Muse

Excuse me, can I talk to you for a second? How can I help you? My date's eating all the fully loaded nachos. All the ones with the meat and cheese and everything. The ones that are fully loaded, she's hogging them. So I'm mostly getting just like, just chips. Like mostly just chips, like nothing on them, but like a little bit of cheese and maybe one little nugget of meat. Okay. Can you say something to her? Say what? Maybe go up the table and just say like, Hey, stop that! Or like, hey, that's not allowed. You want me to go over and say stop eating the meat on the chips? No, just say the restaurant has a rule. It's not you, it's the rule the restaurant has that if you get an item to share you can't, one person can't just eat all the fully loaded ones. Like, don't look around, find the one with the most meat and always eat that one. Can't you just ask her to share with you? Can't you just say the restaurant has a rule? TBTL!

In the next hour, we will present information that's both shocking and enlightening.

You know, everything is not an anecdote. You have to discriminate. You choose things that are funny or mildly amusing or interesting. You're a miracle. Your stories have none of that.

I'm a Grammy Emmy Tony and Webby Award winning and nominated songwriter, artist, designer, director, editor, animator, producer, collector, party thrower.

That was great. That was good. You went for it. I appreciate that.

You embarrassed me in front of Derek Jeter.

You embarrassed yourself in front of Derek Jeter. And I also think it wouldn't hurt you to talk to a therapist about your bathroom issues,

because there's clearly something going on there.

All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. We're just blowing through nap time, aren't we? My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. I'm an activist and house party enthusiast. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where we're gonna have kind of a sort of a combo platter of a day weather-wise it's uh right now looking kind of nice but it may uh get rainy and gray at some point whatever is happening out here and i have been gone for the week and i literally just got home like 10 minutes ago uh the conditions have apparently been ideal for furious grass growth because oh it's grown now it's really grown now i mowed the lawn last week and i left town for like two and a half days and it's all back with a fury so you know what that means we're getting the lawnmower out again baby it's time for the number one favorite thing amongst people who are soon to be 48 years old and that is mowing the lawn that's right first though we've got to get through this episode it's Episode 4184 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Number two favorite thing amongst people who are soon to be 48 years old is talking about the baseball team that their podcast sponsors. That's right. Can you verify? Can you give me some 411? We've got an update on the TBTL Junior Sluggers and how they did this weekend.

I'm in it to win it.

So we will update you all And I know people are very very interested In what's going on with the TVTL baseball team Of the Parkside Little League of East Portland Also this weekend I was in Las Vegas And last night went to that Big giant thing the Sphere To watch a movie I was having what they were billing as a Two hour experience at the Sphere It was well Something I'll tell you that much So who needs a movie We'll tell you all about that. And also, we'll talk to this guy. Longest running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's sort of a, you know.

This handsome young stranger.

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

Good morning, Luke. I know that the listeners can't see me, and you might not even be looking at me right now. But you might be able to tell from my tone of voice that I'm much buffer than I was when I spoke with you on Friday because I have now signed up for a gym.

So you're saying the grass here at my house is not the only thing that's been growing also. You're in the words of George Takei, your musculature is growing.

Oh, absolutely. I am a different person. I haven't done any exercise at the gym yet. You've done the hard part, though. I did the hard part. I signed up for a gym membership. So, yeah, I don't want you to start treating me differently.

Well, it's too late. It's far too late. You look nice today. You have a nice collared shirt on. I am. Yeah, so at the very beginning of the show, I can't look at you because I just can't handle it. I need a little bit of time. Yeah.

Live with me, I know. I know that feeling in the morning. I need to ease into it, particularly on a Monday. Oh, buddy, I know. I know.

It's because I have to have the screen on my computer is where all the little audio drops are. So that's kind of what I'm looking at. And then most days I remember to switch over to our video feed. But then some days I kind of forget, actually, because obviously you're doing a ton of monitoring with the recording, the audio recording of the show and all that stuff. That's kind of your department. I'm probably more likely to be activating some of the sound effects And doing other little things like that So sometimes we'll go through a significant portion of the show And I've forgotten to switch over to my screen where I can see you But today I got to that early and I have to say You look very nice, I like your green collared shirt And here's my question And I don't want to blow up your spot I don't want legions of groupies and exercise aficionados To show up at your new gym But I guess my question is what's the address of the gym and what was the locker combination they gave you?

Would it be easier if I just gave you my home address and then... Yeah, and then

I'll have the listeners swing by and then they'll get the address to the gym that you now belong to.

Because honestly, I could use a ride to the gym. I've fallen on some hard times.

Well, walk. Get the steps in, dude. That's the real... That's the power move. You walk to where you're going to work out. You work out and then you walk home and then you really... I would love

that. I did that in LA. That was great. But, well, that sort of gets to your question here. I'm trying to think, do I care? No, I'll just say it. Well, you can be vague. Well, I don't think I need to be vague. I think I told people where I used to work out at 24-Hour Fitness and nobody was there trying to spot me.

Well, that's because it was closed many of the 24 hours, which I believe was part of your problem.

This also would be strange if I was on the elliptical and somebody said, can I spot you? Like, that's not how any of this works. Because that's mostly what I do. When I get into a decent gym routine, it's nothing over the top. In fact, it's way under the top. It's just me being on an elliptical for maybe 45 minutes or whatever.

From the people who brought you the Sylvester Stallone classic, Over the Top, an Andrew Walsh production, Under the Top.

The log line of my movie is, it's not like a switch. It's not like a switch at all. It's the only thing I remember about that movie, but it's one of the only things.

Like arm wrestling to win his son back or something, which is a weird way for the court to decide these matters.

Right. No, I mean, that's the other thing I remember is it's like at the end, it's like winner takes all wrestling, arm wrestling, and all means his truck, which is his means of making a living, and his firstborn. So that is all. Like when they say winner takes all, those are high, high stakes. And then he turns his hat backwards and he says, it's like a switch. uh assume for what um so anyway you know where i'm going so i did belong to the 24 hour fitness um which was here in kind of the north gate area and i've been a member of 24 hour fitness for a

long time now like well over 10 years longer than you meant to i think in certain periods right

i don't know i was really reluctant to let it go because i liked a lot of things about it i signed up i think when i first moved to seattle and there was a 24 hour fitness kind of near my home and And then when you and I were doing TBTL way back in the day and I was still doing like the night show or whatever, I just had this really good routine. It was central to where I was living and working. But then I moved to L.A. and I could use my membership to go to several different 24 hour fitnesses there. My membership just followed me around. And so I loved that because back then I was always prepared to move at any moment. And also due to some legal trouble. You never will.

You don't always had a bag packed. Yeah, exactly. They had a go bag with three different forms of identification in different names.

That's right. And wigs, a lot of wigs. But anyway, I don't know that they do that anymore, at least where I'm going now is I've switched my allegiance to the Planet Fitness up on Aurora. And to your point about walking, I used to love when I was in L.A. and it was more of a kind of a fine walk through Koreatown to get to my gym. That was great.

That doesn't seem like a super fun walk. although you know you could down aurora this is getting us ever closer to your literal actual address but there probably are some there are some side roads and some residential streets you could take that would make it a little bit less um yeah kind of walking along aurora it you know is is can be rough for a lot of reasons as previously stated um on the program not i mean no sidewalks

a lot of the way it's what we call a strode it's one of those half highway half streets like it's just it's it's just rough all around it would be a terrible walk and also i think a couple of miles again not to give away my address but that'd be a little bit much for me but uh anyway yeah so the thing about 24-hour fitness was it treated me well for a long time but then i have not on in a long time and i uh keep thinking one of these days i'll get back into my good routine and i just never did and a big part of it was kind of the location it's not especially far from where i live right now but just sort of a pain in the ass to get to and also really the thing was just scuzzy showers just like the locker rooms are always so nasty i never thought of the gym part as being particularly nasty but i'm not especially whatever i don't use a lot of the machines like i say i use like three or four or five machines tops on a good day and they were always fine i didn't think about it much it didn't seem like a gross environment but the the locker rooms were a very gross environment man it is nasty out there you couldn't have said it better like just i mean the stuff on the floor on the shower floors old towels and band-aids and hair clumps and all this shit and i just was like i would say how nasty it was but it didn't occur to me that like another gym that would be a chain like that in basically the same area would be much better. But I went and it was sort of my experience on, I guess, Thursday when I first went in to the front desk of this new place, Planet Fitness, just to see, like, kind of scope things out. I have been dreading for months showing up there and somebody being like, OK, well, we have to give you the whole tour and they're going to try to upsell me on a personal trainer and like all of these things I'm just I have to you know schedule a whole afternoon just to tell them that I don't want a personal trainer and I'll just sign up for their cheap you see them

bring out some sort of calipers sir we're gonna need you to take your shirt off right you know

what I think about all the time Luke and almost every time I make myself myself a salad at home so like once a year no um like almost sometimes I'll cut up a salad for myself a simple salad at lunchtime and I'll put a little dressing on there and I'm not even a big dressing person But every time I'm pouring the dressing on there, I remember the story of when you were going to a much different kind of gym and you were interested in signing up. And and the woman that they paired you with said something like like she was a trainer or something. She said, well, how much dressing are you putting on your salads? Do you remember that? Like it was like one of the first questions about your health is how much dressing are you putting on your salads? You're like, I think we skipped a lot of macro stuff here.

Yeah, I do. I was that. You know what? I think that might have been the Seattle Athletic Club. I was there was a minute where I was thinking maybe I'm entering my sort of like Seattle elite phase like I'm becoming I don't know what what this was based on certainly wasn't based on my credit report my income my sort of social standing but I I got really interested in maybe joining the Washington Athletic Club.

That's really, that's nice. I think this was something else. This was when you were down in, like, this was long after you weren't living in Seattle anymore. But boy, you and I have, I don't know if I realized that you did, you know, sign up for the Seattle Athletic Club.

I did this, so the WAC is the really fancy one. And then I didn't have, like, money for the WAC, or I couldn't convince myself that this was a good use of the money. So I went down to the SAC, literally and figuratively. I went down to the Seattle Athletic Club Which is in Pike Place And is also a very cool place And pretty, in my mind, sort of storied But a little bit more affordable Which is not to say affordable But just, like, you don't have to sign over some It's not like joining Scientology You don't sign a million year contract And agree to try to get rid of your engrams Or whatever So maybe it wasn't there I do remember that conversation happening somewhere And thinking, I just don't think This is salad dressing related for me it's yeah how much whiskey am i putting on my salad we might be getting closer to the

problem so anyway i signed up for c org no um i uh i was really because i back in the day when you signed up for something like 24 hour fitness or something you really did get like kind of a big upsell and they wanted to give you a whole tour and i was really dreading that and then i kind of got the i mean this is this is where maybe i get complicated but like i kind of got the opposite of that but then it was also just slightly irked not not terribly irked but i had to remind myself like later in the day like that was just like a young person who works at the planet fitness on aurora of course he's not rolling out the red carpet for you or cares much about you at all but i i knew that there was some like ridiculous deal going on for like waving a sign up fee or whatever which i'm sure is all the time i just happen to be seeing commercials recently and i'm like oh i've been meaning to sign up there anyway so it's like a one dollar sign up fee instead of 50 bucks or whatever like okay i'll do that and so i go in there and i have a bunch of questions and he just like takes this like little laminated piece of paper and puts it in front of me and like rattles off a bunch of stuff as fast as possible so that he can get back to his like conversation With his buddy or whatever And I'm just kind of like okay well I have some follow ups And I'm like wait there's also a yearly fee What's with that he's like I don't know it's just how they do it And I'm just like I don't think you can take

that tone with me when i'm saying why am i paying why will i have to pay fifty dollars now and then a fifty dollars a month and a half from now you know if i don't take advantage of this deal he's like i don't know it's just how they do it i'm like but you should know you're the one who's taking my money right um but having said all that i'm just like well can i just like kind of the reason i'm leaving my other places it seems sort of scuzzy to me i just want to like kind of see the locker rooms this is a funny moment for me too because i'm not in any kind of athletic wear at all i'm wearing you know it was kind of a chilly day so i'm wearing a pea coat and a hat and You know, like, I'm just like, OK, I'm here now. Can I go hang out in the locker room? Can I go see the showers now? Like, it was a sort of a funny vibe.

