Muse

A little BG on me. I do HR, means Human Resources. Here at TAC, my name is Eric Rossdale. Some people call me Cool Eric. They called me that once. Some young people, too. Some one young person did that. I love people, to say that another way. I love people. And that one's got a little more fun to it, doesn't it? TBTL! thought i was shame eating in private what is shame eating i don't think we have enough time for that tonight as i tried to explain before you cannot get honey from a hornet's nest i just don't

think there's any science to support that buddy there's some very basic science out there supporting that trust me pal what a fun terrifying joke that's science these are facts in science we call

that a hypothesis. You find something to back it up and we can talk. Now if you'll excuse me,

I was watching Mama's Family. This will be blown way out of proportion. You have my word on it.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. That's a pretty good spoof. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. You want to do a make-believe radio show in a room somewhere. Coming to you from kind of Napa, California. I'm still in the greater, I guess, Fairfield, California region where I'm on something called Business Center Drive, which tells you just how just how bucolic it is, just how kind of napa valley it is as you imagine it you know in your mind's eye if you're trying to get under the tuscan sun i know we're talking about different continents but go with me on this and yet here on business center drive there is it turns out beautiful nature i'm actually looking at some kind of a estuary some kind of a wetland saw the uh saw some ducks flying around earlier today, which was actually quite beautiful. I got out on my little jog this morning, and when you finally achieve escape velocity from Business Center Drive, you do see some vineyards and things. The grape smuggler. That was kind of a nice little start to the morning. We've got an absolutely spectacular episode of TBTL dialed up for you today. It's episode 4,200. Let the fun begin. In a collector series, we love those round numbers. That's fun, isn't it? 4,200. i mean i'd say probably the margin of error on that has got to be plus or minus 10 over the course of 4,200 in other words it might be like episode 4,194 it might be episode 4,210 i don't know but we're calling it episode 4,200 today and uh we're gonna enjoy it together i enjoyed going to the movie theater in portland over the weekend except for one one part of the experience which is is it me or has it become very dark in the movie theater i mean don't stay in my house if you're dark-sided i know that sounds insane like it's a movie theater they turn the lights down you watch the movie but i mean either this is what you know the aging process looks like for me or they've somehow figured out how to make it darker in a movie theater than they used to because i was having some problems also the movie the fall guy is having some problems at the box office i thought it was a fun movie i enjoyed it and then i see an article that says it was actually one of the worst box office number ones in like 30 years because if you make a movie that is not based on something people already know about it's just not gonna work there's a waste of time to do

So we'll get into that as well. And maybe, I don't know, we've already got too much to talk about today. We may finally weigh in on the Drake versus Kendrick Lamar beef.

I'm the president of rap music, and I need to work with you right away.

America and I guess parts of Canada have been they have been loud in their opinion that we not talk about this topic nobody needs us to talk about the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar so we may get into it coming up oh speaking of hip hop legends we've got this guy never let me slip cause if I slip then I'm slipping he's the longest running co-bro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of tall ships he's Andrew Walsh he's joining me right now hey man

Hey man, there's something I've been excited to talk to you about since I woke up this morning But first a quick diversion right right at the top here. I want you to know I Want you to know Luke that I see you that you did something with your drops the past

couple of days, that during sound check today, I thought, hmm, he doesn't usually have a second cup of coffee at home. I heard you play a drop, and I thought, hmm, he doesn't usually play the same drop two days in a row. I don't think it's a problem if you did, or if you do, it's a hot new drop that you're really leaning into. But today during sound check, I heard a drop, and I thought, huh, I thought he used that yesterday. But I didn't bring it up. I didn't want to get in your head, and just wanted to get on with the show. And then, as you actually did your real introduction there, I realized you didn't repeat a drop. You played the second half of a drop yesterday, and you played the first half of the same drop today. I know, right? The Magic Carpet Ride. It wasn't that one. How conscious were you of this? I have a feeling very conscious.

