubo the mariners yeah i'd like to definitely i'd like to fubo the mariners ownership i can't believe they named it fubo tv that must is that like

fubu tv is that for us by us i know it's very strange and then you have and then hulu pluto and tubi i feel like they're all kind of going for something that just makes it very confusing For me and old When I'm looking for a program I can't keep them straight

But Fubo sounds like a thing you would say As a way of swearing as a kid It does Like it's effed It's effed over beyond Fubo It's effed up beyond overstatement Which by the way describes my relationship with Xfinity

I like a little kid saying Fubo And the O stands for overstatement It's a precocious little kid

very verbose kid but i really was like maybe this is a sign that i just it's not meant to be with me and xfinity and i hate them so much like maybe what i need to do is just rethink this whole thing figure out a way to get the like three products that i really want which are as i've stated are is msnbc the mariners and then i guess during the football season uh the seahawk games that's pretty much it that's pretty much all that i watch and i have 185 plus channels which seems like unnecessary or at least i would if they would give it to me so i don't know maybe this is a sign that i need to just figure this out and and go around them even if fubo is 80 bucks a month that's still cheaper than the 220 something that i'm going to be paying whenever this kicks in have you looked

up if msnbc is on fubo or available on fubo i'm looking this up now because i was thinking about

your situation last night if only we had one of their primetime anchors listening to the show it says yeah

Is that disrespectful for me to reach out to Chris and ask him, for me to reach out to Chris and go, are you guys on Fubo?

Let's see here. Yes, MSNBC is available on Fubo TV. What? Fubo TV is a sports-centered live, so it is a sports-centered live TV streamer that includes other channels like ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC. Fubo TV also includes MSNBC. It has CBS and Fox? Yeah, according- Did this just turn into a Fubo ad? This is a, I am reading to you the sort of aggregated response by Google. Oh, great. Oh, yeah. So, you know, double Fubo me on this before you.

First thing Google asks you now is, have you had your coffee today?

Yeah, right. So anyway, you want to double check. But I was actually thinking about your predicament last night. So I actually mowed the lawn last night. Oh, my gosh. I didn't realize how much my soul needed that. I don't even mean the process of mowing the lawn, which is another thing altogether. But like over the spring, the grass had gotten so long. But I was like, yeah, but the weather is not right for mowing the lawn. And finally, yesterday it was right. and I had a really bad backache, but I'm like, I got to do this and it'll probably make me feel better. Yeah, it's been dogging me for a couple of weeks and I'm like, let me just go outside. Lower, unfortunately, yeah. I'm sorry. That's okay. But anyway, I'm glad I went outside because I was like laying down, just like feeling miserable. I'm like, it's sunny outside. You know how when you're like not feeling well and then it's sunny outside, it makes you feel even worse just about everything altogether. So I'm just like, just go outside, get some fresh air, mow the lawn. Maybe it'll work itself out because that's how backs work usually. Go do strenuous labor.

Actually, in my experience, that is how they work sometimes. It is sort of, yeah. If you get moving, it can kind of loosen it up.

Yeah, I actually agree. But anyway, so I come in from a pretty satisfying, I'm looking around my lawn, I'm like, I can't believe it got so bad, and now everything feels a little bit like it's more in place, and that's how I like things in life. And then I'm like, oh, time for the Mariners. So I am about to jump in the shower. Let's mow the things that mow. Yeah, and so I'm like, oh, I'm going to listen on the radio. So far, I've only watched the games this season, And so I'm listening on the radio. And then I'm thinking about your, you know, viewing or listening experience. So I text you. I'm like, hey, I'm on the radio now. How are you? Has your channel kicked in yet? Are you watching this? And you sent me that video telling me that you were still waiting for Fubo. And anyway, you're waiting for your Root Sports to show up. And so you and I were texting a little bit. And then I'm kind of in my head about this because here's the deal. like i've now seen a couple of somewhat like close-up shots that you've sent me photos and then that video last night of what your tv setup is in this you know and i i can't i can't see the context of the whole room but i understand i truly understand well you and i are very different about some of these things why it's not the same for you just to plug a computer into the back of your tv you have a very nice tv that's on a very you know that's mounted on the wall it's a minimalist space it looks nice for me I'm just in my stupid rumpus room anyway where the back of my TV is exposed so I just have a dongle there all the time and it's just a different situation for me watching on my computer is not such a big deal but I truly understand why you say listen even if this company is screwing me over even if I'm paying way too much just for the ability to watch baseball on this TV like it is a different experience to not have to like hook something up every time I totally get that but i do feel like i have taken advantage of the smart tv aspect of our newer televisions more than you have and i started thinking like very much and i was thinking like fubo is 80 that's too much for me to sign up for just to what 80 a month i should say um that's too much for me to put down just for mariners games when we're already paying for hbo and all this other stuff but if you were able to transfer away from cable like wouldn't it just be so great just to tell the cable company to go Fubo themselves and then you get Fubo and I but I was thinking also like yeah but then you're you do watch MSNBC and I assume that was not on Fubo but like I think that your experience eventually in life is going to be without cable anyway you're going to start using the apps on your TV more and I think this might be this you do you but I would encourage you to break ties with cable it is so infuriating I think it's the perhaps principle

that I talk about so often on the program, right? Which is you just sort of never know how things are going to go. And this seems like this has been very frustrating for me, but it may end up being a real gift because if it causes me to just take the like couple of hours to look at my other options and to, as they say, cut the cord and just get away from this evil corporation. Even before I got the guy on the phone yesterday, Andrew, I was so livid. I was coming back from town. I'd gone down to get some groceries and I thought, well, I'll try to take advantage of this drive time back to call Xfinity. And it was doing that thing where you get an automated voice and it says like, the Xfinity assistant can help you. The assistant is obviously just like an AI program or something. And I go like human, human. It's like the Xfinity assistant. can connect you with a human but first you've got to tell us what your problem is i was like i'm trying to add root sports and it goes the xfinity assistant can help you with that i was like you mother fubo you were never going to give me to a human you were always going to tell me that the xfinity assistant can help me with this it was i mean again this is the most angry i've ever seen you or ever observed you to be is related to this company so i'm not telling you anything but it was just like i was just so mad because it was such it was such a bad faith automated phone conversation initially like it's like it's telling me about the assistant it's telling me the assistant's going to get me to a human but then it's just trying to tell me the

assistant can actually fix it for me yeah i had that with another company recently and it's not it wasn't comcast because i've been away from them for a while now but yeah the same deal it's just like or you know what it was it was a it was one of those um automatic chat functions so it wasn't even on a phone tree it was like you know like kind of the chat function on a computer like I think it might have even been for this company that we're using right now to talk to each other down the line um and I just kept on saying what my problem was and I said oh okay I think you need this link here and I was like I don't need a link I've gone through all the links I've gone through all the links that the other links have suggested like I need a human being and they'll just say oh it sounds like you're looking for a human being what can they help you with here's this link and And it was literally a loop. And I was like, this is designed to drive people bananas. It is a special kind of torture.