But you're dressed like Gorton's Fisherman.

I was.

Yarr, where be your showers? I put on an eye patch. I grabbed me a pipe, a tobacco pipe. I went in there and I just sat. I just sat in the shower section for a while and just watched, observed. No, but he was really, I mean, again, I was relieved that it wasn't a whole, like, rigmarole am i i asked genevieve about that did we learn on this show that it's rigmarole i think

it is but i just don't know anyone out there in the game who's calling it rigmarole i think very technically speaking it is rigmarole it's tough i was going to diphthong it like in the

people want to say realtor realtor realtor yes yeah that's what i have to that's what i have to think about but all of that is to say um the hands-off approach by this young man ended up being good in the long run he's like listen when you signed up for that uh guest pass we sent you a link because i came back in came out to the car i called genevieve i'm like i think this is a good deal should i just do this she's like yeah just go do we're just kind of chatting it out and then i go back in and i'm like okay i'm ready to sign up he's like we already sent you a link i'm like okay and i just like i'm like i could have saved some time isn't that though by the way isn't that

just the just exactly why why for people like you and i and your life can be just so hard because it's there's no easy there's just no right no there's no right amount of attention from people in these kind of things like i totally identify with what you're saying which is like on the one hand you have uh the old model that you and i are both familiar with where you go and you just want to like sign up for this membership and be able to come here and try to exercise or whatever but they're so incentivized the trainers are trying to get you to buy a package of personal training and there's if you want to prepay two years it's like and you just feel like you're whacking away whack-a-moling all these things that you don't want and that's one kind of thing that you don't want to deal with but then you go in and now they've realized like no one was even buying those packages let's just we can have a 22 year old there who's just like like here just bump our phones together and you'll be a member here you know and like it's the exact opposite of what was making you feel bad about going before but now that's its own kind of new bat yeah i was just

like could you at least like care like could you not answer my questions with disdain like could

you at least say sir why would you join a gym when your body is already perfect

that's all i ask he said i'm sorry are you signing up to be a trainer sir that's tuesdays the trainer

the trainer trainee program is on tuesdays that's clearly what you're here for sir

i will say this this is my um if not power out is where i'll leave things when i did take my um what i call the pervert walk around the um around the gym and the and the locker room i believe the pervert stroll wasn't that a song the pervert stroll that was bunny and the whalers i was impressed with how i think i had stockholm i think i had stockholm syndrome with 24-hour fitness because like even the moment i walked in it's much smaller than 24-hour fitness but like everything just looked generally new not like gleaming or exciting it was still basically the same types of machines i need but like every television worked and there were tons of television they were all tuned to different things and the machines all looked like they all look just brand new and shiny and then i go in the locker room and i had been looking on yelp and people are like these locker rooms are disgusting and first of all if you're leaving a review on yelp of a of a chain gym place and you think that the floors of the locker room are dirty you don't have to take close-up photos of your dirty feet which several people did and posted on the yelp page for

this particular gym well i guess we know where to get the free feet pics yeah it turns out people are paying good money for that i mean all you need to do is hang out in the planet fitness yelp

that's right boy i just pushed a lot of traffic that way knowing our listeners no i but i gotta say like i was kind of bracing myself for a pretty like gross locker room no i mean again i guess i just took it for granted that like well if you're gonna have a gym chain like this you're gonna have dirty locker rooms no 24 hour fitness is disgusting and i cannot believe how long i stayed with

picks to prove it and i will be showing them off i will be showing my dirty tootsies off on yelp but go to the 24 hour page for that one um but i was like oh man this is going to be great even if i you know i like to sometimes shower usually i like to shower immediately after working out like

that's what we know kind of my i literally referenced you last night in las vegas and your showering habits to becca on stage oh uh-huh i did i was uh nobody asked me to but i crashed the donny osman show good no becca was like are you gonna because we got up really early this morning to fly home she goes are you gonna take a shower in the morning before we leave but she was trying to time it out and i said i don't know i'm really a one shower a day guy max and i go meanwhile andrew if he can get three showers in that's a that's a good day for him oh yeah old

eczema ears over here he can't get enough hot water on that on that fragile skin of his but

But yeah, so it sounds like your mind was expanded by this by this experience, because you you learned that it is not a given that just because a gym is, you know, kind of reasonably priced and kind of what we might call a affordable option for working out a place that is not pitching itself as a prestige location. It's not a place where you could also have, let's say, your daughter's wedding reception like you can at the WAC.

Although I do plan on doing that I plan on having a child

It's frowned upon, not forbidden Those are very different things Right, right That's a line that I know very well in various parts of my life But like the idea, like it sounds like what you're saying Is just because this place is, you know Kind of reasonably priced and a big national chain It doesn't mean that you have to accept The bathrooms being To use that word again, grotty And so that's kind of cool

Yeah, totally grotty Yeah, so I'm looking forward to this So, I mean, am I looking forward to this? I am sort of looking forward to this. Like, I really want to get into a routine again because I whether it was, you know, long stints in L.A. and Seattle, like when I can get into a rhythm of going to the gym several days a week. And I was obviously joking about me turning into an Adonis because you will see no change in my body. But it just feels good. Like, it just feels good to get the blood up and to get into that routine. and then the little routines that will inevitably build up around that routine, like where I stop for Gatorade afterwards or whatever. There's always something that is sort of built into it.

You know what mine is? It's towel-related. When I do my little jog outside, I bought a bunch of these small kind of hand towels that you would buy to put into your gym, right? And the reason, I could almost go back and get one and show it to you, Andrew, But the reason that they feel institutional is because they have a purple stripe down the middle. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like I literally went on Amazon. I know. I know. But I was like, I want the kind of towels that I get at the gym or if I'm in the hotel gym. I like those kinds of towels for some reason. Like it makes me feel like this is a towel that has a specific use. And it's for it's not drying your whole body off. It's not post shower. It's just you exercise and you're kind of sweaty And it's hard to describe this In ways that are useful for the listeners But I'll try There is something about the feeling Of getting done with my little jog Getting back into my car And then grabbing this towel And then getting the sweat off of my head It is for some reason That feeling, that tactile experience Is very gratifying To the point that it's the thing I'm looking forward to I mean I think what I'm looking forward to is being done But the way that my brain Clocks that now is I'm telling myself there's four Bridges that I have to run down And I break this run down Into how many times I have to go underneath A footbridge and up because there's like a dirt Path that'll go under these footbridges that Cross the lake it's this kind of long Narrow lake and as I'm counting Down the footbridges I'm like okay two more One more footbridge one more footbridge And then it's the downhill part and then you just Go past the beaver and then you know I'm always like checking this stuff down in my brain and it's also a beaver beaver statue a statue of beaver it's a it's a beaver that is honestly very sedentary he's just I did by the way uh I did see an otter the other day when I was jogging there who was up on the grass and I was like into the water with you my friend what are you doing up here but are you

being serious you pass a statue of a beaver there's a statue legitimately a statue of a beaver

But there's also Some like alive Life that lives down there But all of this is to say I'm with you with the rituals Like the getting of the Gatorade Because first of all you're feeling probably pretty good You're having this kind of endorphin Release from you did this exercise Then you get to have your like reward Of your Gatorade and then like for me This reward is literally like Get this towel And mop my forehead off and feel this like again, just this tactile experience that I find very pleasant. It's mostly probably related to the fact that my body is surging with a lot of endorphins at that moment. And anyway, that's the stuff for me that gets me to kind of continue on with some of this stuff is, is the, the event of it. I don't like now I'm really on this thing of listening to the daily. So on like on Tuesdays, when Chris Hayes' show drops, I listened to that, but then I, you know, I'm usually through that in two jogs. So then it's all of this other stuff that's in the orbit of this event that I kind of

get into and of course i'm looking forward to that moment tonight when i'm coming back from the gym and i just feel like the healthiest man in the world so i make myself a swimming pool of like spaghetti and a hundred percent dive head first i mean like oh my god i'm a different person

i can afford to do this now there is a gym rat there is a straight line between me feeling like i quote unquote have been being good and the just absolute punishment to my body through various excessive consumption of things you know what I mean it's like it's that's the most dangerous time like you know today I again I don't want to get into I don't want to get too deep with this and too weird because I do think I have some sort of stuff that's not a hundred percent ordered around my thoughts about food and stuff and I don't want to put that into anyone else's mind I don't want to normalize that but like we were flying back this morning and they gave us granola and yogurt and i don't eat granola and yogurt in the morning i certainly don't eat at 7 30 a.m but it was free and i didn't know how to say no to it and so well i did i could have said no but i was like i don't know free granola and yogurt this so i i ate it and it's not something i really eat and now like now i feel i usually my typical thing is i tend to skip breakfast i have some coffee which is usually kind of sufficient and then i'll have a pretty light lunch and then i eat an excessive amount of food at dinner and i mean an entire day's worth from at dinner but anyway just because today because i got that like yogurt and granola in my in my system now i'm like well i can't believe like i'm feeling i i need to be more okay with the fact that i ate some granola and yogurt this morning that is not an aberrant behavior but because it's so not my typical thing it's kind of has it's in my head like well i've already kind of blown the plan for today do i just after the show go lower myself into a vat of ranch dressing like is this a quote unquote cheat day now which is the worst most binary way it's most unhealthy way to think about this stuff um but it is weird how like an interruption in my in my routine around this stuff and again my routine on most days uh monday through friday is to typically abstain from breakfast then now i've had breakfast and now it's like well do i just pretend like today is just a freebie Do I eat a giant Jimmy John's sandwich for lunch? What do I even do now that I've thrown my little rituals off?

It's funny. I know that.

Oh.

I could have just said, you just heard the unmistakable sound of me realizing, oh, shit, I'm taking this. We could have wrapped it up there, but I'm going to take this into a place that it's very serious.

Listen, as I say so often now, people are just sticking around to hear the Little League score.