So yesterday, I was using... I do. I feel seen and heard, Andrew. Although ironically today we're not using the visual component of our connectivity So yesterday in advance of the box office story Regarding the fall guy that we never got to I used the clip of Howard Stern The great Howard Stern Talking about So here's the thing I got a tight one to five hours on this topic Which is that I really, really love the Howard Stern show I listen to it every day I was listening to it a little bit before Between reading the Stormy Daniels Is her name Stormy Daniels or is it Stephanie Clifford? I mean her real name is Stephanie Clifford Did she legally change it to Stormy Daniels? Because I find it interesting that we're calling her Stormy Daniels In all of the coverage If she has not changed her name to that

Well that's really interesting So I'm not following the trial blow by blow I'll dip in every now and then

well but um judge a judge marchand would say you don't need to be that specific you don't need to use the word blow it's something that's been coming up so far on the stand i'm being serious

um but okay well what if this is interesting and i i'm not coming in with a thoughtful opinion you're just bringing this on me and i'm probably the last person to weigh in but like i'm thinking of a celebrity i guess like if if if ruPaul found himself in the news in a trial or something god forbid but you know what i mean was somehow in the news like i think the newspapers would still

would still say like rupaul right i i you know i guess it's i can't think of something where the stakes are this high um where the person a person who's central to it has also had kind of a like um you know a uh a name that is their performance name so you know what i mean like i just i'm i guess if it were rupaul and it were some sort of dispute about you know some some civil case regarding a apartment renovation in new york that the neighbors didn't like that seems like the level of trouble rupaul would get into yes i by the way have become such a fan of rupaul lately because um he i think he put out like a memoir and so he was making the rounds and he is an incredibly thoughtful person like as a person who doesn't watch i'm not i don't really watch drag race i don't know a lot about that world I just I kept listening to RuPaul in interviews I just being like wow this is a person who has really is really on the ball but anyway I I feel like if it were something about that RuPaul got into let me put it this way heaven forbid if RuPaul was accused of some very serious crime or if RuPaul was just a witness in let's say something that could change the course of democracy I guess I would notice if they were calling him RuPaul I wouldn't notice if it were a lower level thing so somehow this is this intersection of like a person who is performing under the name stormy daniels um and and is you know real name is stephanie clifford but is being called stormy daniels in in in every news report and again maybe she's changed her name legally to stormy daniels and in which case then i guess uh that makes more sense to me but i'm just wondering you would think like for instance here's the thing they did this morning they asked stormy Daniels to point to Donald Trump in the courtroom like is the person we're discussing here Miss Daniels and then she pointed at Donald Trump it's like okay we don't really need that formality so if we're going with that level of formality shouldn't it also extend to we're not going to

have like Bambi bazookas on the stand am I I think I maybe picked the worst example I don't RuPaul really is his name, I think. And I'm trying to figure out the origin. Like, I always thought of that just as a stage name.

I don't think his name is RuPaul. I think his name, I think Ru, boy, now thank you, Andrew, for leading us down this primrose path. I feel like his name is something that is related to RuPaul, but it's, that is a bit of a, like a.

play on his actual name like i don't i don't think he was named rue paul at birth well here's what

i'm reading off of wikipedia it says he was named by his mother rue came from r-o-u-x the french term for the base of gumbo and other creole stews stews and soups so it sounds like that given by his mother at least the rue part was okay so his name was rue but this does it say

that his name was rue paul like as in the soup it doesn't break it down it says it says rue paul

was born in san diego november 17th 1960 we have some close birthdays not exact birthdays but i

want to put that people often talk about you in the same context exactly his parents were both

from louisiana he was named by his mother and then uh then a semicolon rue came from rue the french term for this so it doesn't say that he was named rue by his mother it says that he was named by the his mother and the rue part of that name the non paul part of that name was a reference to gumbo so i think i picked literally the worst example of this because i just always assumed rupaul was a was a stage name that ended up sticking i know i'm looking at the wikipedia

entry and i'm seeing uh what you're seeing so yeah my apologies the thing is there are so many people

who know so much more like you say rupaul is beloved and i'm sure beloved by many in our audience and i just don't know that much about rupaul um so it's such a weird example for me to grab since everybody probably knows way more about rupaul than i do except me the other person

who knows as little about rupaul so this morning i was toggling between reading the new york times like coverage of the of the the case against trump which is also just funny because i'm just reading like maggie haberman and jonathan swan's basically live tweets on it i mean you know that's not what it was but it's just these texts it felt very old school you're just used to being I'm used to being able to stream everything on my phone like I should just be able to like hit a button and just start watching but I guess I don't think that they televised these kinds of cases or whatever so instead I'm just I'm just reading these text dispatches and then I'm also listening to the Howard Stern show and that's where this whole thing started which is I'm a fan of the program but it's funny because Howard Stern is extremely down on the idea of podcasting he also has absolutely no idea how it works like it's just it's just one of those things where him being you know 20 plus years older than us and by the way we ain't young but like it you really he's he's he's all of his 70 plus years are very much on display when you hear him trying to talk about podcasting and what he thinks it is etc so i've always thought this drop was kind of funny because i think he was just berating a caller who mentioned that they had a podcast you want to do a make