And I wanted to yell into the phone threats, but I didn't want to get on some kind of no-fly list. Because I started to kind of lose it at some point. And I just wanted to say, I do have one of the things. I'm going to kill the president. Now you're on a list.

You're just saying that to Xfinity and thinking that's what's going to get you through.

I'm just trying to impress Jodie Foster.

Anyway, goodbye.

But like, no, I really was. I was so mad at one point before I ended up talking to the human that I wanted to just yell into the phone like, I want to burn your company down. It was getting into threats of violence, but then I was literally like, is there a list somewhere of people who've threatened physical violence to the company? Because I don't want to hurt a person, but I do want to hurt this robot I'm talking to real bad. And it was like I understood how people end up to some degree on some kind of government watch list because it's very like Michael Douglas in that movie Falling Down. yeah like i just you know and i don't want to make light of people being violent but it just was i was i wanted to scream into the phone that i'm going to find the corporate headquarters of xfinity and i'm going to like do something really regrettable but then i literally thought are the police going to show up at my house if i do that like that would be the one thing that that xfinity would be good at would be reporting you to the police if you threaten them right like they're bad at everything else they're bad at giving me root sports but they are really effective at reporting me to law enforcement if i make a threat of violence but didn't i also see some photos of

you uh in dc on january 6th like i feel like that is for the courts to decide some lists as well somebody who looked just like you it might have been that or the guy with the little birds from game of thrones it was the guy from bob's burgers wait which wait the guy who's sitting oh because

of the hat one of the guys from bob's burgers was there you know that right oh oh the mr show guy

Oh, what's the Mr. Show Guy? Right, right, right.

Yeah, and he's the across-the-street business owner in Bob's Burgers. Yeah, right, right. Yes, exactly.

In Bob's Burgers. I thought we were talking about guys on Bob's Burgers who look like you, and I almost went into some dangerous territory with that assumption.

Oh, no. Were you going to say Teddy? I do have a hat on like him today, by the way.

Well, that's why I thought you were making a joke because you were wearing a beanie cap, and I thought maybe you meant like your Teddy at the counter.

Let me explain this hat to you, Andrew, here on the 2nd of April. In the year of our Lord 2024, what happened was I didn't plan my morning particularly well. I was doing my little jog right before the show, and I didn't get a chance to quaff my hair. And so right when the show, when the intro music was playing, I was looking around for something to put on because I felt like my hair looked a little goofy. But I didn't have a proper baseball. I didn't have my The Burbs hat in here. So I grabbed this beanie that's from the South End Rowing Club in San Francisco, which is the place where I did that cold water swim. And it is admittedly a very weird look on a spring day.

Oh, I don't think it's a weird look. I think it's weird.

I don't really like this look on me.

I'll be honest with you. I introduced the idea of January 6th. I don't know what I was going for there. That wasn't even really a joke. I was sort of thinking of all the people who should be on watch lists but aren't, and then you're on a watch list. So then I started thinking about the insurrection. I'm like, I think there's a joke here somewhere. So I just threw out the word. It was just. It was just patriots wanting to be heard. And I really am going to end up on a list after this one. But anyway, yeah, so I just regret the whole thing. And then I'm feeling nervous. We're talking about Bob's Burgers. I'm saying that you look like Teddy, which is not the case. Although I have seen you order two sandwiches before, not unlike Teddy. It's Jay Johnson, by the way, is the actor we're trying to think of.

That's the name of the guy that was allegedly at January 6th? Or has that been proved yet?

No, I think there are photos of him there, yeah. but that's as deep as i'll go into that because i don't want to spread uh misinformation but anyway so as of this morning you woke up and you still have the kind of i guess quote unquote new message on your tv that says oh yeah there have been some changes to your to your account but we're waiting for them to kick in which is also just like i mean this is we're living in the

digital age this should not be something does somebody have to go like print out a form and fax it somewhere like maybe this is also a little bit affected by just kind of my uh you know instant gratification impulses and just the way that we live but it just seems like this is something that should take zero seconds once it's been once they're accepting my money once the the guy wherever he was you know clicks and you know fills out some like like online form for me in my account it should just take no time like what is happening between last night when the guy said okay you're good to go and whenever this thing kicks in like digitally what's happening

is there a chance and i i hate to say this because i don't even want to make excuses for them but is there a chance that you have too many devices on the same wi-fi network because i understand one of the leading theories currently i can't even believe that that's where they started with this conversation like how can you're calling about a different issue and this person is

claiming that is almost like he wasn't even troubleshooting though he no no he was just on his we had downtime oh and after he had asked me about my coffee for the day he was then moving on to the next part of his script which was we want to sell this guy faster internet or we want to sell this guy unlimited internet and so the script says hey um you do you have too many device is connected to the internet that's why your devices are slow we can make it faster by giving you unlimited internet it was just a sales pitch it was just the next thing on his list he also at the end was like hey i have a great news i have a promotion where you can get a free device and i was like thank you goodbye like whatever bs comcast tablet you're gonna send me that i have to pay off over the amortized over the next three years no thank you like whatever free device you're

offering me i don't want it yeah what device would you possibly want from comcast it's like their version of a kindle or whatever it's an abacus where you can keep track of how much money they're taking from you every month it's they say it's a kindle but it's an etch-a-sketch

in reality right serious you have too many etch-a-sketches hooked up right now to your

comcast account oh my god absolutely infuriating and like yeah i'm interested to see content for the show so i mean i don't know about that um but anyway i uh i am interested in seeing so okay let's let's just end here with a little bit of math or maths as they say in europe um let me get my abacus up you what is your total com it's a little bit tough because they're your internet provider as well i understand that but how much do you think you're actually paying for