Oh, that's true. We've got to get to that. also i'm kind of curious i want to hear about your travels which will be a good bridge into some of the conversation we're going to be having later so uh i'll just make this a quick little detour into alcoholics anonymous i know that it is a you know i know that that program i'll mention this like i i grew up with several people in my life being part of that program and that being very very good for them um but you know the older i get and the more society sort of examines that there are some things that some people have issues with such as the religious aspect of it but also this idea of if you slip once you've slid all the way down the slide and now you got to go all the way back up the ladder you know but in a certain way what you're describing with food i think is the mentality of people who struggle with certain kinds of addiction yeah and even if it's like a legal substance like alcohol it's kind of like okay i've been good i've been good i've been good i went i don't know five days five weeks whatever it is but then one day they decide i'm gonna have one beer with my buddy but then that night it's a very you know it's a very real chance that you that one beer you're like ah shit i broke the seal and you're passed out in the ditch well yeah

i mean that's definitely a way that i think about my food consumption unfortunately and it's i need i probably need to do some work around that as they would say to just kind of like not have it be so on or off because it's i don't want to live in a world where it's either a day that i'm being and again i'm putting this in air quotes i'm being quote unquote good meaning i you know denied myself this and that and i did my run and i toweled off like and everything's in in order and then there are the days when it's like i woke up and i just felt like really was craving a big thing of scrambled eggs with cheese on it and i made that and now it's like well that day's unredeemable yeah right now that's just a day for me to just be like just literally nothing even matters this day is already shot and that is like a very unhealthy very extreme way of thinking whether it's alcohol whether it's food whatever it might be I think life will be longer and more fun for all of us if we a cut ourselves some slack and realize that it doesn't have to be all or nothing that's something that I think I kind of have have sort of struggled with so as I want to I want to hear about the baseball team

because I need this update as well you did not text it to me so I'm excited to hear sitting on sluggers are doing however I am a little bit curious I know you want to talk about uh your experiences in vegas a little bit in the next segment but i didn't realize so you flew in today huh you're talking about having that yogurt today so you're you're not just you didn't even wake up in your own bed and here you are at work look at you no buffers for this burbank bufferless

burbank i'll write it down um yeah no we um uh this is also though i think a sign of my advancing age um this is now the like in the last few weeks this is the second time that i have voluntarily chosen to fly really early just because then i get back to where i'm going earlier and also because i knew like i'm perfectly capable of like not even though i was in vegas with becca i was like there's no need for me to become totally wild like on a sunday night in vegas it's not a given that I will be, you know, 10 tequilas in or something and unable to get up to make this early flight. Same thing happened flying home from Iowa. We were doing the show out there, and it was this thing where there was a flight at like 6 a.m. or something out of like whatever, out of Cedar Rapids, and then there was another one at like 11 a.m., and I knew if I got the 11 a.m. one, then Sunday was just gone. Sunday was gonna be over, but if I took the early one, I could get back to Portland. I could go hang out with Becca, see the cats. It's like, and I just thought, well, yeah, it'll suck to get up, but I'll just, this, by the way, is not me trying to pat myself on the back. It's just, I just feel like this is the ultimate older person move, which is to start getting up earlier and earlier to just like stay ahead of things or be like, well, wouldn't it be nice to be home by one on Sunday instead of being home by four on Sunday? It's like, maybe, but anyway, so, uh, what happened was two things happened. uh critically what happened was um becca's brother and his wife decided to go to belize and said hey we're going to belize if you want to go and we were like no can't do that but i was like it would be fun to go somewhere and it turns out i had some free nights at the hotel in vegas and um and could use some like miles and stuff to make the flight pretty cheap and i had in my pocket a voucher from a slot machine at the Cosmo in Vegas that I accidentally brought back with me last time for $316 and wouldn't you know the Cosmo is the only casino that I could find in the area I did a lot of googling on this that does not allow you to just mail the ticket in oh I didn't know you could do that for anything you can do that for a lot of them I found out Not the Cosmo And so it became this thing Where I was like is it worth $316 to fly back To Las Vegas to cash This thing in and presumably Then reinvest it in Casino futures or whatever So it just kind of was one of these things that came Together it was like a free place to stay Flights were cheap and I had this Ticket that was either going to Pretty much go to no use if I didn't Do something with it within 180 days

or we just go to that was my next question so there is a uh there was a ticking clock on there

was and so so that was how this kind of odd little trip came about but but the the thing was i could have uh brought my audio gear and my stuff and been like just told you hey i'm gonna be like because like i technically had the hotel today as well it was like they were offering a number of free nights and i could have just done it from you know uh from the hotel room as i often do for work stuff but i was like yeah you know i just like my setup in the madrona hill studio i like having all my things where it's just easier and i'll just get up we'll just get up so we just got up at like so early like 4 a.m today and just flew up here but now i'm here i'm talking to you and i'm very happy about it and i feel like this is the aging process uh in in in vivid color in front of everyone's ears is that now i'm a person who gets up at four in the morning on a monday to leave las vegas by the way more people doing that than i would have expected i thought the airport was going to be a ghost town like 6 a.m flight on a monday coming out of vegas wouldn't you just think that would be like i just assume that everyone has been operating the way that i've been operating for most of my life which is in a state of perpetual hangover and let like no one could get out of vegas at six in the morning on a monday that's an impossibility but no turns out A lot of people just were like, yeah, we'd like to get home earlier also. Like, I thought I was inventing something with this. But no, there were tons of people at the airport.

This might not be true. for vegas as much as like say a card room on aurora but you and i have also talked before about how a lot of people who are way into gambling aren't way into drinking yeah like

i'm a real double threat that way i'm the liza of problematic behavior because that's exactly

the case you're gonna get an egot for problem i mean i've studied this issue very carefully

on the ground at a real kind of you know very close proximity and i am one of the few people who likes to drink and likes to gamble as much as i do most people if they're in the casino depending on the time of day i'm talking more like local casinos like goldie's and stuff there is a time of day that you can swing through goldie's and you're not going to find many people that seem to be an active addiction around drugs or alcohol but the gambling is the thing that is that is giving them a feeling or an ability to kind of disassociate from their feelings that they're looking for it's very rare you find someone who likes both bad habits as

much as i do and they're going to be mad at you if you hit on a 13 well it depends what the dealer

has a three definitely don't that's bad news the dealer has the same i'm learning if you've got

about our last conversation about this someday i want to play blackjack again when i'm 80 years old and I'm going to be too frail for anybody to be mean to me. I'm going to play blackjack again.

Just for the people listening who might wonder, if your card so if you have a 15 and the dealer has a 5 up, if your cards are ever matching the dealer's cards in that way and it's a bust card, you let the dealer take the bust card. It's the theory. But again on our, you want to talk about strodes. We stroded yesterday around Vegas because Saturday we sat by the pool which was really fun. It was like A pretty warm day I mean not by Vegas standards But it was a nice warm day Certainly warmer than Portland And then the plan was like Saturday we're going to sit by the pool We're going to catch some rays And then Sunday We're going to try to We were going to try to go on a hike But it was actually difficult to get Like we didn't rent a car So it was difficult to get like a Lyft or Uber Out to this like Red Rock National park So we ended up deciding to just Take a really long walk from like the vegas strip down to old what's called old town uh which is you boy you really go through the different all the different like kind of layers of the city of las vegas all of the the sort of conspicuous consumption of the of the newer strip where you have these billion dollar hotels we went in this one the fountain blue which is all the reports on the fountain blue is that it's it's just in financial free fall they just built it and apparently it's just like nobody's going to it it's losing money left and right but i'll tell you what not unlike that uh planet fitness bathroom that you can't stop talking about uh-huh gosh that place is nice yeah my i mean well it's like a brand new probably billion dollar casino that's also the style the aesthetic i guess you might say is kind of like miami because fountain blue is you know that's a very famous hotel in South Beach. The style is kind of like Miami chic, and it's just like the colors are really beautiful, a lot of turquoise and stuff. It smells great. The bathroom, the like main, like, you know, just where the slot machines are or whatever, the men's bathroom, it's one of the nicest men's bathrooms I've ever been in in my life.

Really? So let me guess, you got stalls with doors that go top to bottom?

Andrew, I didn't have to do that. I didn't need to I didn't I didn't need to engage in that particular behavior, but I wished I could have.

Yeah. You're like, give me some yogurt. I was just right. I was like, I'm just here to pee.

But man, am I missing an opportunity? This is I mean, this would be incredible if you found yourself, you know, going to the Burger King to poop. But anyway, so so, yeah, this is I wanted to talk to you more about the sphere, which maybe we can do that after the dazzling donors. But we did walk like I think we walked like 14 miles yesterday or something around Vegas and through like the fancy part and then into the like the stratosphere, like less fancy and then into the like Pawn Stars area where that store literally is. And like a bunch of the old motels that are now, you know, shuttered and boarded up and some have been on fire. And there's, you know, a lot of folks in those areas who, you know, look like they're probably experiencing homelessness. And, you know, you really see the other side of this glitz and glamour of Las Vegas, which I'm not blowing anyone's mind to say that there are two sides of that coin. And then you get back into sort of like old Vegas, which is Old Town, which is the Fremont Street experience. And what's interesting is it's very lively in the way that the newer part of Vegas is lively. But you can tell everything is about 70% cheaper. so just everything the t-shirts are cheaper the slot machine limits are lower the you know the energy is like chaos

I saw a lady dressed as a nun, but with her breasts out, but then she was wearing like pasties, but she was just there in case you wanted to take a photo with a nun that's not wearing enough clothing, and then presumably tip her.

Can we use that as the show pic then? I assume you got the photo.

I took a couple of pictures. There was at least three Michael Jackson impersonators. It was like, well, the rehabilitation of Michael Jackson's image, or at least his inclusion in the conversation, I guess, is that's well, that's a solved argument at this point or something. And like, so anyway, you've got this like Fremont Street is just this it's there was a moment where Becca and I were walking and I want to I want to try to remember exactly what's going on. But I feel like the nun was to our left. The nonsense was going on to our left. Yeah, a joker's to the right of you. OK, there was there was also everyone that performed. Now has Their own stereo system right So it's cacophonous There's just the music that's playing because It's Fremont Street Then there's each individual performer With their like with their System that's trying to draw attention there's A guy who's dressed as like a very Very unconvincing Donald Trump But he's wearing a shirt and then A bodysuit so it looks like he doesn't have any clothes on So I guess naked Donald Trump maybe You got that guy you've got a nun you've got people doing all kinds of stuff and as it's all going on and it's all just kind of hitting us right over our head from behind us there's like six people ziplining over us because there's some kind of crazy zipline you know thing motorized zipline that goes on and it was it was like the blue angels of trash culture just zoomed right over us as it was all happening So that was the adventure yesterday. But let's do this.

Like you were walking through the rings of a tree of Vegas. Totally.

And there was something about feeling like every sensory input that could be receiving information like was, like the smells of the area, the sounds of it, the look of it. And then there was another dimension, and it was called people just zip lining over your head that you had no idea were there until they were like doing a flyover.

Sounds like something from Arrested Development when he's in whatever they call English town, London town or whatever.

It doesn't matter. Meets fear and loathing in Las Vegas. Yeah, right. Everything was happening at once. All right. Speaking of things that are happening in. Can I take a moment to update you and the listeners about how the TBTL Junior Sluggers did this weekend? I'm very excited about this. Let's see here. I've got photos, Andrew. I've got an update from Ben, the manager.

I'm actually a little anxious. I said I'm very excited about this, which as I was saying that, I'm like, that isn't exactly what I'm feeling right now. I really want this to be good news. You've got me pumped up with that music. I don't know if we need other. You know how like on Marketplace when they play sadder music when the markets don't go great to be different music?

They play, I think, Stormy Weather.

Okay, yeah.

I feel like the markets are down music.

Yeah.