believe radio show in a room somewhere i'm telling you there's no money in that that always struck me

as hilarious because for the last however many years we've been doing a make-believe radio show in a room somewhere and making a living off of it um so yesterday when i was talking about there's no money to be made in movies that are essentially new intellectual property i used like the back half of this drop which i think is maybe this part i'm telling you there's no money in that But what I've also been doing a lot lately, Andrew, is like if we if we mention a drop at the end of one of the shows, I'll kind of use it the next day as part of the next day show just because I like I don't know why I think it's kind of fun for there to be some continuity. I kind of like it when if a listener has been listening carefully, they realize that these things are kind of sort of burbling up in the in the sort of audio consciousness of the show and then going back down. It's why there's been so much of this audio going on lately, because, of course, that's this listing of, oh, by the way, thank you to, I think, Bobby Pape, who clarified that the story, the This American Life story in question where this audio came from was about a lifeguard who refused to wear the Speedo as part of his uniform. And this was a lifeguard, I think, in the Northeast who had been a beloved. He might have been like an attorney who was a lifeguard in the summer or something like he he he was a beloved lifeguard for many, many years and loved being there, but refused to wear the Speedo. And they wouldn't let him be a lifeguard anymore because of that. And that, of course, generated this tape.

The weenie bikini, the ding-a-ling sling, the grape smuggler, the Miami meat tent.

So today I was wanting to use that Howard Stern tape again But I didn't want to just use the exact section I had used yesterday So when I was playing it for you for sound check I noted, oh, the back half of this Has already gotten its burn notice from yesterday But the front half could still work Still got something that's usable here

You want to do a make-believe radio show

In a room somewhere So I just lopped off the end of it While we were talking And I appreciate you noticing that Andrew so during the sound check you did play the whole thing I see so it was yes look at me you're not you're not hallucinating I played the whole thing but upon here

it i realized oh i want to uh you know i realized upon hearing it that um i wanted to lop the end off and so it would be it would be a reference to something that's already been played on the

show but not actually the exact same thing okay speaking of continuity between shows yesterday on the show you mentioned very briefly in passing the netflix show baby reindeer and you had asked if I'd heard of it and I said oh yeah like I've heard of it maybe I just saw it flash across my my tv screen at some point I remember seeing the name it's I felt like I knew it was buzzy in some way and I knew that it was like sort of edgy in some way I had the opinion I had the feeling that people had strong opinions about it but that was it I knew nothing about the plot of it I knew nothing about the making of it whatever yesterday I was playing some darts I told you I've been having some issues with my wrist so the darts didn't really hold up for too long yesterday I play some video games It wasn't fulfilling I missed my dart bot What can I tell you I pick up the remote control I see reindeer games on the TV Reindeer games I see baby reindeer on the TV

I just want to like They're very different shows

Did I say reindeer games more than once Nope just once Okay yeah

I'm only clarifying that for the listeners Because part of the story on this Is that it is actually A fairly controversial project

Which I didn't realize that And I will tell you what So what I think you know where this is going I pick up the remote I say oh yeah luke just mentioned baby reindeer and here's where they really got me seven episodes and the first one was like just 30 minutes or something so i'm like okay well i had just gotten done watching um three body problem which i really really enjoyed but boy you have to really pay attention to it because there's some kind of complicated just storylines and it you know whatever it's like it's a kind of complicated show that i i really enjoyed but you really have to pay attention to it then i watched some of that show shogun which is you really want to start that yeah that's getting that's getting rave reviews and i watch about one and a half episodes of that but i mean that you because there's so much that is not in english it takes place in the 1600s in japan i have no cultural reference for anything like that is a show that you really have to like really pay attention to and it can be a little bit like wait what's going on here like who who is this person mad at or whatever and then i'm like i i hit play on baby reindeer i see it's a short series and the episodes are relatively short I hit play on it and I could not stop I did not finish the whole series but I was up until two in the morning I think I've watched at least five out of the seven episodes I might have even had to stop it in the middle of like episode six I don't remember where I left off exactly but oh my goodness gracious it is so good and I'll tell you what I'm a little bit even nervous bringing this up because I loved not knowing anything about it like I know I like i almost stopped my marathon at one point to say okay wait i should i should read about this because i don't even know what people are saying i just know that people are saying things and now i've developed my opinions about it but they're pure fresh fresh as the driven snow i like my opinion

