Muse

The more brilliant people we can get working here, then the faster we can get whatever is in your head out into the world. Let me tell you a story. In 1999, Google was a little startup just like we are. And when they started bringing in chefs and masseuses, we thought they're nuts. But they were attracting the best possible people and they were able to create the best product. and now they're worth over $400 billion. And do you know the name of that company?

Google, right? You said it at the beginning of the story.

You're right. I did that wrong. TBTL!

Hello.

Did you say hello? No, I said hello, but that's close enough.

Well, I was just driving down Northern Avenue getting ready to pull into Albertsons, And all of a sudden, I was just minding my own business. Bam! Hit me hard right from the back. I was glued to my seat. I was like, whoa!

This house is obviously infested with reticularmes, Mario Cuomo's. What's that? What's what? A reticular... A reticular... See, you can't even say it yourself.

I'm doing the work. I'm baby-stepping. I'm not a slacker.

I don't watch television. I don't even own a television. Notice I didn't say TV. TV is a nickname, and nicknames are for friends. And television is no friend of mine.

And all you new listeners, all I can really say is good luck.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It's an audiophile's nightmare. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

First things first, I love my job.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill Broadcast Center, perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it was bright and sunny this morning. It was very nice, actually.

I feel warm, and I'm levitating.

Got the sliding glass door open. I'm but-t-shirted right now. Boy, life comes at you fast. Like, yesterday, I'm running the heat and endangering the broadcast because it's so cold today. I'm just, you know, hanging 10 here, dude, in these summertime vibes. known as, well, April 11th, and also episode 4182 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Another reason I'm excited, I bought a new ladder yesterday.

Chris is over there kind of giving us a look at how to use the ladder there. Uh-oh. Okay, we're going to make sure that Chris is okay. And that has never happened.

Now, I did get a little nervous here at the Madrona Hill studio going way up on that ladder. But because I just bought it and because it's brand new and not some weird jank hand-me-down that I found under a bridge somewhere, it worked. And I did not reenact that scene from QVC from those many years ago. Anyway, we'll talk about that. Also, some guys who were fishing on an island, a deserted island. They were near a deserted island, near Micronesia.

Get off milk island.

And their boat sustained some damage, and they had to land on this completely uninhabited island, and then they managed to get rescued from the island by doing something that I think is all of our plan if we end up on a deserted island. So we'll talk about that. Plus, it's a Thursday, a.k.a. Blur's Day.

It's my birthday today.

We will do the Blur's Days. And we'll talk to this guy, longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's just installed a mirror in his studio right behind his camera. Oh, that is a handsome chest right there. He's just doing a little self-analysis here on this Thursday. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

That's not what we did during soundcheck. That's not what you played during soundcheck. That was a trap.

He doesn't get out of the cock-a-doodie car. This isn't what happened last week.

That was a trap.

You set me up. I actually didn't plan on doing that. Here's the drop that I played for you when we were in test mode.

Carol, hold my calls.

And it was only as the intro music was playing that I remembered that a dear friend of the program, who I may see tonight at Livewire, grabbed this piece of audio when you said the following. Oh, that is a handsome chest right there. And sent it to me, and I thought, well, that would actually be a fun little thing on a Thursday. Just put a little pep in everybody's step. You just listen.

It was a fun little thing.

It's fine. You have no idea what you were spared from today by me because I thought about sending you a story for Top Stories, and then I imagined your response, and then I just tabled the idea. I didn't even get into it.

That doesn't paint me as a fun, open, creative partner.

It paints you as.

the conscience of a generation it's a very old generation unfortunately but yeah no uh apparently uh in mexico uh one of the news channels was showing images of the eclipse and uh somebody had managed to sneak in i didn't know that this was kind of a go-to joke in latin america i'm being very serious here like i found out reading this article that this is kind of a go-to down there but um while they were showing kind of b-roll and clips of the eclipse uh somebody had snuck in either a photo or a video of them creating the effect of an eclipse using their testicles beautiful purple balls and that made me laugh so hard and also i loved learning that that is i mean again within reason and i have to offer all the caveats that we now should offer in a you know in a safe environment which is you don't want people showing off their their body parts to other people that don't want to be seeing those body parts so like that that is that's part of this but it did make me laugh to think that somebody got that onto television and and apparently the newscaster was doing what newscasters do which was just like reading the script looking at other things had no idea that this giant ridiculous thing was looming behind him on the screen i didn't put that story in the show sheet no good that's so therefore it won't it won't make it never happened at all which is nice cisco drop nothing none of the stuff that i was worried you would find distasteful has happened on this thursday that reminds me of a phenomenon that

was going on in the early 2000s that i want to ask you if you remember um because it lives large in my head for some reason although i didn't engage with the content all that much before i say that though because it does nod toward adult content i want to back up and ask the listeners via you luke okay how many i am their ombuds person there was a lot of chatter going on um in the past i'm going to say month or so as you would say every now and then on the podcast like oh we're trying to keep things a little bit cleaner around here kid friendly get rid of that explicit rating kid friendly show kid friendly show and a lot of people had a lot of speculation about what that meant we're going to start a lot of people were programming i want to be

in florida getting a tan on my back we were going to give that kid a show yeah exactly it turns out

he's 29 now um but anyways so of course now we are sponsoring a little league team so that was sort of the idea we didn't want people to think that we're some sort of disgusting podcast um you know supporting supporting a little league team or whatever so we just wanted to sort of like you know keep things clean around here yeah having said that we didn't want any of the parents of

the tbtl little sluggers to google the show and see a an explicit rating or b tune into the show and hear us say something and by us i mean me probably something kind of unfortunate and go what what exactly is happening with this entity that's sponsoring our children's baseball dreams

also yeah now i'm wondering it's either going to be you saying something dirty on the show um or listener bet who called in with a legit dirty joke on our voicemail line that i'm gonna play for you with a lot of adult content warning here in a moment i mean it's just it's filthy luke really but do you remember the phenomenon i think in the spicy um in the early 2000s i want to say as people got more and more into selling things online there was this i don't know if they were perverts or pranksters or if those two um circles overlapped but um people who would take

photos perverts pranksters or profits sometimes they're one in the same andrew that'll be our

show we'll drive around instead of going to diners drive-ins and the other hold on i'm getting a text

right now from ben thank you for your sponsorship of the tvtl little sluggers your services are no longer needed we have someone removing the letters from the backs of the jerseys one person just

removing the stitches so they can reuse would that they were stitched on they're ironed on and

they're not going to come off easy they're steaming them off but um remember the phenomenon of people trying to sell things online but they would take a photo of the object but they would be unclothed and then sort of like almost accidentally capture their reflection in it So, like, let's say, I mean, an obvious example would be like, hey, free tea kettle for sale or whatever. And it's like an alum or, you know, a stainless tea kettle or something that is reflective. And if you look closely, you can see that the person who's taking the photo is reflected in it kind of, you know, on the handle or something. And if you look very closely, you can see that they are in the buff.

I don't think I knew about that. But what's funny is, or interesting to me only, is I saw an older clip of Nathan Fielder, of Nathan For You fame and The Curse, which I can't record.

highly enough to folks if you like me subscribe to dwell magazine and then read it and then feel used and abused by the budgets that people have and by but yet you also aspire to that world you will love the tv show the curse uh with emma stone and nathan fielder okay that being said it was a clip of nathan fielder i want to say on like seth meyer's show and he's talking about how He took a picture And he had these sunglasses On and he didn't realize that I think maybe the initial bit is He didn't realize that his sunglasses could reflect Back maybe like You know an adult website That he was looking at or something like something gets Caught in the photo that is embarrassing to him But it's one of those things and he shows the Photo and he's like yeah this is really Kind of embarrassing and then he Has another photo where he's Like taking a picture of his meal but he's holding his fork and his fork is reflecting something more ridiculous and then in each photo there's something that's more impossibly staged where something reflective is in the like that's a good joke it's a great bit i've done a terrible job of describing a great bit but no no i followed

along hey if i followed along eat it okay i'm wondering though because i think it seemed like

it was it wasn't like this it wasn't in the promo tour for the curse it looked to me like it was from maybe around this era that you're discussing, and I'm wondering if maybe this was his play on that trend. I actually kind of missed that trend, and I want to say I'm not sad about that, but also I would have, you know me, I would have probably enjoyed a good spoof of somebody being naked reflected in a teacup or teakettle.

Wait, you weren't like me? You didn't spend your mid-twenties pinch-zooming in on teakettles to just feel something?

Well, I can tell you that at this point in my life, I do try to pinch zoom on conventional photographs. Have you found yourself doing that or having the impulse to do it and stopping yourself?

I don't know if I found myself in that situation. I've heard people talk about I've heard people talk about their children who will, you know, are more comfortable with like a tablet. They grew up with tablets and fantasy and kids and fantasy. And then they're like three years old and you show them a magazine and they don't understand why they can't zoom in on the magazine.