your cable service now uh i think the cable part of it is like a hundred and something bucks okay the total bill is going to be like 227 a month or something now this is where things become a real

pain in the keister and so i don't know if you're going to feel like dealing with all this especially as you're in a situation where you're getting more and more settled into your house i could see you not wanting to like kind of reverse course too much but like when we dropped our cable we said well we don't want to get our internet through comcast either because comcast because they provide so many things they want to bundle everything and that's why i was paying for they want to do my cell phone now they want to do your taxes they wanted like actually i could use some help with that we paid for a landline for probably at least five years across a couple of different apartments we didn't even have a phone plugged into it but they had me convinced that well if you bundle this and this and they make it they make the math or maths so confusing that like if you're going to cut the cord you know we pay we had an introductory rate but now it's like 75 dollars a month for internet and that's it and it's the fastest internet i've ever had in my life and it's through a different provider now and we have no relationship with you must have the exact right number of devices hooked up i do i have you know what it is and it's a thousand I was actually thinking about that. Like there was a time when I mentioned this to Vives not all that long ago that like there was a time. time when if we did have too many devices, we as a society or we as a household had too many devices plugged in, you would get lag. And it kind of occurred to me the other day. I'm like, wow, V is like you you're watching TV upstairs. I'm watching TV downstairs. I'm probably also listening to a podcast, you know, whatever. But like we never even think about that anymore. And we don't have cable. It's all just like smart devices that are streaming. And so like basically what I'm saying here is if you totally cut ties with Comcast and then got Fubo on top of that that could be not just a money saver but also a pretty smooth experience and you can tell them to go fubo themselves but that does mean probably you know having another cable provider come to your house drill a hole in your wall or whatever they're gonna do because we have um which i'm gonna call it the one that's super fast now it's like what's the word fiber fiber yeah exactly so i don't know it's a good way to go but i completely understand if you're just like i don't

want to untangle everything that i've tangled up well here's the here's here's the uh sort of sleeper cell in this whole thing andrew that i realized yesterday when i was making that video for you i can't really see the tv very well in the afternoon because there's so much sunlight coming in okay this is a new twist yeah like i mean this whole project of this house has been because it has this cool view of the river and I want to have my moment of sitting and staring and all that. The project has been, and it's been many, many thousands of dollars and much work has gone into making it just basically one side of the house, kind of a big glass front. And that's all well and good except for it turns out that lets in a lot of sunlight, which was the goal. but it means the tv the current placement of the tv is it's it's not really watchable in in the you know but from six to like eight whenever sunset is uh between you know the the late afternoon and when the sun sets it's actually not great for television watching which is

maybe the most ironic thing ever i don't think many baseball games are played between 6 p.m and 8 p.m. here on the West Coast.

It's not a common time for the sport.

No, not at all.

I know. I mean, yesterday as I was staring at the TV screen and sort of plotting the demise of the Xfinity company, I was also noting the fact that even when it gets working, I'm going to have to figure some stuff out because it's not ideal currently. I mean, it's ideal for staring at the river. It's not ideal for watching baseball. Point is, I might just be listening on the radio this whole season, And maybe that's not a bad thing as well. Fubo listening on the radio, doing projects around the house.

Maybe I just need to rethink this whole thing. Maybe I still have been yesterday when I tried to watch the game. I was listening to part of it, as I mentioned. And then I wanted to switch over to like watching a stream. One of these, you know, let's say unpromoted streams. I'm always looking for the right word for that. I don't know, like, illegal makes it sound like you're breaking the law, which is I feel like you're breaking Major League Baseball rules, but whatever. But I was trying to dial up one of those streams, and I was having a lot of trouble finding one that would stay steady for the entire game. I finally found one, but there was so much messing around, and this has not been the experience, like, the past several games. Yesterday was just a bad day for some reason, and I started to wonder, oh, I do believe that at times the industry does find, does sort of root out these streams and tamp them down and i wondered if that was going on yesterday as i'm like sort of i'm i'm crouched over my computer which is plugged in behind my tv i'm sitting on a tiny little chair i got the radio on because i don't want to miss any of the action but the radio is about two minutes ahead of the game that i'm trying to get a stable stream for and i'm just like this is not working and i was like maybe maybe i you know again i mentioned this on yesterday's show maybe we're just baseball listeners from now on i'm not sure exactly I'm not exactly sure what that looks like

it would probably be better for me because it would mean that my life as I know it can continue on and my life with Becca can you know you're less attached to it when it's on the radio than you are when it's on the television you know you can drive places you can kind of like it just it means that you're not spending you know what's like four times 162 that many hours just plopped on the couch watching the game like it's it's a better system honestly to just like make peace with listening to it

yeah no i mean i love i again i'd listen to probably more games than i watch um on a during a usual season but like but that's because i choose to because i'm mowing the lawn or i'm puttering or i'm doing whatever i don't like the idea of not having the ability to watch it all but i do feel like something's got to give eventually something has got to give and i don't know i mean maybe we all just rise up oh hey we were just talking about uprisings january 8th it's a it's when it's when the consumers rise up against

that's right exactly it's it's uh when we the uh the people who want to watch baseball for a reasonable reasonable price when we finally um you know make our voices heard um uh so uh yeah we'll see you guys all next year for that in the meantime hey we should thank some dazzling donors and then I want to talk to you about these are we don't talk about Kim Kardashian a lot on the program but I would like to talk about two people who could not be well that's not true I was gonna say could not be more sort of diametrically opposed, but I don't know if they are. Kim Kardashian is actually fairly designy at this point, but I didn't think I would be saying the names Kim Kardashian and Donald Judd in the same sentence. And, uh, I will say those names in the same sentence right after we thank some dazzling donors. 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 All right, let's thank those dazzling donors.

These are the wonderful, generous people keeping TBTL in business with their donation of a dazzling amount of dough. Of course, we're talking about Joe McIntyre of Atlanta, Georgia.

Are you sure it's not pronounced Joe McIntyre? Oh, N-K-O-T-B. Do you know what NKOTB is? It did take me a second, but I realized that it's so Joe McIntyre. And then the pronouncer is pronounced just like NKOTB. And I did look at that at first. I'm like, and then I'm like, oh, new kids on the block.

Joey McIntyre, I think, was, well, I went back and forth between thinking Joey McIntyre and also Jordan Knight. Those were the two hottest NKOTB guys to me. Why I was tracking this as a tween, I don't know, but I will.