you're rousseau's noble savage you are one of those rare cases where we can see what happens to a human if they have no sort of external inputs into their opinion exactly i'm that i'm that french

boy that came out of the woods um so anyway i just want to say that i say this without any cultural context for this like i don't know what people are saying i don't know what parts are controversial obviously it is a show that it delves into some very dark themes and you know not all of our listeners will you know don't don't sit down with the kids and just check out this that's why i want to really clarify on reindeer games yeah well probably neither really for kids but either way yeah uh because isn't reindeer games isn't that a um like an action movie from

the 90s i think so yeah for first yeah i don't even i couldn't tell you one thing about it other

than i my guess is ben affleck is in it oh that sounds about right but uh there's no reindeer all the way reindeer all the way um but uh so i guess my question for you is and i'm trying to figure out like i've probably seen more of this than maybe a lot of people listening or maybe i'm way behind on it but my point is I don't want to spoil it for anybody else but even though I'm so far into the show I still sort of don't want to spoil my naivete as I watched the last two episodes but I will just say that the I mean from the storytelling to the acting there's something even about the structure of the storytelling that is so amazing and it just it's like it's not complicated it's not something that is like kind of well it's tough to watch in some ways but in other words like it was like you you talked about um how you reacted to um uncut gems sort of like this is kind of a very fast pace like this just throws you into the action and the action sort of never stops and it sort of is like that only this didn't stress me out quite as much and it's and so anyway what is your experience with this have you seen it you're doing a story related i am the

perfect person for you to be talking about this with andrew because i have seen zero minutes of it so far. OK, I was hearing about it. I saw maybe a very quick clip on tick tock and then and I was hearing about the again. When I say controversial, I don't mean that I think people are saying this shouldn't be watched, but I think it's just because of how serious some of the themes are and the way that it works. People like you said, people have thoughts about it. And then I got a message from my CBS boss is saying, can you please be in L.A. on Friday morning to talk to the two main. stars of the reindeer games and so it's on my and gary sinise i'm now learning by the way

no wait so you're talking to the two leads of baby reindeer and like the guy i am talking to

the two leads of baby reindeer and um yeah right and so anyway here's here's the thing i have not yet embarked on the process of watching the show by by friday morning i will have watched all seven episodes but um i have not that's actually that's on my list for tonight uh to start the process and then I've got some flight time so I'll pack some in then but I can't spoil anything for you because I don't know anything about you know much more about it than I do even though I'll be talking to the two stars of it on Friday

and you said you haven't read much of the Scuttlebutt either I'm actually kind of glad of that too because like I say it would be very hard the way I set that up would be very hard for you not to talk about it and I kind of realized that going in but this is exciting for me I'm very sensitive to spoilers I think there are some people in our audience who are more sensitive maybe I'm in the middle but I lean towards the more sensitive type of person when it comes to spoilers. And sometimes, like, just going into something completely blind is really the best way to go for me. Like, again, like, I just knew that there was some buzz, but didn't know theme of this. I knew nothing. So, anyway, I really enjoyed it. Having said that, since you're going to have to have watched at least most of it probably by the time we talk on Friday, I wouldn't mind doing an almost an old school TBTL like you and Jen just saying, spoiler alert we're digging into this because i would love to talk to you about it it is so okay

good yeah excellent well i'm glad i mean i'm really glad that um that you're finding it as

intriguing as you are and uh that set it up too much though now that's another real concern like

