Muse

Daring. Gas prices. Whoa! Sick and twisted just how we like it. Organic dog food. Is it legal to be this insane? Guess who I got to hang out with this weekend? You have any idea? My family. Bruce Chandlings. Excuse me, America. Do you mind? Fast food. Here we go! Psycho, screwy, and totally unbalanced, Chandling turns the stand-up stage into a mental institution. Laser pointers? You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to take my laser car and drive it off of a laser clip.

There are many ways to keep one's lips conditioned. I don't kiss, for example, 24 hours before a performance because kissing makes your lips mushy, and we cannot have mushy lips and be a champion.

It's embarrassing and it's gross, but at least it's kind of funny.

You're hungry, you're confused, your face is streaked with dry tears, and you don't even remember when you started crying. First of all, I'd like to see the chef face to face. These are the best Cajun chicken niblets I've ever had.

Shh, I get it. I know who you are. It's been explained to me. I'm into it. I mean, let's talk.

Well, all right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Spock, sabotage the system. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Give it up for Luke! Luke Burbank! Coming to you from Napa, California-ish, I guess you'd call it. California, got me. The hotel that I'm staying in purports to be in the greater Napa Valley region And I guess maybe technically it is But this ain't Texas, ain't no Hold'em, my friends This is not wine country This is looking out at Travis Air Force Base And I am picking up here on Monday right where I left off on Friday If you remember, if you're a careful listener to the show You remember that last week I was in a different part of California and I was debating between sticking with my kind of less than ideal hotel room or trying to do my sort of typical move, which is to upgrade or try to get a slightly better situation. Well, since we've last spoken, I flew home, had a wonderful weekend, flew back down here to California and am once again dealing with a hotel motel situation.

Is this a thing people care about?

No.

So anyway, I'll probably, even though I thought before the show, just you need to calm down with this kind of content, Burbs. I'll probably still end up talking about it. Also, in case you were wondering, yes, this is episode 4199 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Andrew went to Dave and Buster's this weekend for the first time.

Well, what did everybody think?

Very excited to get the full report on how that went And he wasn't the only one from the show having fun this weekend I went to a movie at a theater So who needs a movie? I saw The Fall Guy And I enjoyed the film But then I pick up the New York Times And I read that it was kind of considered a box office disaster Even though it was the number one movie in America, it hardly made any money. Because I guess if you try to make a movie that isn't just basically Minions 4, then it's not going to be profitable. I'm telling you, there's no money in that. So we'll talk about the movie industry at large. And, oh yeah, we'll talk to this guy. He is the longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Please welcome the wickedly talented. Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now Good morning my friend

Good morning Luke I'm at war I'm at war right now

Yeah with yourself? Nope

With the city of Seattle And their utilities department my friend I have set up We're coming in hot on a Monday my friend

Forget about the fall guy There's a new action hero He's Andrew blue sky walsh is this related to the social media account that you set up that you sent me a a message about the other day oh it most certainly is my friend so

So I was procrastinating on Friday. I had to write the newsletter, and nothing was coming to me, and I didn't know what to do. So I'm procrastinating like crazy, and I look at my inbox, and I see I have a bill to pay, a utilities bill from the city of Seattle. I'm like, okay, I'll knock that out. Good time to pay bills is when you're avoiding doing other things. I think John Lennon's saying about that.

Honestly, if you're going to procrastinate, at least procrastinating with something else that is something that you should be doing is actually a good – Because I will procrastinate with looking at TikTok. There's just like no upside to that. If you're procrastinating by doing something else that you were previously procrastinating on, I still think overall it's a win.

I will be honest and say I paid the bill after getting myself up off the floor where I decided for a while to lay on my back and scroll through Instagram while Genevieve was in a meeting outside. I couldn't go lay down on the couch, which was a really good thing because her colleagues, possibly the president of the University of Washington, would have seen a fat man leave his studio on a Friday afternoon and lay down on a couch behind Genevieve to digest some pho that I overate at lunchtime.

So this is why I may never cohabitate again. Right. I mean, I know you've got a lot to talk about and I don't want to I don't want to derail things early, but I will just say I, you know, there's there's obviously huge upside to sharing your life with someone and being in a home with them. But then there's also the fact that under my current situation, I don't have to in any way justify any napping I want to do, any lying down. I mean, maybe it was for you more about not interrupting a meeting that was going on. But I just know that, like, you know, I as a person who who did like to occasionally lie down on the rug and digest some pho, I feel like what we don't talk about in relationships is that there's a certain amount of subterfuge that goes on. sometimes maybe we don't and you know we just don't want to we don't want to have to explain to our partner or our roommate or whoever might be in the house that we that we do want to lie down on the rug for a while or something like or like in other words you would have maybe been lying on the couch if you were all alone if it were if the if the world were your oyster you would have been lying on the couch for a minute but instead you were lying on the floor because to come out into the main room would have again maybe more related to the business call that was going on but i've what i'm trying to tell you andrew is i've i've lain on a few floors in my day with the door closed because i didn't want to justify to the person on the other side of that door that i really wanted to lay down for a minute that's all i really feel like i should have a bar

in my studio like jack donaghy then i would never leave this room i will okay a couple of things to respond to there i do know what you're talking about there are moments in a relationship and in life where like things are just a bad look right like for example like your your partner coming home and especially like your partner coming home from work and like seeing you laying on the couch is a bad look it's not something I do a lot by the way but Genevieve will tell you she has seen plenty of me like kind of come out of my office on a Friday afternoon saying I don't know what to write about lay down on the couch for a second and then that second becomes 45 minutes or something so I'm not saying I know that she or I are a stranger to that kind of behavior from me I try not to make it too much of a habit but in this particular case the instance I'm talking about you're right it had more to do with the fact that she was on a call but you know what that little regulator that little governor in my life was really necessary like in a certain way it's good like because i did have to get this done who knows if i laid down on that couch who knows what would have happened luke i might i mean if you saw the things that happened this monday

morning privacy if you saw the things that happened in the privacy of my unsupervised home andrew it would turn your blood cold i'm sure i would not want to touch any surfaces that's for dang sure no black light but anyway so you're you're trying to figure out what to do about the newsletter but in the meantime you're dealing with some bills i don't know why i needed to start

the story there that's a thing that i inherited from my dad i think to tell you a simple story i got to start from my birth um but the point is i go to pay a bill on friday and i say that with all love we're very similar but um i go to pay a bill on friday and i'm like oh the garbage sewer water bill comes in that's always the expensive one but if you'll recall about a month ago i went to pay said bill and there was this mysterious quote-unquote extra garbage pickup charge of $13.50 on the bill and so I called and said we do not put out any extra garbage we don't do that I'm very conscientious with my garbage routine you have no idea do you have any idea who you're talking to here this is the inventor of garbage anxiety my friends the people who answer the phones at this department the city department are actually always really really great and so in the last time I called and said, this is not a charge that should be on my bill. She was like, you know what? They are supposed to tell us what the reason is for this extra garbage pickup or take a photo or something. And there's nothing in your account related to that. So I'm going to.

reverse the charge i said thank you very much that was a month ago in that conversation though i did learn that there are various caveats like if you have so much garbage in your garbage bin that the lid is cracked open by more than three inches that's considered an extra garbage pick now

by the way lives in my head anytime i'm putting my garbage out at my place i'm like going does this garbage can right now look like if you put googly eyes on it it could be part of the expanded universe because if it does we got trouble could this thing start talking and say something right have we anthropomorphized it in some way by leaving by having the lid up a little bit that's by the way that's the key difference of any of these things between uh you know living and non-living is the mouth slightly open and will it start talking to me if i put an empty paper towel tube

in the crack will it look like it's smoking a cigar if the answer to that question exactly and And if that's happening, you're getting a charge. $1,350, yes, exactly. But that was last month. And now that I knew that rule, obviously, I'm not going to break that rule because I don't want to do this again. And I can tell you for a fact that we haven't had anything even on the edge of pushing the lid up the past several weeks since I learned that rule. and so when I open up the bill and I see almost exactly one month like to the date since the first erroneous charge there's another I will call it erroneous charge of extra trash pickup so I call the city again and this time I get a guy and he's like okay let me look into this yeah there's nothing attached to the file as far as an explanation of this so I will reverse the charge this time but that's two for the year for you now so we won't be able to do this again and I said what do you mean

And you won't be able to do this again.