Well, didn't you mention recently that you were sort of inspired by one of them in a fashion sense?

Yeah, I wanted a haircut that looked like Jordan Knight. It went very, very wrong.

That's where the heart came in, the heart shape.

That's where I know you like skin heart came in. But I think Joey McIntyre was kind of the dream boat of that crew. And I assume our Joe McIntyre is also the dream boat of Atlanta, Georgia. Joe says, I'll always be amazed by how much the show and the contributions of the listeners lift my spirits. could also be as my wife pointed out recently that tbtl is the only thing i listen to read or watch that isn't grim oh uh that's not it though i'm just thinking about all the jokes i made at the beginning of today's show that were possibly by the way we still we need to um also uh check

in on your garbage situation oh yeah that's i think that can be a quickie okay uh it's not that

though the show is genuinely great on a daily basis if i ever have time i'm going to create a taxonomy of andrew's noises and pauses and the varying degrees of alarm and concern that they express as luke calmly tells a story about doing something in the most normal way available to him

that's a thing i didn't realize that that's a thing did you know that that's a thing i did do i over express concern when you're talking about boring stuff

i just think it's this is a very interestingly interestingly constructed sentence luke calmly tells a story about doing something in the most normal way available to him in other words i'm using the language available to me i think is what the is what that means i think what the

takeaway here is you're just telling a normal story uh doing something nor talking about doing something normal in a normal way but i'm making degrees i'm making sounds that show alarm and concern probably when they're not needed which i'm going to lean into now i didn't know i did If it's got Joe donating, I would say don't stop.

Like that? I forgot what the bit was. I was like, what happened? I also can't see you because I currently have the Dazzling Donor script in front of me, so I don't know what expressions you're making, but I do know that Joe says, TBTL has been the soundtrack to my terrifying bike commute through Atlanta for almost a decade and to a whole host of transmissions that I probably should have been focusing on instead of trying to picture Luke's home improvement projects or Andrew's reasonable worries about putting a grill on the rooftop, quote, deck.

Thank you, Joe. I will send this to Genevieve.

I often describe the show to people, and I always say that a true measure of y'all and the tens is that I've never been bored. Wow. Thanks, Joe. That means a lot.

That's like the nicest thing anybody's ever said about the show.

That is really nice. Yeah, thank you. I'm using the language available to me to say thank you, Joe. We really appreciate it. And good luck, and stay safe out there on that bike commute that can be hairy. Maestro?

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

We've also got to thank Sarah. Sarah Woodruff of Silver Spring, Maryland. I used to go out to Silver Spring, Maryland when I lived in D.C.

For reporting or for hanging?

No, just for hanging. It's a cool town, and I think you can get there on the D.C. metro. Nice. There's a Silver Spring stop. Sarah says, Sarah with an H is the biblical post-covenant spelling, which is both true and the bad joke I have made before completing this form. Do with that what you will. I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that the H has anything to do with a biblical post-covenant spelling. My sister, Sarah, is with an H as well.

Does that, it sounds like I'm making another bad joke here, but I'm a little confused by what that means. That's not the part that sounds like the bad joke, but does that presuppose that there is a Sarah without an H? There is. I mean, I know that there is. No, I know that it exists in modern society. But is Sarah saying that there's actually an earlier, like the H was actually added later? I think of Sarah without an H as being a more modern convention. And this says, so this is saying that Sarah with an H is actually more modern than Sarah without an H?

It looks like that. Wow. Sarah with an H is the biblical post-covenant. It's got post in it. It does. Post-covenant spelling.

Okay. Interesting.

Sarah says, greetings to Luke, Andrew, and all the tens. I feel incredibly lucky to once again be in the financial position to be a dazzling donor. Thank you. I've previously used this opportunity to highlight such lighthearted topics as grief and medical care and exercise. So I'll stay on brand and talk about transitions. Within a one-month period in 2023, I left my job of nearly 20 years to start a new one, and my long-term partner came out as a trans woman. This was on top of there being major griefs, complications with our various kids, and just the chaos of life in general. The job change has made a huge difference, and I both love the team with which I work and the nature of the work that I'm doing. My partner is pursuing all of the changes, personal, legal, medical, that are allowing her to become fully who she is. So I want to ask the 10s. What change do you need to make for yourself? How can you show up for yourself just as this pod cart shows up for all of us? You can do this, semicolon, I believe in you, exclamation point, from Sarah with an H.

We can start with the small stuff. I'm being honest here. Like, when I think about that question, what is a change you need to make for yourself? And I hope this doesn't sound like I'm making light of this or I'm being pat. I'm actually being quite serious because I have so many relatively small things in my life that if I were to make a change on them, it would make a huge, huge difference. And literally one of them has already sort of been addressed today. I've been dealing with a bad back that's been dogging me for like about a week now. And I think part of that is stress related. It just kind of goes out from time to time. But you know what doesn't help? Me sitting in a chair for a couple of hours every day talking to you, a chair that is not built for a desk like this. and me now twisting to look into the camera and talk to you but then also twisting to look at this and I was just talking to Genevieve about it yesterday I'm just like for years now I've had bad backs and I know that I need a new desk chair like I and again this sounds so pat but I but I hope that Sarah understands that I mean this and like there's so many things in life that if I just took a little bit of effort could have a huge impact and I'm not making those changes for myself

Yeah, you know, Andrew, I'm also not trying to be glib or joking, but I think in all seriousness, I think you need to be nice to yourself. And also you need to like, what's the word I'm looking for? Like basically take care of yourself because I feel like you kind of you take care of a lot of other people. You take care of the show. You take care of me sort of by extension. But but you should be you should you deserve to sit in a chair that doesn't hurt your back.

Well, the reason I don't do it is out of laziness. It's not out of like some sort of hair shirt mentality. I don't think it's like, I don't know, like the chairs that are comfortable don't look good. Not that this is some especially good looking chair. And then it's just like, I don't know, unless Genevieve buys it for me and forces it on me. I'm just like a child.

Okay, you are a bad person.

I am a bad person is what I'm saying. But anyway, I hope I didn't make light of what Sarah is saying. I don't think so. I think in small ways and in large ways, we can all kind of look at what changes are we not going for that we should.

Yeah, and this is a big day of change for me too because it's the day I learned I'm signing up for Fubo TV.