i hope i didn't know and this is also great for me i love this because this means i'm both doing cbs and tbtl prep yeah i watch it which honestly it's about working smarter not harder for me at this point so if there's anything that i can do um that that that generates both content on the cbs level and the tbtl level then that's a huge w for everyone so no i'm actually really i'm really intrigued by it and i'm and i'm uh like again looking forward to it is a weird way to say it because i know that there's a lot of big themes that are raised and a lot of intense dark things but the other part is like we're interviewing the we're like as i don't think this is going to happen i'm going to try to swerve on this and this is where we're now we're going to get into like like what's the word I'm looking for what's the term I'm looking for not even a spoiler but like I'm sure you'll have a thought on this one of the things they were proposing is well maybe you walk around on the like Hollywood Walk of Fame with these folks as the walk and talk so usually the way these work is we sit down with the folks and in a very controlled environment where it's like very elegantly lit and it's you know we're doing it in a in like a music venue In Silver Lake Which is hilarious too Being that that's kind of My old stumps Then we're going to go somewhere And do the quote unquote Walk and talk I have not seen I've really seen No minutes of this But I feel like The Hollywood Walk of Fame Feels like a weird place For us to do the walk and talk

I'm trying to figure out So you Why This takes place in London It has nothing to do with LA That seems like such a strange fit

I know It just feels And also Like I mean you've Probably been on that I used to always describe That part of Hollywood Is where like You know the dream has run out of gas and you're coasting in on fumes like it's just it's it's sort of you get to the end of the rainbow which is holly woo and then you look around that part of holly when you're like oh god this is this is pretty bleak so i don't feel i'm i'm i'm gonna be trying to come up with a better walk and talk than that because i don't think that that really even having not having not seen the show i don't think that that is really an interesting backdrop to a

a further conversation about the program yeah unless your producers like have some idea then again unless something happens in the last two episodes or your producers are going to a reindeer farm and they play games um i will just tell you somebody who freshly has watched five or six episodes of this that seems like a strange fit to me and almost like a distracting fit even for because first of all there's no ties to la you think uh you think like a shabby spider-man

in the background, standing next to a minion, trying to take a photo with us. Do you think that might be distracting

to the piece? Yeah, this is not, and these are not conversations, like, this is a, I mean, I have a feeling the conversation is going to end up being pretty serious. Like, I really, again, your producers know what they're doing, but you need to know, you might need to watch the show sooner than later if you're going to be doing any pushback on this, because, again, I might be missing something

here. I never let that influence my pushback.

I'm more than happy to push back on something I have absolutely no intel on.

Tell them that your friend says he thinks it's a bad idea because I think that's a bad idea. Am I allowed to call you my friend? I think so. Well, I don't know. How are we? How are we doing?

Recently, we've been telling people during the Dazzling Donors, it's absolutely fine to refer to us as their friends. Oh, that's why you said that. I want to double check that you and I also have that relationship. I can say my friend said this. My friend said the Hollywood Walk of Fame is probably a not ideal backdrop for the conversation. Yeah, I feel like there's – I mean, hell, we could go to the Tam O'Shanter. We could go to – there's enough bars that are open at noon in L.A. on a sunny Friday that we could go to that would probably actually more approximate the vibe of at least the beginning of the program because that's the part I've seen. I've literally seen them meeting at the bar.

Okay, well, can I actually give you – if you really are looking for like an L.A. location that would somehow tie in – and again, maybe this is too on the nose and being – I hear myself talking right now, and this is how I talk when I'm setting up for a joke. I'm not setting up for a joke, just so you know. I heard myself. It sounded like I was going to try to be serious and then say something ridiculous. But this might be a little bit too on the nose, but if there's any kind of tie-in, like part of the main character's backstory, and again, I promise you this is, to everybody, this is not a spoiler, but part of the main character's backstory is he is or was a sort of struggling comedian at times. Again, this is in London and in Edinburgh.

Right, we're doing the sit-down at a place That has comedy shows

Okay that's what I was going to say

I'm guessing in the background If you squint you'll be able to see Like a stage with a comedy Tragedy mask on it Because we like to play it subtle on CBS Sunday Morning There'll be a mic, a single spotlight And a comedy tragedy mask that all reads Comedy So that element will be represented visually But yes I'll keep you posted Also no one judge me If you see this piece on television in a couple of weeks and I'm walking down the Hollywood Walk of Fame, just know that I somehow lost the argument. Just trust that your boy Luke tried and he died. But because there's nothing worse than me setting up what the what our listeners slash sometimes viewers of that show will know is a very clear indicator of me losing an argument. You know what I mean?

Yeah, well, that's OK. I mean, that might be that might be fresh, you know, like kind of a fresh side of Luke Burbank. He relented I did Nevertheless he relented Is that a show title? I don't know is that too on the line?