I didn't do anything wrong here. You guys are just charging me extra.

These are like challenges in an NFL game. That's what I told Genevieve.

If you win the challenge, you don't lose the challenge going forward. Exactly. I said, like, I didn't. But he's like, yeah, I don't know what it is. He's like, no. And so Genevieve says she could hear this conversation. She didn't know about any of this. But apparently I learned I learned later that you heard that I was talking to somebody on the phone, like through the ceiling or something. And she said that she heard a shift in my voice, in my voice at some point during the conversation. And that was the moment where he said that I'm, you know, I'm out of challenges. And like you, I won my challenges. What are you talking about? So the rest of my life or the rest of the year is this garbage collector who I'm now starting to believe does have it in for me because I found my garbage bin set upside down after the first time I called about this. I think that I'm in something here. I think I'm potentially in a cold war that might be heating up.

Oh, yeah. No, this is moving into a hot war fast, my friend. Yes, it is. And I'm heating it up.

I have a hot plate here.

It's thickening. So what? Yes. Okay, so I didn't know the extent of all of this. So you have now and this is I would I'd love to tell the listeners this is the first time you've started a social media account to document what's going on with your garbage. But it's in fact not because you're having a different problem at your old place, which was the the route that you were on. It seemed to be kind of hit and miss for them picking the garbage up at all. And and so you and then so but this time you've started now because we're no longer an ex family around here. You have started a Blue Sky account to deal with this.

Yeah. Now I will give myself. No, this isn't credit. I never started a social media account for this purpose before. I used my existing. You just added it to your existing Twitter. I would just take a photo every night as I would pull out the garbage and put it on the curb so I could. And then I would, you know, have a have a time stamped public record if the city of Seattle said that I hadn't taken my garbage bins out on time, which was a real concern. And that and I'll tell you what, I'd rather deal with what I'm dealing with now more than going back to that old situation where it was like 50, 50, whether my bins would be emptied on any given day. And then I'd have to call and fight. And then they would have they would literally lie and say the garbage collector noted that it wasn't out in time. And I was like, I was out on time Plus it was all such a high traffic area

I feel like there was so much For you, it was a lot of anxiety Around what's happening to What's happening to Canny My little can that's out there People throwing stuff in there Bindle Bindle Irwin, I've heard you can rap So yeah, I get what you're saying Which is that this is, even though this is kind of stressful It's a different kind of stress And one that is probably overall a little better than the one you were dealing with at the old place.

Yeah, at least my garbage is being emptied, but I don't like that. And again, can I afford $13.50? Yes, Luke. I am proud to say that I'm a $13-dollionaire. But if they do this once a month and I have no recourse, what is that, $180?

a year or something on top of what i consider to be a pretty pricey garbage plan anyway i've got the smallest bin available the most affordable bin available and it's 33 bucks a month like that's not nothing for like a little 20 gallon little little box to put my garbage in and then you're just going to add 1350 on that based on nothing based on the fact now that's absolutely unacceptable now i live a few blocks off of a main arterial here if i'm saying that word right that's what you call a road like aurora right and there's a lot of foot traffic and a lot of you know like all kinds of crazy shit goes down in my neighborhood i'm not gonna lie about that so is there a chance that somebody would abandon a stroller next to my garbage cans and someday and that then they think it's garbage and they they charge me for it sure but i don't think anything like that has happened i definitely find other people's garbage in my garbage can sometimes when i go out to check and see if they were emptied or not but nothing that has been like a huge bag that is like propping up the lid or anything i honestly and i'm in my head about this but i honestly think especially after getting that voicemail from a listener who is a long time garbage collector saying that like yeah it probably got back to this garbage collector that he didn't take a photo of the bins um and i do think it's a guy by the way i'm not just making that assumption i've seen him before uh and i said hello to him one time he emptied the bin and i grabbed it right away and he kind of had this smirk he kind of smirked at me in this like sort of knowing way and i felt like He was looking through me like, oh, this guy's obsessed with garbage or something, which I am. I'll wear that. But anyway, so we had a call from a listener who said after I called to reverse the charge the first time, that might have gotten back to the garbage collector, maybe because he got a note that said, hey, start taking photos of this if you're going to charge them. I don't know what I don't know what goes on. All I know is strange things are afoot. And I have now created a blue sky account called Andrew's Garbage Anxiety. I already have seven followers because I linked to it in the newsletter. The profile picture is a picture of Oscar the Grouch sticking his head out of a garbage pail. And it says, this is an account created to prove to the city of Seattle that I'm not putting out extra garbage on Trash Day. I'm innocent, I tell you. And right now it's totally empty, but I will take out the garbage this week. The person on the phone started to get a little shirty with me maybe as I got a little defensive. And he's like, well, maybe, you know, your bins are too close to your neighbors. and so they're assuming they're all yours. I'm like, we don't have any neighbors on this block where the garbage bins are picked up. And everything he's throwing at me, I'm throwing it back at him and I hear him getting impatient with me.

Right, because these people have no idea who they're dealing with.

I'm more of a professional than they are in this department.

Honestly, honestly. They think that they're dealing with me, but they're dealing with you. And by that I mean, I'm somebody who, I try to make sure to get the thing out there. I don't really know what it costs. I would and sadly this is about a lack of personal organization I probably wouldn't notice if they were throwing extra money on the bill because I don't look at it as closely as I should and if I had a problem and I called in I just would be minimally aware of really the details that is not my friend Andrew Welsh you are very aware of what's going on you're very much following the rules and so when they try to shine you on with like oh well maybe you you know it's too close to your neighbor or whatever I mean you're just you're just sort of like you know wax on wax offing away all of those possible explanations because they're just it's no way that's what's happening

and by the way i'm not even 100 sure i haven't paid these extra charges before it wasn't until recently that i started looking at the itemized bill so now i look at it every time and after i told this story on the show i know i've heard it from at least one person a friend of ours who said who sent me a screen cap of his bill and he's like i think i've been paying this like almost every month because i always load my garbage can up as much as possible well that's

$13 more they can donate to TBTL.

Honestly, if they donate $5 a month. If you round up, it would be $14.

I was going to say, if they donate $5 to us every month of that, they're still making $7.50. I mean, this is TBTL is money savers. If through listening to the show we've saved you any money, all we ask is that you reinvest 50% of that saved money into TBTL. Now, here's Andrew.

I didn't tell you who this person is, but let me just tell you that this is a friend of ours who donates so generously to the show that I would send them the money back if they started donating more money to us at this point.

I think I might know who you're talking about.

We're narrowing it down.

Let me ask you this. I think you know the answer to this, and it's probably even come up in these previous conversations, but I'm starting to get a theory here, or at least I'm starting to get, I'm starting to develop a theory in my mind about why it is that they're being so persnickety about this. My question to you is, is this run by the city of seattle like is this are these folks city of seattle employees to deal with this or is this a private company that is contracting with the city of seattle to do this

pretty sure it's private company i know it was in the last place i lived

And that's why I think often when I would call in, the people would be very nice to me and say, well, you know, like, in other words, like they're sort of mitigating between the private company they work with and the private citizen that is me. And so, yeah, they that's why they need documentation, because they're not city workers. They're people that their companies hire. Right.