I think it coincides with the fact that my eyesight has really been deteriorating lately. I mean, you know, within the normal range of getting older, I want to be clear. But it's new to me. I've been blessed with very, very keen eyesight for a long time and never really had to wear glasses when I was younger. And so even just a minimal amount of interruption in that or inconvenience or having to think about readers now. And I I think I said this on the show. I totally now get what the bifocals are all about. And I also totally get what the glasses down the nose are all about, because I found myself doing that in a California pizza kitchen at LAX. I wanted to watch the college basketball game on the tv but I wanted to look at my overpriced pizza margarita and also let's be honest my phone which probably had tiktok on it was a two-screen experience and I realized that if I had my reading glasses on I can see the phone really well but then I can't see the college basketball so I moved my glasses down to the end of my nose and thought okay I look at the tiktok and then I look up and I'm looking at the game and then I look down at the tiktok this is magic and I was like oh this is why people have been doing this since they invented eyeglasses i think the more that i've had to think about that and and deal with that um a little bit of um you know whatever uh eye hassle i guess the more these kind of things

have been on my mind yeah i am still struggling these glasses that i have now i've had for a couple of years and they're my first um kind of progressive lens glasses they're like you know like bifocals without the line essentially the the bottom part of my lenses are supposed to help me read i'd never needed that before i'd always been nearsighted but couldn't see in the distance right i always have to i always have to think like nearsight nearsighted means you could see things close up you just couldn't see far away yeah exactly and my glasses prescription has traditionally been strong i've been wearing glasses my entire life um but now as i got older around age 40 just like they say it's amazing how like some things actually work out like they say like it really was you gotta give it 40 you really gotta give it to him it's like that steve martin joke i was wondering if this would be good intro tape do you know the steve i don't think you're quite as obsessed with steve martin records as a kid i wasn't i loved the movie the jerk i thought it

was the funniest thing i'd ever seen but i didn't follow that to like getting his albums nor would

i probably have been allowed to possess them i have two um actual lps um one of them they're both like his fame i think he has two pretty famous records that came out around the same time like let's get small and wild and crazy guy I want to say one of them is the famous one with the cover with the arrow through his head I call that the Gus the little Gus oh yeah right our friend Gus dressed up like that but these records were given to me by my Aunt Mary

when I was in high school and there is a not maybe not as dirty as Betts joke but there is a really dirty joke on it uh that I remember like listening to in the car with my parents I was like I want them to hear all of this but I also knew that this joke was coming up anyway uh he has a joke in there that says you know what if you just like kind of died you know I was thinking of this because of your hey dummies video last week you were talking about kind of beliefs and and the afterlife and stuff and um he said what if you just died and you just like you went up to heaven and there's like a saint peter and a gate and a bunch of angels playing harps just be like oh shit i thought this was all bullshit they told me in college this wasn't real and then like how you go about navigating heaven i didn't do as good of a job on that as steve martin did but it had been jangling around in my head and i needed to get

it out I hope that's what happens I think this is what I said in well I didn't exactly I think I said a version of this in the video the hey dummies question was what's something that you don't think is real but you wouldn't be shocked if it turned out to be the case and I think that the person mentioned like aliens aliens visiting earth was for them something that they didn't think was happening but if they found out it was happening they wouldn't be like shocked for me it would be some sort of an afterlife or something something beyond this that uh you know not just a black curtain goes down and we're done done that's what i think happens yeah but if something else was going on if there were some kind of consciousness if we stepped through some other door i don't think i would be like shocked and i i hope that's the case i'd rather that is the case than what i think is the case which is nothingness although the nice thing about nothingness is you're the last one to know really so i think it's yeah i mean it's pretty low it's a pretty light it's light work for the person who's no longer with us that's the good part for them i guess

yeah you know i'm the opposite on that i was about to talk about my bifocals and it's not

a good conversation so let's talk about it's almost as important a topic as is there an

afterlife is there an afterlife i gotta say like that would be one of the things i would be most shocked of and it's kind of funny it's like i'm not like i'm not like somebody who for lack of a better word like is a militant atheist or something like i'm not like somebody who goes

around like trying to convince other people you're not richard dawkinsing up and down the e-line bus

probably probably a bad place to do that as well i have no desire at all to try to shape other people's opinions about their faith or afterlife or anything like that um having said that as somebody who grew up you know as you know in a very religious family i was an altar boy like i I, you know, the church was very central to my life growing up and our Catholic faith and everything. I went to Catholic school, all this stuff. And now here I am, 47 years old. And one of the most shocking things in the world would be that Steve Martin scenario where I like, honestly, like I pass away and then something happens and I have consciousness again in a different realm. I'd be like, no effing way. I mean, I would be so shocked.

Let me be clear. I would also be shocked. I don't want to be floored I mean it'd be the biggest thing that ever happened to me probably

outside of this podcast sure yeah like I don't want to I don't want to low-key that I don't

want to be like I don't want to be like I'd wake up and go oh that scans huh well I got it right on the hey dummies yeah where's the snack table you know oh hey look it's Albert Brooks I feel like he'd be the somehow the first person you'd see is he defending his life I told you um I think i might have told you off air it all blends together but i ended up watching that movie on my flight to germany yeah remember way to watch that movie oh it was so good it was so good and and uh and so good recommendation and i literally i only watched it because of all the times it's come up on this show and i know genevieve you and genevieve both really like it and i was just in the exact right mood to watch an albert brooks and meryl streep film from the 80s i believe

Well, the funny thing is I do like it. But the funny thing is, is it's it's the way it's sort of like an inside joke in our relationship, because the way Genevieve pitched it to me like 20 years ago or something when she was she wasn't quite that long ago. Maybe it was 15 years ago. She had a job where she was traveling a lot. And the topic of that movie came up in conversation. And she said, oh, yeah, that's like worth a watch. Like if you're like on a business trip in like Illinois somewhere and you're in a hotel room and it's on, I'd leave it on. And I was like, what a ringing endorsement of that film. But I kind of knew what she meant, though. Like, it is a good, I mean, it's an Albert Brooks film. It's a good film. But, like, it's also, like, especially in this day and age, it's like, you don't have to necessarily seek it out. It'll come to you. And when it comes to you, just, you know, accept it with an open heart.

Honestly, Andrew, like heaven. You can't try to sort of, you can't try to sort of force it into a box or tell it what it's going to be.

You're just going to – you'll find out when you get there, Andrew.

What we'll do is you want to play Bet's dirty joke at the very, very end of the show so people can, like, tune out if they're not ready for it?

I think definitely, yeah. Just we're trying to, you know, we're trying to keep this – we have right now a five-star rating from the Council on Family-Friendly Podcasting, which don't – honestly, don't Google that organization and do not dig into the website. There are some very bad takes.

You're going to see a lot of American flags and bald eagles.

But we have five stars, and we're trying to maintain that. So let's put the dirty joke way at the end of the program, and let's focus, Andrew, on something that's even more pressing to my life than Bet's dirty joke, which is, can you see on this camera, can you see there in the kind of little entry area, whatever you want to call it, of this room I'm in in the Madrona Hill studio, do you see those orange pendant lights that are hanging out?

Oh, yeah, those are beautiful. I was looking for a ladder because there was a ladder there yesterday, and somehow magically the ladder is gone, but there's a light hanging from the ceiling. Magically now those pendant lights are there. I only see one, though, you're saying. Well, I can't. Oh, wow. Oh, shit. Those are nice. Isn't that great?

Oh, my God. Yes. Okay, so I have been in a very – I kind of, with the projects around here, I have really gone in fits and starts. The most progress is usually when I'm paying my father to be here working. But then there will be these long, like right now they're in Florida, my parents are, on Anna Maria Island with their pals Cliff and Cindy. Oh, yeah.

Do they get away much?

Do they come home much is the question. Those two are like living in a Jardians ad or something. Like they are constantly gone. I think that they're in Florida like four times a year now at a minimum. They've got their pals, Cliff and Cindy, who they love. And Cliff and Cindy live in Tampa, but then they'll all meet up on Anna Maria Island. And my parents will rent a little bungalow, or now they've got all kinds of world mark points. So they do some kind of timeshare situation down there. And they love it so much. I mean, they are down there constantly. How do they feel about the One World Alliance? Oh, they don't, they don't, they, believe me, they probably flew one leg on Spirit and then changed to a, got on, probably got on like Aeroflot. What is the, what's the, what's the Russian, what was the Russian airline for many years?

Oh, I have no idea.

