Muse

I hate teeth. I am so sick of looking into people's mouths. You know, I have this recurring nightmare where instead of all of my teeth falling out, I get more of them. Just like more and more and more. I get teeth fingernails and teeth toenails. My belly button even sprouts a tooth. It's disgusting.

Have you thought of getting out of the dental industry? TBTL!

What do you want to risk? You have everything going for you. You're on a gravy train with Biscuit Wheel. Más estúpido, más estúpido, más estúpido, más estúpido, más, más. Uno más. Más estúpido, más estúpido, más estúpido, más estúpido, más. I don't understand.

Great heavens. What kind of radiola show is this?

The story of this situation is, it's extremely personal.

well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live my name is luke burbank i am your host i am a large man

i'm a very large man and i use my dad voice a lot coming to you from the madrona hill studio

perched high above the mighty Columbia where it was very cold today. Yesterday, Tuesday, it was very warm to the point where I had to put on some short pants. I don't just mean high waters, I mean actual shorts. Because I was sitting in the living room and I was basking in the sunshine while filing travel expense receipts in the Concur program. And it was so warm that I was sweating. And then this morning, it's so cold that I was running two heaters here in the Madrona Hill Broadcast Center. And I blew a fuse, blew a circuit, disconnected the internet. It was a whole debacle. So hopefully we're back online and ready to bring you episode 4176 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

Finally, after, I don't know, three or four mentions, I want to get to the bottom of Andrew's garbage situation. I don't know what's going on.

I mean, trash is trash.

Mentioned it the other day on the show. We talked about it yesterday. We keep not getting to it. So that's going to happen today, I promise you. And another thing that we have been promoting but not quite getting to, but I do think it's an interesting, believe it or not, I do think it's an interesting conversation, which is the question of if Costco is, if they're making the right decision by cracking down on non-Costco members who just go to their food court for food. Welcome to Food News Today. There are certain Costcos now that have started checking your Costco membership before they'll let you get into one of those glizzies, and we're going to talk about that as well. And we are going to talk to this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships.

Hi, Goldfish Darling.

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

Good morning, Luke. As you were doing the introduction, I made a decision. I made an editorial decision based on something I alluded to right before we started recording. I'm going to do it. I'm going to tell you the story of my gross body.

Good, because I've got this audio ready to go. You're a gross person. And I really didn't want to have that go to waste. So I'm glad you've decided before before we started recording, you said something gross is happening with my body and I don't know if we should talk about it on the show or not. And that was that was the last we discussed it. Yes. I had Tig Notaro ready to go.

And now, you know, I can't resist like I also think it's good content in a certain. Well, you don't even know what it is yet. I will say that I think this is point. I think this is kind of I think this is kind of gross, but I don't want to stigmatize something either. And I will say this, it's not bathroom-related for once in our gosh-darn lives. So I don't know. But I do think it gets into some details of my body that some people might not want to delve into, including, like, loved ones and family members. So take that with a grain of salt. I mean, we started the show with tape about a woman having dreams about teeth in her belly button. So I don't know how much works.

Who is that, by the way? What is that from?

Do you know that that is a drop from a movie called Handsome? I can't tell you anything about it other than that is Jeff Garland's voice that you hear at the end. It sounded like Jeff Garland.

Yeah, I did that part.

But and it's some I mean, let's look it up before I get in. This gives people like who are just like debating whether or not they want to hear about my gross body, whether or not they want to stick around. In the meantime, let's look up the movie Handsome. It must have been like a Netflix or a Hulu thing.

Maybe five years ago or something. And I don't know why I was watching it or how I landed on it. But that little piece of tape just really made me laugh. Him just saying, have you considered getting out of the dental industry? Let's see. It was a mystery movie that came out in 2017. Are you looking at the same thing I am here? I think he plays a detective, maybe? Gene Hansen. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. No, go ahead.

No, I'm just, I'm internetting it myself.

Oh, I see. Well, here's the description on IMDb.

His name is Gene Hansen. Wow.

Gene Handsome is an L.A. homicide detective who tries to make sense of his life as he solves crime. Handsome's knack for solving mysteries is matched only by his inability to make sense of his own problems.

So it looks like you've got some Natasha Lyonne in there. Oh, yeah, we do. You've got some Kaley Cuoco from The Big Bang Theory.

I'll bet you that's Kaley's voice we hear at the beginning. Is that Kaley Cuoco? I'm guessing. Also, The Stewardess. That's a show. Oh, that's a show for you. Yeah, Veev says that's a good one, huh?

Yeah, no, I, well, yes, it is, although I didn't actually get through. Is that a sort of damning with fate praise? If a show is supposed to be a whodunit, a mystery, and then as the viewer, you don't have the interest to get to the final episode to figure out who, in fact, done it? because that's like the the stewardess kaylee cuoco is this very very hard partying uh flight attendant who who uh is i think somewhere in europe and has a wild night of blackout drinking and sexual escapades of some kind and wakes up to find a dead body in the hotel room and and and you know we don't know exactly what has happened but we know someone is dead and now and now the mystery begins of how does kaylee cuoco figure out what happened who did this why are they after her etc and it was very compelling and then i just kind of i don't

know i got distracted with other things yeah i mean sometimes for me the the highest praise i can say about a show is it's so good i haven't watched it yet because i want to sit down and actually pay attention to it you know what's weird is i see natasha leone in the press photos for this but i don't see her anywhere listed in the cast on imdb but that could go back to how terrible imdb is these days which we don't have to relive that conversation so i don't know what's going on there but um anyway yeah so uh i don't know if i recommend handsome or not it's a netflix mystery

movie it makes me well jeff garland's got some jeff garland's also kind of you know yeah he's doesn't sound like the doesn't sound like the the greatest person to be on set with i thought he just didn't like being at my house because he didn't realize he was coming to a private residence to be on tvtl but it sounds like just generally speaking he he's the reports from some people that worked on other shows with him particularly the goldbergs uh were that he was

not a pleasant presence on set i am seeing natasha leone in the like the quiet trailer that is playing in front of me now um remember did we even talk about this i i'm sure we did we obviously talked about the issues that he was i was going to say that he was having but more that he was creating on set is probably a fairer way of putting that but do you remember that they fired him off the show but they still had to include him in a a wedding scene at the end of like i think the series or something they do some very unconvincing cgi with him incredibly uncanny shit going on with this like melty face jeff garland sort of standing in the background of a wedding scene

or something i feel like even in the like let's say that was two years ago in the intervening two years things have gotten so much better with that technology yeah i mean i agree if they could have just delayed that final episode of the program for a couple of years i bet you now you wouldn't even be able to tell it's not him maybe but in that one i feel like it's someone who's wearing a melting jeff garland mask like i prefer just being very very bad and distracted yeah all right

want to talk about my gross body let's do it all right a lot of you're a gross person figure out with a lot of dazzling details here, but they're not dazzling. I guess they're more like, are they dreadful? I'm going to give you a lot of dreadful details about me. I have been dealing with something for, I'm going to say actually probably the last 10 years or so that sort of comes and goes and lately has been a little bit more intense, which is like my body sort of like kind of overreacting to a stimuli. Like for me, it means I get eczema quite a bit. Now I've looked up, because I struggle with some eczema stuff, I've been doing a lot of searching on eczema and um by the way you really you are really in a place where you're struggling with something when you voluntarily look up pictures of other people's eczema which i've been doing a lot lately and i will say like that is not for the for the faint of heart although it does make me appreciate how little affected i am