You mean that's why they need to document what they're doing to you. That's why that's the lack of the photo of your overfilled garbage can is, yeah, right. That's why they've got it. But also, on the other hand, there's a huge profit motive here for them to only give you two challenges and then to take them away for the rest of the game. Because, I mean, that's the whole problem with so many of these things like this where cities outsource it. If this was the city of Seattle, if you were just calling up somebody who'd been a city of Seattle employee for many years in this particular part of the civic infrastructure of the place, they would probably just go, okay, let me take it off. Or they wouldn't even charge you in the first place because their company is not being enriched for every extra fee that gets tacked on. I mean, you're dealing with a mini version of the airlines here. You're dealing with a for-profit company that is very much motivated to ding people for these extra charges and then make it hard on those people to prove that it wasn't their fault because they just make more money when they do that. It's probably built into their actual business model. If we ding enough people for any minor infraction, the percentage of people who actually challenge this is pretty low. And if we do get some people that are actually on the ball and they're chronic challengers of this, we'll just say they can only do it twice a year. But this is all because this is very likely a for-profit company.

Just to be very clear, and I think you know this, but I want to say that, of course, the people I'm talking to on the phone are City of Seattle employees, but they are dealing with a contractor. Oh, I didn't actually realize that. Okay. Okay, yeah, that's how I believe this to be. I'm not calling Fred's garbage service. I'm calling the City of Seattle Utilities, which is what I said earlier, kind of confused things. I heard you trying to kind of sort it out. But I think what it is is in the past when my garbage wasn't being picked up at my old apartment, I would call the city and the relationship wasn't like, well, we got to check with our colleagues who drive the trucks. The relationship was, well, this company works for us. And so this company, this garbage collection company. So if we have one of our, you know, residents saying that they're not getting good service, then we need to hold this company that we hired accountable in a certain way. So the people in Seattle, in the offices there, probably are less defensive because they're probably like, oh, yeah, these jamokes. Is that an okay word to say? It sounds really iffy. It sounds iffy. It sounds on the edge, but I don't think it's an epithet. But anyway, we know that these contractors maybe aren't great with the paperwork or whatever. So that's why I was a little turned off by this guy. I was on the phone with saying that I was out of challenge. to be on your side basically but here's the okay so the plan is now i've got this blue sky account which the bummer is it's not like the old days of twitter i can't tag the city in this because the city is not on blue sky like you'll be surprised to hear but at least i will have something where i can time stamp it like i they can't argue with the fact not that my issue right now is that my garbage isn't out on time nobody has accused me of doing that in this new house having said that i could see it going in that direction and so i'm going to take photos of my garbage bins maybe even videos maybe i'll turn it into a week in review podcast i would

absolutely follow this live stream andrew i would i would and i think there are there are dozens of

us dozens yeah so i am going to take photos of my bins out at the curb with plenty of space around them with the lid fully closed i'm going to take a photo of the inside because he was like well maybe there was sawdust in there something there wasn't sawdust in there and so i will and then if they challenge it now the only thing is now this is the real i wasn't even going to bring this up because i don't think this is what's going on but you came so close to pushing me into this conversation before i'll just go all the way there's another factor here there's some poison in me that the listeners of this very podcast put into my veins and they did so in a loving way they didn't realize they were poisoning me forever but there are some viral videos out there that supposedly show i mean if you can believe what you see on the internet security footage of private garbage companies that are hired you know to maintain dumpsters and stuff for businesses that also have policies if like let's say you know i run andrew's paint shop or whatever and i've got a dumpster and i pay a service to empty that dumpster and maintain it and they come and empty it every couple of weeks or whatever apparently the rule remains if the lid is if It's so full that the lid is bouncing up on that. dumpster well then this company is going to charge me more well there is video that i watch that purports to be the collectors coming and then rearranging the garbage inside so that the lid pops up so that they can add this charge oh wow oh wow that's can i get a there's got to be of

course you can my friend there's got to be a a like an internal incentive structure where the folks that are driving unless it's like uh such a small operation that the owner of the company is also driving the truck there's got to be some way that it's like the owner's like all right for every up charge we get you get you know to keep 50 it's sort of like the tbtl model for every dollar we save you we'd like you to send 50 of it back to us because otherwise here's what here's where all this stuff always breaks down for me if i were the person at the tip of the spear i there's no way i'm getting out of my car and throwing this rearranging the garbage in the dumpster so that we get them over the line or taking a picture of your can that's allegedly has like a slight opening because of some louver blinds you were throwing out like i'm just not i am just not that good at my job or that interested yeah in like in documenting this stuff there must be this is and this is this is the problem that this is a conspiracy that goes from the bottom all the way to the top because there's got to be some way that it's been impressed upon the rank and file people out there that we want you to kind of try to like note each and every violation because it's going to you know make more money for our company and therefore there must be is it possible i mean for years there's been rumors that like you know parking attendants have like a a quota they're supposed to hit or that you know there's like you get somehow they're rewarded for doing these little things that annoy the rest of us in society is it possible that these companies have some sort of incentive structure for their employees to try to get them to be extra kind of detail oriented

around this stuff i mean it's 3 a.m i'm tossing and turning in bed these are the thoughts that go through my head of course but in the light of day in the light of day i want to be very careful these videos that people sent in i don't know if you can believe everything you see on the internet luke i've heard some people lie there i've heard some people create videos just knowing that they will enrage and get clicks so can i verify that even these you know these dumpster situations are are real i i can't even say for sure that i'm not getting duped by the internet one of the people look like two raccoons in a waste management uniform yeah which was surprising it was funny

but uh i have i have a thought on this um i mean i've got a lot of thoughts but can i just before i forget can i just you know the court where this really needs to be adjudicated dream rants and raves oh go right to the seattle times i mean if there was ever a rant and rave if ever there was a ready-made rant and rave topic i'm talking just from a demo standpoint as in wow the people who read the rants and raves the people who write the rants and raves like a rant to the garbage company that that is uh continues to charge me and then tells me i'm out of challenges i mean that could become and this should be the new goal the most viewed story at seattletimes.com and if you can work in i don't know if they let you do this but some kind of link to your blue sky account i think it would be incredible let's get the seattle times rant and rave let's let's let's drag the rant and rave column right into the 21st century because so far it's just there have been no hyperlinks involved it's just someone going rave to the person who found my cat and then rant to the person who parked too close to me at cole's Now, let's do rant to the system that is in place. And by the way, check out my Blue Sky account.