Would people understand what we were By the way I love your show title For yesterday's program I don't remember Which was Napa No Way No How

Oh yeah we did Napa No How No Way I think we did it Oh I wanted to say Just related to this conversation about Hollywood Are you do you remember and if not are you surprised to hear that this kind of well you didn't use the word shitty but maybe I will part of like Hollywood I actually really like it like I used to go shoot there's this area like you said where it's like just like Spider-Man wearing saggy Spider-Man outfits and like people are taking photos it's just like it's you don't want to be the third Spider-Man of the day in the costume you really want to be the first part of that human centipede if you can. But also there's like a DSW there, and I want to say maybe not a Target, but something like really just sort of just like basic there. And I remember I liked doing my shopping there. It felt like – it felt maybe like a bit like an acid trip. You're like, yeah, do you want to go pick out some moderately priced shoes at DSW? Yes, I would. Let's go to the one that is in Hollywood where you have to step over like a passed out Elmo.

is that literally in the building where the like um you know man's chinese theater is and all of that where they do the the premieres and stuff oh you know i think this i'm thinking of a place

that's slight i could map it out here but that wouldn't make good podcasting although was it the snow goose it's in that kind of general area but the courthouse i think it's down like a couple of blocks where um there's just a little bit more i think it's on like the other side of the street i mean that area with the the walk of fame sort of spans kind of a yeah it goes a while yeah so

You've got the real beating heart of it where you've got like a Ripley's Believe It or Not experience, like a kitty corner from where the, you know, again, the man's Chinese theater is where they'll still sometimes do premieres, I think. Actually, maybe more than sometimes. I think they probably do them a lot. But, yeah, that's a part of L.A. that when I lived there, I just – it wasn't that it was unsafe in any way. It gave me a bad feeling, but it's interesting to me that it gave you, I wouldn't say a good feeling, but it was something that you actively pursued.

Yeah, like it was just kind of weird to me. Like to go on a Saturday morning and have a very mundane task to do, but to do it in such a weird part of America, not even just a weird part of town. But like where else are you going to have that experience of getting, like I say, a slip on what is dock cider or whatever the shoes I get. But it's just, like, also where there are just tourists from all over the world taking, like, trashy photos, you know, with these characters. There was something about being in that part of Hollywood that just reminded you that you are in a place that is internationally known, for better or for worse. And it wasn't even like it wasn't even like the the experience you talk about sometimes or used to talk about way back in the day about like kind of slumming it in a dive bar and feeling like you're kind of living a life that you're not really living. It wasn't that I can't. It's unlike any other feeling I've had other than just like, this is so bizarre.

Also, I would think and again, I feel like whenever I get into this realm of speculation about you, I'm wrong. So I don't I don't I don't want to assume anything. But in the way that like the antithesis of that part of Hollywood is a place called Erewhon, right, which is like a really high end, very sort of natural grocery store where, you know, like a celery juice with energy boost will run you twenty five dollars and an acai bowl, you know. And it's where, typically speaking, a lot of very young, very kind of beautiful people will go after they've just gotten done doing like a hot yoga kind of a thing. And there is this side – I guess my point is there's a side of L.A. that I feel like was really – didn't feel welcoming to you and also you didn't enjoy it. And if I think of the opposite of Erewhon, I think of a DSW on Hollywood. Yeah, right. You know, it couldn't be more different, and I don't want you to think, I think of you as the human embodiment of a DSW on Hollywood, because I don't, but I could see how you'd be like, enjoying going towards the parts of Los Angeles that are not built around this incredibly external, your physical appearance matters, how you're coming off in the world, the kind of car you're driving, the kind of people you know, the parties you're going to. Whatever the phony side of Hollywood is or of L.A. is, the DSW on Hollywood is the opposite. It's real life. You have to you have to practice radical presentness if you're there. There is no walking around there thinking it's all happening for me right now. No, you are in it. And there's something about that that can be comforting.

So, you know, I think I found the exact location. I told you this wouldn't be good podcasting. So let's do it. I think I found the exact building I'm talking about Which according to Google Maps They show sort of a zone of influence That would be officially the Walk of Fame Sort of They kind of have this blue bubble or cloud Over like the whole area or whatever And this would be just slightly west of that bubble But the name of this building And it is by So the Dolby Theater Is that the Chinese Theater Or no I think it used to be like

Yeah, I think it was Grauman's Chinese Theater back in the day, and then I think it's been rebranded Man's Chinese and now probably rebranded the Dolby.