That's right. Oh, my God.

And this is the day I start wearing a ski cap on the show.

If you end up canceling your Xfinity, you need to just document, like, every emotion you have during the process. Like, do you get somebody on the phone? It probably makes more sense to cancel online, but wouldn't you like to tell? Do you have mis-

Mr. and Mrs. Xfinity's phone number? I assume they run the company. Can you call them directly?

We don't need to get bogged back down in this. Yesterday when I was just in the absolute throes of my anger, I was like, is there a guy sitting at a desk somewhere who is Mr. Xfinity? And I imagined him to be the bad guy from Inspector Gadget. The claw, you never see his face. He's just petting a cat, if I remember right. I was like, that guy is running Xfinity, And I need to find him and I need to make him sad. I mean, I need to make him feel the sadness that I'm currently feeling by not because I can't watch Root Sports.

Yeah, I mean, honestly. And so, like, it's all like Comcast. Aren't they tied up with NBC now and stuff, too? Maybe I'm maybe I'm getting that confused. That's Cable Town. That's GE and Cable Town. anyway yeah but you do know that as we go through all of this stuff there are people who are running these companies who are just so fabulously wealthy beyond beyond well that was comprehension again

that was this whole like thing i was going through in my mind yesterday as i was as the robot was like you know telling me like i'll help you with that and then it was like i want to talk to a human okay i'll get you to human but first i need to know what you're dealing with like as that was happening I was like somebody decided that this would be how this goes and somebody sat in a boardroom somebody who is themselves fabulously well compensated and they work for a company whose shareholders are fabulously well compensated decided that it was worth the money they would save on having 10 more human beings work there on the phones or 50 more human beings it would be worth it because i wouldn't have a different option and in my anger like they calculated at like how angry i could get before i would stop being a customer yeah and mostly they were right with the calculation but maybe not today sarah with an h yes today things change but like you know what i mean like they i was just i was so mad because i felt like you knew this was going to happen to me and people like me and you decided it was worth the my anger because you knew that that like a certain percentage of us would just stick with this stupid system because it's too much of a hassle to switch. And you did the calculation. You decided make Luke's life worse because it puts more money in my pocket. Like that's what somebody decided. And I was at the kind of sort of business end of that decision yesterday.

I don't want to continue to sully Sarah's dazzling donor message with our gripes, but I just discovered something somewhat funny. So I was thinking, I wonder if Fubo is also just a subsidiary of the same company. You know what I mean? Oh, that would be hilarious. The thing that drives me bananas is the lack of choice here. You know, like we're just up against the wall. So I looked up who owns Fubo.

It's just a different flavor of Comcast. Right.

But it does seem to be a different ownership group. What I'm laughing at, and I don't even know if this is actually funny or if I'm just still reeling from those dreams. It's owned by Crocs. Face Bank. What? It sounds like a Jack Donaghy joke. Who are you face banking? Yes, it sounds like a Jack Donaghy joke. It's capital A-F-C-E, no space, capital B-A-N-K. Face Bank, you know, just one of those innocent companies that has a bank of faces. What are we doing? Can we go? I mean, I know this is not a real option for me.

Between face bank and bite dance, we don't stand a flipping chance.

We got to move out to the woods, man.

Yeah, I'm trying. I'm out here, man. I just want to watch The Mariners in the Woods and be left alone. Anyway, thanks to Sarah and Joe for sponsoring the program today. Hello and welcome to Top Story. This is a story that is sort of quite designed for me, Andrew, because I'm not that obsessed with Kim Kardashian, but I am very obsessed with this guy named Donald Judd. who is an artist who's kind of, I mean, he's passed, but he was sort of credited with creating the art culture in Marfa, Texas, a place that I love. And he moved out there in, I want to say like the 1950s, and the land was cheap. I think Marfa, Texas, there had been a military, some sort of military presence there, and then they had moved on. So there was all these buildings and things that were just kind of sitting there and the story goes that he was this guy Donald Judd was like passing through on a train and he saw this town and he thought oh I can set up my art and he was like based in New York at the time and he set up his kind of art thing there in the sort of middle of nowhere and over time he developed this kind of place called Shinadi which is this kind of art colony.

and then other people came out there and now there's a Prada store outside of town. So it all worked out.

That's not a real Prada store though, right? Or is it? No, it's not.

It's just like a photo op. Actually, I don't even know if Prada is involved. I think it's an art installation.

We passed that. I mean, maybe have you gone and visited it since? But I remember the first time you and I saw that together at the side of the RV.

As we were on our way to the Tumbleweed RV Park. Yeah, I think so. The coolest RV park I've probably ever been to. That's cool. Um, and so this guy, Donald Judd is, um, Addy and I have done the like tour of the Judd foundation. And it's kind of funny to me because the person who took us on the tour, basically, if you get the tour of this place, what you find out is this guy, Donald Judd was, seems like he was kind of a nightmare. Like the person leading the tour said he made these chairs that were so uncomfortable looking. Speaking of uncomfortable chairs, Andrew, don't buy anything from the Judd. the person said that donald judd was like like these chairs are like plywood and very they don't look comfortable at all and apparently he said to his children like a chair shouldn't be comfortable because then you'll want to sit in it too much like just the most like withholding asshole thing like he designed an uncomfortable chair for his children so they wouldn't sit in it because then

he thought they'd be more active that sounds like a craig benson move now you're gonna ask who that is he was a very short-lived governor of new hampshire who wanted to institute the standing meetings in like the mid-2000s so that you didn't get too comfortable meetings he was like a champion of standing meetings i think his name was craig benson i just wanted to throw that out there for craig t benson aka coach wait oh shoot is that craig t nelson okay yeah okay i think i mean if i pulled a real craig benson reference there i'm proud of myself even if nobody else is thank you

go ahead yeah this guy Donald Judd like what the takeaway from the tour is that he was a really not a nice person and I have to say I haven't met his offspring either but they also seem kind of intense his daughter is named Rainier Judd and they're very mad the foundation is very mad at Kim Kardashian because she was doing some kind of a like video tour of the offices of I think it's skims which is i believe her clothing line i don't know if if the skims brand is specific to just like shapewear or if it's everything but um it doesn't have vowels am

i right about that i don't have it in front of me right now is it like skms or something like that

i think so that sounds that sounds right so i think kim kardashian was doing a tour of like the skims offices and she there's this big plywood ass table with these uncomfortable ass looking chairs and she's like this Donald Judd table is just amazing everyone comes in here and has lunch and I'm like clearly you didn't take the tour or you would have known that these chairs are designed for discomfort but she said that in this video and the Judd Foundation who by the way emails me every week it's like thirsty much Judd Foundation I took one tour i bought one baseball cap leave me alone what are they what are they trying to sell they're not trying to sell you actual design they're trying to engage i don't know i got on some you know emailing list but it's if you've taken if you've taken the tour it's such a austere kind of thing you know it's a lot of like giant rooms with like a chair an uncomfortable chair sitting in them you know what i mean it's a very austere project yeah and then the fact that they're just like hitting me with these emails it's like yeah this is a little thirsty yeah this is Donald Judd would

not have approved of this you walk into one of these rooms there's nothing in there except for a flat screen tv playing root sports have you had your coffee today it's a rerun of a