Also, if that doesn't get what I want, if that doesn't get the attention that I want or the justice that I want, dare I get Jesse? Do you remember Get Jesse? Oh, how could I forget? I don't know if Jesse's still out there doing the people's work of like kind of this sort of investigative journalism on behalf of consumers. Exactly. If people are wondering what I mean, I think you get from context what rant and rave is. But just to give you a little taste of it, this is today's rant and rave. I love that it's daily, by the way. Sometimes there's only like one rant and one rave in there. Like sometimes the cupboard's a little bit empty. But they I used to think it was just a weekend.

but no they're they're cranking out the rant and rave every day because they know it's the best thing they do as a newspaper it really is to give you sort of the sense of people who are writing in uh rant and rave this one is a combined rant and rave rant to the grocery stores for their digital coupon savings that many people cannot access this is clearly discriminatory rave to the cashier who bravely bypassed the system and allowed us to buy our strawberries at the digital savings coupon price so these are the folks who are writing into the oh wow i have to tell you

that of the things about self-checkout that i've actually found to be fairly useful it is the digital coupon maybe that's a privilege thing because i have a phone but like i what i find

it to be i'm surprised that you do digital coupons at all what are you clipping digital coupons

i am now i got that safeway app if i'm looking at like sometimes they'll have you know bubble water it'll be like you know half price or something but what i couldn't figure out for the longest time was how when i got to the self-checkout or even the regular checkout if there's ever a person doing that i could not put together how in the world they knew which which things i had scanned and then someone just said well because you punch your phone number in it so it's all associated with the phone number so i have the app they got my phone number i mean it's it's my you know what last shreds of personal privacy i have just flying whiffing right out the window but it is very convenient just kind of go scan scan scan and then you get up there and it just takes it right out because of course you also put your phone number in at the beginning

of the transaction yeah so the phone number thing i definitely do and then i watch it sort of like take all of that off of my um bill which is such a even that is such a canard it's like look at your savings it's like no you jack of course things up to force us to sign up for this yes get our information and track what we're buying but i should pay more attention to i know my friend hannah um who i do spotless with is a big uh coupon clipper or digital coupon snipper do you clip real coupons and snip digital ones i don't know why i'm making that designation but um anyway so that's the plan i've got the i haven't posted anything yet because it's not garbage day yet but i will be posting some photos of my trash bins um you know properly on the curb with no overflowing issues and no garbage next to it um but also if i continue to get um these charges and they won't accept that i am planning i have these old like kind of security camera everybody's got like their ring doorbells or whatever i got these pretty old clunky ones now that i played around with a little bit at my old apartment and then just put away because i don't like having

cameras all on the outside i know that's the funny part is i feel like you're you're personally very anti like ring camera and sort of surveillance state and things surveillance as it pertains to

it's not that just for me because i feel like if i'm constantly getting alerts of somebody like setting off a motion sensor in my backyard i think it's going to make me too paranoid i like i think it's going to do something to my brain that i don't like if somebody walks onto my property and pees on my fence like i don't want that to happen but also i don't need to know about it you know what i mean chances are the rain will come and it'll go away no that's a really good

that's a good way to look at it and i think it's interesting to me that this is what will finally though bring you into turning into and this is the reference i always use when it comes to cameras And it's so outdated, but I believe it's is it Billy Baldwin in the movie Sliver? Oh, sure. Yes. He I think he I don't know if he's the maintenance person, but somehow he's got cameras all set up in this apartment building and he's watching everyone all the time. Again, I'm sure that that whole thing could be knocked out for about, I don't know, 80 bucks on Amazon now. I'm sure at the time it was some technological feat that he was doing it. But the thing that's turning you into that character from that movie is is the battle between you and the and the people of the garbage collection world. Now, we do need to move on because you've got your hobby horse, Andrew, which is your garbage collection. I've got mine, which is called the Marriott Bonvoy universe. but um do you if you have the camera set up in such a way that it's noticeable to the person who's coming around and dealing with the garbage i wonder if that will change their behavior or not um because if they know they're being monitored would they then not um try to get away with either turning your garbage can upside down or i don't know rearranging things so that you've got a little too much in there or whatever it's another i wonder if the visual deterrent of the cameras will then it's sort of you know it's it's it's schrodinger's cat which we refer to on the show all the time becca sent me a cartoon from the new yorker these people are in i think like a party or something and the person comes in and goes mrs schrodinger it's about your cat i have good news and bad news Ha, ha, ha!

it's like a perfect joke good news and bad news like how did we get this far how do we get to

2024 before somebody wrote that joke it's it's absolute perfection to me i don't think that my

i mean i like the idea of setting up like a television camera like a full i like the idea of my garbage collector just coming and jesse i can't remember jesse's last name but i just like the idea of get jesse being there next to my garbage bins the next time the collectors come but um i don't think i these cameras would be i the best way i can picture doing it would be i'd probably hook it up to like my like the corner of my garage or something but you know these things are not very big so i don't know that they would even notice it and again i'm sure i bet you i'm more in my head about this like maybe they really did see something or maybe somebody came along and threw a bag in my i don't know like i'm obviously being very extra about this whole thing but I am legitimately pissed and if the system is like 1350 every time somebody walks down the street and throws extra garbage in my bin well then there's got to be a better way I told Genevieve like I was exploring the options of like if I call with another erroneous charge complaint and they give me a hard time about it like I want to be in a position where I can tell them to go stick it where the sun don't shine um and so I was looking into like what would it be like if i just maintain my own garbage service where i got like a bin a bin of my own and take it to the dump every week but the thing is taking it to the dump like that's a 33 dollar minimum charge anyway for anything between like one and 300 pounds is like 33 bucks so then you know what

you got to do you go around the neighborhood and you you just say okay here's what we're doing we're all pooling our money. This is honestly, this is how the prophecy is foretold. Andrew becomes a local boutique garbage man going around and collecting all the garbage of the people in your neighborhood and then taking them to the dump to get over the minimum number of threshold, but still saving everybody money.

No, we don't pool our money. I just become like slowly a de facto garbage collector where I pay the 33 bucks, but I charge them. I just they're paying Andy's garbage service I get myself a little truck and I start collecting garbage around town that you can I won't I won't overcharge that's the Andy Walsh guarantee

well until you realize that it is sometimes a problem when the lids are kind of propped up and then you just in order to charge make it well yeah and then also and then one day you wake up And you've replaced waste management with your own Byzantine system. And then you've stared into the void too long, sir. I'm propping up garbage lids to get a little bit of extra scratch.

What have I become? What have I become? I'm pounding at the mirror. I just saw an Onion headline. I don't know why I'm saying this other than to wrap up our conversation with a totally unrelated topic about something we have not talked at all about. But I don't know if you were following this whole rap beef, this rap battle thing that really, I mean, it started a couple of weeks ago, but exploded over the weekend. I listened to all of the diss tracks yesterday. I sat down and looked them all up, listened to them in order. And I just saw this on your headline, Drake Drops New Track Inviting Kendrick Lamar Out to Coffee So They Can Clear Things Up, which is, I would listen to that song. That's kind of what J. Cole did, actually.

but can we do tomorrow could you explain this to me could you give me a ride home from the rap battle tomorrow grandma because all i'm seeing is the it's people just kind of like playing the songs and then reacting like oh my gosh no he did not and i i sort of vaguely understand that these these rappers are in a argument but i don't really know who's winning and also like kind of I just don't know enough about the story. And if you spent yesterday listening, actually listening to the tracks, I'd be kind of curious to get your thoughts on it, maybe for tomorrow's show.

I'm literally the last person in the world who should be weighing in on this. Well, I'm not going to ask you. But I'll just tell you what I know, basically. Yes, that would be really helpful. I'll read to you from the Vulture article that just did a track-by-track breakdown. And then I just, like, as I read it, I looked up each song and listened to it.