The TBTL Little Sluggers went on to a dominating win over the Golden Tigers. Nice. Final score, 8-5. But according to manager Ben, Andrew, that doesn't even reflect how well the Junior Sluggers played. A five-run first inning gave us an early lead. And dominant pitching by Andreas and Jaden secured the win. special kudos to Bea who won the hustle pin which is the equivalent of a game ball for her enthusiasm on the field and her cheerleading from the bench nice and also Ben mentions this is more of a personal message that he had had a dream the night before the game I'm being totally serious I'm being very serious

I love that the manager's notes include a dream this is really the league for me there's no doubt about it yeah uh have you ever had a dream that that you um you had

you could do anything the dream that ben had was that a co-worker told me that he needed to wear powder blue knee socks to ensure a win for the team uh so of course he said i did that less a pox be upon our team so i think ben was wow was wearing um appropriate um uh an appropriate outfit for this and now he said uh of course i'm now obligated to wear uh knee-high socks and shorts for the rest of the season because that was the special combination that and if you're scoring at home andrew brought the tbtl junior sluggers to a record of two wins one tie and critically

zero losses that is fantastic i assume that we could have gotten more runs in that first inning it sounds like We triggered the five-run mercy rule per inning. Yeah, and what is the name of our clubhouse leader again who won the pin?

The pin was for Bea. Also special mentioning to Andreas and Jaden for their pitching. Up on the mound.

Nice, nice. Good job, everybody.

Absolutely. I know I say this with every update, but only because it's so true. As the Mariners continue to just absolutely find new ways to devastate me, the tbtl junior sluggers find new ways to delight me so thank gosh we've got this team

amen and also like i don't want to walk into planet fitness later today as you know a loser you know what i mean i needed i needed to be we could really use a w here and you got i could really use a w here and i know that this is just slightly slightly less um i guess i'm hold on i'm Rattling through a whole bunch of words I don't want to use. Okay, good. Get those out of the way. Charming, charming. This is a slightly less charming update in the world of sports, but also your Akron groomsmen remain at the top of the beat. Hey, so you've actually got two teams. Just a dominant performance. A dominant performance that wrapped up with Sunday Night Baseball last night. One of my categories was down to literally the pitching of one reliever that I was waiting. I can't remember his name now. but I was waiting for the Padres-Dodgers game to end to find out if my reliever was going to play at all, and he did, and he swung a column for me, and so I remain. I know it's all going to come crashing down, but I barely, literally two years ago, I didn't even know how to play fantasy baseball, and now I am the envy of the town.

That's amazing. I'm very happy for you. I'm happy I was able to give you that gift by signing up for a team and then completely and totally abdicating my role as a person associated with the team. All of my eggs are now in the basket of the TBTL Junior Sluggers.

That's where my eggs are, too. I feel bad for even sullying the story of the Junior Sluggers with fantasy BS.

There is also a photograph of one of the pitches, the Junior Sluggers pitching, and it is to say that this player of ours, this pitcher, is throwing an EFIS pitch Is the understatement Are you familiar with the Ephus pitch No I have no idea The Ephus was this kind of like Almost like I don't want to say joke pitch But it's this pitch that nobody throws anymore But it's basically Instead of doing like think about a standard baseball pitch In the major leagues it's pretty fast And it's kind of going in a straight line The Ephus pitch was like almost like you were throwing a pop up To the hitter And something about the angle Like the ball instead of the ball coming at the hitter directly the ball is almost dropping out of the sky to the hitter okay so instead of trying to hit something that's moving towards them they're trying to hit something that's dropping straight down uh-huh and it's probably an e-fist goes about 30 miles an hour i don't know why it was called e-fist but it was the most fun thing when someone decided to do it because it was like it looked like a pitch that you you or i could have thrown and it's like being thrown by somebody who otherwise is throwing 90 mile an hour gas and then all of a sudden it's like and here comes the e-fist pitch anyway our pitcher is definitely throwing an ephus pitcher and i love it i am absolutely

here for this is it totally unhittable or can you get underneath that thing like is the idea of the ephus pitches it's just ridiculously unhittable i mean when i think when well executed

it can be hard to hit but i think it's also if it doesn't work it's almost an automatic home run

You just crush it.

It's like the home run derby if it goes wrong. It's sort of like a knuckleball that doesn't move. Then you've got real trouble on your hands. It's probably a part of why I don't think it's in heavy rotation anymore. Outside of the Parkside Little League of East Portland where we have our pitchers throwing the EFIS pitch and having great results.

Speaking of the home run derby, one of the fallouts of this whole Shohei Ohtani gambling scandal with his interpreter is now he needs to find somebody else to throw him pitches during the home run derby, right? Wasn't it his interpreter who would throw him those soft pitches during the derby?

Because I think his interpreter was a player at one point, too, obviously not of the caliber of Ohtani because very few are. But like, yeah, I do think that he was a he was a player, too. So that would make sense that he would be able to throw, you know, home run pitches. The Ephus pitch is a very high-arcing off-speed pitch. The delivery from the pitcher has very low velocity and often catches the hitter off guard. The Ephus pitch is thrown overhand like most pitches, but it's characterized by an unusual high-arcing trajectory. Its invention is attributed to Roy Sewell of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1940s.

Let's see. According to manager Frankie Frisch, the pitch was named by the outfielder Maurice Van Robes. When asked what it meant, Van Robes replied, Ephus ain't nothing. And that's a nothing pitch. Although the origin is not known for certain, Ephus may come from the Hebrew word pronounced Ephus, meaning zero. So there you go.

It also doesn't mention that whenever that pitch is thrown, it makes the like Looney Tunes sound. Absolutely.

Yeah, it's definitely, if you were an animaniac throwing a pitch, it would be the E-fist. So anyway, congratulations to our beloved TBTL Junior Sluggers who, again, remain undefeated here into mid-April. Nobody thought it could happen, but it's happening right now, right in front of our very eyes. So that's pretty cool.

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.

All right, let's thank those dazzling donors for their donation of a dazzling amount of dough. Our first person has not just donated a dazzling amount of dough for many years, but has hosted the very program at her very home in Columbus, Mississippi. We speak, of course, of the legend, Jamie Nettles. Jamie says This is my golden-ish listening year Y'all are at the age I was When I started listening And hoo boy Do you have fun times ahead Oh I see So we, Andrew, you and I In our aging on planet Earth I thought as we enter year 14 Jamie is saying she was 14 years old When she started listening to TVTL

No and also we celebrated our 15th anniversary In January So congratulations

Actually, I'm much happier now, and the worst part is colonoscopy prep. So just get that out of the way and then coast for a decade.

Yours is coming up, huh?

Well, yeah, but I may have to move it again because I don't have a ride home from the rap battle. No, Becca is going to be in D.C. for a work thing, and that was going to be my ride. So I may have to move it by like a week or so. But you know, and again, I don't want to get too into this right now, but when we were in the endless line to get into the sphere last night, the guy behind us, who must have been around my age, I guess, he was the age that you start to get colonoscopies, was telling his friends how happy he was coming out of his colonoscopy because they gave him ketamine because he smoked so much weed that they thought he might be resistant to whatever the normal stuff they give you is. and he said he was he goes i went into the most wonderful k-hole wow you gotta tell them you're a weed smoker i mean i don't think i've ever had i probably don't need to be messing around with ketamine i don't need yet another substance to have a problematic relationship with but but um uh but i thought that was an interest i didn't even know that was part of the process like that if they think you have a high tolerance they'll put you on some real some real party drugs

yeah and also i'm kind of surprised about the connection between weed and something i would I almost think, like, alcohol would be, like, more of a, like, kind of depressant or whatever the word is. I'm not a doctor. I don't know.

But, no, we are going to be getting, I'm going to be getting that pretty soon here. Jamie says, I feel like I say the same thing every year, but I dazzlingly donate because TBTL is such a part of my life that I can't imagine the K-hole it would leave if it went away. No, sorry, the hole that it would leave if it went away. Thank you. I am a maximizer who doesn't want to be alone with my thoughts, but I also just love hearing the way you walk through the world. Mostly respecting others Sometimes shitting on them Sometimes talking about cup of noodles for 15 minutes Sounds like that's something Jamie especially loved That's the second That really made an impression on people That really made an impression on people

Yeah that really

I didn't realize how Maybe how long we went on about that Or how that really Seemed like it struck a nerve with people And not in the good way That things strike a nerve Not in a good way that you hit a nerve

maybe in the annoyed well no like a nice cozy soupy way of hitting a nerve uh jamie says i'm

not superstitious but the word count was six six six so adding love to the tens just to be safe that's fair i'm you know uh jamie i'm with you on that like i grew up in that world and i don't think that there's i'm not of the belief anymore there's any significance to those numbers but i will tell you i note them if i see them on something i'm like like i truthfully if i get If I was getting on an airplane and I noticed that the, you know, the number on the airplane was 666, I would be like, that doesn't make me feel better about this flight. Even though I don't think there's anything really going on, it's very, very, for the rest of my days, I will note when you see those three numbers in a row.

Luke Burbank, did you read, I believe this was in yesterday's Times.

in the new york times um the psychiatrist who fueled the satanic panic dies at 83 did you read

this fascinating obit i was then i was brawn was his name i was i was stroding through las vegas

i did like almost no news consumption i'll send this to you i don't think that i have um the ability to probably summarize it here but it's really fascinating and it got into stuff i didn't know about i knew in the 80s that there was like a lot of i guess we'll call it satanic panic i remember like just experiencing that as a kid like hearing about like oh you can't play Dungeons and Dragons and literally like growing up out in rural areas I remember like people being like well that's you know don't go in that graveyard that's where they do the sacrifices or whatever it was like a huge thing growing up we're all kind of like scared of it and it turns out there was a psychiatrist did you know about this guy Bennett Braun no who basically was going around he fueled it by telling people that he first of all he sort of initiated the idea of repressed memories apparently oh but then those repressed memories quickly became i was abducted by and abused by satanists and then some people have um repressed memories of then taking part in other satanic rituals or whatever so it started with him like kind of quote-unquote uncovering um you know the these repressed memories but then the repressed memories he would always sort of guide them into being satanic ritual in some way and then that really like that created the culture that you and I grew up with where you had like, you know, like Nightline or whatever, the TV shows talking about the, you know, the satanic issues in America.

Or you had like, there was a standup comedian named Mike Warnke when I was a kid. And, you know, I mean, he was a Christian comedian. And I think this came up on the show six, eight months ago. I think I was talking about this. But his whole sort of shtick was he had been a satanic high priest. I mean this is what he would go in and tell people So it seems like an odd combination for stand-up comedy But also I used to be a satanic high priest And I used to like do human sacrifice And I used to be part of all this But somehow he was able to make it all work As part of the same performance And so it would be like part of it would be Just very very low rent stand-up comedy Things like I remember he had this one joke Which was something about like losing your car keys and then later he comes back to this thing about like why do people when they blow their nose in their in their handkerchief why do they look at it what are they looking for what their car keys and i remember thinking oh he was talking about car keys and i had forgotten about car keys and now he's connected it with this thought of why are you looking in your handkerchief after you blow your nose into it uh-huh so it was that and then he'd get serious for a minute then it'd be like but uh but i want to get real and i want to tell you about you know satanism and what a real threat it is and how I was, you know, I myself was caught up in it. And anyway, it was all bullshit. It was all bullshit. It never happened. He was not a Satanist. It was all completely debunked. But that was how he kind of went around, you know, I guess sort of raising his sort of relevance to everybody who was. So that was a lot of that going on. There was a lot of the talk of backmasking was really big when I was a kid. And all of the music that had satanic messages in it backwards. And I remember even at the time thinking, I think forward would work better. I think making it intelligible would be a really, if I was trying to do it, that's what I would do if it was me. Like the fact that supposedly if you play this record backwards, it says whining women. Like, I don't know. I'm nine. Neither of those are things that are really on my mind right now anyway.