They got like, I mean, yeah, hitched, they probably like hitchhiked from, from like Sarasota up to Tampa, like God knows what goes on with those two. But anyway, so, yeah, when my dad's here, a lot of work gets done. But when I'm here by myself, what I've realized is that I'm very intimidated by actually trying to do a lot of these projects and not even overly complicated things. Just I've been talking to Becca about this. I've been really trying to do some personal growth in the department of fixing things and sort of doing projects here in this house. Because there are so many projects that still need to be done. This place is like maybe 50% of the way towards kind of being finished or at least even remotely finished. And what happened was when I got the place, my thought was, I'm going to learn how to do all this stuff. I'm going to go on YouTube. I'm going to watch TikToks. I'm going to tackle. I'm going to take on projects we know we can't do and do them, as the drop says. And I haven't really done that. I have been, I've given into my, I'm not, I'm not generally speaking a super intimidated person. I usually probably overestimate my abilities in a lot of areas. Some people would say podcasting. But when it comes to kind of relatively simple projects, like putting these, you know, kind of, I guess they're technically called a pendant because they hang down. putting in these pendant lights from kind of up you know the rafters as you can see andrew it's pretty high the the ceilings here in the madrona hill studio are pretty are pretty tall because my dad and i took out this was a garage and we took out the what was the originally the ceiling of the garage which was just a bunch of like planks we took that out we did this whole elaborate thing and so way up in the tippy top maybe 12 14 feet up is where because it's like pitched right is that the word now yeah i think pitched i think pitched would would be the way to describe it so what happened was i bought these pendant lights months ago and they arrived and i took them out of the box i thought boy these look pretty cool i'd love to have these installed because what was up there were just a couple of like bare light bulbs that were basically screwed right into the ceiling like it was a that's a look it was a temporary it was a very in industrial look and it wasn't the kind where they're dangling at first i thought they were going to be dangling down on a wire but just swaying a little bit casting creepy shadows

around at night um that was the main house andrew and that remains the case in certain rooms

today on a reason the joker's there and a doctor is saying you see what i have to work with

uh from the arkham hill studio did i say that right i feel like i get that hospital name wrong no I think you're right Arkham Asylum look at us if you want to know look at us if you want to know just how weird things are around here like this morning for no reason I just ripped a giant section of wallpaper off in the room that my dad sleeps in I was in there I was moving

because you're mad at him

when he comes back when he comes back from Anna Maria Island he's going to see this holly hobby ass wallpaper is ripped down no it's like this house is so other than the parts the parts that have been fixed up are pretty nice now there are so many parts that aren't fixed up and those parts are so grody or grotty really thank you for thank you for teaching me about that they are so grotty that like i'm just in this room where my there's what here's what's happened and i'm sorry i'm going on a million tangents here but basically there are two bedrooms upstairs there somebody told me when they came out to look at the house that this was one of those one and a half story houses which is a thing it turns out from the 1930s where they just for some reason made the upstairs not really tall enough for a person of six feet of height as I am like I asked I go do you think that they converted this attic and the guy said no I think they built it this way there are a lot of houses around here like this they just

say I mean are you just saving some money by not having to go up so high it's like it is have you seen John Malkovich

it I honestly every time I don't find myself inside John Cusack which I know isn't exactly how that movie works but um i uh it's the weirdest thing you have to duck i have to duck when i am walking in this little hallway it's so cramped up there and i'm like why did they build this this way like it would have been like two more feet of wood in every direction like you make you make this post taller you make this header taller like do everything you did here but go up two feet yeah it's just it's that's why i thought it was what could it cost michael i mean it's a it's luke's comfort What could it be? Ten dollars? It's four feet, Michael. What could it cost? I understand if you built a house that had one floor and then an attic and then someone was like, hey, we could also use the attic. And now you're kind of working within the confines of something that was never designed to be livable space. I don't think that's the case here. And so as the main floor of the of my little house has gotten more livable, I will soon have a working kitchen in the main area, which is very cool. um i you know i'm things are starting to come together but there are just still so many other parts that are just so decrepit and including this room where my dad has been sleeping on an air mattress for the last two years when he's here so i decided i'm finally going to break the bank and get a proper queen size bed from wayfair.com and put it in here the man i don't know how old he is pretty old the man deserves to sleep on a gd regular ass bed plus anyone else who comes over to visit like i've had like nobody visit this house really including my daughter including you and veves you know um because it's just been this weird kind of construction zone which it still is but there are small things i could do that would really improve the experience and make it so that i could actually start to have people over and and just sort of use the house the way that i was hoping i could and it starts with having any proper beds at all outside of the king bed that I've wedged into the room that I'm using, which, by the way, is mostly bed. You, like, open the door, you step into this tiny room, and it's just like, it's kind of a kid's fantasy. It's an entire room that's pretty much a bed. Kids and fantasy. Kids and bed to see. Wait, that didn't really work. Okay, so anyway.

I'm sorry to interrupt you on that. I just felt like you would have played that drop if you could have, so I just wanted to say it.

I appreciate that. So anyway, all that is to say, I went up there to measure the room and to see if the queen bed going to overwhelm this place, which it's not, the room that my dad sleeps in. And then as I'm standing in there, I realize like, oh, this carpet is so bad. And the whole upstairs is carpeted in the grungiest carpet that no matter how many times I vacuum it, it's just unpleasant. So I'm going to cut all of that out except for like there's hardwood floor under some of it. The hardwood floor has been painted randomly in other places. It's just a mess up there. And I'm just looking around in this room And there's just this like I call it Holly Hobby wallpaper It's this very like Probably what it was Was like an 11 year old girl's bedroom At some point

It's just generally country kitsch

It's very country kitsch Yes it's probably all back in style now Honestly

But the problem is- You're a trad Luke. Lean into it. Barefoot and pregnant. I would be so happy to be a trad Luke.

I only know that term because Genevieve called me a trad wife for a while. You are a trad wife, bro. I was like making, what was I, doing three things. I was like, well, making a lot of chicken stock. I was making a lot of candles. You love to do the dishes. Yeah, maybe sweeping the floor.

I don't know I don't know what else I was doing but anyway I was just standing in this sad room looking around oh and by the way the roof line this is all under what's called a shed dormer so shed dormer is kind of like if you've ever been upstairs of a house and then it's like very angled but then there's a part of the ceiling that is not quite so steep at an angle and there's windows that thing is called a dormer the shed dormer is like completely tilting to one side I'm gonna have to have it all ripped off and have the roof replaced at some point So I'm just in this room and I look over And this country Kitsch wallpaper which is separating from The wall like something from Barton Fink

Oh god I was about to say that

I walk over to it And I'm like hi I wonder how I wonder how hard this is to take off and I just Pull it just starts coming off but not all Of it all of it would be fine What it is is most of it meaning Now there's just like a torn ass section Of wallpaper that just looks It looks worse than it did before because it was at least a solid, you know, visual. Now it looks bad. It looks even worse. So anyway, Walt should be enjoying that in a couple of weeks when he comes over. My point is, I have really struggled with.

We're really working hard to make a Charlotte Perkins Gilman joke here, but I don't know. I don't think I know who that is. Drop the reference. Did you read the yellow wallpaper? You must have taken like a literature class.

No.

Okay.

I avoided that. I didn't learn how to read until about four years ago.

I forgot, which is – that's a problem. There's a book, I think I read it in my women's lit class, called The Yellow Wallpaper. And it's from the perspective of a woman who – I'm going to guess that it's probably the late 1800s maybe. Yeah, I'm going to say it's probably around that time. And basically it's a short story. I think it's a novella or something. But it's from the perspective of this woman who is, you know, basically having emotions, having like human emotions. But all the men and male doctors in her life are saying like, oh, she's suffering from hysteria. Just keep her in this room. You must. You know, the more she feels, the more she must just stay in this room that had yellow wallpaper. And then she starts to have like sort of if I recall, which I probably don't recall correctly, almost like a hallucination or like sort of like she almost like mentally folds herself up in this yellow wallpaper. I guess I just wanted to flex because that wasn't a joke. It wasn't seamless in the conversation. I apologize. I cede my remaining time to you.

I give the balance of my time back to the gentleman from the Madrona Hill studio. I will say, until Def Leppard was able to reclaim the word hysteria, I feel like it was almost never, ever, ever being used in a way that was good for women.

Yes, exactly. I used the word histrionics the other day, not talking about a woman, because I would never do that, because that is like kind of the, right, isn't that the origin of the word?

I only learned the word histrionics like five years ago when it came into Vogue. I'm being serious. Like, I didn't even know that word existed. I'm guessing that it's related to hysteria, but it means it's a version of being hysterical or overly dramatic. Is that kind of?

Yeah. And of course, you know, and I think it was, again, as you would say, Luke, I'm out over my skis here.

I guess I would. I'm hearing from various quarters, some of it involving television's Chris Hayes, that I am the one who started saying that. I'll take the credit for it. I like it.

It's a compliment, you know, like, yeah. But anyway, you know, I think those words were originally only applied to women. Right. It was like men saying that, you know, hysteria, because isn't that like also the root of hysterectomy?