by it or afflicted maybe um because i have had eczema it started off and i don't know if you i don't think you've ever dealt with anything like this before luke but it's like um oh shoot what is the word for eczema and psoriasis autoimmune autoimmune exactly like the body thinks it's fighting something and it's fighting too hard where it doesn't need to be and the way it started for me and it's it's it's usually um triggered by stress and the thing is i'm sort of a high strung guy that's not something i've mentioned to you on the show before i don't know i don't know if it's something that you've picked up on, but I tend to just generally be high strung and it leads to various things in my body. As we, as we said on the show recently, the buddy keeps the score. So like it wasn't a total surprise to me that my back went out the day after I did that KOW thing. Cause I think I was holding a lot of stress there than it probably, you know, like I probably relaxed for the first time in a month or something and it sprung on me. Um, and the way I used to get eczema was it would sort of be more like a kind of a um kind of a rash kind of between my fingers and stuff sort of a scaly patches right but what i've been getting for the past five years or so are not a scaly patch but like um kind of bumps like these little kind of kind of painful little blisters itchy little blisters and there are things one can do to change your lifestyle to like there's no like kind of cure for this there are some topicals they can prescribe or whatever um but mostly it's like well like i'm getting a lot of eczema bumps around the place where i wear my watch the doctor would say stop wearing your watch there so then as soon as it goes down a little bit i start putting the watch on again because i love wearing my watch

so it's kind of like your your your your skin is the skin the largest organ on i mean we've all heard that right it's the largest organ but it's like your skin is a little predisposed to have some troubles from this and then if you have an area where there's something that's rubbing or an aberration that becomes maybe the location for it like because there's something extra going on

there where you wear your watch yeah and that's just like my interpretation from just kind of reading about this because i do think it's strange that i went from being somebody who would have like these small sort of scaly patches which i think is more common and there's like three or four different kinds of this dermatitis or whatever and um and now i kind of get these little these little rough pimples or whatever and they like i say they come and go but they haven't gone in a long time they've receded in the background to the point where maybe i'll just have one of them on my wrist but then like kind of on a day like today i wake up and i've got like 10 of them for some reason i don't know exactly why it might have had to do with the fact that i was up very late last night maybe my diet hasn't been as good um i mean also the things that they say you shouldn't do is like take long really hot showers you're supposed to take literally one of your favorite activities other than playing dart potentially the reason i mean i put a dartboard in the shower Luke I don't know if I mentioned that to you yet um but yeah like what I do is I take long really hot showers I cannot I don't like tepid water in a shower and I like to take

long showers and so like that's where we are very different yeah I know not not that I like tepid water but I am really a baby about hot water in the shower like I it's got to be it can't be scalding I've like it feels like it really hurts the like the between my shoulder blades of my

back like i have low tolerance for that and that's why you have beautiful skin luke um i remember when we were in i haven't showered in years do you remember when we were in arizona uh and i know that you don't take kind of the pleasure of showers the way i do too you told me a long time ago i don't pleasure myself in the shower andrew thank you very much um you're a gross person try to get your face wet or something i think you used to do and in arizona we had we were when we were at spring training many years ago now i remember we had an airbnb and you took a shower first and He said, man, the water, I can't get it so it's not scalding in there. And then I went in there, and I couldn't get the water hot enough. So I was like, ah, we are dealing.

That was a weird Airbnb. It was the pool house of a mansion. The mansion was being populated by Kansas City Royals fans, and the pool house was being populated by us.

That's right. It was such a – and there was a pool that –

And we couldn't swim in the pool, which I was – that was the whole thing I was excited about, and we got there. And if I remember right, it was like, yeah, pool's not working.

But then you did. you did take one dip in the pool so i can't remember what they change if they got it working halfway through do you remember that you took like it was too cold or something but you i think

maybe like the hot tub wasn't on i don't remember i was excited for us to have a desert uh like a little desert getaway yeah just it was a little strange no we're just in a weird we're just

watching like what did we watch endless a lot of game show we watch a lot of steve harvey hosting

yeah we were watching a ton of family feud i think there were three shows i liked and they

were on a rotation three game shows on the game show network and i think i liked two of them and i didn't like the third one but we were just sitting through the third one to get back to family feud or something that was a fun trip that's where i that's where i met uh my first yaris and i fell in love with a yaris have you ever that a lot of good stuff. Yeah, I believe, did you, I don't want to, I don't want to bring up the

negative. I totally bent it around a telephone pole. Yeah. Have a kind of an issue with,

I thought maybe you hit it on the side of the Airbnb, but that's not, that wasn't where that

happened. There was just one, I'm joking. I didn't, I didn't bend it around a telephone pole. There was one small scratch on this rental car that I do think was my fault, but it was like on the mirror or something. And I was very concerned that I was going to get dinged when I returned it. And

i did not get dinged um so what's the latest with your i mean are you considering really getting to

the gross part yet because this oh this wasn't supposed to be about the the eczema on my wrist it was i and i realized i went too far on that what i wanted to sort of tell you is that my body will sometimes have these overreactions to things that i think are all sort of related uh and sometimes it's kind of eczema sometimes it's other things and this is where things get gross and i alluded to this on the show briefly one time and i kind of backed away from it as fast as possible because i think it gets i think it gets pretty gross but i for the longest time have used over the ear headphones even for my bluetooth needs so if i'm in the basement playing darts or playing video games or on a walk or whatever i always had these big black over the ear headphones um which i always liked but they started to become impractical as i was wearing those to the ball game and then i had to like you know babysit them the whole time i that is by the way

the cool look like that's how all the young people it's come around i was doing it when it wasn't

cool then it became cool and that's around the time that i got my first set of like air i always say earbuds earbuds the kind that go in your ear and i um i uh you know i'm not an apple user so i i think i can't remember the brand i um what uh it doesn't matter i have some here they're right here jbl earbuds that i have jbl jbl i love my jbls and so that was a real game changer for me i got them about six months ago and so as i wander around the house listening to the levitard show constantly i'm not totally closed out if genevieve like wants to yell something from the other room or get my attention or tell me something i don't have these big black headphones blocking out all sound right you can hear through these things a little bit more it was a pretty big game changer You're going for a walk in the neighborhood, not having to have like these big black headphones. So I like it. But I realized after a couple of months of using them and me using them pretty intensively because I'm always listening to something, I started to get some weirdness in my ears. And I'm not exactly sure how much I want to describe this, but it was my understanding. And I started to think that this was my body kind of rejecting these earbuds, these earbuds a little bit. And I or the Levitard show. The Levitard. Could it be content related? Oh, my God, that could be it. Too much Tony on that show is what my ears are telling me. Sorry, Tony. But what I thought was happening, this is so goddamn gross. What I thought was happening was that my ears were producing a lot more earwax. And I don't want to go into too much detail, but there was some grossness going on in there. And there was a buildup going on in there, or so I thought. And so I was sort of trying to keep it clean. I was doing all this stuff of trying to clean my ears. I would pick at it in gross ways throughout the day because I thought I was like kind of picking at buildup. I had a realization yesterday as I was shaving because I'm no longer a bearded boy that I saw a little tiny red bump on the very outside of my ear canal. And I suddenly had a realization. This has been dogging me like, again, it's so embarrassing for me to talk about. So I don't talk about it with you on the show or or even Genevieve too much. But this ear thing has been really dogging me for several months and it's been a point of concern. But I realized yesterday this isn't earwax buildup. This is eczema in my ears. Is this a possibility? Can you even get eczema in your ears? And I looked it up and sure as heck you can. And boy, did I see some pictures. Boy, did I see some pictures of eczema in ears yesterday. And so I now realize that just like my watch on my wrist where I now have a whole bunch of little red bumps this morning, though I'm getting eczema and it wasn't build up in my ears. It was just like dry, flaky. It was my skin having eczema inside my ears when I'm wearing these earbuds, which I don't think I can wear anymore, at least not for a long time until this whole thing.