Do you remember I was telling Veeves the other day This is a really hard thing to explain But we talk about how some of the drops That we play on the show Even if we barely ever play them Stick in my head like an earworm And when somebody says What are you looking for I always hear In the voice of a backtracked Petrus song What are you looking for the devil for When you should be looking for the Lord Because you and I went on this journey Long after you and Sean DeTorey went on this journey with backmasking and music. Somehow you and I found out that the Christian rock band Petra to kind of combat all of the satanic leaning backmasking of rock bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. They put this in one of their Christian rock songs. What are you looking for the devil for

when you ought to be looking for the Lord?

I didn't know it was ought to be. That's going to change. What are you looking for? What are you looking for the devil for when you ought to be looking for the Lord?

Did we ever figure out what the forward version of that sounded like?

No, but I could back mask it here pretty quickly.

I mean, the irony of back masking that to get to what, like, I wonder what sounds, and Petra, yeah, was a big, I actually thought Petra was too rockin' when I was a kid. Like, literally, it's ironic because Petra, I think, means. rock right it's like isn't that based on peter upon this rock i will build my church

that was totally lost on me what a good name for a christian rock band because of the rock

yeah it was built upon but it was ironically too rocky for me i never really got into petra it was right there the whole time but i wonder what they were singing forward in order to make

that sound happen well that's it's true because there's no music behind that right it must be in

the clear always sounds evil always probably part of it right yeah like of course it sounds sinister you take anything and in the words of missy you put your thing down flip it and reverse it it starts to sound like something is up but anyway jamie thank you for being so mindful of the word count on your dazzling donor message and keeping us out of trouble um and we really

do appreciate you thank you so much maestro on your mark on your mark get set get set now ready

ready go everybody hey look who it is it's Thea Anderson of the Wolves good old Cedro Woolly Washington how I miss it what a fun town that's where Thea is just spent a lot of time there in the Wolves I used to run in the uh like 5k they'd have on the 4th of July great 4th of July parade If you ever want to just really just, like, you know, get into kind of real what we think of as Americana. And my memory of being there was, you know, I haven't been there in probably five, six years now. But, like, I remember it actually not being overly, like, politicized, if that makes any sense. I mean, there was the subtext of the whole thing. But, like, it felt more like what I think of a Fourth of July parade. Cute kids, American flags, VFW guys, some fireworks. You know, like, it didn't, there wasn't the, like, stop the steel float or anything, you know what I mean? Which, honestly, like, I would have also been unshocked to see that, you know what I mean? But just kind of felt like a, it felt sort of like a throwback to a bygone era. Thea says, I am delighted to be a dazzling donor supporting the venture of entrepreneurship and keeping Johnny and Bobo's antics in my ears. TBTL is a consistent source Somehow of both mind candy And interesting eavesdropping That I listen to day to day But especially comforting on days When the irrational anxiety has a strong hold I will unapologetically shout out My very part-time business I'm a nurse practitioner And I offer medical grade Aesthetic and skin care At my small clinic It's called Monday Aesthetics So their website Thea's website is Monday Aesthetics, so Monday, M-O-N-D-A-Y. We all know that one. Aesthetics is a little tougher. I maybe even misused it earlier in the show. A-E-S-T-E-T-I-C-S.com. Monday Aesthetics.

I think you missed an H in there, too. I back-masked it.

You have to play what I said backwards, and you'll hear the proper spelling. A-E-S-T-H-E-T-I-C-S. MondayAesthetics.com. 10% discount to any 10s. My full-time job is a sleep medicine provider. So, Luke, just get a sleep study already. If you need convincing, happy to elaborate. I want a sleep study. First of all, I love sleeping. It's one of my top favorite things to do. And the idea that I could sleep, although my understanding, and Thea would know, is that at this point, sleep studies, they send you something at home. You put some electrodes on it and just go to sleep at your house. Oh, I didn't know that. I want the sleep study where there's a room of people in lab coats just watching me sleep all night. That's what I want.

Well, that's a kink, isn't it?

Here's what I think, Andrew. I think I'm a good sleeper, and I feel like I would get the highest sleep score. You want to show off. I do want to show off my sleeping. I want all of them to be comparing their clipboards going, we've never seen any sleeping. We've never seen anyone sleep this good.

Like a surgical theater, sort of. I don't even know if they still have those anymore where a bunch of students. from the nick are all looking down at you while you're sort of like they like they're all comparing

their data because they all think they got it wrong they all think that there's some kind of statistical anomaly until they realize no this man is just this good at sleeping we must we must

withdraw his blood and share it with us others yes we need to we need to centrifuge it we need

to figure out how to replicate it and we need to give it to everyone because this is the blood of a man who can really sleep um but uh but also has some amount of apnea that we should also probably talk to him about yes um anyway thanks the uh and everybody check out monday aesthetics particularly up there in the beautiful skagit valley um stop by and say hi to thea and tell her that tbtl sent you thanks again to both of you

hello and welcome to top story so because we had this kind of odd sunday night in vegas and by odd i just mean we had to leave really early the next day it was kind of like well let's not go crazy let's not be out till super late carousing and whatever let's try to find something to do in las vegas that's a little bit more uh you know that shuts down a little bit earlier and um so you know that thing the sphere which is i guess actually owned by james dolan of cable town fame oh i didn't know that yeah it's madison square garden i think they wanted to build it in new york and they couldn't get the like they couldn't get the zoning or whatever and so then the idea moved out to las vegas um but it's this you know completely kind of insane big sphere that the outside is all led and it just can i mean it is a pretty it's a pretty amazing looking thing i got to give them i got to give them that but um we well here's what i'll try not to get stuck on this part of the story because it's not really that interesting but first thing that happened was sunday morning we were saying well what should we do today and what should we do tonight that would be kind of fun and entertaining but it isn't going to go until too late and we thought well is that movie showing at the sphere because when like you too isn't playing there they have this movie called postcard from earth that's made by darren aronofsky okay and it's made

specifically for this venue because you kept saying the movie and i wasn't sure like well what movie is playing that would be good to watch at the sphere i see it's special program i think

it's special programming designed to be shown in this and and the thing is you know the outside of the sphere is all these led lights and the inside is also all these led lights so you're in this very immersive experience um and so i uh you know went on their website and i was going to try to buy a couple of tickets not cheap by the way 150 bucks a ticket and then you get popcorn on top of that they didn't sell popcorn andrew and i was devastated dude they didn't i i really wanted some popcorn they didn't have popcorn i was very bummed about that you know i had to get instead Funyuns. Not the same.

Oh, no.

How much do you think a bag of Funyuns is at the Sphere in Las Vegas?

I'll bet just not fun. $6. I'll bet just not a fun number.

Maybe $6 isn't that much. It just seems like so much more than you'd pay for a bag of Funyuns

on the street. And are we talking about a little that you'd throw in your kid's lunch bag?

Snack pack bag. We're not talking even that one that's bigger than the lunch size, but not as big as a full bag. There's that mid-range. not even that we're talking the the frito spiral bag right this would be in if you were packing your kid lunch and you wanted to make sure they were getting their daily serving of funyuns

this is what you'd throw in the bag six bucks so that's probably 50 cents a funyun that's a very good quick math you got probably uh by the way so good really oh so good i don't

know why i'm not eating more funyuns well i do so anyway yeah see previous comments guy I can't forgive himself for having granola this morning.

He had granola and yogurt. You're like, why am I not eating more Funyun? I'm at a shame spiral. I feel like there was a time in my life as a kid where a Funyun was a fun idea, like an exciting idea because it was like a chip, but it was more exciting than that. But I don't know if I ever actually liked it or if I just liked the idea of it. And I have not had a Funyun since I was probably fun-sized myself.

I would say it's worth, as our friend Kamara Kev would say, a day in court. All right.

I'll think about it.

So, I go on the website, and of course, because everything is terrible in the world, the only way to buy one of these, or two of these in this case, massively overpriced tickets, is Ticketmaster. Oh, my God. So, that's, you know, and they just don't sell the tickets other than Ticketmaster. So, I go to Ticketmaster, and I look at all the shows. I'm on the website for The Sphere, and I'm on my phone. I'm doing all this on my phone. and i go through and i see that there's like there's multiple showings throughout the day which will come up later in the story i think but um i uh they realized hey there's a show at seven and i look and they're like tickets available and stuff it's like okay okay fine let's just do this it's really really a ripoff but like we're in vegas the hotel was free this will be an interesting thing to do so there's no gambling involved so like i can't lose money like they don't have a They don't have a roulette wheel set up Somewhere in the theater so I can be losing money While I'm also trying to watch this Aronofsky film

I'm surprised

I give them time Also all the accounts are that it's not doing well financially Which is crazy Because it was so sold out when U2 was there And it's so expensive And it seems like it's at capacity all the time I don't know what their business model was

And they're $150 a ticket For the non-premier events For a movie For the matinees Please.

Or like a VHS tape that they just pop in and hit play.

That's how it worked. Oh, it's a really big VHS tape.

I'm pretty sure that it's a VHS tape. So I buy these tickets, and then I look at the confirmation email, and I realize, oh, crap. Somehow in this process of buying the tickets, instead of buying the 7 p.m. tickets, I've bought the 11 a.m. tickets. And it's 10 a.m.

oh you should definitely get matinee prices for this and oh same price by the way and so i'm like

oh crap but i realized right away like it's just like i i mean this is the kind of thing that happens in the world now a lot when we buy so many things on our phone i feel like generally speaking we have agreed like even with like airlines and stuff like i've had this happen before where i buy a ticket on an airline and it's like somehow the wrong one and i call them Even if it's like no refunds just so you know No refunds well I have had The experience of calling them and being like hey I just Messed up and hit the wrong button they're like no problem How long ago is this I don't know 10 minutes ago Yeah sure we can take care of it I think In this world of increasingly Frustrating kind of Sort of Commerce events I do think the like I hit the Wrong button on my phone on the app can And that was five minutes ago I feel like we've gotten Some grace around that

That's good

Generally speaking That's how I feel about it I feel like most of the time Even if it was a lot of things saying When you hit this button Amazon is an example Although Amazon has a tricky one Which is like Depending on what the seller has set up Their parameters Sometimes it's like Oh I didn't know that It's like I'm going to order I order these like What's it Like dentine ice or something Or I don't know I forget who even makes this gum But I now order like six of these like packets of gum that you can put in the cup holder of your car you know that shape yes that they love now for gum because it can go in the cup holder i i got tired of like there's

just one grape flavor that i really like really oh yeah this is fascinating to me and i'm so glad you brought it back to this because there's been something about this conversation that's been dogging me for like five minutes and i haven't been sure how to bring it back yeah but your obsession with gum first of all i'm very shocked to hear that you like a grape gum i always think of you as chomping on like a minty gum because you're obsessed with your breath and I'm going back to this Funyuns thing and you're telling the story about the sphere but I'm still thinking about this bag of Funyuns you're on a date and you're just like carefree chomping on Funyuns that doesn't scan with anything I know about you and I do this show with you every day for 12

years first of all my days of being at a movie being a makeout party with my date are But I'm also drinking water I'm keeping it You know what I am And you know what I didn't get because of this We were so hungry And it was like We hadn't gotten dinner yet So I needed something to eat during the movie And most of what it was Was like pepperoni pizza A lot of bar food And then french fries I was like you know french fries will be perfect Except all they had were Truffle garlic fries and like garlic parmesan fries and i did not purchase either of those even though french fries sounded delicious because i thought i don't want to be like fuming garlic all night while becca and i are trying to hang out so i did have that in my mind somehow i decided also she was going to have some too you know we did we did a real sampler we did a we did a nice um because again this was out of necessity these were the only things they were selling that weren't a piece of pepperoni pizza or garlic fries or some meat skewer thing bag of cool ranch doritos bag of sweet chili oil doritos bag of funyuns that was it that was what we had uh that's that that was that was what was available to us and we got all three and i opened them all up they were in a box like the kind that they would put hot dogs in or something oh yeah and it was like i was like we have a real sampler of flavor-blasted snack products here.