Oh, my gosh. I it's that sounds like it would be a thing. I don't think I'd given this enough thought. But so all of that is to say I have I had big, big plans and big dreams when I got out here that I was going to. And this is so commonly the case for me that I was going to be a different person by by the end of this process. And one of the ways I was going to be different was I was going to encounter something that didn't come natural to me. And instead of just going, I'm going to hire someone to do that or I'm going to just live with it. I'm going to actually learn about it and I'm going to probably make some mistakes with it. And then I'm going to actually kind of figure it out. And then I'm going to it's going to be very satisfying. Like, again, as a person who's generally not very intimidated in the world, I'm very intimidated by home improvement projects that I don't instinctively know how to do And it turns out I don't instinctively know how to do anything of them so that leaves but that doesn't that doesn't scan with what you've been talking about is it that most of the because you've done and you've put video of yourself doing projects and all this stuff that I would know under the careful tutelage my father that is always when you're like yes when you're Walter's apprentice yes but but I feel like you've told other way too many mop buckets here oh wait wait for it wait for it those mop buckets are gonna be your best friends in a little bit but I don't know I feel like you're selling yourself a little

well maybe so but what I haven't become is and I would see these people on YouTube and even TikTok and I'd be very impressed at people who are like I bought this fixer-upper I didn't know how to do anything and then just through a lot of late nights and a lot of like just you know teaching myself how to do it and going down to the you know whether it's the Home Depot or the local hardware store and just talking to people and just like I just have figured out how to do this i have not been able to take that journey myself but honestly and this is such a weird there's such a sad there's such a low bar but honestly a thing that's kind of changed for me has been one i'm running out of money and two like this kitchen that i've been putting together because it's ikea stuff okay now listen that's it's allegedly designed so that just about anybody can put it together. And yet it is complicated in a way like a whole kitchen from Ikea. It turns out is the drawer systems and the, this and the, that, and I don't care what people say. I don't think that the illustrations are always that helpful. And so I had thought low key, I'm going to just hire my dad to kind of help me put this kitchen together. And then he's just going to like, it's gonna take him one day. Cause it's flipping Ikea stuff. He's just going to like knock it out and then I'll just it'll be done and i'll have paid someone to put together my ikea kitchen but it'll be done turns out it took him a week to do like half of it and every day he's doing i'd be like how's it going this is a real pain in the butt like this this part doesn't fit with this part or this ceiling isn't you know remember we were playing the the guy whose whole thing on tiktok is telling people how to put together ikea kitchens and not lacerate themselves as he had done he had super his leg by the way my dad I would come in and I'd hear that guy on my dad's tablet oh my god my dad would be watching that guy in Europe talking about how to do various parts of this

thing which I thought was pretty funny actually I wonder if it's especially frustrating for somebody like your dad who is so handy and knows woodworking and and construct you know various aspects of construction and what have you I wonder if it's especially frustrating for somebody with a lot of know-how to then, like, get involved in an Ikea project that is just, like, boggling the brain.

I think it was frustrating for him for that reason, because it's something that is very standardized, but because of that, and it should go together quickly and all the pieces, but it doesn't always, and there are quirks about the house, and so then you're trying to take kind of a, a square peg and then fit it into this square ish hole. That might be more of like a slight parallelogram. You know, it's like, it's a lot of that kind of stuff. So, uh, I, I basically, by the time my dad was, was, had to go back, uh, to one of his many trips with my mother, not even the Florida one, I looked around and I realized this kitchen is not even close to being done and i realized that it was going to be on me to put it together because the guys were coming out to do the the countertops and unless it's all done as we learned um that could be a real problem i know it didn't um i think i got two hundred dollars worth of content out of that so at least there's that but anyway so i just said this is going to be complicated and again there's a lot of like drawer systems there's a lot of like there's a lot of stuff with this ikea these ikea cabinets where it's like it's very easy to do it wrong because it's like the drawer has this face that goes on it but the face has these interchangeable locking parts that you screw on and if they go on slightly wrong it's offset by a quarter inch which means it hits something but then if you change it it's gonna it's like it's just a lot of doing it wrong sitting there thinking well this is they sent the wrong thing and then sitting down and then like going online and then taking it apart and redoing it and i had to do that with each and every section of this kitchen and i will tell you that by the end of it first of all if anybody needs me to come put together an ikea kitchen i'm your guy like i sounds like you're not uh andrew i am now a recognized master because what happened was your own video series i do i what happened is trial and error and this is of course really the at the core of every pretty much everything in life that you don't know how to do and then you try it and then you are bad at it. And then you, uh, learn how to be less bad at it. And then eventually you're sort of pretty okay. By the time I was putting together the last of the stuff, in fact, here in the Madrona Hill studio, I'm going to be using some more Ikea cabinetry, um, for like a kind of a kitchen Island thing. And, um, the, I put there, there's like a partially assembled base cabinet behind me and i put that thing together in under five minutes and like when it comes time to put the drawers in boom i now go to the ikea kitchen department and i'm just telling them i need this this this and this and also not that one because that one doesn't you know like i'm i've gone from being very intimidated by this thing to being overconfident and honestly terrible to be around uh which has been the goal but i've been trying you might say that you're you're you're all about

that base cabinet uh-huh yeah no trouble i'm just gonna zero trouble try just keep throwing these things out at you do we have any dirty jokes that we could hear try to change up the energy

yeah we really do i need to change up the energy go ahead so i was trying to so i've been doing

that and i and i've been feeling actually kind of even though that's such a low bar it it it kind of was important to for me because it it was like here's a thing that i am dreading doing that i know i'm gonna be bad at that's gonna take me forever that's gonna be frustrating i'm gonna want to go sit on the porch and have a beer like there's a million like a million trillion things i'd rather bleep and do than to be bleeping with you in the words of big sean so i um i think that was megan trainer oh i am always mixing them up so i uh it just the idea that i that i tackled this thing and i got it all figured out and through trial and error it ended up being and now the countertop is in. And then I had to wait 24 hours for the countertop to cure or something. So now, yesterday, Andrew, I stood there and I had some cheese and some crackers and some olives on a plate. And I was just, the plate was sitting on a countertop in the main area of my little house. And I was like eating. Oh, so there was a pickle on there. I was eating some pickle and cheese and like just kind of looking around and being like, whoa, this is, and all the cabinets look really nice and are all together and the drawers and the i was like holy smokes i did this i actually did this i didn't just hire someone i mean i did hire someone to the countertops don't get me wrong but i've been trying to harness that good feeling of like hey i can actually try to do stuff that is not that does not come natural to me and one of the other things has been these chandeliers they're not chandeliers they're pendant lights because what i knew i was gonna have to do is i was have to climb up into the rafters of this place i was gonna have to first of all turn the power off so i don't let you myself unscrew the thing that was in there which is one of those like ceramic very basic round outlets for a light bulb if that makes sense take that out pull all the wiring out get these pendant lights figure out the facing cover for them rewire all this stuff together all on a ladder at about 14 feet screw it all back in Level both of the pendants So that they're like you know Etc etc and I was just like And I really had that like the boxes Of these pendants have been sitting here For months and I've been thinking daddy will do it Like I'll just have my dad do it That's what I kept thinking

Don't say it in that voice I mean that's half the problem

Do you think that's why he's fled to Florida Wonder why he keeps leaving Daddy will do it That's the name of my YouTube channel Daddy will do it

it's just a video yeah it's your video but you're just taping him or videotaping him

people don't say tape anymore do they i do so what i realized though was so i don't own any um like a decent ladder here there are some that were left behind did you guys inherit a ladder at your house i feel like one of the things you will often find in a house when you move into it if it has a garage is like a shitty ladder that somebody didn't want to take with them

I don't think we inherited it, but we got that one from the Ladder District in Renton when Genevieve, what did she tell me? She told me via text because I was out of town. I was pulling a Walt, and she said, I got a line on a ladder. It was like maybe a week before we were moving into our new place, but she had a line on a ladder. She got a free, because you don't want to overpay for a ladder. She got a free used ladder off of Craigslist in Renton, which has literally.

Chris is over there. He's kind of giving us a look at how to use the ladder there.