Oh, because they are kind of lodged in your ear canal. in a way that the big over-the-ear ones aren't. So in fact, you need to go back to that version.

So I guess I don't have a power out for that other than it was a strange thing when, and again, I'm trying to explain why I want to talk about this or why I'm obsessed with it in a way that isn't literally stomach-churning. But this whole time, I was sort of trying to clean out something out of my ears that I thought was a buildup, but it turns out was just my skin. And so this morning, I'm waking up to a new realization, which is I do have an issue. I'm going to start maybe, you know, acting appropriately, doing the treatments for this stuff that you're supposed to do. Because, again, I don't think there's like some sort of like a pill you can take necessarily for this. I know there is for psoriasis from what do they always say in the commercials, medium to severe, moderate to moderate to severe. So I think I do need to like start behaving better, like with my showers and certainly not sticking things in my ears anymore, which is such a bummer. I loved these things so much. But the thing is, I definitely need to stop trying to clean this condition out of my ears. And that is now my reality said. And we're going to have people that are going to be emailing in. I mean, that's the other that's the other thing that's going to happen unquestionably from this conversation is people will will offer their advice based on their own experience. And maybe they're they're dealing with the same issue.

um i'm guessing that if you were to go on the internet it would tell you to like stop eating you know wheat or something like i'm guessing there are a lot of there are a lot of theories

about what in defense of of what i've been reading that does not come up that much i mean there are some dietary things but it doesn't go in that direction it's usually just a lot more like for this like remove earrings because your body thinks that there's something there that it's fighting

off and there are certainly so it's really kind of just any persistent rubbing kind of it's not

just that though because like it's it's a definitely a stress reaction as well like you get it in places well i guess maybe where your body rubs against your body like i think very common places are between your fingers and the backs of your knees and the first time this ever happened to me was when i was the most stressed out for a prolonged period of time in my life which was when i was in la starting that radio show that was the first time that you'd ever had this at all yes and I it all started with me late pretty late in the game yeah and it started with me sitting at my desk totally stressed out over everything the deadline the just everything you know the state I was in there and I was I just had this memory it almost reminded me of being a kid and not really realizing you have poison ivy until you've already been itching yourself without thinking about it for like an hour or whatever like I remember just like sitting at my desk and itching the backs of my knees through my jeans but not really thinking about it thinking about thinking about it until one day I realized oh my god I have these big rashes and then I started looking I'm like oh this is eczema and it's also the stuff that's you know starting to appear on my hands and whatnot and that's when I sort of learned that I had this but I just wanted to go to the defense of the internet in this case it's not they don't jump to that I've been reading so much about this and it mostly is like you know buy lotions or or like topicals that can sort of like heal and moisturize and just give it time and definitely remove irritants um and uh so uh

the things that is it in both ears yes okay so it's definitely got to be air earbud earbud

related so i'm i'm pretty sure i mean again it's changed i mean i the thing is though and i just want to make this clear like because i am getting it on the wrist where i wear my watch and my earbuds it makes it sound like this only happens in places where there's some sort of a foreign object that is not the case people have these outbreaks all over the place and for just various internal reasons but there are outside factors that can um you know create more of a problem and for me it's just kind of like I'm just so steadfast in like why do I need to wear a watch like I have a clock on my phone I just like my watch Genevieve got it for me as a gift it's a nice watch I like wearing it and so as soon as I think oh this stuff isn't so bad I can wear my watch again I'll do it or I'll just put these earbuds in I know I'm having issues with my ears and they're almost definitely related to these earbuds but I like them more so I just barrel through with it and I never do what's what's right the smallest steps in life that I could do and so anyway I think I'm going to at least try to take some of those small steps going forward

I'm just trying to figure out which one of these many drugs that I see promoted on when I watch network television or cable news is the one for you yeah um i'm hoping we can pick the one with the catchiest song i mean i know it's not ozempic because that's been in the news so much um maybe uh nothing is everything is that i think that might be for you yeah nothing is everything oh that's psoriasis that's different yeah i'm pretty

sure like i have my so in the past i've had doctors prescribe for me um some topical steroids i think that's the only thing that is it works for eczema which i do have but they always i don't know if i've told you this before it's very ironic they always say don't use it too much because it thins the skin and when i'm looking online it always says you know you shouldn't you know use the prescription stuff too much because it thins the skin now you know me to have very thick skin generally speaking well that's it i mean you honestly could use a little thinning of it yeah right exactly genevieve when genevieve heard that she was just like oh my god keep you away from that you have the thinnest skin of any I know so yeah I don't think that there is like a I don't think that there's like a pill or a powder or anything to consume well I'm sorry that I'm you can

see this Andrew on the video link we're using but I've now started kind of I think without even meaning to itching parts of my like hand out of just having the conversation yeah but I was gonna say I'm sorry that this this definitely sucks for you I'm I guess it's good that you finally figured it out though right I mean, it's a bummer that you're not going to probably be able to wear AirPods. You're going to have to continue cycling in and out of fashion with your headphone choices. Because you're absolutely right. Those things were very popular. The big over-the-ear headphone was popular in, say, the 80s, like with the Heathcliff cartoon. Remember he had Mungo, I think, was the big guy. And then there was the person on roller skates. There was the cat on roller skates. that would have been a period where the big over-the-ear headphones were really in style and then it went out of style and now it's way back in style because of the AirPod Max's the Apple ones that are big over the ear that's now what people are constantly wearing when I see them making TikToks or I'm jealous of somebody who can exercise with those things on I'm just such a sweating mess when I'm exercising that it's got to be AirPod's for me or even corded AirPod's but definitely not over the ear like that would be i would short those things out in one session well

that's the thing yeah i mean that's what i used to work out in when i was going to the gym like more on the reg i would be on that treadmill and just sweating my ass off wearing these big heavy these you know big heavy headphones but at the time i was just like i don't know anytime i shot the thing is i've never liked earbuds that go into your ear that far like back in the day like i still went to this website that sold like old school do you remember the original earbuds with the wire from like an ipod or something where it was more like a plate like a a tiny little dinner plate or something like a it was flat like a dime and you would stick it into your ear it didn't go as far into your ear uh-huh i would like those were the things that i was always trying to because i never liked the kind that went deep into your ear but that's how all these bluetooth ones go so i finally kind of i mean it's just ironic i finally got them i'm like okay i can oh, this is a big improvement. This is what the world's been doing. And then my body is like, you're not like the rest of the world. What are you doing?

Well, I'm sorry, Andrew. That's a bummer.