I see. Here it is. It's TCL Chinese Theater, but it got too small. I think the Academy Awards got too big for that venue, so then there's the Dolby Theater, which is kind of behind it. Anyway, I don't know how much truth is in anything I just said, but there's the Chinese Theater, and then what I'm talking about is, yeah, just the next block over west, There's some big building called the Hollywood Boulevard Peterson Building Shopping Mall, and the DSW is apparently now closed, but there's like, I don't know, there's like a La La Land souvenir store there. It's literally called La La Land, and it's just like, kind of like, it's just like, yeah, so it's one block away from the theater. So I guess this really is in the thick of it, and that was where I would sometimes go, you'd find a parking in an underground garage somewhere, and you'd be like, okay, let's go to the mall. It was just such a weird place.

I think you might have been, again, you were coming from like Koreatown or whatever, but I was going to say, another thing about that area is, if I remember right, you can actually take the train there. There's actually underground public transportation to that area, which is another thing I know you love. So public transporting to the down market part of Hollywood to get a wide shoe. Actually, that's not true. I always, this is, by the way, this is a misconception that I have had for so many years. I always there was a place on Ballinger Way in Seattle called the like wide shoe store. And it was like actually this really small little place by Lake Ballinger. And for years when I was a kid, we'd drive by and I always think like, what's the demo for the wide shoe store? But there was one and there is one. And it was a you know, it was a thriving business for many years. And then when I, for some reason, because there's a W in DSW, I just decided when I first, because I didn't grow up with DSWs being in the Northwest, I decided when I first heard of one of those, that must also be one of those wide shoes, it's got S and W in it, it must be designer shoes wide or something. And I went in a DSW in Vancouver, Washington, like three months ago, and I was like, this place is awesome, actually. And that was the first I realized, they don't specialize in wide shoes.

no that's it's designer shoe warehouse i believe yes but i learned that it's definitely like a disc i think it's kind of a discounty type of shoe store but there used to be one here in in northgate that i would kind of slip into and often we'll get gifts from genevieve's family of dsw cards which is like a very practical i love it it's like a very good practical gift

yeah i enjoyed being there i got some shoes for my my gig at this big microsoft uh uh project That I was doing there I said it Andrew It's out Deal with it America

I thought it was Expedia You were saying a tech company on the east side It wasn't Expedia

You thought it was CD Baby Which we need to get to the bottom of that too Because I have been going to Ikea So much lately Which is down by the Portland International Airport And when you get off the freeway You come to this little It drops you off at this spot where you're staring at a building, a pretty modern office building that just has this sign on it still, big professional sign that says CD Baby. And I don't know if they just never took the sign down or if it's still happening. It's always shocking to me when I see it. And I see it like twice a week right now.

Their website is still up, CD Baby, music distribution with no recurring fees. Oh, I see. They help you distribute your music. It's not a it's not a for a second. I thought it was like Columbia House or something. No, no, it's your music deserves to be heard. Release a single or album for only nine ninety nine. So it seems to be a going concern. I'm on their website right now.

But I'm just wondering, is it on CD?

Oh, I it's I don't mean CD Baby is in the name. I think they're just keeping the name. It says make your music available on a hundred is strong on 150 plus streaming and download services around the world, Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, Amazon, Pandora, YouTube, and Deezer. Have you heard of Deezer? Oh, which Zers? Deezers. I was trying to formulate a joke around that as well. Okay. Can I go on one? Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Please.

I mean, we're-

I'm on fire today.

We're at CD Baby, so at this point, we've lost all connection to what the show plan was, and I'm fine with that. I find it very interesting that this service that and for very good reason, they pivoted, you know, in the way that Netflix used to mail you DVDs and they don't anymore. But the thing is, Netflix isn't called DVD flicks. It's not called Mail Flicks. It's called Netflix. Right. Thank you.

I mean, very smart on them to focus on the Internet side of that product back in the nascent days.