Which is literally buckled underneath me. Okay, we're going to make sure that Chris is okay. And that has never happened. While I've been trying to, like, you know, I wasn't using it properly. I'm trying to use the hedge. I'm tiptoeing on it. It's buckled underneath me. Like, it is no long, like, once a ladder goes bad, a ladder goes bad. Yeah, it doesn't come back. Just like yogurt and half and half and other things that go bad in this household. of even says it's still good and so she's hanging on this ladder that i think is fundamentally

a liability i am here as a fundamental liability myself andrew i'm here i'm here to tell you spend a little bit of money thank you on a new working ladder the advances in ladder technology forget evs okay forget starlink forget ai forget whatever you've been hearing about the greatest leap forward in human technology that i can tell in the last 10 years has been ladder related because i have always been just using some old weird like the ladder that was left here in this very garage before it was a studio i was like cool free ladder my dad was like they call that the widow maker because it's an extension ladder that the design of it is that it's it oh I think the design of it is that it has this you know clicking lock system but sometimes I think either the locking system would kind of slip or it also is missing a rung by design so you're going down the ladder and you're like oh uh this is where there should be another rung and then there's just not a rung and that has something to do with the extension system So I had that ladder I had this other one that they left here That was in the side yard I got the I don't know seemingly more okay Of the two ladders This was two days ago When I'm contemplating doing this project And I get this old aluminum ladder That when I pick it up it's like rain water Is like leaking out You know what I mean Anything metal that's been out in your yard Just i'd say tip that thing on its edge before you bring it indoors because there's gonna be rusty

ass rainwater in it right right and probably mosquitoes yeah you name it so i'm trying to

like shake this thing out i bring it in here it's got these little feet on it that are kind of like wonky i lean it up against one of the rafters it's it's also like the ladder is grimy it's it's these beautiful white scissor trusses that that that were great hassle and expense to put in and paint and everything it's like kind of marking it up you know it's just like and i'm looking at it and i'm just like i'm not gonna do this i'm just gonna wait for daddy i looked at this two days ago i was like this is not happening i don't want to do it it's gonna be a hassle i'm bad at this i'm gonna make it worse i'm just gonna wait for daddy and so i uh i went to bed with that plan in mind and then i got up um yesterday actually and i went down to town to do my jog And as I was on my little jog around Lake Sacagawea, I was thinking, is there another way? Is there another way to think about this, to look at this, Burbs? Like, you're going to have to drive right by the Home Depot anyway. What if you went into the Home Depot and you saw and you just take a look around at what is the current state of ladder technology? And what if there was a ladder that you could fit in your Mazda CX-5 that would also be safer and less marking, would like not mess the ceiling and the rafters up so much? and also while you're there why don't you grab a wire stripper which you're going to need and some of those little you know caps that you screw on that like sort of tie two wires together that you're trying to put together

why don't you give yourself a Mountain Dew too because Pop Pop needs a treat they always have Mountain Dew always there's always some kind of

seriously flavor blaster Doritos a Slim Jim or two and then some kind of Mountain Dew product and a Code Red yes right so like i was like why don't i go in there see what they've got and then bring it home and then if i if i find that it's too intimidating or too much i just we can stop at some point but maybe having the right tools for this uh will make a difference and i go in and i get to the ladder section and i'll be gosh darned andrew if they don't sell this ladder by the gorilla company I think it's called that like, it's so slick. So think about the typical kind of a frame step ladder that, that most of us have that you can use for kind of, you know, projects around the house where you don't need to be real high up. They make one that is that kind of ladder, but then you can flip that other part around and turn it into an extension ladder. It goes up like 14 feet and it's got like a really cool, really stable tray that comes off of it. And it's got great rubberized feet on it and the top part i don't know if those are the hands or what but it's like every single part of it is well designed like it's not going to slip it's not going to mark things up it's stable it's not like i'm not up there being like and like there was something about getting this ladder yesterday and setting it up that it was like it made me feel like confident that i could potentially do this and so sure enough uh yesterday while i was listening to

the last few chapters of Jane Marie's great new book about multi-level marketing because I'm doing an interview with her tonight for LiveWire down there at the Alberta Rose.

I thought because you were getting into multi-level marketing. Well, that's the thing, Andrew.

I have also started a business selling ladders, and I am looking for associates to help

me with this. Okay, well, that sounds like a burgeoning business. I'm excited

to learn more. This has all been a setup for my multi-level marketing. I mean, you want to talk about The original multi-level marketing ladders, baby. I got to make money on these ladders. So anyway, yeah, I'm listening to the Audible of Jane Marie's book, and I'm up on the ladder. And granted, there were some highs and lows, literally and figuratively. I cut my thumb really badly, and then it was bleeding all over the ladder, and then I had to get down and fix that. And, you know, there were there were a number of of at one point I got the first one all put together, tested it, turned the fuse on, turned the breaker on. The light worked. I was like, sweet. And then I had to put all the wiring back up into the like kind of, you know, cavity that it all goes in before putting the cover on. And of course, in the process of doing that, one of the wires came loose. So I get it all screwed back together. I get down, I turn on the light and it's like nothing. Price is right. Sad horns, you know. but i just was like okay this is the process right this is i'd like to say this is the good part so got that figured out the second one went in way easier because i had now done the first one and kind of figured out the little angles which was to after i get the twist on there then electrical tape the whole thing so it's really secure but make sure they're pretty separated so these two things aren't going to cross or spark or talk to each other up there and like i just was figuring it out a little bit. And, um, and anyway, I got them up and it's very, very gratifying. And I, I really think like, I'm so excited about this ladder. I feel like this ladder has empowered me to like, you know, to, to feel like I can, I can do some of these things that have been intimidating to me. If I'm willing to invest the time and be okay with the fact that it's, I'm going to be bad at it at first, there's going to be some mess ups, but like, you know, I don't know. I just, it's been a good few days here where I feel like I've been pushing through some personal barriers about this kind of stuff i feel like you're going to start taking

this you know personal support ladder with you everywhere and people are oh everybody's bringing ladders on planes these days you put a little vest on do not pat we'll do not pat we only allow ladders in this tavern if they're support ladders you're like it is look at the vest it's a support ladder you're going to show up at on stage at live wire tonight did you say or tomorrow with this ladder yeah yeah it gives you a certain sense of confidence it's portland portland is a very progressive town no one's gonna question right they'll understand i under i do think i understand that story it gives me you know we're pretty well into the show right now i think we have other things to talk about so i won't get into it but i have found and i'm just just right now as i speak with you about this putting sort of vague feelings into words and possible like actual thoughts here but like i've had i realized i've been kind of anxious lately this is a shocker um and one of the things that's been sort of driving my anxiety sort of is like when i go outside of the house here well that's it i'm just going outside of the house no when i you know i love our house and i love puttering around in the yard and everything during the summer months it's i find joy in it even when it's you know do i want to spend all weekend trimming the hedges no sometimes it's a barrier to get out there and do it but then once you do you get the ball game on it's very satisfying all that stuff um but for some reason and maybe it's because like we've had a couple of warm days where it seems like summer has started and then of course it's a you know kind of false spring a little bit and then it's cold again but i'm looking around at things that i feel like this really needs to be done but i don't i can't explain it for the first time in this house i just feel overwhelmed by it instead of looking forward to a project and maybe it's because I haven't talked to these about it. You should come see this place.

Have you tried tearing the wallpaper off Barton Fink style?

I need to get another ladder. No, I did get a good ladder after that other one buckled underneath me. I used like a housewarming gift of a Home Depot card or something from some friends and got a good ladder, not a transformer ladder like yours. I think I've gone on my last ladder that is a leaning ladder. I think I'm A-frame all the way as I just ease out of the climbing on ladders business. As you age out of the ladders.

That's, by the way, something else that I should have thought. My dad's big thing now is he's like, I don't climb on ladders anymore. He'll tell random people at Home Depot this, by the way. It's one of the main conversations that he has to those places, to people that didn't even ask.

He's like in a progressive commercial. Just like one of those guys becoming his parents.

Hey, are you telling people that you don't go up on ladders anymore at home?

Home Depot.

But anyway, yeah, like, just things like I look at my roof of the little garage we have. And the garage is not in super great condition anyway. But now we have installed a human door on it. And no, I didn't say human door, friends. I said a human door. Now that's something Walt would really love. But, like, there's so, you know, this is Seattle shit. There's so much moss on the roof that it's actually starting to grow upwards. We have a little garden.