Oh, that's all right. I think I need to, even though I am going to probably treat myself to maybe some nicer over-the-ear headphones because my other ones are kind of falling apart on me. I think truly I shouldn't be wearing headphones even over the ear that much. I should probably just get used to just listening to things on speakers again and just like try to let my ears.

my my problem is i i'm constantly purchasing not constantly but in the last two years i've probably bought four sets of the old like relatively old school apple airpods the cordless kind okay i don't like the airpod um the the pros they're the ones that are supposedly noise canceling and they're fancier i don't like those ones they are um they they plug my ear up too much and i feel like i have an equilibrium problem i like the kind of like first version of the apple airpods the problem is i don't think those are people aren't buying those very much anymore so i don't know if apple is making them at a lower quality or what's happening but one of two things happens now i buy them they're like a hundred bucks a piece or something they're almost i don't want to say they're disposable but they're like it's now the thing where i buy one and then after about two or three months one of the airpods start stops charging particularly well like it just sometimes i'll open it up and one will be on 100 and the other will be on zero and i can't understand why i will try to like do you want to talk about being a gross person sometimes what i'll do is i'll i'll like kind of lick the there's a contact point at the bottom of these airpods that's where they charge in the little thing they sit in i'll like kind of lick it and thinking maybe that will create a little bit more of a contact point and then the eventual event what one of two things happens eventually one of the airpods just stops holding a charge for some reason so now I'm down to one and then eventually I'll lose that one that was working because I was walking around with it or I was jogging and I didn't put it back in its case I put it in a pocket of something or my shorts pocket and then it's in the wind and I currently have at least three I could walk over to this this table behind me and grab probably two different charging things that have only one air pod in them and it's the one that doesn't work anymore That's the reality of my life, Andrew.

Do you ever clean your – I mean, I don't want to do that thing where I'm offering advice. You didn't ask for advice. You're on your own journey. But one thing that – and you know me. I love cleaning things and getting into little routines. With my little JBL AirPods here, I'm holding the little case up, Luke, so you can see it.

I like to take these things out. Oh, you're not looking at the screen. I like to take these things out of the charging case and then get a little Q-tip with some rubbing alcohol. Yes, and I clean them, you know, the earbuds themselves, earbuds themselves. But also I then clean out the charger and the contact points in the charger as well. Yeah, I should do that.

I need to invest in some rubbing alcohol and some Q-tips so I can get my –

Oh, God. How can you live without them? I use them for everything.

I you know I don't know Andrew it's just different lifestyle choices you know theoretically you can I don't know when this would come up but you can wear your airpods in the shower they are technically waterproof people say and I see people online taking showers with their airpods in and

that seems like madness to me yeah that seems deeply uncomfortable to me and I don't I would never do that and besides I think I've mentioned I have not one but two radios in my bathroom now Oh, sure. Yeah, we've all heard.

They're talking about it all over town.

One set to AM and one set to FM. It has been great.

You know how Andrew is able to afford to live like this king with two radios, two AM radios in his downstairs bathroom? The Dazzling Donors. Exactly. Who we're going to thank in a minute here, and then talk Costco and a quick update on your garbage, and also what my situation is as far as watching televised sports in the comfort of my own home. That's right after we do these 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 ready. Ready. Go. Everybody razzle-dazzle.

Speaking of our dazzling donors, let's thank these wonderful folks who are donating a dazzling amount of dough. It's how TBTL is possible all these years later in this ever-changing media landscape. It's because we get support from folks like Ryan Honick, who's in Alexandria, Virginia. What up, Ryan? Long time, long time friend of the show, supporter of the program. Ryan says, reflecting on last year's episode, 3887, Dazzling Doinkers.

That's a good name.

I can't help but laugh at the irony of being on the opposite end of that infamous field goal miss. Sorry, Luke, but that doinker cost me a win in my Super Bowl squares pool.

Oh, that's right. Was there a Super Bowl doink that worked in your favor?

There was. It was two Super Bowls ago. And it was because the Harris Butker, the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, doinked a field goal attempt. And I had a silly like side bet in one of those apps that was that there would be a doink during the Super Bowl, which was a very, very, very unlikely thing to have happen. And sure enough, it happened.

Congratulations again.

Congratulations to me. And sorry, Ryan. Yeah. Apologies. Luke, your airport security antics ahead of the Winter Games had me wondering, what were my airport security antics ahead of the Winter Games?

I don't remember, Luke. I apologize to you and Ryan.

I wonder if, did that have to do with when my bag, my luggage got stuck on the wrong side of the security apparatus?

Oh, and you lost your mix pre? Or no, no, that was something else.

Oh, that happened too. That also happened. It had Ryan wondering, why no AirTags yet? You could easily track your stuff. As tech-savvy as you are, well, that's where you're wrong, Ryan. It seems like a no-brainer. Oh, and your story about CBS and the SSA hit close to home. After my own decade-long battle, I finally settled with them last year. I wish I had thought to get media help with it at the time. That cash could have really gotten me out of a couple of jams. What's the SSA?

I don't know. You did a story about it. I don't know.

Are we listening to the same podcast? Is it a social security thing? Did you do a CBS? I mean, I am locked in a protracted legal dispute with the Social Security Administration. I must have done a story. Oh, wait.

No, it's not your CBS story. It's your story about CBS and the SSA. Are you in a protracted battle over SSA funds related to your CBS gig?

Doesn't seem like the kind of story that I would be doing. Like your story about CBS and the SSA hit close to home. What was the story about CBS and the SSA?

That's what I'm saying. Yeah, I don't think you did a CBS story about the SSA, but something about it. I don't know. Was it something about your payments from CBS and Social Security being withheld? I have no idea, man.

That was back when I was really against them withholding Social Security from my paycheck.

Right, I don't know.

And just because I had declared myself a sovereign citizen, Andrew. How do you not remember this phase of the program? Back when I was in my sovereign citizen era?

You were the president of Lukebania.

Oh, what a time. Ryan says, 2024 has started rocky. My service pup, Pico, is now retired, and I am once again a resident of Breakup Town. Aw, Ryan. Sorry, Ryan. Sorry to hear that. And sorry to hear that Pico has retired. TBTL and the community of tens have been my constant. My longest relationship is with a pod cart. Belongs on TBTL merch, Ryan. Oh, that's a good idea. That's a very, very good idea. That is a very good idea. I think that, in fact, at this point, I can say that that applies to my life. This podcast Andrew is without a doubt The longest successful relationship Of my life Like it's not even close So Ryan I hear you and I feel you I'm sorry you've been kind of going through Here is to not letting Doinkers, lost items Systemic battles or breakups Keep us down No mountain too tall Ryan what a good Positive attitude to be keeping through all that stuff That sounds like some bummers there I'm really sorry I would like to know what my story about CBS and the SSA exactly was. It was a systemic battle. We now know that. It's a systemic battle. Doesn't involve PICO. That's a separate issue.

Could this have had something to do with the fact that, like, during the pandemic, here in Washington state, there were scammers who were kind of taking people's government checks, and somehow you got—

Well, that did happen to me. somebody tried to file unemployment claims under my name, but you know who caught that was actually APM. I got a letter from them saying, did you file for unemployment benefits? And I said, despite what you've heard, I am still technically employed here. And I hadn't, and it was, and it turned out it was because somebody, some entity somewhere, some people had tried to file unemployment benefits under my name and I had to freeze all of my accounts.