Okay, so you open up all the bags and you put them into the cardboard and maybe you're kind of like a charcuterie board.

Well, no, they were in the bags, but just imagine three open bags.

I thought you dumped them out.

I'm not a savage, my friend.

You didn't plate it? It wasn't girl dinner?

No, no. No, so, oh, by the way, the gum in question that I can't recommend highly enough, it's Icebreaker's Ice Cube's Arctic Grape.

Arctic grape wow I would never have you I guess I just I think I know you better than I do I guess we gotta do this show another 12 years

yeah right well the other thing is here's what I'll say about the Arctic grape it tastes like such a treat but it's sugar free but it's like a little it's like a reward in the words of what's his name in what's his name in what's it's movie what's his name?

You're turning into me. You always help me out in these situations. I want to be the guy who can help you. It's Christoph Waltz. And I believe it's,

I think it's from Inglourious Bastards when he's having a beer. And he goes, it's like a reward. Oh, okay, yeah. It's been meme-ified on TikTok is the only reason I know that specific scene. Me with my little sugar-free grape gum, it's like a reward. It's just, it hits the spot. And my feeling is, it might not be quite as refreshing to your breath as a mint gum, but it's better than nothing.

yeah does that make sense i know i definitely especially if it's got that what did you say is the actual flavor it's a sparkling arctic yeah that's where yeah i mean that's where i that's

where the that's where the absolute finest grapes are found i love that we're trying to like you

are one of the relatively few in the grand scheme of things americans who have been inside this fear that everybody's obsessed with and i want to tell you about the hubba bubba i saw in the store yesterday i was leaving the grocery store and i turned my there was some like shelves like after the after i paid for everything and i'm pushing my cart with a few grocery bags in it out of the store i noticed that for some reason in a place that would be inconvenient to buy it already past the registers there was a little display with a whole bunch of hubba bubba in it and i was like if i hadn't already paid if they had moved was it like old school hubba bubba yes like it was the old packaging wow and when i say display i don't mean that was a huge thing it was just like a little shelf of like sundry items and on one of the shelves was a little box like you would see in like a 7-eleven or something it had hubba bubba which i didn't even remember existed and i was like if they had moved that 30 feet over there maybe 20 feet i would have bought it like just i don't even really like that kind of bubble gum that much but it was such a nostalgic blast yeah

that's like big big childhood memories for me that hubba bubba i got out of the gum game as a kid um too early for bubble tape oh i chomped on some see i feel like bubble tape was i was the generations that came after me um but maybe i just didn't maybe i just didn't have it or whatever i thought it was cool i was jealous it seemed like a very cool invention so you were

jealous as like an older kid looking at younger kids yeah no we had it i don't know when it came around but in in my neck of the woods it definitely is like you know grade school like i remember being fourth grade or something and like bubble tape being huge well anyway i realized that i've

bought the wrong tickets and so i call ticket master and that's to describe that as um you know kafka-esque is really saying something of course the person i'm talking to it by all accounts does not seem to be anywhere near the United States of America. And they're explaining to me that because I bought the tickets within 24 hours, because the show is within 24 hours, there are no refunds on the tickets. And I said, well, can I talk to a manager? And they said, well, we can't transfer any phone calls here. And I said, there has to be a way. I just hit the wrong button on the app. And then she goes, well, I can send a request to a manager. And I was like, okay well that's right okay we're making progress right there she goes and the manager will respond

to you within 48 hours yeah i knew that you're like you knew that was coming right yeah yeah so

i was like uh so i realized this is not going anywhere so i end that call and then i call the sphere directly and um and i get like you know they're answering thing and it's like if you have a question about a show hit one and it's like if the show is today if this show is happening today hit hit one i hit one hold music for like 20 straight minutes like i'm just in the i'm getting ready in the room close to showtime now we're getting yeah i might have said 10 a.m before maybe it was more like 9 30 i think we have an hour and a half total before the show but it's like it's clear that what the the being on hold with the sphere is not going anywhere like it's not it's not just like the person who's supposed to be handling that phone line is too busy it's that that is going to a dead end. It's also Sunday morning at 9.30 a.m. It's going somewhere that's not staffed currently. But it's not telling you that. It's not saying our hours are this to this. So what we end up deciding to do is, the only way to fix this is to walk to the sphere.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Nobody's picking up the phone there. Ticketmaster is zero help. And now we've got to get to the sphere, make sure we're there before the show starts. Because once the show's actually starting, then they're probably not going to give us... All I want is just tickets for the 7 o'clock show. I feel like it's a fairly respectful ask from me. I'm not asking for my money back. I'm not trying to take money out of James Dolan's pockets. I'm just saying the app got weird. I ended up on the wrong showing. And keep the money, but just let us come to a later show, please. It feels like a reasonable ask.

Mm-hmm.

So. We walk over there and I will give them this. I will give them credit for this. There is this like concierge door that we go in because there was already just like for the 11 o'clock show. There was just like endless lines of people queuing up outside in those sort of like, you know, cattle, cattle things, whatever you call those. And so I was like, oh, my God, if we have to wait in that line to just find out that they're not going to do this. So, no, there was this little side office. They were helpful. It took them shockingly long to do it. And the solution was very weird. The solution was, first of all, the woman disappears into the back for a long time. And I thought, can it be the case that no one has a request like this ever? Like, hey, we can't make the 11 o'clock, but could we come to the 7? I would have guessed that'd be like one of the top things that people come in there asking about.

Like that never happens to the edge?

Well, right. Or Larry Mullins Jr. Or Larry Mullins Sr.

Often forgotten.

Yes. Or Adam Clayton. um i just what if you were into everyone in youtube except bono what if you felt like bono

was the one that was holding youtube back just a little preachy so it could be so big if they

am i boogin ya i don't mean to boog ya so the the woman was gone for a long time and i was like turning back i was like if she's gonna come back out with uh and i'd been through a whole bunch of stuff with the hotel already where they said we were gonna have one kind of room and then we showed up and it was totally not the case it was a different kind of room and and i employed every tactic i have of trying to be charming and trying to you know and just none of it was working we were hitting a lot of dead ends in terms of various things and so i was not i was just feeling fragile and i was like you know um if this person comes out and says like we can't i guess we just have to go to this show now even though we're all excited to enjoy the sunshine and be out and about long story short she comes back she's like well here's what we can do we can issue you some new tickets for the seven o'clock show i said great that's amazing but we can't issue them to you until one o'clock because we have to make sure that you didn't try to go into the 11 o'clock show with your tickets because your tickets are still active and i thought well digital tickets right i thought i was like well why don't you just revoke the tickets we have and give us the tickets for seven like i was like okay that's totally fine with me like you can trust me that We won't try to crash the 11 a.m. show But that's odd that that's the solution Like as soon as we know As soon as the first notes of postcard from planet earth begin And we see that no one is in those seats of yours We see that your tickets haven't been scanned Then we'll be safe to reissue your tickets for the later show It's like a very odd system But it ended up working out okay? It was amazing I was like she could tell that I'd been hurt before Because I was like okay but what happens if I don't get the text from you I go are you going to be here at 7 She goes yeah we're here till like 8.30 I was like okay are you going to be here She goes yeah I'll be here I was like okay And then sure enough Right at 1 like boom Like clockwork There's the text It's got the link It works So everything was That was all copacetic So now it's now 7 o'clock And in fact it's 6.30 We walk back over to the sphere Because the show is listed at 7 o'clock But as we're starting to get kind of queued up And again, this is so many people This thing holds, like, I heard the number was I don't think this is true But, I don't know, 10,000 people or something I think the thing holds a lot of people And as we're lining up They're saying Alright, you're in line This is the 7 o'clock show, starts at 8 The 7 o'clock show starts at 8 And I was like, I think you're talking about the 8 o'clock show It's like, no, the doors open at 7 The show starts at 8 Because What we realized was, as we were walking to get in line and we were a half hour before the doors were even supposed to open Andrew we walked in a line to get into this thing that was comical everyone was cracking up everybody who was walking with us we were just we couldn't believe this line we were in which was called the bridge line

it went from the sphere through the Las Vegas Convention Center the line into the Venetian hotel it was easily a half past the statue of a beaver it was half of a mile jesus interior i'm

looking this up it holds when seated so for an event like yours seated seated capacity is 18

i heard that number and thought the guy was on a in a k-hole i was going to say i was going to say 18 000 people but i was like that can't be the real number off yeah and then when when standing

Like if it's a concert in a standing room only It's 20,000 people

So this is the thing that I sort of figured out In waiting in this quite extensive line Which I'm not exaggerating We walked easily a half of a mile In the interior of these like series of like Elevated walkways and whatnot And just kept going

and kept going and kept going and kept going and you must be wondering sorry about my mic you must

be wondering at some point like what if I'm not in the right line like are you ever well probably not you because you fly so much but there are times when like an airport is so ridiculously busy like around the holidays or something and you're in like a you think that you're in the line for security but the line is so out of hand at this point and winding around and anti-ems or whatever yes that you're not even sure like when i get to the front of this line what am i in line

for exactly and i was worried about that i kept kind of double checking and triple checking because i also was like okay we're now standing in the basically the venetian hotel which i can't overstress is not where the sphere is i mean they are technically part of the same entity but it's like we're talking multiple city blocks difference that we now have to trudge through and side note everyone's tickets are on their phone so just think about that chris sullivan choke point of everyone going like i thought i had it in the email maurice you said you had i thought i did like everyone eight eighteen thousand people getting up to a point where they have to produce something on their phone that has to check out for this whole thing to work it just seems i will give them credit it actually went that part went faster than i was expecting they've clearly dealt with it a lot but so i was like are we going to get to the fee in the theater by 8 p.m are we going to be physically inside there because this is a lot of people that have to get scanned through and get in and sure enough we did we were in there by 7 30 so we spent from when the line started moving it was a half it was a solid half hour of just shuffling towards getting into the sphere and i was like why is it not like this if you go to a basketball game or a mariners game Why isn't it like this when you go to a Trailblazers game in Portland? And I realized it's because the Trailblazers don't play six games a day. The issue with this is that they're trying to get 18,000 people in and out of this multiple times a day. So they can't just open it. The 7 p.m. show, it can't just be like, yeah, come on in at 5. Come in whenever you want because they got other people in there. And so this is a very unique thing where you have a facility that's trying to house 18,000 people, but on a every two hours schedule. It's a logistical nightmare.

You can't get early, get in there early and watch Aronofsky like.

Right. Taking free throws. Well.

Yeah, right.