You've unlocked my secret to hosting this show. It's just repeating verbatim something that somebody else wrote, somebody who knew about the topic. Okay, let's thank some Dazzling Donors. Andrew, we have so much still to get to. I do want to hear about Dave and Buster's. I don't really care. This hotel story is not – let me do this. Let me knock this hotel story out in five minutes because it's really not that interesting. And then we can go to the Dazzling Donors, and then we can talk Dave and Buster's, and then I can tell you about the fall guy.

and uh and the essentially actual worst case scenario that i can imagine in a movie theater happening to me um which happened on sunday um but uh the the scoop with the hotel is here's the short version i booked the wrong hotel um to stay in and did not realize it until about 1 30 this morning when i arrived uh which was so we're filming a hotel in like a completely wrong

part of town or a wrong city or just a wrong hotel i the producer so i'm working on a story

here in northern california in the kind of really expanded bay area of the story is about this land acquisition that's been going on by these people running a program called california forever and you might have heard about this is actually a fascinating story there it's a group of very very rich people including like um steve jobs's widow and a bunch of other tech folks who have been buying up all this farmland out here because they want to build this city that they think will help with affordable housing and will really be like an example of how to really build a functioning working city that's their that's their sales pitch and i'm talking to the guy in charge of all of it in a couple of days some of the people in the area who say own farmland and had their family farms for years and don't want to sell to this project i have a very different opinion of the project they think this is a basically a land grab and i will say that when those some of those families have been sued by this entity for not selling their land it doesn't seem like it's not that kind of a thing so anyway that's what i'm here covering But it's fairly rural or whatever Anyway the producer for the story said Hey here's where we're staying This is the hotel to stay at And I somehow in my mind When I went into the Concur travel app To book this hotel room I just I don't know what I did I just went to the wrong hotel That's in this sort of general area And so last night what happened was I basically get in the car And I say can you please take me to this Particular hotel I show up at the Hotel It's really late I walk in the front Desk lady had a look on her face that wasn't good It was basically saying There is no room At the inn or I think we've The reason I knew that this woman thought That everyone had checked in for the night because She was hanging out with her lady friend and they Were both playing with her dog In the lobby of the hotel she was Like I've done all my work everyone's checked in everything's good to go now my friend janice is here with the dog and we're gonna she's gonna keep me company through some of the long hour the wee small hours of the morning so right when i walked in i was like well that's not good she seems surprised i'm here and sure enough i said well isn't this the um i go like isn't this the courtyard by marriott and she goes uh no this is the residence in i was like what and she goes yeah no you don't have a reservation here and i was like oh you gotta be kidding me because so then i have to find another car and i have to go down i don't know 20 minutes away to the hotel that i'm currently at right and the whole time i'm thinking i'm having this conversation in my head with our producer where i want to say to him dude we should have all stayed at that residence inn it was pretty nice it was like brand new like the place that i accidentally went the place that i went to that wasn't really where i was supposed

to be staying was nice. They just built it. And I was thinking, why are we staying at this other place when there's this other nice thing we could have been staying at that's reasonably priced and part of the Bonvoy empire? And then I get down here to this hotel, the one that I'm actually booked at, and I check in. And Andrew, every misgiving I had about the Burbank Airport Marriott last week pales pales in comparison to this place it is it's amazing to me that these folks are still able to as they say fly the Marriott flag because these are all franchisees right I mean most of them are are somebody owns maybe a number of hotels and they pay money to Marriott they get to be a Marriott but it's not all owned by Jim Marriott or whatever I mean the the the whatever you want to call it the kind of cleanliness of the hotel the like the upkeep the maintenance all that stuff it's kind of onto the person who owns the hotel within some certain parameters i get in the woman goes hey um i've upgraded you to our spa suite i was like in the words of cisco ooh la la and uh i'm i'm walking so i get my stuff i'm i'm walk or you know my key card and stuff and i'm walking down the hall and i'm like just noticing things are kind of dingy i'm noticing that like they've put in new carpet but the pattern on the carpet really kind of veers like whoever put the carpet in didn't know really how to do it so that does that make any sense like it looks like i put the carpet in like it's in your tile gets off yeah precisely it's like it's in but someone who really took this seriously knew what they were doing it would never look like this and then i get into the elevator this is a massive building by the way i get into the elevator the elevator could probably hold two adult people it's the smallest elevator i've gotten in in the u.s that i can remember like it's something you might find in Europe somewhere where they do things a little smaller but I'm like this is a massive building it's got like a hundred hotel rooms why is it an elevator for two like what is going on here and then also elevators tell a real story about a hotel because they might redo the rooms they might but the elevators they get to last and sure enough I look and it's like it's just like everything is dingy in this tiny elevator the baseboard doesn't all connect in the corner there's just like grime it's like it's tile it's broken but they haven't fit you know what I mean it's like it's the window to the soul of this of this particular hotel and i'm just like oh you gotta be kidding me i get to my spa suite room which is i don't know if you can really see andrew behind me it's probably the perspective is not very helpful but this i'm in just this room i think what they did is they took two hotel rooms and they just made one of them the the living room area and it's just massive but it's empty it's like a massive room with like two chairs in it

and not enough other furniture yeah and i've been in rooms like this before i'm i believe i am on the yelp page for the hotel that you're at right now and um now i'm i'm i'm doing a i'm sort of cherry picking here it looks like mostly people have left four star reviews for it but i've gone right to look at the two-star reviews not even the one but i just wanted to start with the two-star reviews and the descriptions are like very much what you're saying we're bonvoy members and we like to stick with marriott hotels this one not up to par bad smell in floor hallways elevator outdated uh only two floors in the hotel is that the right one can hear lots of hallway noise large

spider in our hotel room like it's and i want to mention that the people that i've interacted with who worked here totally nice like like it's has nothing to do with the staff that i can tell it's just like andrew i don't know if this is going to really pay off um but let me just do this for you i'm going to just open so because i'm in a spa suite andrew i have a balcony now this balcony looks like the wreck yard at a prison it has no furniture on it and it is i'm just going to open the door to the balcony i want to see if you notice anything sonically different about the experience of being in this room okay so it's closed now and now it's open oh very loud and i don't know if you're able to hear this but it is we have a spectacular view of the glory that is interstate 80 here in this part of california it is it was so loud last night and i actually don't mind a little ambient noise i was blasting my little fan app on my phone yeah i will say that

that just sounded like white noise to us i think so it didn't it wasn't like cars honking and

people screaming the problem is at night it's just like not very loud and then you just get like a guy with a blown muffler so it just goes from kind of completely pretty much fine to just like whoa what um but uh the other thing that i this this was the this was the cherry on top when i got into the bathroom my spa suite and i realized the reason they call it the spa is because it has like a gigantic bathtub i guess probably like you'd call it a jacuzzi spa this is the funny part though andrew i should actually this could be the show pick today okay the funny part is they have put this giant bathtub in which is like i mean you couldn't pay me enough to get in the bathtub to get into this jacuzzi tub but in order to fit this into the bathroom they have had to wedge the toilet into the tiniest corner of the room between this giant square built-in bathtub thing and the wall so that when you go to access the toilet paper you can't move your arms enough to it is the feng shui of this thing is so wild like you cannot the toilet is rendered not functional oh by the way it also doesn't flush it's also literally not functional but i just mean from a seating standpoint it's non-functional because of where it is trapped in the corner of this room because they wanted to make room for this glorious 1990s era fairly dingy looking bathtub were you joking when you said that the toilet also is not

functional was that just a joke or you literally can't flush the toilet either

I was being very serious when the... I'll turn my camera off too See if that helps our speed here No, I'm being very serious I cannot Basically the chain inside the toilet tank Is not connected And if there's anything you don't want to do When you get to a hotel room It's reach into the toilet tank to try to fix it Good lord Yeah, no, it's crazy It's like everything that I thought I mean, Andrew, I'm looking at so many spider webs And also cigarette burns in the like drapes like it's everything that i thought was um not ideal about the last place i was pails in comparison the funny part though is i i was already rehearsing this talk that i was going to give to uh our guy mark um the producer from cbs i was going to say to him like why are we at this place that we're at right now like why are we not the other one the nice one and then when i got in bed very by the way nervously i was like no no tokenada i don't want to be near the bedspread i'm trying to like the bed looked relatively clean by the way again i think the staff here is totally doing their job the best they can i think it's the physical building but i i got in the bed and i re-looked at my phone and i looked at the note that had been sent out by the producer and i realized everyone else is staying at the nice place i just booked the wrong place like we're not here we're not here as a group i'm here but of but of everybody in the