I don't, that's, so maybe that's part of it. I'm not sure. Wow.

Anyway. Well, Ryan, it sounds like a hell of a show. Again, I don't know if it's TBTL, but it sounds like there's never a dull moment with whatever this program is that you're referring to. So thank you, Ryan, and hope that, you know, the rest of 2020, we're still relatively early in this. We're only in the fourth month of this whole thing. Let's hope that the rest of 2024 really turns around for you. And thanks again for helping with TBTL. Maestro.

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

We've also got to thank Nicole Partridge. Like the bird. Nicole's like a bird. She'll only fly away. Can you name? Can you name? No. I have no idea. The I'm like a bird singer. Do you know that song? No. That's Reg Nobel's song. I'm like a bird. I'll only fly away. I don't know. Where my home is I'm kind of guessing

Is that like a soul song from the 90s?

Yes, I think maybe Was it from the 90s? Probably No She's had a She's had a resurgence of sorts She played, I think she played like Outside Lands or Bottled Rock or something Something in the Bay Area where people were really Stoked about this music Even though I could only probably Name, well no that's not true I think she also was part of the song Promiscuous Girl with whoever the guy in that song is. Is this helping you at all?

No, this is one of my biggest blind spots. So I'll just say J-Lo. She's having a big comeback.

It is, in fact, Nelly Furtado.

Oh, okay. I remember that name. I'm like a bird. I'll only fly away. Okay.

Kind of like a Nicole Partridge, who's in Bothell, Washington, by the way. No further comment needed. Nope. We're all thinking it. Nicole says, I'm so happy to be part of the inaugural class of dazzling donors for TBTL colon Independence Day. I like that idea of, like, you're the first class of TBTL. Like, you're the incoming. Like, this is going to get us and me in real trouble. It's like, isn't there something in, like, X-Men? Don't they go to school for being X-Men people?

there is a there is a school for X-Men people and they're like there I feel like this is like we

got there's like a you know the incoming first inaugural class of TBTL colon Independence Day

yeah yeah yeah oh that's right because it's like Luke you're you're knocking on the door something there I think that there is a oh now i wish i hadn't started the sentence uh isn't there a movie called x-men colon first class oh okay and i think it is i think it is like like actors playing younger versions of the characters as they appeared in earlier movies and is it like a professor xavier isn't that who i believe yeah professor x yeah uh let's see here first class is it a movie isn't a movie john sklaroff will fire us both x-men colon first class 2011 action sci-fi thank you very

much look at tbtl colon independence day we're doing it uh tbtl has been an important part of my life for the past 15 years and i'm super proud of luke andrew and john for figuring out how to make sure it sticks around well nicole be proud of yourself because the dazzling donors and the other people supporting the show is really how this has all been able to work um let's see uh in my message i'd like to remind people oh let me just go back a little bit i want to make sure we're getting all of all of nicole's words of wisdom and also i think it's a compliment to us so i want to really more important uh uh thanks so much for the work that you put into churning out content five days a week people do seem shocked when i tell them that we do this

five days a week people are gonna be really shocked when they hear the beginning of today's show i i feel i'm just like sitting on the urge to not apologize to these dazzling donors that their dazzling donations are appearing in today's show after a half hour of me talking about my

gross ears just edit it all out just make it it will be a really short intro if i edit that all

out it'll basically be like we hear the little clip from the movie handsome we talk about the movie handsome a little bit and then we're immediately thanking the donors well if that's

what you heard today you know that andrew went back in and cut out yeah some ear content yeah um nicole says uh in my message i'd like to remind people how vital their libraries are to this community to their community rather not only do they provide a safe third space for people to be without paying to access but libraries also offer unfettered access to knowledge hopefully without censorship i'm probably preaching to the library choir here but it's worth remembering that services and access to public and school libraries are under threat across the United States. If this is happening in your community, please offer loud and proud support for your library. All my best. From Bothell, dot, dot, dot, Nicole. Yes. I will, when the subject of libraries comes up, I will mention that I was a kid who lived in the Green Lake and Greenwood public libraries because there was, well, first of all, they had like TVs there So I could watch videos like all of the collected music videos of Wham, which I liked. I don't know how that made its way into the Greenwood Public Library, but it did. But also just that idea of being somewhere. I mean, as Nicole points out, a third place, being somewhere where you don't have to pay to be there. And there's all of this knowledge and entertainment and information. It was really big in my life as a kid. And I didn't grow up in a house that had, other than the Bible, a particular large amount of books. And I didn't have any money. So having this something I could go do that was enriching and I felt welcome there, it was a really, really big deal for me. And that's how I used to while away many a summer afternoon would just be hanging out at the Green Lake Library. So I fully support what Nicole is saying.

As some of my favorite memories as a kid was that feeling of going into the library and actually being able to spend some time there, but also checking out like a big pile of books. But I remember, like, finding a corner of the library, and you remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books, of course. I think most people remember that from our generation. I don't know if you'll remember the Time Machine books. They were like a Choose Your Own Adventure, but they were their own brand, and they were all called Time Machine. And they were some of my favorite books. They had, like, kind of silver covers, but it was, like, you would be a time traveler, and your adventure would be in the, like, the prehistoric era or, like, with dinosaurs or something. thing or you'd be in the 1940s or something like I don't know the Knights oh yeah Secret of the Knights I had that one I think yeah that was of Saturn yes looking at those must have been some of the I think I had both of those but also I remember checking out those from the library or better yet like finding a corner of the library and just like it felt like just diving into something that was just such a I don't even know how to describe it I don't think I have a parallel like that like i i still like to read but there was something about being a young person and just like feeling like this is endless it's just like endless it's like also that realization

that like oh this is just like a movie that your brain makes up somebody said the other day i saw like hey i don't want to bum you out but just think about this reading is just your mind hallucinating based on ink marks. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't want that to dampen anyone's enthusiasm for the library system, but it is kind of what's happening. All right, Nicole, thank you so much, and thanks to Ryan as well for making TBTL possible today. Coming in. Nice. Cone.

Hello and welcome to Top Stories.

I always mess that one up. Coming in with a lot of force and volume there. It's the Top Stories. we don't need to belabor this too much but I will tell you Andrew that yesterday afternoon I was doing a bunch of different things here and one of the things I was planning on doing was really digging into my Fubo TV options I left the show yesterday I finished the show TBTL thinking okay well this is it I am done with Xfinity and you know just like any kind of relationship I think that Xfinity sensed that I was pulling away from it and so sure enough i don't know three or four in the afternoon i turn on the television and what do you think is operational root sports and even though the mariners did not play a particularly great game last night i even sent you a little video i i don't have so my kitchen that where the kitchen is going to be in this little house is there are no countertops and also there's no plumbing i mean there's no water and the stove doesn't work other than that it's a pretty good kitchen right now sure yeah um but i just like you i hear it's and isn't that the most important part of a kitchen love is what makes a kitchen uh worth kitchening like it is but this andrew if you want to know how much what where my real values and motivations lie what i have now started doing is kind of using this kitchen area that again has no working sink has no countertops and the stove doesn't work i've started to use it as my food preparation area how do i do that because there are no countertops i have uh some disassembled ikea cabinetry still that they sent me some stuff that got broken in the mail and then when i called them and said it's broken they were like keep it that's how you know you're dealing with quality yeah right sure when their answer and then and i was like how much proof do you need And they said, none. That's how you know this is a high-quality, long-lasting product that you've purchased. They're just like, honestly, we'll send you more broken shit, and you can keep that, too. We just don't care.