Kraken game from a year ago it's a it's some kind of like three hours of Jen Mueller asking Bryce Miller

what his first car was? Piper. What's Piper Pepper? Piper Shaw? Piper Shaw is nursing a hockey player. Is Piper Shaw asking Kraken what their go-to dipping sauce is? Welcome to the Judd Foundation.

That's worth $222 a month to get to the bottom of what these Kraken are dipping their their nugs is yeah anyway so the judd foundation was so mad about kim kardashian calling this table a a judd table because it wasn't she bought it from some you know company i think in los angeles or whatever some furniture company that like apparently somebody at skims like so the judd foundation saw this video they were very mad about it they said this is not a Judd table. The Judd, these tables go for $90,000. I think there's like, the story says like three of them have been sold, which sounds high.

of me for $90,000, some uncomfortable plywood ass table. But, um, but so they, uh, immediately hit up the, um, like skims or Kim Kardashian's whatever team and said, uh, this is not a, uh, a Judd table. How dare you? And I was actually, I have to say, it seems like the Kardashian people handled it pretty well. They said, Oh, we're really sorry. We'll take down the video. And by the way would you like us to have kim do a video promoting the judd foundation oh i didn't know

that last part i just heard that they took the video down and the judd foundation was like no they don't want to they're they're snobby they don't want to be associated with her brand

snobby like dudes are you daft take the kim kardashian like stop emailing me and accept the kim kardashian promotion of your thing like what's wrong with you yeah that's an interesting

thing because like you said i don't follow any of this stuff all that closely i'd read this when i saw that it was coming up in the show um and i wasn't sure what your take was going to be on it because it sort of gets it sort of gets into this conversation that you and i and i'll say myself i fumble around it because i don't know how exactly to feel but when like an artist makes something that has an impact on the culture or is just even just beautiful in its own right. And then that influences other people to make that, whether you're talking about music, whether you're talking about sometimes we get into the kind of conversations about the value of art at auction, you know, whether it's just a painting or a Banksy or whatever it is like, what are these values? Where does the value derive from? Like, it's kind of a hard thing to kind of wrap your mind around. And I know that design is really important to you. in a certain way if somebody is saying hey listen I have this piece of art by an artist and it's completely not by that person it's just like somebody who says like hey I have this Picasso but it's actually somebody just like who recreated exactly a Picasso but it's not by Picasso obviously it doesn't have the same value and you can't just say hey this is a Picasso and it sort of sounds like in this original video Kim Kardashian is saying this is a Judd table and shares and it wasn't so I guess you're like okay can't go around saying something is by somebody when it's really not but on the other hand it's a table and chairs and there's something like so fundamental and practical about that that at a certain point especially once the artists themselves have passed on but you have like a foundation or just like you know heirs or whatever it might be trying to hang on so desperately to this idea of like well you can't besmirch our name you can't You can't make an uncomfortable table. We own that uncomfortable table. It's kind of like, yeah, but at the end of the day, it's a table. Like, people should be able to make these things. So it's a little bit complicated, but honestly, what you just said about, like, the Kardashian, like, whatever, the Kardashian, what would you even call it, the industry around the Kardashians or whatever.

Yeah, the Kardashian Industrial Complex.

That's exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for sending me there. Yes. Saying, oh, shoot. Yeah, well, first of all, we're going to take that down. And also sounds like you guys are doing great stuff. Let's shine a light on that and like maybe help you raise money and spread the word of your father's work. Like that is that's irritating.

The Judd Foundation wanted the video deleted, the furniture, quote, recycled, i.e. destroyed and Kardashian to issue a public statement like this feels very on brand for this Judd Foundation. Like the table needs to be destroyed.

Yeah. Right.

And, you know, by the way, this article in the New York Times was written by Zachary Small. They say in this piece, before dying in 1994, Judd fiercely protected the authenticity of his creations. In 1990, he criticized Giuseppe Panza, an Italian art collector who created some sculptures based on the artist's drawings, but without his direct involvement in some cases. writing after the solomon guggenheim museum acquired the works judd said the collector had botched his designs with inferior materials panza doesn't care he wrote what i require is too expensive consequently panza makes mock-ups comma fakes it's just like i mean calm down guys like again this for me is very personal because i do very much love marfa and i very much love the idea of this place, Shanati, and I do think that the Donald Judd stuff is kind of cool in a way, but it's personal to me because it's like they email me all the time with bullshit, and like you're trying to get attention. You're trying to engage with me. You just had a chance to have like arguably one of the most famous people on planet Earth. They're suing Kim Kardashian, by the way, over this. Like this is not, like this is going to court is why it's in the New York Times. Like I just, it just feels like a missed opportunity to get one of the most famous people on planet Earth to promote your thing which is clearly what they're hoping for. or otherwise, why are they emailing me all the time?

Honestly, the most beautiful part of this story that I never saw coming was that Donald Judd is cluttering up your email box. Like, that is just so wonderful.

I blame Rainier Judd.

It is sublime.

I mean, I honestly, like, you know, hurt people hurt people, right? Like, I feel like Rainier Judd was just never allowed to sit in a comfortable chair. And so she's like, she's taking it out on Kim Kardashian. and I just don't feel like this is necessary.

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

Feels like forever since we've done a proper email segment. Do you have any emails or V-mails? Well, don't forget, we did take a call on yesterday's show. It was from you.

But we did take a call, so that's pretty exciting. Yes, that is true. That sounded neat, by the way.