So then this is the whole thing, though, right? You get in there and now it's 730. We still have a half hour before the show starts.

is that why they call it a 7 p.m. show but it starts at 8 because they need to make it very clear that it's going to take forever to get inside to your seats i guess but here's the thing

if we would have shown up at like 7 40 there would have been no line that's the odd part like there's this crush of people who got who did the right thing this is why i never do the right thing because all the people that got there like at 6 30 for the 7 p.m. show which is really the 8 p.m. show we're like in this line forever but then by the by the time everyone's in i even heard someone talking about the security had said just go over at like 7 45 everyone's already inside and by the way it's assigned seats so you're like you're gonna it's not like you're jockeying for the best seats you have the seats that you have regardless but we get inside it's how is the

how is the like access to seats this is a very small question but like if you are the last person there are you gonna have to crawl over like 50 people if your seat is in the middle of a row

absolutely yes so that's rough somehow because i realized also that when the person just said oh we'll give you new tickets i never even specified where they were gonna be oh yeah okay they were just presumably in the same price point and um we ended up being on the aisle oh thank god well yes except we managed to because we weren't interested these are the activities you can do oh when you walk into the sphere the activities that you can do they kept saying it's a two-hour experience it's a two-hour experience part of the experience is the movie but the other part of the experience is this real world of tomorrow shit there's like a some kind of robot person that looks exactly like remember uh that ex machina movie that came out and remember the way that they had the like robotic character looking kind of she was sort of i feel like she was sort of partially human but then like mesh you know back of her skull was like mesh this kind of like this sort of you know cyberpunk if you will kind of like part part human appearing but part machinery kind of there's that word again aesthetic of a certain kind of like future anyway there's like a robot woman who looks like that she has kind of like a humanoid face but but then her body is mostly like

metal and she's talking to people she's in this like circle and it's just a rope she's like so she's a physical she's a physical robot that you can go up to and interact with i was a little confused if this was an effect on the walls or something physical robot that you can i think

like ask questions and it answers ai i don't know what there was andrew was a thousand people gathered around it with their cell phones out i was expecting a zip line to go over us at any moment yeah it was just like well this is 2024 like a kind of sort of quasi ai thing but honestly probably like probably not that different than a member of the rock of fire explosion from showbiz

pizza truthfully was the unknown there oh my god that would have been phenomenal the unknown's kind

of blowing up right i haven't been digging deep into it but like it was like a young person who was playing the unknown at that wonka experience thing and after getting like after the whole like quote-unquote production has been dumped on so publicly i i get the impression that the the kid who is playing the unknown is now like sort of a modern day hero figure i love that for them too

i've always felt like the unknown was trying their hardest yeah like you're given almost nothing to work with and you're doing you're being game i kind of appreciate that but it's like what they Want it to feel like when you go in there is like You're on the Like the deck of the of the enterprise You know but like whatever The newest version our friend Navia Would be able to tell us whatever the like yeah whatever the Most updated version of Star Trek is So you go in and there's just like It just really feels like something In a movie where the movie is trying to Really tell you that this is the future So you've got this kind of like robot Thing that's talking to people and everyone's like videotaping I'm like I'm like I promise You this is less this is less uh novel than maybe you think it is but okay fine and then there's i you see this huge line people going to stand on this circle where like lights are going around them and what i thought that was was this thing that you have in a lot of very touristy places now which is like a selfie like a 360 selfie machine i don't know if you've ever noticed one if you've

been out in like i don't know downtown seattle i haven't seen them in person sorry i thought you I haven't seen them in person, but I've seen the effect that people will post it to Instagram sometimes. Right, so the camera kind of goes

around you, there's some kind of light source, you're on this, or I don't know if you're moving, the camera's moving, but anyway, I thought that's what people were on. No, they were on a full body scan for your avatar. So you stand on this thing in front of like a thousand strangers who are also lining up, you stand on this platform, and then these things go around you, and I guess it's creating a hyper, like, I don't think I want that but okay a hyper accurate body scan that you are then I don't know if they email it to you but I guess the idea is you now have that in your toolbox

if you have that going for you

I mean the reason I want an avatar is so I don't look like this

yeah right give me a can I have that guy's avatar I'll trade avatars

I mean do you have any idea why we want to engage with this content it's to not be

this yeah right can i be something can i be something with a tail please i mean so so there's

people doing that there's there's people like filming the robot there's people lining up to get like tremendously overpriced drinks and food none of it being popcorn which i was so bummed

about i was craving popcorn all day not believe that well you know why andrew popcorn is not part of the future no it is not it's part of the past yeah it's part of me kicksy radio and a bucket of popcorn on an island that is slowly separating from the rest of culture but also like to talk about this food menu like it just the fact that you can't even get normal fries that it has like literally everything they're serving except for i guess the pizza is like some sort of flavor blasted like can't you just get regular can't you get like a bag of lay's potato chips i'm sorry to be so boring but can you get a bag of fritos why does it have to be funyuns or something flavor blasted with doritos or garlic covering the fries i would be pretty miserable in this situation i

don't like crowds it was pretty you would not have loved it nor would i nor did i but like well here's what i realized i said to becca like i have to really check my privilege because because of my job stuff particularly cbs stuff because we filmed not in the sphere but we filmed In front of it when I was in Vegas doing that TV story and it would have been it would not Have been unusual Like one other phone call we probably would Have been filming in there right we would have been like And featuring the sphere and it does this Or whatever whenever I deal with this Kind of stuff it's almost always Through one of the job things Primarily CBS and someone Has already set it all up there's Somebody there handing me a lanyard that works For um

Madison Square Gardens productions you know like I I am very fortunate and I also avoid those things if I don't have that kind of access I'm not the kind of person who likes waiting in line for a ride or waiting in line for I mean no one likes waiting in line but some people are better than others I just if I know there's going to be a half of a mile line for something my general thing is that's okay I'll just skip that or I'm there but somebody is literally like I'm walking in we already have our camera crew there somebody's handing me a lanyard they're ushering us around it's all very like kind of special treatment so when i'm just completely just like a you know regular joe just standing in this like insanely ridiculous line wondering if you know we're even going to get into the theater i think i respond to that especially badly because i'm uh i've been so privileged to not have to deal with that a whole lot so yeah it was it was definitely not probably you're seen but i will say we finally get seated and of course we're this huge long row and we're like like becca's like on the stairs and then me and i thought well this is crazy i thought this thing was almost sold out and this is like there's like a row of 20 seats next to us that's not taken and in the next 15 minutes all 20 people showed up one at a time one at a time yeah you're getting up and down and like and by the way everybody was so sheepish like i'm so sorry and i always want to say like you have nothing to be sorry about you just bought tickets to an event but i was like oh i should i don't know what we should have done we should have been the last ones like last ones in first ones out we should have been the last people to sit down in those seats because everybody else had to we had to get up from them but whatever it was fine i would still rather have

that we these and i went to that um theater with the really big marquee it's kind of a historic movie theater right in um the heart of ballard the majestic bay the majestic bay and i finally went it was great that's where we saw um the holdovers like the day after thanksgiving it was like just like a perfect matinee like date with genevieve during the holidays for that movie especially it was just everything about it was perfect except like they retrofitted you know again it's an older theater and so that's you know part of the you know that that's part of the issues with old theaters they weren't built with modern sensibilities but they retrofitted this one theater but there was only one like i can't explain it there was not an aisle on both sides of the road there was just one aisle on the right and we got seats on the edge like i always want aisle seats because like i feel claustrophobic if i'm not in the aisle but like the seats were really pushed tightly together and it was a similar thing it was a crowded holiday movie showing and i just had to get up and down and up and down and up and down a million times but i still while it was a little bit irritating i still would rather be the person on the end getting up for other people as opposed to being the person crawling all over other people because immediately as soon as i sit down i'll be like oh no i have to go to the bathroom and i left the oven on and like all of the reasons why i feel trapped there start rattling through my head you just start

being in one of those commercials did i lock the car and then you but then you do it on your phone Remember that one that was in heavy rotation during the football game? The dad is like having anxiety or whatever, intrusive thoughts, but then he can lock the car from the seats or whatever.

Yeah, but then wasn't it weird, though? Didn't they illustrate with he gets really long arms that go snaking out of the theater, and then didn't they illustrate it in the commercial weirdly like he was a rubber man with rubber arms?

I thought that that family was like a football game, but I could be misremembering.

I think there were two there's one where the guy is in the in the stadium with his son and he's like grocery shopping while they're watching the game but there's another one where they're leaving a game or something in the kids like the car is going to be cold or something like that and so he touches the app but then his arms get really long and they illustrate it by showing his arms like snaking through the parking lot and in adjusting the car whatever gave me the bad feeling so we are finally see the point of your story it wasn't the point of the story we yeah so you're gonna look like after you go to the gym

Your arms are just going to be endlessly long, pliable.

Okay, sorry.

So the movie sort of starts, and it's basically the size of a standard movie. Like a big movie screen, but like a standard movie. And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. There's no way we did all of this. And it's like it starts with, so it's called A Postcard from Earth. And it starts with like a space probe is leaving like the Earth's area and it's going and landing on some other planet. And then we go inside the space probe and there's these two people, a man and a woman, and they're like they've been in like hyper sleep. And it's, you know, talking like there's.

A robot thing or something that's telling Them like it's exposition So we the viewers kind of know what the Plot is but basically what this is is Sort of a nature film with 5% of Plot thrown in as a way to really just Show off how cool this theater is but For the first like seven eight minutes It's just regular kind of letterbox And I'm like If this is actually the Show I am going to pitch such a fit Because like what are we even Doing here but then of course very clever they do this reveal where they talk about planet earth when the robot voiceover is talking about planet earth all of a sudden the screen like expands and you're zooming in on planet earth and that's when you realize oh these seats all have servos under them they're all haptic so as you're going into you're on this whatever spacecraft you're on this journey going into the atmosphere of earth your seat is vibrating and the wind is blowing through your hair because are these massive fans and like it is so effective as far as like transporting you there i didn't realize how big of a deal the wind blowing through your hair was going to be there's a point where there's these big storms gathering it's basically like them trying to say hey can we not completely f planet earth up but they have to say it this is where the plot gets weird they have to be slightly vague about it because they don't know who's coming to this they don't know what's the people's politics are it can't just straight up be like humans have caused climate change and if we don't change everything about how we power things um our grandchildren will have a unlivable planet you can't just say that so you have to write this kind of weird like story of like humans on earth and we loved the earth and we wrote these poems about her and as they're saying these things they're showing how beautiful the earth is and then they're showing churches actually maybe the coolest part was they did a few of these shots in these super ornate like in a mosque in a like a catholic church and because this thing is so immersive because it's also the whole ceiling you're in this church and you look up and it's the ceiling of the church it is so i've never it's like imax has nothing on this it's so immersive that you you really feel for all the world like you're inside whatever they're putting you in whether it's and it's almost cooler when it's like an indoor space because it's so seamless the way that the the ceiling of the indoor space is um and then anyway so it's like it's kind of trying to say that like we have we're about to ruin the planet but they they're like they can't really just come out and say that so the story is like it's the story of earth and then like early life on the planet and it's just a bunch of cool nature shit of like you know plankton and then fish and then this and then and then elephants and then people picking crops. And then, but then we ruined the earth. And then this is where it goes off the rails because in the story of these two people who are on this other planet. Now,

what has happened is we ruined the earth, but then we just moved off of the earth. And we've been living on these like space colonies on the, on the, like, you know, in the atmosphere of the earth, I guess this is maybe the imagined future, but again, they have to be so nonjudgy about it. they have to try to thread this needle of like not pissing anyone off who doesn't think climate change is happening so it just ends up being the most bizarre plot it's just the the main takeaway is like the footage is incredible like i still think this was a good thing i mean i think i'm still glad i saw it but as becca said she was like we could a lot we could have dispensed with all the voiceover like the because then what it shifts into is it's sort of hard to explain but basically you end up with this male narrator and female narrator and they're i think that they're the people who have now gone to populate this other planet but it's them talking but they're still in hypersleep but it's like their thoughts on the planet and it's it's just very spare the writing but it's just there to try to move this whole thing along but it's just kind of like a little corny and like i they just should have done a david attenborough film as far as i'm concerned they just should have done a like the planet is amazing like the kind of thing we all saw at the science center as kids like get a load of this place we live it's really something but they were trying to make it because it's aronofsky they're trying to make it something a little bit more impactful but again you know that madison square garden and james dolan were like uh that's great take out every reference to climate change take out every reference to man-made climate change