So you're flipping those over so that you're using the flat side of them as the countertop?

I'm using the flat side. Because basically, eventually, if I wanted to assemble these, they could turn into another cabinet. Sectional cabinet is what it's called. Sectional with a K. But instead, it's just one side of like a standard cabinet that would be in the lower part of your of your kitchen. And I now have that sitting over a hole in another cabinet. I have it sitting where a cap where a countertop is going to go as of Tuesday, Andrew. But it's like I just sit there and I'm like chopping up my veggies. I was making this orzo salad last night. And it's so silly because all I have to keep walking between the real kitchen and this camp kitchen that I'm making for some reason, just because I want to be standing out where the view is and where the television is. It's so silly. I should just continue to use the regular old kind of grody kitchen until the full transition is done. But instead, I am doing this weird thing. But I will tell you this. Last night, I was having some of my orzo salad, and the game was on, and the Mariners were already losing, unfortunately. And the sun was setting, and it was a nice warm night. It, tell you what, was pretty fun. Yeah. Pretty exciting. And for all of my, I mean, look, I still hate Xfinity with the fire of a thousand suns. But now that it's, it took me, I guess here's my point. It took me like 10 minutes to go from I will I will find whoever runs this company and I will shame that will follow them around on the streets of wherever and I will yell shame like Cersei Lannister walking through what King's Landing or something like I went from that to this is really not that bad like in 10 minutes of it working. Now I'm just like, cool, I have root sports again and all is well.

But then watching balls go through Ty France's glove as if he had a hole in it. I honestly, I was at the game yesterday. I had a really lovely time with my friend Paul and we were watching my first, you know, in-person ball game of the season. And the Mariners were playing very, very poorly.

Did he do that too? Because our right fielder made a critical fielding error as well.

There were at least two, maybe three actual recorded errors in that game, but also just general terrible fielding. And there's something about that. Like, it's baseball. It's a long season. You're going to win some. You're going to lose some. But watching your players look like a joke while fielding. I said this on our text chain, I think on opening day, watching some of these fielding issues. Like it literally looks like when I'm playing my baseball video game. And the thing is, and I'm not joking, I never remember how to field in my baseball game. There's too many buttons on the controller. You're just mashing buttons. So I just always do my best to get it out of the park. And when I don't do, or no, no, I'm sorry. When I'm playing defense, I'm not, no, I'm just trying to like get strikeouts, I should say, because I just don't want to deal with that ball coming at me. I'm joking. I'm joking. So, anyway, it really looks like that's what we look like. And when I was at the game yesterday, and, again, it was a really good time despite the play on the field, I got your text message, I think, a little bit late, and I thought that your point was going to be, well, thank God I paid for this so that I could turn this on tonight and watch the worst team just, like, fumble around the field. So I am legitimately happy that that was not your experience. that despite the gameplay that you had a nice night watching your Xfinity broadcast.

I did, I just, I enjoyed the sounds of it. I enjoyed the whole just kind of ritual of, I mean, really what it was, was this feeling that like for all of this time and energy and expense, great expense that I've put into this silly project here, that actually when it's all happening, even if it's on a like a overturned Ikea side of a cabinet, as the Mariners are losing, as I have to continually go into the other room to get the stuff that I need. Even amidst all that, I was like, yeah, this feels good. This feels kind of like what I was hoping it would feel like or what I sort of envisioned. So to feel that coming together was, yeah, it was a very nice feeling. We must, and I must stop myself from getting into a whole what is even going on with this team's offense kind of a thing and move on to a what is even going on with your garbage kind of a conversation. What is going on with your garbage?

I think you'll be happy to hear that this is a quickie. This is I'm going to do something that you do on the show a lot, which is reset expectations on this. I mentioned at the end of the show a couple of days ago that, like, I think my my garbage collector might be mad at me, which sounds like a really juicy story reporting you for each and every small transgression. That's kind of my guess here. But just just to be warned, we can keep this brief. And also there's probably not a lot of smoke here. But I mentioned on the show a couple of weeks ago that I called in to the city because I saw that I had a quote unquote like extra garbage pickup fee. And it wasn't like they sent another truck out. It was something like extra garbage was set out by the curb. And of course, I would know if I had done that. Vives and I make a point of not doing that. We have a small garbage can, but I'll spread it across weeks if I need to or go to the transfer station to get rid of it. I've never set out extra garbage. And so I called the city. I'm like, could you take this fee off of the bill? They were very nice about it. They're like, yeah, usually if there's some sort of transgression here, the garbage collector should take a photo of it. What's that?

wasn't this because you had a pole like a thing from your blinds or something now my that's now

my guess they're like if they're if your garbage lid won't close or it's pried open by more than three inches based on the garbage inside then that's considered extra garbage and so we're going to charge you it wasn't much right it was like it was it nine dollars or fourteen dollars or something um but i was like okay i didn't know about that rule and then in the back of my head i'm like oh that's probably when i threw those mini blinds away and like most of them fit but like one didn't and so my lid might have been pried up by the way i heard from a friend who listens to this show and i'll keep them anonymous but he said oh you got me going through my bills they've been charging me that 14 bucks every single week because i always am jamming stuff into my garbage can um and i was like yep well that sounds like money that could be redirected to tbtl now that we were the solution to that problem that's right this is a very just economics I will also say this is a very generous friend of ours who has supported TVTL in many ways, economic and otherwise. So what I'm saying is let's double down on that friend. So anyway, that happened. I got them to take the charge off because they're like the garbage collector didn't take a photo. So we don't even really if you're contesting this, we don't really know what the issue was. So no problem. We're taking that off. And again, the people who are answering the phones at that particular department are very, very helpful and good to work with. So I really appreciate that. the next week though the next garbage pickup when i went to retrieve my garbage cans from this from the you know side of the road or whatever my black garbage bin which is like you know this kind of the heavy kind with wheels on the bottom it's like a city bin was turned all the way upside down like usually they empty these things and they just put it's easier just to set them back down on the wheels because that's the heavier end of this thing it felt like a deliberate act that they turned my garbage can upside down at the end of my driveway after emptying it are they are they mad at me probably not but it really made me wonder why this did they hear that i'm now contesting their charges there's no way the garbage collector gets a report that that i've taken something off of my bill i would just was there a head about was there a knife through a

piece of paper stabbed into the garbage can the paper just said you there was like a little it

was like a dirty pink teddy bear if you can sort of picture that and that had a knife right through

yes okay that and the teddy bear have a mustache like a very thick lustrous it was it was drawn

on there with marker did i send you a picture of this have we talked about this i don't remember talking about this but yeah you must have seen what i don't understand i don't understand the

the i don't understand the like physics of this because aren't isn't that garbage can dumped with one of those big you know kind of like mechanical clamps that's what i thought and then dumps and then goes back down like i don't understand how it could even be placed back down upside down that would have to be it got dumped it went down with its wheels on the ground and then someone came and picked it up and turned it over i think this is very much a shot across the bow it felt it feels

weird to me and here's the thing i can't 100 verify that the trucks that pick up my garbage use the robotic arms i feel like they would that's why we all have these standardized cans I do know that for my yard, the only time I've actually seen somebody empty my bin into one of the trucks was that time, which was also controversial, where they emptied my food and yard waste bin and picked up my Christmas tree and threw it in the back of the truck. And now I've got one of those tiny little green like yard waste bins, the smallest kind. So I don't think that they do have robots that pick up the tiny ones. So I did see that collector pick it up and empty it by hand. Maybe they're doing the same thing with my black garbage bin. I'm not exactly sure, but it certainly seemed like a weird. It seemed it seemed like a weird.