crew like you're the one who's least concerned with these things i've started three blue sky

accounts andrew just to monitor this hotel no that's the funniest part like i was i i got up this i should say last night i was going to bed thinking like i'm gonna have to really try to be nice i'm gonna try to be pleasant to the producer but i'm gonna just say to him dude up the road like 10 miles was a brand new residence in that's totally fine who told you that this was where we wanted to stay like what like what is wrong with you basically and then i realized nothing is wrong with him everyone else is staying at the newly built residence in i am enjoying i am now enjoying the uh the the marriott that's down here in the um i'm trying to even figure out what else is around me in the travis air force base district and um and i'm good i don't know how i'm going to get through the next few days i'm down here for a while too but i'm gonna i don't know i'm gonna

have to just figure it out i guess so you're i you're not changing your hotels well one thing

i went on the app and the nice one seems to be fully booked oh wow so that's got me worried like because of course i didn't do any of this until two days ago uh so i don't know if it's if it's full it's there's also it's just like the other issue is just getting around everything is very spread out here because again farmland so it's like i don't want to go stay at a part of why this this area was picked was because it's centrally located to all these farms we're going to and kind of far-flung places so like for instance there's a westin over in napa that It looks pretty schmancy on the Bonvoy app, but I might be moving myself to like two hours away from everything that we need to do. So I've got a few things to sort out, but I guess here's what my here's what my message is as we as we go to the debt. And how do I do in my five minutes? They're pretty well. Pretty good. You think?

Yeah, pretty. I think we're. Yeah, we're exactly five minutes right now.

now yeah tight five no i was you know in the words of um who was it warrant who did don't know what you got till it's gone whoever did that song that was a kind of like a hair metal song from like i think probably the 80s maybe the 90s whoever said that the those those sage words i didn't know how true they were i i want to apologize to the burbank airport marriott i am so sorry that i ever doubted you um the uh that i had no idea how good i had it there and i will never ever question your cleanliness or bathroom layout design standards i do i'm really hoping andrew that this photo that i'm going to send you actually pays off you know pictures are weird it might not you might not really be able to tell what's going on but i'm just telling you if they ever if you're ever at this the marriott in fairfield california the travis air force base one do not ask for the spa room it is not what they think it is cinderella 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 who are making tbtl possible with their continued support and we are very very appreciative of folks like peter and sherry cop of my old my old stomps of port townsend Washington, a small maritime village of... I'll be out there July 11th, Peter and Sherry. Maybe I'll see you. I'm helping out with the Jefferson County Land Trust gala again. So, I feel like last year I mentioned this on the show, and then we heard from Peter and Sherry, and they said, we're intentionally out of town that weekend.

Oh, wow. That's a little chilly.

Yeah, it was. It was. But, you know, honestly, they're putting their money towards the show, so if it's Show up at the Jefferson County Land Trust or if it's support TBTL. I'm going to TBTL all the way. So thank you, Peter and Sherry.

Certainly.

You may remember our dazzling donor message from last year. It was about our love of the Buy Nothing movement, and it was hyper-local and wordy. This year's message is shorter, but with a much broader perspective. Our message this year is simple. Vote.

In the Song of the Summer campaign. Wait, no, no. We don't do that anymore.

Vote for values like kindness, decency, inclusivity, basic human rights for all people, personal liberties, truth. Vote for candidates and initiatives that reflect those values. Vote in every election. You want to see social programs be preserved and enhanced. You want equitable and affordable access to health care. You want to see continued work on infrastructure to ensure our planet's viability for future generations. all of these things that Peter and Sherry are laying out seem like reasonable goals it's just I would love to see the person lining up against this and see how cogent the argument is against all of these things that they're laying out because they all seem to make a lot of sense

oh yeah let's keep the planet livable for humans come on you liberals easy

RFK Jr can you tell that I listened to this morning's daily on the treadmill Oh, by the way, let me say one. Here's one plug for staying in a hotel that honestly may or may not even sort of have its permitting to be here. I noticed the permit in that tiny elevator is expired.

Oh, my gosh.

In the workout room, I think the floor slopes. So even though I was on a treadmill, it kind of felt like I was running downhill, which was actually awesome. That's where has that been all my life? Just a down like a slight downhill, not steep because running down a steep hill is its own whole problem. i'm talking gentle decline i mean that's what i'm hoping for my health and also my treadmills like i felt like i was just i was on a gentle decline i think because the floor was not level

but i was into it sounds like the hotel's on a gentle decline oh not so it's speeding up rapidly

but i was listening to the daily and today's episode was all about basically like what is going on with rfk jr getting on the ballot and like it's just i mean i you want to talk about Just going into a rage cycle And shadow boxing with someone Sorry Peter and Sherry I know this isn't what you asked for but It's what you're getting By the way they finished by saying Weary of the lies, obstructionism Nationalism, bigotry, racism, sexism And censorship, then vote Every election matters, I could not agree more Peter and Sherry, I think if you're Listening to us right now I said this the other day, I was like Everyone vote but also don't vote for Donald Trump i love i want everyone to vote except also don't vote for rfk jr like i want you to vote the way i want you to vote that's all i'm asking um i'm figuring if you listen to this show you're i i think you've got to be a good egg and i i feel really good about you voting whatever your personal thing is i think if you like this show you're going to be operating in good faith someone operating i think in bad faith would be rfk jr do you know how he got on the ballot in michigan no so it's i i learned all this like an hour ago so it's fresh in my mind it is really challenging to get on the ballot in places and if you remember rfk jr was running as a democrat and then he realized it wasn't viable so he switched to like independent but the fear is that he may end up stealing more votes from joe biden than he does from donald trump so it's very it's very concerning to democrats that he's getting on the ballot in places but it's hard to get on the ballot and how he got on the ballot in michigan not through uh uh you know getting a bunch of signatures not through anything from the legislature it turns out there's something in michigan called the natural law party and it's run by one dude and i remember in my days of talk radio production that oftentimes if you saw a real kook candidate for president they'd be running as the natural law party candidate do you remember ever seeing that when you were like

booking something i remember kooks i don't remember that exactly i mean i literally have taken photos of people running um in the new hampshire primaries with boots on their heads but i don't remember that actual party i had somewhere in the recesses of my brain i was like

oh yeah i remember the natural law party just being this complete and total wingnut operation

Because of some kind of quirk of state of Michigan law, instead of RFK Jr., and of course Michigan is a very important state in this whole election, instead of RFK Jr. needing to, again, sort of demonstrate a certain amount of viability, go through the difficult process of sort of proving that he should be on the ballot there. instead he and this one dude who runs the natural law party in the state of michigan they are going to have a two-person convention and emerging from that two-person convention will be their nominee for president robert f kennedy jr that could very well swing the future of america a guy in michigan who wants to let an egomaniac like rfk jr onto the ballot so he can prove what point i don't know and if that steals enough votes for michigan to go the wrong way i i mean i was in such a state this morning listening to this andrew i was i was i was as you would say rip shit just to hear that it was the natural law party that's going to be allowing this

to happen in michigan what if it's there's only two people at the convention but it still ends

up being a brokered convention i would love it so much there's intrigue at the natural law party convention andrew it's like uh mcgovern nixon or whatever back actually those guys are from different parties i think whatever it was that hunter s thompson was writing about in fear and on the campaign trail so here's my point peter and sherry thank you for the donation and thank you for the admonition please everyone do get out there and vote i'm i feel confident saying if you listen to this show even if our politics are slightly different i think you are a good person in the world and i would really like your voice to be heard even if it's not in total alignment with ours um and you know if you can get to the natural law party convention and create some havoc i would also say do that if if you can get there and i don't know who you'd who you'd nominate Donald Jr. That'll steal votes from Trump. How about that? Can you get in there? Can you just start throwing other Trump family members on the ballot? I mean, that would be a way to mess with them because, I mean, if anyone's going to steal votes, get Carrie Lake on the ballot in Michigan, please, if you want to do some kind of a, you know, if you want to mess with it. So anyway, thank you, Peter and Sherry. I'm sorry that I went down that road, but that's just how it happens here on TBTL. Maestro?