206-414-TBTL.

That's true. So 206-414-8285, I think. So this harkens back a ways, but I wanted to share with you several reactions we got to a topic we were talking about, which of course is a topic that would get reactions, which is the topic of tipping. Specifically, now this is going to branch out into several different...

Did you see that Seattle Times article, that Gene Bulk project recently?

No, I'm trying to think if I saw the headline or not. What was... Oh, what do satellites tip on and what do they not tip on? Was that it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm trying to remember if I cracked that open or not.

It was like the day after we'd had a tipping conversation, so I didn't send it to you because I felt like we'd already done it, but it was pretty interesting, actually.

You know what? I feel like I looked at the chart or something in there, because it got into appliance tipping, like appliance delivery too, right? And that was one of the lower categories, or am I misremembering that?

That might have been on there. I think what I was noting was the high end, which is I think baristas get tipped most frequently along with, like, hairstylists. But interestingly, the older people who tend to tip more actually tip baristas less than young people who tend to tip less, but they tip baristas more, if that makes sense.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, that is an interesting cultural phenomenon there. But so let's talk about this a little bit, because there was one specific thing that I asked people to weigh in on, which is something i hear a lot of people these days complaining about and i've only encountered in very like maybe one or two instances which is you are prompted usually electronically in some way to tip on something that seems like this is not a tippable service the example that i gave was like this sort of beer shop slash quickie mart that has a little bar in the back of it kind of in my neighborhood and i'll go in there and buy literally like a pack of incense and a six pack and then the device automatically asks me like what would you like to tip but there's a none button right there i don't have to like kind of like jump through hoops and i think that's because there's a bar in the back and so those people tip and it's the same system as you said the pos system which i don't think i'd heard of that before you mentioned that's my new nickname for comcast by the way yeah the pos system yeah um and uh so anyway uh so that was the only example where i just hit no on something no i'm not going to tip because i'm just buying a six pack here to take home I wasn't served but that doesn't cause me any kind of guilt or agita that just sort of seems like we all know what's going on here whereas maybe some other people do stop in that same exact store and say I guess I should tip for this loaf of bread so I wanted to know what are some other experiences people have had where they're asked to tip on something that really does not seem like a tipping situation Becky and Shoreline I have a few of these Becky and Shoreline says i just donate to a i donated to a go fund me and it included a tip for helping their website to keep going or something like that i unchecked the box real quick anyway love the show yeah like a tip in that case you're not even tipping the person you're like kind of tossing a little extra money to the company that allows people to raise money for their causes i wouldn't tip the company

you tip a person right yeah that's yeah that's um i i would be unlikely to uh to do that as well

although i did get an email today and i didn't even open it i deleted it because i knew they were just asking for more money but i got a very flattering email from wikipedia today i don't know if it was jimmy wales himself or just wikipedia and they said you are one of the unusual people who are one of the rare people who donate to wikipedia because of every now and then And I threw literally five dollars their way or I had in the past or something when the more of the screen that's taken up by the appeal.

When eventually it's 90 percent, the appeal, I'll just I will. I have also kicked them a little money here and there. Yeah. A worthy cause. And now they. Yeah. They're really giving me the Donald Judd treatment.

So anyway, there's that one. So do you tip the GoFundMe website? No. So Alan wrote in to say in, let's see, it was about a year ago at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno and on the lot.

There's a small convenience grab-and-go type of store. You grab everything yourself, and you pay using self-checkout. During the self-checkout, there's a prompt for a tip. Who am I tipping? Zero humans help me. You could argue that, well, they have this POS machine. The Xfinity assistant is who you're tipping. Somebody set up this thing to ask for tips because the casino, bars, restaurants, POS terminals. But I wonder how many drunk people have actually tipped 25% to no one in particular after grabbing some Doritos. from the casino grab and go um and then jenny in chicago says i just listened to your tipping discussion the weirdest tip request i received was i was buying postage stamps online at the usps and there was a tip prompt at the end for a web store for a government agency who gets the tip anyway i declined that is so weird that is very weird isn't it i wonder where that money would go

If you were to, I mean, I think, you know, people, postal workers certainly deserve a living wage, and I think they're very underappreciated. In fact, you know, all these companies like Amazon, I think, mostly can exist because they also utilize the services of the USPS, right? So I'm all for those people getting paid well, but like, does, yeah, where does that tip go?

Yeah, I have no idea. I have a couple of voicemails here because I wouldn't mind kind of grouping these all together today because I feel like tipping is such a conversation starter that can also dominate a show for weeks on end. So here's a quickie from Garrison in Chapel Hill.

Related to tipping and tip regrets about eight years ago, I was at a brewery in Connecticut and bought about two cases of beer, special craft beer. And as the same point of sale system on the inside and outside, they turned it around and I pushed out of habit 20% on a two cases to go and have never let myself get over that. So that's my example of tipping regret.

Yeah, if you're just grabbing a bunch of to go beers and that sounds like it's probably a pretty high tab if it's two cases of specialty beer and then you're just tipping 20% on that. again like i'm i don't want i hate arguing against tipping because it only makes you sound cheap or whatever but i guess i still believe that like you are tipping for a service there and in this case you didn't receive service other than them possibly handing you your change i also very

much identify with i'm let's let's say that was like 40 bucks for the beer let's go with a is that how much beer costs i don't know i don't buy a lot of beer well i know how much athletic brewing is It's very overpriced. I tell you that I had a near beer Corona at the LAX airport that I think was $20.

Yes, you did. Did I mention that? It was with a margarita pizza or something like that. Yes. You had a pizza and a Corona.

It was like $45 for those two items, $40 something dollars. It was shocking. But let's just say that this guy paid $40.

Well, here, let's do the math on this. Let's say, what is 14 times 4? because a six-pack of Bodhi Zaffa, which is like a kind of common IPA around here, but also kind of something that you're paying for, is $14. So a case would be four six-packs, right? So that's $56 a case. Maybe there would be some markdown because you're buying in bulk. But essentially you're looking at a bill that's a little bit over $100 or about $100.

So $20. Let's say that's $20. Now here's the thing. $20, that's real money. But on the other hand, it's also typically not the kind of thing you'd think about for years and years and years. But I would exactly like this listener. This would be something that would dog me was the fact that I just kind of acted sort of haphazardly without thinking it through. Hit the button. I would spend the rest of my life thinking about that 20 bucks.