and if if if that is a if a human person was picking again that just seems like you that way you couldn't do like a you know a long route of trying to like physically pick up these huge garbage cans and dump them yeah you know like i feel like that would just wear you down like there's a reason we have these these kind of mechanized systems but let's just say it was a person and they did pick up your garbage can and dump it and then that's an intentional act to put it back on its lid i mean that's like throw it's like the paper boy throwing the newspaper on your roof like that's really that's a i feel like if one of the main rules of being the garbage person would be don't put the garbage can back upside down yeah i mean the first rule is empty the garbage definitely first rule is don't talk about garbage club second rule is yeah for rule number one is empty the garbage and rule number two is don't put the garbage can back down lid side down I don't understand how that could be an accident. That just seems like it defies everything we think we know about this process, which leads me to believe that maybe there's, you know, do they have, have you noticed, do they have some they must have some kind of little screen in their truck that kind of tells them where they are in the route and I don't know, note, probably notes about like this is a long driveway, probably so if someone else has to take over the route at the last minute like there'll be some intel there about what to expect but like i just feel like uh there's something on i think you're i think that your account is flagged i think you're i think you're

on their list man i'm marked i'm well i'm glad to have your i'm glad to have your backup on this because you could have easily dismissed this as the irony though is like nobody is more careful

about their garbage collection or thinks about it more than you you ending up on their no fly list

would be the height of irony yeah especially because i want to be their friends like i don't i don't want to have an you know uh combative relationship with my garbage collectors i'd

invite them over for holidays if you know what well you could tip them i mean that is a thing

right i don't i mean i know that that's a thing i don't think that's a thing in my neighborhood like i don't know exactly how you live in the non-tipping district well i mean can you imagine me leaving any kind of money in in my area like i think i've never done it myself but i think you

walk out oh i see okay like like around christmas time or whatever you might kind of come out with an envelope and say hey thanks so much or that's that's what i've heard people do i have not done it i also think that's a throwback to like when you had like a garbage man who came by every weekend a male person and now it's like i feel like things are so subcontracted and fractured And it's probably, you know, the USPS on behalf of Amazon that's like emptying your garbage every third Wednesday because of some somehow that's what the like AI system has decided is the most efficient way to do this.

Yeah, it's a full life cycle now. It's literally the IKEA people picking up the old broken IKEA stuff.

you know what will be the ultimate sign that the the garbage folks are mad at you is if you come out one day and your garbage can is upside down but somehow all the garbage is still in it yeah right and then i have to like yeah like a pint glass of beer that's turned over on the table

but still has the beer in it right exactly it's a bar bed i can i'll bet you i can drink this without spilling any of it right yeah so look for that i'll be honest with you like the fact that it was picked up every i mean because i'm so paranoid about them not emptying my bins every time they empty my bins it feels like a little victory to me like maybe maybe the the flip side of my constant paranoia and aggravation about this is i get a little treat once a week every time my garbage is successfully emptied which it has been almost every day for the past two years since we've moved in here except for like one time i think um but the the my last apartment hurt me so bad that now i take so much joy like i do a little fist pump when i see that the when i open up that black lid and i see that it has been successfully emptied and that no neighbors have put dog shit in it before i could pull it back from the curb that is just like

any given thursday that's a little victory any given thursday it's basically 52 opportunities for you to feel really psyched for for 10 to 15 minutes that's right what is the show title the

president of lukebania or any given thursday that's the problem man any given thursday is

pretty strong have we used a version of that before i don't know i don't know i'm not sure

by the way i was going to tell you this off air but i'll just brag about it on air i was very proud of my show title yesterday did you happen to see what it was no what did you go with Judd not lest ye be judged

That is very very good Thank you Very good I needed that validation No that's good I love that

Here I go once again with the email Every week I hope that it's from a female Oh man It's not from a female

Let me just I know it's not an email technically But let me just wrap this Costco thing up because I've been promoting it for A week and we haven't talked about it

Oh, the hot dog thing.

The hot dog thing. I do think it's actually kind of an interesting story because it gets down to the question of lost leaders. So the news that's going around is that certain Costco's have started to post signs that you need to actually have a membership card to eat in their little food court area where famously, of course, they've got the cheap hot dog and soda deal. They've got, you know, this chicken bake that people love. They've got a Costco hot dog. They've got pizza. all of this stuff and uh and i guess you know you had a lot of people you technically because you don't have to show your costco membership to get to that part of the costco you could kind of walk in and then sort of hang a right or you could maybe be with someone who has a membership and they show the membership when you come in but then they go off and they do their shopping i guess there's a way for people that are intent enough on it for people without a membership to get over to the food court and to order some of that sweet, sweet Costco food. And I guess for one thing, Costco, I don't think makes very much money on this stuff. I think it's kind of a loss leader for them. I think it's just to get people in the store. And also this is the part that I didn't quite expect. I was reading one article that said the people that are really annoyed about the previous situation or the people that are paying for their Costco membership, but then when they get done with their shopping there's like a crazy long line to get their their costco lunch and their theory is that it's mostly people who are not even members of that costco they've just come by for a affordable lunch and so i guess the people the card carrying members now like the crackdown because it gets rid of the riffraff or the hoi polloi huh okay i had not heard about that

aspect of it and i guess that makes a lot of sense or maybe if i did i maybe you just articulated it in such a good way, Luke, that it becomes more clear to me now.

I think that's probably right now the leading theory.

But I was a little surprised by this headline as well because I figured the same thing, that it's like, even if you're a non-member but you're in the habit of going there and getting your little lunch every couple of weeks or something and not using a membership card to get in there, it just makes you more and more solidified in the Costco universe and makes it more likely that eventually you'll just tip over the edge and get a membership card so i was kind of surprised and like why why is this the crackdown because they can't be losing that i mean i know that like you know dollar 50 hot dogs the price will never change blah blah blah blah blah but like are you losing that much money by people sneaking in but maybe it was maybe i mean could it be accurate like actually true and accurate that they're doing this because of their their members are getting annoyed well that was again