please and also i mean i'm sure that building this thing in the middle of the desert where people fly in from all over the country i'm sure all of that is good for the planet i'm sure the building was good for the planet i'm sure everybody flying to it is good for the planet i mean the irony i mean that and there's also just something so when you said that it was a movie called what is a postcard or whatever and i was like oh of course they're gonna go with something like that because

that you even before I thought specifically about what you raise here about like the sort of the it shouldn't be political but the political implications of this stuff like already you're like of course if they're going to have a movie that is going to be kind of the standard movie that plays in a place like this of course it's going to be like footage of earth like it's just like the safest place to I mean I understand you're not going to show Blade Runner because it's not going to it has to appeal to kids it has to appeal to like all of this you know like you say like all different walks of life and the people who are there but there was already something and i'm not trying to dismiss your experience it sounds you know jaw-dropping it sounds breathtaking um but of course it's going to be like some version of a nature documentary because what

else would it be which i was totally fine with because i actually kind of like that shit and because really the the theater itself i mean that the experience of it oh yeah so i was saying there's this part where like these storms the closest they get to being like guys we ruined this was like mother the other problem is that they're being so it's just like the writing is just a little much it's like mother nature tried to tell us mother nature tried to throw us off her back and then it's like storms gathering but while the storm is gathering the fans are blowing on you the seat is rumbling and it is like holy shit i feel like i'm in a storm right now like i the just the experience of it was was pretty cool but then you know they end up they move off of planet earth i mean it's that the plot really falls apart the plot is we moved off of planet earth we're living in these like space stations above the earth we knew and then the earth healed and then we went back but only a few of us were allowed we knew that it would be too damaging if we went back i was like have you met humans you think we're not going back to earth the second that that shit stopped sucking like it's like and then it's showing this like beautiful pristine like so it's just to restate the plot we ruined planet earth we moved up to like low orbit at like altitude earth healed we only let four people back one lady to rock climb another guy to stand on top of like a snowy mountain and one person to scuba dive with a whale. These are the three people that were allowed back on planet Earth and like everyone else just took no for an answer. No, no. Everyone else was just...

Thursday night football would be back in a flash. It would be the Vegas Raiders versus the Jaguars.

And it wouldn't even be available on Amazon. And it wouldn't even. There would be an entirely new platform you had to buy to get the game, even though everyone had fully converted to amazon at this point exactly but like be on mcdonald's tv so it's like now earth is is nice again but we know we can't go back to earth because we're going to ruin it i was like didn't stop us the first time no so what we've decided to do is send these pods send these spaceships with two people in it to like populate new planets that's our solution is don't go back to earth because earth is ruined although earth is fine again but we'll ruin it if We're there so let's go to other planets which is where these two People find themselves maybe the funniest part Is that they and I'm going to use A bad word here so I hope the junior sluggers Have tuned out it is Very clear these two people are there to fuck That is their only Job Adam and Eve were their names Adam and Eve probably Like There's this writing that's like Again it's trying to be profound but It's kind of not quite profound but it's Like it's but it's also not just like a plot It's not like a traditional movie where it's like like two people doing a scene for a movie. It's somewhere in between all these things it's trying to be. And it's like, I forget what the, there's just like this 40 second section where Beck and I were looking at each other like, it is so clear that what you're trying to say is y'all have one job and that is to get it on.

And then the music starts playing.

I mean, they're very attractive. They were very attractive people. So the good news is we're going to have a very very beautiful multiracial future on this planet so that's at least we got that going for us

I'll bet you it just occurred to me we by the way I am very sensitive to spoilers and things that I care about but it never even occurred to me that this would be a spoiler situation but we will hear from listeners who are upset about spoiling of this thing I think which is like kind of an odd thing to spoil. I think I'm helping people

and here's why I'm giving them useful information here's here's the thing what you should know is that the movie is 58 minutes long if that it might be 45 minutes long what it ate is two hours welcome to you it's a two-hour experience welcome to your two-hour experience yeah about an hour and 20 minutes of the experience

is getting your body scanned for the avatar and buying flavor-blasted chips.

They could do that at the airport. It sounds like a backscanner, honestly.

There was a lot of guys in blue. One dude just was yelling for some reason. Shoes off, laptop's out! But it's just so funny because I don't know if they just want to sell more the Sphere sweatshirts or something, but this whole thing. Literally, so many people kept saying it's a two-hour experience, like people that work there. Now, I will say one last thing about this, which is it was remarkable how consistent and effective the training was of the people that work at the sphere. It was the most helpful, nicest group of people that I can remember in anything like this. Every single person asked you if you needed some help. Can I point you in a direction? it was so clear that like day one of this place they said everyone who gets hired here is going to have to understand and make like it's the opposite of what you got at planet fitness it was like it was almost like at some point i was like i got it everyone but at first i just thought oh we're just getting lucky some night we just keep bumping into nice people in severe shirts but no there was clearly a very intentional thing of every single person who worked there being really helpful and really like game and seeming like this is not as we sometimes say the last place they want to be and i want to give i i assume it wasn't james dolan because he's famous for kicking people out of knicks games if they work at law firms that have sued him

oh that that guy yes he's oh that guy he's got the name rang a bell but i forgot like that whole

he's got like a really shitty band called like james dolan and the six shooters or the straight shotters or something that he makes he's got a real Jim Ursa thing going where he like makes people go to his concerts so I assume it wasn't him but somebody somewhere in that apparatus set up a system by which everybody who worked there including the people that were slanging the Funyuns were cool the people who took your tickets were cool there was not I did not interact with one person from that organization um who wasn't doing a good job and wasn't being like really helpful you know so i'll give them points for that yeah no that sounds that sounds good and

actually i appreciate i mean chick-fil-a i don't know if you've ever heard of chick-fil-a it's a fast food restaurant that also came with its own baggage but there is something about like the like the the company culture of like you know you go in there and everybody's just going to be nice it does sort of and again i'm trying to get out of the mindset that i sort of grew up with as somebody my age and the kind of culture i grew up with in the midwest or whatever of expecting people to be my best friend as they put a diet coke down in front of me who am i kidding it's a regular coke i never order diet coke why did i even say that i sign up for planet fitness and suddenly i'm claiming that i'm drinking diet coke why have changed you're a health nut i've never ordered a diet coke in my life anyway um i you know i'm trying to break the mindset that everybody who's helping me out in a professional setting has to be my best friend having said that there is something nice knowing that when you go to like a chick-fil-a drive-thru or something that they're all going to be like oh hey andrew here's your order and they just sort of like see you even though it's so fleeting they see you as a human being five guys does that too i think it's

one of those ones where everyone has to say like hi when you come in or something and like there's different levels of there's different levels of buy-in um on that but but yeah like i do i i will say that that that i'm i'm slightly a sucker for that like it's it seems like a good policy for a company particularly a service-oriented company to just kind of say like if we get one thing right about this yeah okay the the funyuns are overpriced the experience is really about 45 minutes the line is interminable like we're gonna get a lot about this wrong but uh we are gonna people are gonna to be nice when you're here like that feels like a that feels like a victory here i go once again

with the email every week i hope that it's from a female oh man it's not from a female

all right emails v-mails before we get on out of here yeah i know we're tight on time so i'm

going to tell you a little story about a letter that i found sort of uh this weekend and then we'll get out of here also i'm glad that we're burying this like kind of two hours in the show I don't know if Genevieve would be comfortable with me telling this story, but I came across something that moved me greatly this weekend. And we have some bookshelves around the house. When we moved into this house, I said, I want to start organizing our books kind of like by genre and stuff by color.

Exactly. That is a big thing, though, by the way.

Oh, no, it can. Yeah, no, I actually think that's that's pretty cool.

But anyway, putting that aside from a design sensibility, Vives and I, when we've moved in the past, sometimes I win the battle and I organize all the books by like kind of genre or memoir, true life, fiction, whatever. Vives likes a more totally like randomized assortment of books. So you could be by any bookshelf at any time and just sort of grab something randomly. Having said all of that, we have one little row of books by our stairs going down into the basement. And mostly I just pulled books that have the best binding there and like hard covers or whatever, because it's kind of like a little bit slightly more on display. And on Friday or Saturday night, I don't know why, Vives and I were both just kind of like bopping around the house, doing our own thing. And it doesn't matter what we were doing. But anyway, I found myself on the stairs and I pulled a James Thurber volume off of this bookshelf. And I was like, yeah, when did I get this? And I flip it open to the very first page and it's inscribed and it's inscribed from Genevieve. And I didn't remember that she had gotten me this book, but this came from. So Veves and I met on when I was traveling to Boston right after I graduated college and we hit it off. But then I moved back to Ohio and I thought I was moving somewhere else in the Midwest. Genevieve lived in Boston at the time. And we just like we clearly were very, very into each other and acknowledged it. But we were just like, well, we're pen pals now or whatever. And this book must have been from that time. I'm wondering if Genevieve even mailed it to me, like shipped it to me.

Which Thurber book?

It's like a collection. It's like 92 stories or something. I can't recall. It's like a collected works. But she wrote on the inside. She wrote, any man of letters should have some Thurber on his shelf. And then it said something like, you know, congrats on surviving Kent State University and your job and good luck with whatever comes next. And if you're reading this in 20 years and you're wondering and you're wondering whatever happened to me, hey, look me up. And I was like, I'm getting choked up talking about it. It was so nice to see this thing, to be in our home together and open up this book that says, look me up in 20 years. Now I'm crying at the end of the show. I thought I could get through that.

That is such a cool story. And, like, such a cool, like, I don't want to say ending to that story, because you're just in the middle part of this whole thing, probably. But, like, what a great thing to find and to, like, kind of know how the story turned out, right? Yeah, exactly.

I'm like, oh, look me up. I didn't have to look you up. We never separated. I don't know. That was a very nice little thing to happen to me.

Genevieve asked me not to. I feel like in the interest of friendship, I should disclose to you that she wrote that three weeks ago.

it was a plant she sent you the same book there are so many men in america who have that book there are people listening right now being like oh yeah i got that oh yeah i got that edition before hinge came out this was jennifer was just sending them out to every guy every eligible

bachelor in the country that is no that is a really really sweet thing um and i i love that

story i think that's really i think that's sorry i kind of i got a little i get a little choked up

at the end and telling i think that's the only appropriate response yeah if i was a really sweet thing to discover if i was ever able to keep a relationship going for more than a handful of years i would also be very choked up i think you're having the appropriate response to something something really sweet like that so yeah it was really really sweet um well i can't top that um So instead, I think maybe I'll just vote for us wrapping the show up. Let's get out of here. And then let's see. Oh, I also vote for us coming back here tomorrow and doing more imaginary radio for all of you. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, don't mount too tall. And good luck to all.

Hello, my name is Corey, and I'm going to tell you my three jokes. What do you get when you cross a dog and a daisy? A cauliflower. What do you get when you cross a cow and a rabbit? You get hair in your milk. What kind of animal is related to a computer? A ram. What happens if you get a dog back on an elephant? It's an elephant, carbon, and sprinkled. And what do you get when you get the eye for the tower and then a tree? The eye for the tower and then took a past tree. I want you here when you get so good. And I might. I might hate to do my so good. Power out.