eventually you will have a living roof which is very very in style these days yeah and like it's

just like i need to take care of that and also when seth are um the the the neighbor who lives down the street who is a what is the word a contractor i guess he's put in this door kind of a handyman for some reason handyman still just seems handyman seems like they fix the flag on your mailbox that won't stay up right exactly it seems like it's not taken seriously contractor Or you could say contractor. I'll just say contractor. But he's kind of a jack of all trades, and he was kind of walking around our garage, which, again, the reason I look at is this is something that will probably, hopefully in five or ten years, maybe tear down and build an ADU there or something. But you don't want it to totally go to seed on you. And he's like, look at your downspouts. He's like, you know, he just is seeing things that I don't see. Right. And that's always – I remember when our pal Barry came over here, and Barry's just a generally smart friend, broadcast Barry. um like he visited our house like before we even moved in and he's like oh well there's your cable coming in over there there's your sump pump and i'm like oh sump pump i i thought that was just where oscar the grouch lived underneath there like i know so little i don't look at the house and like i don't see it the way other people see the structure and the things and like and so now i just sort of i have this sense as as we're you know kind of i guess in mid-spring now and the days are starting to get a little bit warmer instead of being excited about projects i'm feeling pre-overwhelmed sort of and I need to I think a part of it too is this you speaking of the garage it's so cluttered in there right now like it's you know Veves and I always have a balance of like kind of being overly neat that would be me and maybe a little too cluttered Genevieve but also like that's where Genevieve does a lot of her woodworking projects which bring her a lot of joy and so I don't mind sort of seeding the garage over to that but then during the winter we started storing more and more stuff in there but not thoughtfully and we also have like just debris in there like the mechanism that used to operate the garage door and some random old fence pole and like she's starting to pile up and literally when i go in there if i just have a small soup canister of random screws that i want to put in the garage i go in the garage and i literally can't find one place to put it i can like balance it on top of like 17 different flower pots that are about to topple over or i can or i can sort of like maybe sweep away a pile of rag it's just like i go in there and i sort of just get the hives i just keep telling genevieve and i just think that this will help my mental health so much i want to rent a truck from handy andy who's are they still sponsoring you they are sports career yes they are okay good they sponsored your little league team i know when you're a kid i'm going to go to handy andy rent a truck i want to open up our garage door not the human door the big door and i want to pull

literally every object out of the garage you want to do all out into the drive large scale version

of how you like to clean your bathroom exactly I want to pull everything out pull it in the driveway the stuff that we do not want to put back in the garage goes right into the handy andy truck and I'll take that to the dump and then everything else we can put back one by one in the way that sounds like a great weekend project yeah I feel like but whenever I say that to Genevieve she looks at me and she's like it's not that bad I don't think we need to do that I think she thinks I'm going to be throwing away too much stuff that maybe she thinks we'll use down the line or something. I've seen this movie before.

The television program is called Hoarders.

Oh, yeah.

Well, I don't want to put a label on it. One of these has to go. But that's a perfectly good Raggedy Ann doll. You just sew a new arm on it.

Yeah, exactly. Pull the knife out. I don't know why there's a knife going through that doll. but uh anyway so i mean i do sort of think that like if i can do that and then get the garage and just sort of reclaim that space sort of i just have this this sort of um and again i haven't talked about it with anyone i haven't even put it well now you've talked about it into words yeah now i'm just sort of like i think maybe if i can sort of like reclaim that space and feel like i have control over it again then maybe the other projects in my life this summer might feel a

little bit more doable i am feeling right now like and i'm not trying to be glib about this you're absolutely right we need to thank some dazzling donors there's no way we're doing top stories we can probably do some dazzling donors and go right to blurs days but like i'm not i'm not trying to make light of this at all but i i wouldn't say that i'm in a manic phase but i'm in a i'm in a phase of high motivation if that makes any sense like when i like i woke up at like 5 45 this morning i was like okay what's next what can i do like i'm in i'm

Thank you.

feeling very i went from being kind of dormant uh and kind of just being like feeling very like this is i'm just rolling this rock up this hill and it's just never going to happen to now it's like everywhere i look i see a project but i think let's just how do you eat an elephant my friend sky used to say how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time it's just like okay

this and then this but also don't eat elephant though also no unless it's sustainably unless is sustainably sourced i guess the ag industry and their the way they raise elephants is inhumane

but i yeah i'm just i'm i'm in this mode right now we'll see how long it lasts but i'm just kind of like i'm just feeling like i think it's from something as small as assembling some ikea cabinets and the drawers and the drawer faces or whatever and putting in two pendant lights i mean this is this is not complicated stuff at all but it is somehow changed for me fundamentally how i feel about if i can do things or not do things so that's kind of good okay we'll wrap things up with

one last question is ladder related and i'll allow it um and that this seems like the perfect place to end this actually on the show sheet when you wrote luke loves his new ladder you wrote loves l-u-v-s is that a sort of a play on words i'm not getting here or is that just sort of how people

say love on the internet now i was just making fun of the fact that i wanted to talk about my ladder on the show like i almost like i have a crush silly have a crush on it so i like to sometimes just put in fun little things for you to let you know that i know that it's silly that i wanted to actually talk about my ladder with you so that i felt like it didn't deserve l-o-v-e-s It deserved L-U-V-S.

In all seriousness, I think that that feeling you're having right now about getting a couple of things done and then feeling emboldened and looking around and being like, this is achievable. I actually think that's very relatable, enviable, because I think that we all go through ups and downs.

And right now I'm probably at the down and you're at the up, you know, but like I swear once you got that garage sorted, though, once everything has a place, like just imagine once you've got that whole thing like organized and all the every yard tool, etc. It all goes somewhere Then the next time that you need to like mow your lawn Or get something together for your little fire Like just There's something about And the basement of my house Would put your human garage to shame right now But this is how motivated I'm feeling We'll see if it lasts But like you know at some point I'm going to go down there I'm actually looking forward to this I need to pull everything out of the basement Reorganize it get it all set up because i'm thinking about building a very very elaborate catio for bubbles under the deck nice like i'm thinking about turning the whole under the deck part into a catio for her that's really smart because it's not really usable space anyway but it's already framed out like it's basically like all of the hassle part of building a structure for your cat like think of a chicken coop basically but like a big one but it's like a dirt like she would be

like playing on the dirt floor or whatever would you well no grass no it so what she would do is

there's a window that like a little kind of a basement window right that's small that used to just be above where the washer and dryer was that's now gone and that window could be her access point from being in the basement to being outside but still protected and saved in this you know screened off thing with cat toys and grass that she can run around but actually that's

like actual real grass like yeah it'll be outside but under the deck right like how cool is that

going to be so i have this whole thing of like getting the basement like again which is just a absolute nightmare of like 1930s technology i mean it's just it's just dank and floods sometimes or whatever but get it at least organized and get it ready for when we bring bubbles back out here so she can have this catio i'm just again i'm i've been in a real i've been in a real fallow period and now i feel like things are things are everything's coming up millhouse so i'm gonna try to ride this as long as i can yeah till i go back to my totally under motivated mode we was hoping

for some razzle dazzle razzle dazzle that's right man razzle dazzle on your mark on your mark get set get set now ready ready go everybody razzle dazzle hey let's thank some dazzling donors who

are making TBTL possible today with their donations. Thank you so much for allowing this to be a job for me, which allows me to buy a ladder that will safely support my ample carriage as I climb up into the rafters of the Madrona Hill Studio. Thanks to people like Christine Blake in New Malden, Southwest London, United Kingdom. Heard of it?

UK baby intern. TBTL Internationale

You're London based Scottish 10 here For another year another dazzle I may have been a little grumpy with TVTL recently, due to Luke's hot takes on UK police procedurals, but my 11 pointed out that I am exactly the same way regarding US TV. How do these maverick detectives keep their jobs, for goodness sake? So I will grin and bear it.

So remind us what we're talking about here. You were watching a lot of UK police procedurals with your dad, right? Yeah, yeah. And you were sort of nitpicking a little bit.

Well, I think what I, here's what I said I loved about shows like Shetland. And I'm not being sarcastic. I love that they are completely and totally disconnected from the real timelines of police work, meaning because, of course, it wouldn't be an interesting show if Jimmy Perez needs Tosh to get him some information. Hey, can you get the CCTV on that? And she says, well, I asked the judge for a warrant. We're going to hear back in four weeks. like that would be a boring show so what happens is he goes i need the cctv on that and she says i've got it right here and we can see the perpetrator like and also uh like you know i don't the miranda rights don't seem to be a a huge part like there's just a lot of stuff that where the for the purposes of the show to be more entertaining there just seems like you know there's always a cctv camera and it's always immediately the footage is available to the law enforcement

folks that need it in that moment they don't call them miranda rights there they call them lift right they do boot right that's right i was gonna go i had to go water closet boot or lift that's it that's one of my three go-tos i couldn't give you a fourth

seriously uh seriously though still loving the pod cart and i am so glad you're making a success of going independent it's going to be a hard year with the u.s election and probably an election over here as well uh which almost certainly will be equally awful so grateful for your virtual friendship and as an oldster i'm totally here for andrew's light bulb organization talk that one was for the kids that'll be something you can i guess you don't keep those in the garage see that's another one garage um but uh but but maybe you can once that thing is all organized and fancy like that uh lastly a couple of tv recommendations for mr burbank senior oh vera set in northeast england and scott and bailey both really good tv series well vera waltz way ahead of you on that christine it's really funny when i scroll through box with my dad because he and my mom watched every single program that the bbc has created um particularly anything with mysteries or crimes involved but really the whole thing it's the only stuff they watch and the most fun part is i'll be like oh hey dad what about this show and he'll go eh it's not very good and i'll go oh okay i mean we watched all of it yeah twice always it's not very good i mean it's not always but it's often oh yeah i didn't really i didn't really enjoy that we watched it twice like you said like it's the fact that he didn't love it never means that he didn't watch all of it with my mom well you just

sort of um we were joking around yesterday off air you just sort of soft launched a development um right there luke uh brick box huh we're not um you we're not bootlegging our british dramas

anymore no because i love nothing more than overpaying for content i am now you got it for them as a gift no i got it for me as a thing so he and i could just watch the dang watch the dang programming because i think it's five bucks a month or something npr got me as opposed to him

like coming with like a usb thing to plug into the back of your tv or whatever and then also

what's that program you'll know this there's the program you have to use sometimes to interpret the audio because the video and it's it's the this uh the the icon for this is like a triangle with an exclamation point in the middle of vlc player there you go we'll have to use like employ these various tactics to like sync up the audio and the video because they're separate well

Well, that's just a media player in its defense anyway. Well, maybe not that. Give me your dad's number when he's back from the islands.