one of the

I saw they interviewed somebody who was at one of these stores that had cracked down and he said the line has gotten considerably shorter so I at least somebody somewhere one time one guy said that but I mean to me it's just like it just seems like Costco is such a tremendously profitable operation for one thing like you just said if somebody wants to go sneak into your building and sit in your food court and eat a hot dog that doesn't make you any money as a company and stare at all of the majesty that is your costco i mean isn't this why companies buy advertising isn't this why costco connections magazine exists by the way the dry cleaner that i take my um my my kind of dress outfits to now down in town um it's uh i think i i might have said this to you i definitely said it to some people i don't want to um i don't want to sound i don't want to sound uh what overly fancy or overly snooty but i did think it was funny that i did bring a tuxedo in to have it dry cleaned and i think it might have been the first tuxedo that's ever been brought into this particular dry cleaner because when i went back to get it i don't think they even asked me for the ticket they were just like it's the guy who brought the tuxedo he's wearing a monocle though when you picked it up two monocles attached by a piece of metal and then two like our ear ear things Oh, it was glasses. I was wearing glasses. I'm sorry. I call them double monocles. But there is the oldest, saddest Costco Connections magazine that's just been sitting on the like where you ding the bell and you pay for the stuff. And it's like, has anyone ever cracked that Costco Connections? I don't know. It's like, why was it put there in the first place? Was it like in case someone wants to read while we're retrieving their stuff? Like, all I'm saying is if you're a company like Costco, I think getting someone in the door to sell them or even give them a food product so that they are experiencing your company overall is like a dream scenario from a business standpoint. Like, yeah, that's so much more awareness of your company than just like they saw a billboard, they saw a TV commercial or whatever. So that part was kind of surprising to me. And I guess, again, I don't have the articles right in front of me, but one of the articles I read about this, it sort of, you know, there was famously this conversation that apparently happened, I think, between Jim Senegal, who was one of the founders of Costco, and some high-level person. And the story goes that the high-level person was considering raising the prices on the hot dogs, and Jim Senegal was like, over my dead body, or whatever he said. That's become kind of like lore at the company. But this article mentioned that there legitimately was some other conversation between, I think maybe the same people, where Costco, they were like, we're not making any money on these hot dogs. And so what they did was they created their own hot dog production facility, which allowed them to get their margins up on the hot dogs, which allowed them to sell the hot dogs for cheap and not lose their shirts.

And I just, all of this is a shock to me because I just assumed they were just giving the hot dogs away. Like, who cares? You make so much money as a company. It's like Les Schwab giving us popcorn. It's like Nordstrom letting you return that shirt that they know you wore for a year and pitted it out. Like you just build this into your company because people love it and you make more money or you at least continue to make a healthy profit because of this stuff.

Yeah, which I guess, just to go back to it, I guess gives more credence to the idea that they were actually doing this potential. I mean, it goes so against my nature to say that a huge corporation was actually doing something out of service to its customers. That's the reason I keep choking on this. But it could be that they're like, hey, listen, the people who are actually giving us – because one of the things I read in the article, which has been a couple of weeks now or anything, or at least long enough for me not to remember the details too well. promoting it for two weeks the um the vast majority i want to say in the 70 percentile or maybe even like 73 percent of the profit comes from membership not from sales at the register so they need to keep their members happy and if their members are starting to be like i don't know man costco used to be this great experience i'd go in i'd buy you know a a 100 pack of um god damn I don't even know cotton. It's hard for me to imagine. Egg bites. Egg bites or whatever.

I bought so many. I didn't eat one of them, and then I just had to toss them. Because they looked – I like those egg bites you get at Starbucks, and they had them, similar thing there, and they were all hermetically sealed in these packets. And I was like, I'll eat these every day. I never had one of them and then had to just admit that I wasn't going to eat these and that they were probably not good anymore. So there you go.

Eggs last forever. um i uh i i you know my rule or i think you know my rule never buy something at costco that you aren't already buying on the regular from a grocery store what was the thing that genevieve

took a flyer on and you just violated

the rule i where to begin i mean i mean i don't want to be cruel we have two bags like two one pound bags of frozen fruit in our freezer upstairs because genevieve saw them at costco and thought oh i'm gonna start putting these in smoothies and made like two smoothies and that was like a year

and a half ago and now we i've got a couple of bags of that going on yeah that have moved

refrigerators right and i'm always like if you want to try something like let's buy a smaller bag at the grocery store and i go i do the grocery shopping i'm happy to go to the grocery store almost every day if need be and then if we realize hey this is something that we're buying a lot of let's up the ante and save some money by buying it from costco but if you're just wandering around costco and then you look at something you're like you know what maybe that's the person i'm going to start being today do not buy it at costco buy it at the grocery store first maybe i'm the kind of

person who will brush my teeth with two Sonicare toothbrushes at the same time. That's right. Do you have any emails or emails now that I've polluted this segment with my Costco talk? But for me, critically, cleared it off the list. Is there anything else you want to do before we get out of here?

You know, I have, I'll forward promo something for next week. We have an interesting story from someone talking about their haircut experiences, somebody who also went to like a barber college kind of situation. But I feel like that will lead to a longer conversation and a conversation that I need to have with you about my current barber situation.

Well, I've got thoughts, my friend, because remember how I was all hyped about just like going to just your regular great clips and super cuts and, oh, remember Fantastic Sam's?

Oh my gosh.

Did you have Fantastic Sam's?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think I went to one, But I remember the name and the commercials for Fantastic Sam's.

It sounds like a guy that Pee Wee would yell at.

You have to share something with the rest of us, Fantastic Sam. Yeah, that's a good call.

But I was extolling the virtues of these kind of lower kind of, you know, lower drama, lower whatever you would call it. I don't want to say class, but just kind of like less fussy hair care.

Yeah, sure.

I may be going back to Rudy's, let's just say, after my recent Great Clips experience. So maybe I'll talk about that when we get into the message from the listener about their haircut.

Yeah, that could even maybe be a topic for tomorrow, because I need to have a serious conversation with you about my barber situation right now as well. We'll block it out tomorrow. Let me just play this. Oh, go ahead.

I just wanted to say, I can't believe that I forgot to mention this, but if you're in Iowa this weekend, if you live in Iowa, we're going to be doing LiveWire in Iowa. We're doing something called the Mission Creek Festival, and I believe it's in Ames, Iowa. And I just wanted to throw that out there. It's not every day that I'm in Iowa doing LiveWire, and we'll be at the Mission Creek Festival. So if you're in Ames, Iowa, and you want to come out and say hi, that's where we'll be.

Nice. Let me play one voicemail for you since we played the sounder, and it would be nice to get a voicemail in here. This is from listener Max talking about the point-of-sale computers or POS machines that have led to people tipping more.

Hey, Luke and Andrew. It's your buddy Max in Brooklyn listening to the show where you're talking about point-of-sale systems. One of my first jobs was I interned with this teeny-tiny startup company that made custom point-of-sale software, and it was literally two guys, and they liked to joke around the office and then also sometimes literally two customers they were pitching. They were like, we will make you a POS that's not a POS, and by that they made a point-of-sale that's not a piece of shit, and that was definitely like a daily refrain. So people in the industry are definitely aware of that, but somehow, yeah, it's just the thing.

They address it. Power out.

Thanks, Max. I like knowing that. And in fact, as I think about it, of course they know. How weird would it be if you work in the POS industry, and you're the only person who's never heard the term POS as it relates to other stuff?

being crappy like that would be really crazy they also make a device called a sale operation log

it's an sol let's get out of here um i'm trying to think of a shit creek reference maybe we should just play this i don't know all right thanks for listening everybody uh hey we're gonna be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you so please do join us for that

In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. Go Mariners and go eat a bagel. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Now get our $24.95 perm special. Shampoo, cut, perm, and style. Just $24.95. You look great. I feel great.

That's a fantastic gift. That's a fantastic gift.

Power out.