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

Everybody rattle.

Hey, look who it is. It's Amy Lake of Eugene, Oregon. Amy says, another year, another dazzling donor message. This show is such a part of my life. I've been listening for, I don't know, 14 years. I can't tell you how often I pass along interesting stories I heard from my friends, Luke and Andrew. It's easier than describing you as my podcast friends Amy you know this As a listener to the show Everyone who is hearing our voice right now Is absolutely authorized to refer to us As their friends We are your friends And we will cover for you If we bump into you somewhere And you're with the group and you're like Oh hey it's my friends Luke and Andrew Remember I was telling you about that thing We'll invent a back story on the spot

Absolutely I also well maybe How do you feel about proxies, Luke? Like, if we can't be everywhere at once, are you okay with people pretending to be me and you? Absolutely. And saying, this is my friend who can answer that I'd be. Yeah, honestly. Can I get a handsome person? Yes. Do we get to pick? That'd be so fun.

Amy says, you two are like the brothers I never had. Please don't tell my real brothers. Your secret is safe. You know, Amy, here's the thing. we've stored that information away in a place they'll never look called tbtl so if you have if anybody wants to get anything off their chest this is really the place for it because it's almost no chance this is going to get to your brothers uh i also need to shout out my lovely wife heidi who has become an official 10 hey heidi welcome to the team it worked it just

took 14 years of trying to get Heidi to flip I have a to turn state's evidence yeah I have

I just have such a soft spot for anyone who has arrived at the show um you know has been basically subjected to the show by by somebody in their life and then some either through Stockholm syndrome or who knows what somehow then actually becomes themselves a fan of the show I just That's such a rare journey It's always really heartening to hear That somebody like Heidi made that journey Thank you Heidi even donated separately So she could have her very own TBTL commemorative coin

Oh wow

Heck yeah Keep what you're doing keep doing what you're doing and then power out from from amy in eugene oregon so thank you amy really appreciate you and heidi thank you as well we couldn't be here without you hello and welcome to top story all right i am i'm i'm going to make an executive decision let's i do think it's actually kind of interesting let's talk about fall guy tomorrow okay because a lot happened one i watched the movie so i've just got my basic review of the film or at least i'll tell you guys what i thought of it then there's also just what happens now in the movie theater experience which i there was some new stuff for me like the fact that the it wasn't imax but somehow the screen was going on the sidewalls as well and um but then also just the hollywood industry i thought the movie was great and then i find out it was basically a huge flop even though it had good reviews famous people in it things are blowing up it just seems like it would be a natural hit and it wasn't so let's talk about that tomorrow um what i really want to hear about is how your big boy birthday at dave and buster's went now it wasn't my birthday of

course it was my friend it was his big boy birthday he was turning 40 years old actually and he lives on the east side now and he thought it'd be kind of funny to get a bunch of his friends together um over at dave and buster's a place i've never been before and also i should mention that like i love this friend dearly we haven't seen each other that much since he did move to the east side because i'm a terrible friend and i i don't leave my you know like four mile radius of my neighborhood but um you've got to be there to watch the garbage pick up well i have to be there constant vigilance constant would it be weird if i just set up a lawn chair on garbage day can i do tbtl on thursday from my driveway sitting in a lawn chair I believe the listeners demand it dress Thompson style hat and sunglasses cigarette holder I don't know why I'm just turning myself into him but like talking to you in a microphone with a camera with a really big lens on it just waiting for the garbage collectors to come I had never been to Dave and Buster's before I also had never met a bunch of my friends friends before that which is what I was setting up there so in that way like it was a very it was a very nice time to meet a bunch of my my buddy's buddies and of course he attracts great people of course he does so that it was fun i'm glad i went but i think that you and i were maybe a little bit more hyped about it on friday thinking this was going to be like really something i would take to like a moth to a flame and i will say okay i'm gonna say what might be the most ridiculous sentence i've ever said on this show and i know my track record by the way i say that fully knowing my track record having said that and i'm not just saying this for a laugh i think i thought dave and busters was going to be more sophisticated which is like a weird thing to say like so this is going to sound like an anti-child thing it's not i like kids but it was under i was under the impression that dave and busters was like an adult like like a chuck e cheese for adults and kind of for adults only and it's very not it's very much geared towards children and like you know it's and and so and it was fine again we had a good time but i don't know what i expected i guess i expected it to be like everybody was just like kind of maybe wearing suits and they were going to be really sexy ladies with cigarette boxes sure i don't know what 1 p.m in factoria i don't know what i was expecting but it was just you know and like again we had a Genevieve and I had a lot of laughs I'm glad we went it was fun but it was not like I thought it was going to be kind of like man what is inside these Dave and Busters like there's going to be a whole thing it's like oh no it was just like a really loud arcade with like a bar and very mediocre food and very mediocre service and just a lot of chaos you know and you know it was it was fine I played some ring toss games Veves and I are more attracted to the games that have some sort of physical component.

We played like a skee-ball, a ring toss, threw balls at clowns' heads so that they fell over. It's all, you know, this is me just being old. It's way more satisfying when you're playing skee-ball or something like that, and then a whole bunch of tickets kind of pump out of the machine. But, of course, it's all digital now, and you buy one of these cards, and it's just like the food plan in college. They use some sort of, I think they call it buster math, where you have no idea. It's kind of like, well, this is $25, or this card's $45, and that's worth this many points. And then you get the points, and the points become credits. And then it's kind of like, well, what does a point get you? Well, it depends on the game. Well, what does a credit get you? Well, it depends on what you want. It's just kind of like all this.

It's like my dad trying to use his World Mark points on a Verbo. This is most of what we talk about during the project, is how mad he is at the conversion rate. Is he mad as it is?

Isn't it world, Mark, what I'm supposed to yell when I see somebody get into a fight in a Burger King and I'm taping it up? Did you see? Did you see anything world-mark worthy of Dave and Buster's?

No, I didn't. So all of that is to say it was a good excuse to do something that I wouldn't usually do, but it was not a transformative experience like I sort of expected. I didn't expect it to be a transformative experience. That is a lot to put on both Dave and Buster. Right. But it wasn't the vibe I thought it was. I thought it was just going to be a little bit more not refined. I thought it was going to be a little bit, you know, it was kind of sports bar-y, but I thought that the games and stuff would just be a little bit more like kind of chill and cool and like you know you go into the little store at the end to buy stuff like Veeves bought