We've had issues in the past with the audio and video not syncing up because when it was bit torrented, those files came down separately in some way in different folders or what have you. I don't know. Point is, I thought it's worth five bucks a month for us just to be able to go Shetland and watch it or Vera and watch it. Right. So that's the scoop. Yeah. So my dad and I, oh, it's also, we need to move on. Christine, thank you so much. But like, I just have a million great stories about Walt. So I bought this couch from crate and barrel. And let me just put it this way. It wasn't overly expensive. It wasn't ridiculously expensive by the standards of a pretty well-made couch, but it was more than. the sum total of every piece of furniture my parents have ever purchased in their life and that's not because this was like a ten thousand dollar couch just because my parents have probably spent at max eighty dollars total on all of the furniture they've ever had um and so i get this new couch and i carefully selected it for durability for its shape its plushness i had this whole image of you know me and my my little postcard moments of like i'm gonna like relax in this couch and watch tv and and and look at the boats and like this whole thing was in my mind and i got the couch all set up and by the way it has totally worked for that i love sitting on the couch i love watching my tv and i like looking over at the lights of the boats going by at night like it's working my dad sits in he goes huh there's not a lot of back support and then he goes and he gets the most jacked up pillow from the other room like there's always at least one room in my house that's just like where i put all of the crap i don't want and my feelings and just like don't go in there and he goes into that room and he gets this like janky old scrubby pillow and he puts it on my beautiful new crate and barrel couch to prop his back it was like that's better i'm just like walt can't you enjoy this couch the way i want you to enjoy this couch

while we're watching brit box we're the same person i when our couch down here was starting to go bad and there was no support at all my back was bad if we were watching tv or certainly if i was playing video games i would pull a straight-backed chair out from my office and set it in front of the tv and between the couch and the tv sit on your straight back chair i'm serious i

believe you yeah um well anyway thank you christine uh appreciate your support for the program and i'll try to i'll try to be more even tempered about these british shows when walt and i this summer when Walt and I are power-using them again, as we will be, and you're hearing a full report every morning.

A little something you'll call the Vera Project? I did. The thought occurred. The thought occurred. No. Maestro? I say maestro.

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

We've also got to thank Chris Stremlau, who's in Kirkland, Washington. I think this might be the first time that I've said Chris's last name correctly.

Yeah, probably the pronouncer helps.

Strumlau rhymes with them, rhymes with al. Yeah. Strumlau.

Love these pronouncers. That's so helpful. That's a good one, too. Because it's hard sometimes to, even if you have the ability to give a pronouncer, especially if you don't work in broadcasting, trying to explain how to pronounce something in text can be very difficult. And I appreciate Chris and our other listeners being able to kind of explain it well.

Yeah, writing things out phonetically is its own art form, and no two people seem to agree on how to let someone know visually what the pronunciation is. This happens with Livewire so much, where somebody writes in a pronouncer for me, and it somehow makes it worse. Like, I'm more confused about how to pronounce the person's name after seeing someone's best attempt at explaining to me how to say their name.

The hardest sound to explain in text is the I sound, because I think properly it's E-Y-E, but that breaks every other rule of phonetic spelling. And so I always find that to be like you're adding three letters to explain one. Like, that's a tough one. But I consider being able to write, like, in the proper phonetic. I don't know if I still can do this, but certainly when I was writing a lot of scripts for public radio, I was, as you know, Luke, I'm not a very confident person, but I'm confident in two things. Parallel parking my VW car, because it's a small little guy, and it's manual transmission, and it just makes it all so easy, and properly spelling things phonetically.

You are very good at that, and I appreciate that, and recording the show when we do it live, another thing that I love about your abilities. No one except you will ever know why I said that to you. But anyway, Chris says, hey, guys, I don't want to hold the show up too much with a message. Oh, it's too late for that, Chris. We've been holding it up ourselves here for the last 64 or so minutes. I actually stopped my timer. It's probably been more. It's more. I don't want to hold the show with a message so you can get back to the hashtag content. But here's a question I've been wondering and hopefully some hashtag content to keep the needles moving. What happened to calling out the sweet cream district when introducing Andrew? I get the spicy origin of the term. It reminded me of something my rural, yet worldly grandma would have said. Did it just fall off Luke's intro organically, or was there a conscious decision that was made to save the show from some sort of super salacious sweet cream situation?

Super salacious sweet cream situation.

That's a lot of S's, dude. keep

up the good work my dudes uh signed chris in kirkland uh do you want to handle that one andrew it was yeah not just randomly drop off of my my intro for you it was a decision that we made but

it was also a decision that i argued we didn't need to necessarily address in the moment i said we can just like kind of let it slip into the background but here's a little background for people who don't know what chris is talking about when we first moved into this neighborhood genevieve and i a couple of springs actually we're coming up on our two-year anniversary in a couple of weeks, I think. What's the two years?

Is that the ladder years? Is that the year you get people ladders?

That's the bronze ladder year, I believe, is two years. So get us that. Get us a bronze ladder. It's so heavy. And soft.

Unfortunately, it's also very soft for being so heavy.

The hedges look great. Why are there trenches below them? When we were not even moved in yet, but in the process of moving in the very first person the neighborhood that Genevieve met was somebody who lives nearby us and he's a the best way to describe him would be an older kooky guy um he's like the most generous way would be to describe him as a yeah and it's kind of hard to describe him because he's somebody who definitely kind of he's he's got a lot of opinions I learned recently that he believes in ghosts I don't know if I told you that story I'm not going to bring that in now that's maybe for another time but um but anyway Genevieve was here at the house doing something And preparing to move in or something And he came by and said hello He's the type of guy who will do that And then sort of trap you in a conversation for a long time But Genevieve was sort of charmed by him But as we kind of got to know him And also his reputation in the neighborhood Is there's like this neighborhood list serve Where people will talk about Issues in the neighborhood or whatever And we had learned that he had been kicked off of that Some years ago for like kind of not heeding the the sort of rules of I guess polite society on that listserv and so we're starting to learn that he's got this sort of complicated legacy but when Genevieve met him the very first time she was sort of delighted by him and he referred to we live in an area where a few blocks away on a main drag on Aurora there's a lot of prostitution and that's obviously very complicated because I think people like you and I Luke don't look at prostitution on its face as necessarily a bad thing it's just the situation you know adults paying each other for pleasure seems generally fine to me but it's the way it's manifested in our culture and the way it plays out

for the people involved particularly the women involved is really can be really harmful which is not a of course not a way of trying to not be sex positive exactly and the way it is on aurora

is you know it's not it doesn't seem necessarily as empowering as you would want if it was something that was legal and regulated and safe because a lot of these people have you know there's a lot of other stuff in that situation that makes it sometimes a very dark existence but in this very moment when he referred to the women who work on Aurora as the sweet cream ladies he was like the sweet cream ladies and we looked it up and some of our friends who live in the neighborhood and it turns out like there's a kinks song called like I don't know what some some song from the 60s that celebrates prostitutes and something like the March of the Sweet Cream Ladies or something. We just sort of thought it was like, like Chris says, sort of a kind of a charming anachronistic way of describing something.