Yeah. I mean, I still speaking of me not being nice to myself, but I still cringe over that like that weird moment I had when we were in Mexico not all that long ago. and like I sort of felt like the the waiter was not first of all just did not return to my table at all I wanted to order more food I just sat there forever he was busy I wasn't getting angry about it but at a certain point I'm like I just need to get out of here and then I'm like I'm standing up I'm sort of like following him around the restaurant finally asking for my check and then him just taking my money and not offering me any change back and just assuming that the rest was going to be a tip and that like irritated me and then I asked for change and then he didn't give me good change of tip and i realized i kind of stamped out of there and then i looked at the math later i'm like well that meal was so cheap i didn't even have a beer to go with it i just had like water or something and it's just like oh like while i felt like he was taking advantage of me he was taking advantage of me for prices that wouldn't even register like not even an atm fee here in the states and then i'm like why did i get it in my craw that i was being taken advantage of when we were talking about such small margins and then i blame the guy who was banging down the plaster at your timeshare yeah that was

the same day exactly um hey one more uh perspective here and this is from somebody who actually delivers appliances and we're always talking about like oh nice hey you know like what is

the tipping etiquette around there and if how common that is for people to tip i i think of myself as being a real extra special person who does that but maybe that's more common than i

thought hey guys it's a listener jesse in albuquerque new mexico uh i was just listening to your your conversation about uh delivery drivers and tipping them and in luke's practice of uh making sure that both drivers see that money was handed over i work for a major home improvement concern an orange one i don't know where they're headquartered um And that's my job. I deliver and install home appliances. And in the Southwest, you're right, the tipping isn't often, but it is appreciated. I can tell you that the driver of the vehicle makes $13 a drop and his assistant makes $10 a drop.

Now, I want to pause it there for a second because that can't be a full day's wage, right? because like a drop the last time we had something like that installed i think they said they had a total of nine or ten that they were doing in a day does that that doesn't work out right is that is that like you're paid on top of a base pay you know this is a question that jesse knows the answer

yeah i know i'm asking you sorry i just wanted to like it sounds like no it's i'm i mean i i'm imagining that and jesse will you get back to us on this i'm guessing that yeah it's there's an hourly wage and then on top of that so if you have a really busy day where you've got to do 10 deliveries maybe that's not a busy day I don't know yeah and you're carrying a lot of heavy stuff up and down stairs you're also getting a sort of a pay bump for that I sure hope

there's just no way that's not a living wage if you're just getting paid $100 a day a lot of times

that includes installation unless it's a dishwasher you could Luke I might suggest you know tipping an even dollar amount so it's easy for them to split up I definitely like that you make sure that both see it because there are some sneaky sneaky mofos out there if you wanted to watch the world burn you could tip each one of them $10 in secret and not tell the other one just to you know make their day interesting that's not that bird Jesse has a lot of time

to consider like

psychological experiments That's a really interesting perspective, especially after, you know, playing a bunch of voicemails or reading perspective of us, the tippers, to hear somebody who does deliver appliances. It's not done all the time, especially in the Southwest, like he says. But it is very much appreciated. And that's good advice, too. You can either try to have an evenly split type of situation to make sure that they both see it. Boy, can you imagine working all day with somebody in your truck who you just know if that person gets paid is going to try to pocket it or gets tipped is going to try to pocket it? Like, how do you – man, how do you just, like, spend your day with that person?

I was in kind of a situation like that when I was a valet in college. I worked for a place called Pacific Parking, and we would, you know, do golf tournaments, and I would park cars up front of Duke's Chowder House there on Lake Union. and we were supposed to pool the tips that was the rule you just put all the tips in this paper bag and then at the end of the shift they get divided up but the problem was i knew there were some people pocketing the tips pocketing their tips so then do i continue to put my tips into the into the paper bag or do i hold back some of my tips so i'm not the only person that's

getting under tipped in the process right because then yeah i mean that's kind of bad behavior begets

bad behavior right yeah because i feel like i felt like if i just put all my tips in then i'm gonna i'm gonna get sort of penalized financially for this so i i think i sort of well you know what i really did was stole a car ripped unintentionally ripped the gear shipped off of a jaguar and then put it back on and then parked the jaguar in the way back and made sure i didn't bring it didn't return it to the owner so any amount of tip stealing the other people were doing was fine compared to the fact that I broke someone's jag and didn't want to take the

blame for it. You were pretty young here, right? It was high school or college? College. College age. Looking back as a wizened 47 year old, are you 48 now? No, we're both 47. I'm 47. Okay. My dad was on the phone with my dad the other day. He's like, you're about to be 48, right? I'm like, dude, I got like eight months. Can we calm down with that shit? Anyway, it's funny because you and I both round up. We're both like, we're pretty much 50. But I can do that.

But anyway, looking back, like in the moment, you probably freaked out. But looking back, are you like, oh, that probably wasn't permanently damaged anyway. That probably just like screwed on or off.

I think it might have already been a problem.

Ah, okay. Interesting. Yeah.

Like, you know what I mean? It came off way too easy. You'll even know. But what was weird was.

This thing gets me looked at. It comes off way too easy.

What I'll never get out of my head was the weird look, the weird appearance of a gear shift that's been denuded. It was just this little, it looked like one of the people when Ursula takes their voice in The Little Mermaid and they become this little sea worm. That's what it looked like. It was a sad little metal thing, a little slim metal thing. Like it's not designed to be looked at. It's designed to be underneath this other apparatus. I remember just being like, whoa.

Fancy now, car. Yeah, that's what it's good. Like walking in on somebody when they're changing. Oh, I was not supposed to see that. All right. Well, that's what I got for you, Luke. We just got to do a whole segment on tipping. Got to go through all of our voicemails and emails on that. Thank you.

Yeah, Jesse, get back to us on more of the wage structure and any other cool stories or interesting stories of appliance moving in the Southwest. I'm very here for that.

Absolutely.

And again, if you want to give us a call and leave us a message, it's 206-414-8285. 206-414-TBTL. All right, Andrew, I'm off to enter the house and find out if I own Root Sports again.

Oh, my goodness gracious.

Or if I'm going full Fubo today.

Never go full Fubo.

Thanks, everyone, for listening. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

I'm done with wolves now. I'm into angry unicorns. If I was a unicorn, I'd never be angry. Power out.