I was going to say just like this idea I would have guessed the same thing which would be usually in the modern world I think the way that things like this tend to go is you go into Dave and Buster's thinking I don't know this is like a Chuck E. Cheese or something and then you find out like oh no actually a lot of grown ups do go there for fun they'll have birthday parties they've actually got a whole kind of area that's really mostly just adults like you know playing games that are for whatever reason more geared towards them more interesting and that they actually have a like dude you'd be so surprised the bar is actually pretty good like you know what i mean like we we live in this world now where oftentimes things like this exceed your expectations it's it's it's more rare that you go and you're like oh no this is just a a bunch of video games for children where they also will legally allow adults

to be. Yes. Yes. Which, you know, I said to these, I'm like, oh, I guess this is just like a Chuck E. Cheese with booze. And she's like, no, Chuck E. Cheese famously did have booze. That's why you had all those people. Yeah. Like a lot of police engaging, a lot of police activity. Yeah. So I don't have I mean, maybe this is good as far as you having a deadline today, but I don't have much more to say about it than that. I mean, I went on for, you know, an hour and a half about my garbage situation. I guess I would just say Dave and Buster's is fine but i i would not make any you know i'm not personally making any more plans to to go there myself but if a if another friend had another birthday party there i wouldn't boycott it either it was it was fine you know we had we had some you know back then i tried to go back and i tried

to go bowling on sunday this is before we ended up seeing fall guy and because it was really rainy in portland on sunday and we were just like well what can we do that will be kind of fun and indoors and we went to this bowling aisle that just like it's so perfect looking I was so it was in like Tigard Oregon I was like this is magical and then we walked in and then I just saw all of these people in fancy bowling shirts and I knew it was tournament time I knew this was not we the hoi polloi were not welcomed to go there and do any bowling on this day it was all people that had their own balls and their own shirts and it was like serious business going on in there yeah it's league day huh yeah it wasn't it was a league though that's the thing it was a tournament it was actually a tournament i learned was different i would have thought they were the same thing these were people that were like individually competing to win the tournament oh i see being part of the pin pals or whatever but like i guess it makes sense because the place was freaking packed but i also like was like if you're a bowling alley if you're one of the last few the few the proud the bowling alleys if you're one of the last few bowling alleys wouldn't you think a Sunday afternoon a rainy Sunday afternoon would be a good time to let families come in and bowl because it seems like it's something people would want to do but I don't I don't think that's

the economy anymore I told you yeah I mean that's how I would want it as well but of course we see so many bowling alleys going out of business I think their most steady source of income is locking into leagues remember wasn't it Kenmore lanes that I called I was gonna I'd like missed my friend's birthday celebration a few weeks ago I don't know a while back a few months ago and I said well let's go bowling sometimes so she and i were going to go bowling but i didn't reserve a lane or anything i think it was kenmore lanes i wanted to go to and so the day of about an hour before we were supposed to meet up at the bowling alley i called and remember some guy was kind of like i'm like hey i just want to call and like reserve a lane for about an hour for now do i need to reserve it and he just said we have 24 lanes of league bowling or something or it was like a very weird way of him saying he's like we have no lanes i'm like i thought you had 24 lanes he's like well they're all league until 9 30 he's like talking like a guy with a lizard on his shoulder effectively you have no lanes yeah exactly he just like said it in this roundabout way like i first you must answer my riddles three i was like dude can you can we just have a conversation between a bowling manager and a human being here the bowling industry is basically turning into tbtl

is really what's happening they've realized that there's not a broad interest in what they're selling so they're super serving their p1s they're just like oh you like this oh you're willing to bring you're willing to buy your own shoes for this okay well now it's made now we're making it for you now this is this is what's happening all the time we're not because the the you know So the, the me and Becca run. wandering in on a random Sunday is not a business model that's going to work for them they're not enough people that wanted to go to this bowling alley in Tigard um so they're just like okay who does like this oh there's there's 800 people in Portland who like this we are going to make this great for them and uh and and then and that's and what that means is probably most of the time when the few of us who do like bowling but aren't like hardcore enough for the league

want to go it's not really for us anymore right yeah i and you know they might have open bowling at a different time but of course like the money would be in something that is steady and dependable not just kind of like well how many people are bowling these days let's just like leave let's like say no to the leagues and leave all the lanes open and just hope we get straggled right

somebody just wanders in and wants to spend 15 for an hour to like you know roll a couple games So I will say this, though, Andrew, and this is, you know, this is this is me just drinking the haterade. I after we started to walk out, this has seriously happened. We started to walk out and then I was like, hold on a sec. I want to see what these people are rolling. I want to see how these these people have cool ass shirts and balls that are specially weighted for them and also their bowling balls, Andrew. and um and the whole like i was like everyone there and you know wrist wrist what do you call that like a wrist wrist guards on and finger people had guards on various fingers i was like everyone must be like just scoring so high so i went back to look at the scores and i was like i mean i only looked at a couple of them but i was like i saw a 60 in there in the sixth frame or the seventh frame somebody had 60 I was like okay all right 60 in the seventh frame of of you know and again I don't want to I don't criticize anyone we're all in our journey with bowling but I thought everyone was gonna have like it's just gonna be like strike strike spare strike strike strike spare strike strike strike spare strike strike strike spare is that one of the animations that they'll do on the TV but it's like the pins are like the pins are playing in an orchestra but And there's one pin that's directing them. I could see that. I just was expecting the scores to be off the chain. And it looked not unlike when you and I and our friends are bowling regularly. I mean, just regular people bowling and someone's kind of having a good game and someone's maybe having less good of a game. I just thought it was going to be like real 300s across the board, and it wasn't.

You know what I'm just realizing? And I'm sorry to do this. I'm just being a sad bastard here. But I just had a thought. I told you I think it started Last week or maybe yeah I think it Started early last week that I started having Issues with both of them like kind of the Muscles and tendons some people are predicting I'm gonna have tendinitis or something like I don't know if it's repetitive stress syndrome Or whatever from throwing so many darts I don't think it's that because it's kind of in both Of my hands right now but I literally Couldn't roll a bowling ball right now it just occurred To me and that's one of my pleasures in life I had to stop playing darts last night I had dinner with some friends last night came home I'm like all darted up with the old dart bot a little bit booted up the dart bot and like literally i got a new dart board this weekend too by the way because i kind of whatever i'll get into that some other time i'm sure but i got a new dart board to replace my other one and uh friday night was basically okay and sometimes there's a little bit of pain when i'm throwing darts but i can sort of work my way through it but maybe i went too crazy on a saturday night because sunday like i have something going on like i can't really whatever i can't move my fingers uh in in the in the proper away without them hurting yeah and it's kind of like so i was like well i can't play um darts i guess i'll play video games and i'm like using my thumb and i'm like oh that kind of hurts like maybe the reason i have this is because everything i do is like scrolling on my phone tapping on my mouse throwing darts playing with an xbox controller like maybe i just need to give my hands a break i don't know what's going on geez i'm sorry andrew i mean yeah as you start to list

those things i'm like those are all of i mean rotating a sausage on the grill like we're getting

into lifting on glass to my raising a beer bottle to my lip i'm thinking like every i'm not trying

to make light of it but truly like all most of the things that bring you joy in the clipping a tree branch into smaller branches and feeding it into a fire it's all kind of fine fine motor movement hand related stuff man so i i hope yeah i hope that that you can get that worked out man

well i'm working on it the best way i can which is not seeing any doctors and just trying to power through it that's definitely what i would do yeah i know i know you've learned from the best exactly hey we're in sync again

all right that's gonna do it for today's edition of the show but i have amazing news we're gonna be right back here tomorrow what do you think the chances are andrew that i'm still gonna be in this

hotel for tomorrow's show slim to none and slim just left town i think i can't see it happening but then again i don't know what's going on in the local hotel economy here i don't know what's available to me it's so funny that you're in the most beautiful places in the country well that's okay well that's why at the top of the show i said napa ish yeah napa know-how ish napa napa ish napa ish know-how napa know-how no way it's so deceptive the naming of it it sounds like one thing and it looks like something else I'll give you a full report tomorrow when we join you all again for more of this imaginary radio in the meantime have a great Monday take care of yourselves go junior sluggers and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all A strike to claim it, a strike to claim it, and he got it! I did it, Jeff! That is why I did it at number five! Are you kidding me? That's right! Who do you think you are? I am! Power out.