To where it kind of takes some of the, like for instance, when we lived in Port Townsend, there were these, they called the places where the prostitutes were living and working, they called them houses of ill fame. And this is in the old books and they referred to some of the prostitutes as soiled doves oh geez which is I don't like that one as much it's silly but it's like well I guess what I mean I guess to me it it's so ridiculous and and antiquated that it doesn't have the punch of something that would have been made up in 2024 you know or something more new yeah and so we I

thought that was charming I told you about it um and so we started when you were to introduce me on the show you'd say joining us from the sweet cream district Andrew Walsh and I don't know that we really explained it and also some people some people's imagination ran away with them I heard from a lot of listeners who thought that that was a reference to like bodily fluid because of the nature of the work and that is not the case I looked up the origin it had to do with like sort of I didn't even think of that no I know I know I was like oh please don't make me I had to write several emails explaining to people and you're talking about this crap but that is honestly not part of the origin of the word I think it had to do with like kind of skin tone or something like that but anyway it became very complicated hearing from people who were I heard from a lot of people who actually live in our neighborhood who actually really liked it and sort of missed that we stopped calling it that but I just felt like there was enough going on we had enough listeners who didn't like it and also the more I started to learn about our neighbor who said it and I went back and I looked at some of the things he had written on the listserv and it wasn't even necessarily I don't know that it was necessarily related to that I'll see you then.

particular issue but again he was like he came off so sort of toxic in these old emails i was reading as opposed to the and not in a good way jolly complicated man toxic but not in a good way um so anyway i was like okay this guy this neighbor like he's a very complicated person he's very i'll probably be talking about him throughout for the rest of my life there's a bunch of stories that even you don't know luke that are somewhat somewhat interesting but um but anyway it just seemed like a whole bunch of things sort of kind of coalesced around this idea that it's probably not worth it at this point and if people are misinterpreting it or if they think it's disrespectful for us to you know sort of be I don't know minimizing the plight of the women who are working on Aurora or whatever it just seemed like let's let this one just sort of fade into the

background it seems to me like it's part of the larger approach that we have landed on for just like anything that is kind of seems funny to us or is a nickname or is a shorthand for something or a go-to joke or whatever it is i would say most of the time and there are some exceptions but most of the time if we're saying something and somebody says hey you know that really bummed me out when i heard it or that is that could hurt some that could make some people feel less than great most of the time i think our thought is yeah well we'll just come up with something else stupid to say like we don't need there's nothing that we need to say that badly that if it hurts makes somebody feel not great i think our general our general take and there are very few exceptions but our general thing is to just kind of go all right then why don't we just find something else to say like what's the downside this this kind of weird thing which i very much engaged in early in tbtl's lifetime of wanting to like really make sure that you can argue like logically you can make an airtight argument for why you should be able to use certain words like well other people say this version of that or uh the original uh meaning of this word you know like it's like okay but like really like do you have to is this is this that important is it that important for us to say sweet cream district if it makes even five people have a bad experience it's like no we'll you know we'll do something else i think that's just and it's sort of apropos that this was you know brought up during a dazzling donor segment because i don't want to i'm not trying to convert this into a i'm not trying to monetize this conversation but i do think that that's i hope anyway something that people who are listeners to the show enjoy about this community and about this program is i do think generally speaking we are trying to um be responsive to feedback and not trying to which is you know the older that one gets the the The easier it is to get really set in your ways And to become kind of ossified And I'm hoping that people Appreciate the fact that we might Error on the side of being snowflakes on stuff A little bit but it's like yeah But I mean isn't it better to just Did we need to hear Sweet Cream District that Badly that 10 people's Experience and untold number Of people that by the way we'll never meet Who are just out living their life And maybe on Aurora trying To survive like the idea that in any way that could like even make the way people think about those folks it's somehow bad or whatever like it's just not worth it and i think that's our general take on most of this stuff which is why we now call it the histrionics district yes that's exactly thank you to answer the question it is now known as the histrionics district so thank you to our dazzling donors for making tbtl possible today and giving me a chance to remind everyone of how incredibly woke we are

There's a right way to rock and a wrong way to roll You can just listen to your soul Just remember that life is number one You can be having so much fun Just remember that life is much fun You can be number one

Now I'm on BritBox here. I just want to ask you what you know about any of these. Are you familiar with Mrs. Brown's Boys? You're asking the wrong person.

You need to be asking Walt. He'd give you... Yeah, but I thought the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. No, this apple fell so far from the tree. This apple fell, it hit a root, and it literally went into a completely different county.

This apple bought BritBox.

This apple bought BritBox and has literally never looked at it. Again, except for when his dad is here. What's another one on there?

Oh, okay. So Mrs. Brown's boys. That almost has a Mrs. Doubtfire look to it.

Well, but there's also, aren't there the Father Brown mysteries? There's Father Brown is right next to that. There's something called Death in Paradise. That one I don't know, but I bet you.

my parents have silent witness season 26. And is that the, is that the woman from leaving Las Vegas? Has she been in Jennifer shoe? Is this Jennifer shoe? No, I don't think so. Anyway,

here's what we could do on a different day. Andrew, this would actually be funny. We should do this next week while my parents are still on Anna Maria Island. You read me shows off of Brit box. I will text my parents in real time and ask them for their takes on different programs. and I'll just report back as they respond.

I love that idea. The only thing I'd love more would be if we could get your dad on the horn for that. I don't want to interrupt their vacation. But that might be asking a little bit much. Not that much. No, I don't think that that is Elizabeth Shue. I think she just might look like her. But anyway, do you want to do some Blur's Day?

I would love nothing more.

How about this from Zadie who says, I'd like to wish a happy birthday to longtime listener Christian. He's my father and an all-around good man, and I hope he has a good 46th year. Thank you, Zadie.

So this Zadie is the child of this Blur's Day of Christian.

Exactly. Now, we have another happy Blur's Day to Christian here, and this one comes from Brian in Portland. I'm going to assume this is the same. That's what they said on Ask Jeeves. I can't prove that it's the same Christian, but also I'm not on trial here. but I'm kind of guessing it probably is. Brian in Portland says, Happy Blurzy to my co-bro, Christian. He's a monster on the mandolin. I mean, he's no Roy Dong, but he was a regular guest on the Colgate Hour. He's also the kind of true friend who will drive you to your colonoscopy and have a snack waiting in the car for the ride back. Happy Blurzy, Christian.

Hey, I was wondering, Christian, Could I get a ride home from the rap battle? No, could I get a ride home from my colonoscopy?

That was pretty devastating. Reed says, happy Blurs Day to Renee in Aurora, Colorado on her actual blurs. We met Renee at the trivia event in Denver a couple of years ago. Reed says, so today is her actual blurs. That said, Renee's happiest day this year was likely when she heard that Luke's abandoned truck had been taken over by the mechanic. As an owner of an auto repair shop herself, Renee pleaded with Luke at Local 46 in Denver to get it fixed or moved. So I'm sure that she was glad to hear the update that something happened with it. Happy Blur's Day, Renee. I hate to be gossip. Just kidding. I love it. Who knew that you got Renee one of the best birthday gifts, one of the best Blur's Day gifts she could have asked for?

It was $2,000. I hope you enjoyed it. I will tell you, the truck's gone, by the way.

Probably sold it.

I don't know, but it was still there for many months, even after they had filed some kind of paperwork to wrest it away from me. It was still there, and now it's gone. So it was called Clementine. You may see it tooling around the streets of Portland.

Yeah, until you click on a Kevin Morby video and you see it featured in there. You're going to pay $10,000 to get it back. Grace in Ithaca, New York says, I'd like to wish my mom, Diane, and Bo's Arts, Washington. Did I do it right? You did. Bo's Arts? You absolutely did. Bo's Arts, Washington, a happy Blur's Day. I'm so grateful for all the adventures she's brought me along on and those yet to come. Kyle and I hope you have an amazing time seeing Waxahachie at Zoo Tunes this summer. I almost made a Waxahachie joke before I went with Kevin Morby. I'm so glad I did for Variety.

Well, because that's, you know, the cover of St. Cloud, the fabulous Waxahachie record. I believe there's a big yellow truck on there. Probably why that was in your mind.

Yep. That's it for the Blur's Days. I just love the song. Yeah.

Well, I guess this is the part where the art gets made.

Indeed. That indeed is the Blur's Days for today. Love. It does seem like there's not too many in there. Should I check my spam folder? No, don't.

Let's get out of here while we can before I start talking about some other long-winded home improvement project that only a handful of listeners care about.

I do see that some listener emails have landed in my spam folder. I'll get back to you. Are these, but are they Blur's Days? No Blur's Days. Okay, well, I'm out of here.

Contractually, when the Blur's Days are done, I'm allowed to leave on Thursdays.

That's right. I mean, that is what we signed. That's what John told me.

in a Thrive meeting we were having without you invited.

I think, I'm sorry, I'm looking at something here and I'm having a thought, but I don't think it's a thought for now. It's not a thought for now. I want you to stop that right this very minute. But tomorrow I'm accepting thoughts. Eh, I'm hoping that this thought will die on the vine by tomorrow. Now tomorrow I really want to know about it. Today I have to go finish the script for tonight's LiveWire. It's all scripted? Dude, when I'm not writing the NFL season, I'm writing LiveWire. Oh, my God. Maybe we'll see some of y'all down at the Alberta Rose Theater tonight. The show is sold out, NBD, whatever. pretty successful radio show selling out left and right and by which I mean left I think it's the only show we've sold out in like a year anyway thanks for listening everybody we will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you in the meantime have a great Thursday take care of yourselves go little sluggers and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

Hey, dummies, it's Beth. I know you wanted kids to call in with jokes, but I heard a really fun one the other day, so I'm going to tell it. What did the one saggy boob say to the other saggy boob? If we don't get some support around here, everyone's going to think that we're nuts. Sorry, that cracked me up the other day. So anyway, power out. Power out.