I'm surprised that CD Baby has not, I mean, they must have decided, and it must be one of those things where, because I remember hearing about it when it was first kind of out, and they were literally, they would make CDs for you. That was their whole thing, I think. Or people would release stuff on CD Baby. You'd see it on a band's website, like, get our record on CD Baby. And they obviously figured out that we've got to go much more digital than this. This is not about sending out discs, no matter how compact they may be. but that they're sticking with CD in the name because it's so anachronistic. If they can just hold on for 10 more years, it'll be really retro. Like if you had a streaming service that was called like Pure Vinyl, that would be actually kind of a cool like wink to the fact that you're doing something digital, but your name is kind of a play on an extremely analog technology. But they've got to hold on a little longer because right now I feel like CD Baby is in the uncanny valley of names for a thing that streams.

I sort of disagree. I mean, I definitely maybe I definitely agree with the long term vision that you lay out there. But I think it's really smart of them. And I applaud them for not changing. And I mean, clearly, I going into this conversation, I thought it was like Columbia House. So you already had a leg up on me as far as what CD Baby is. But like, I think it would I think it would have been real. I don't know what their business is like these days or how they're doing. But I think it would have been really kind of weak and floundery to try to, like, say, oh, it's not CDs anymore. Let's update it to this. And then you end up with, like, then they do change their name to something that seems current at the time. But then time passes that by, right?

It's like MP3, baby.

Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Or even stream, baby. Maybe we'll have a different term for it.

Dot wave, baby.

So that's why I sort of feel like, no, they stuck with it. Just like we were talking about DSW, nobody really knows what the DSW stands for.

maybe a lot of people do you and I didn't but it did I certainly didn't yeah but like we knew it was a shoe store so I don't know I kind of I kind of disagree I applaud them I think too many companies like this especially if they're a business model that might be on the potential fringes a little bit as time moves on to not try to like kind of thirstily grasp at what's modern again because then you're just going to end up with a lame name that's going to be outdated again

and I think that there's a lesson to be learned for old TBTL as well which and this was the hey dummies video last week that was in the newsletter was somebody asking kind of like where'd the name tbtl come from and i i sort of explained it or whatever and it's like if we try to like is it a great name absolutely not it would it be a bad idea for us to try to change it absolutely i think at this point like it is what it is it's our name we're living with it there are thankfully at right now enough people who like it or at least like the show and tolerate the name that we've got something good there would be nothing worse than us trying to change our name to well how about this crime junkie af which is the name of a show that was promoted to me by serious satellite radio today and i i honestly wanted to just burn my laptop i wanted to delete the email and then burn my laptop and then walk into the sacramento river because is there anything worse than the serious satellite radio trying to get into the podcasting space well i mean they're in it they bought like what did they buy like stitcher or something i mean they've acquired a lot of podcast content but like the idea that they're launching a true crime first of all there is a show called crime junkie i think right was there a crime junkie isn't that already somebody else's show but this one is literally called crime junkie af and the af is in pink because it's hosted by a woman and i just was like i just well i was mad because now we can't change our name to tbtl af which was one of the things we had talked about but yeah that

That was my idea, I got to say. I was like, we just need to, we need it to zing a little bit more.

Yeah, we need to try to connect. But I mean, joking, but also seriously, like putting AF in the name of your podcast is when you know your podcast is over.

Yes.

In my opinion.

Yeah, possibly. Or they're reaching for a different audience. Here's what I was going to say. And in the past five minutes, I've been wondering, should I bring this up or not? Like, there's no need for me to bring this up. Now, we are about to engage in something that is both a probably a rant of mine that people are sick of. And also, I don't know enough about this topic. Having said that, I'm now just remembering another reason why I was just sort of like I was playing Darcy. I told you, like, my wrist didn't feel great. But also what happened was I think I've said this so many times that I'm such a junkie, but I think I might be just out on Levitard for a while now. because that's part of my process is throw darts catch up on lebitard and like i find myself sometimes in the past like kind of few weeks maybe thinking like yeah do i want to get into this world am i just like kind of addicted to it or am i still enjoying it and i gotta say

to their credit like don't give the tv tale listeners no there are no other options for you tv tale listeners do not watch tv to remove the veil from over the ears of the listeners who

may be in this exact state with us that is a good point in that way this story might be relatable to our listeners and that like you have this relationship with this show it may be sometimes you're wondering wait do i really want to hear andrew talk about garbage again but you're like well i should tune in well you guys don't have a choice you are compelled to keep listening and donating and we thank you for that having said that i still maintain my freedom of choice when it comes to my entertainment selections and here's the deal my it's so funny because we when people publicly complain about something we do on tbtl you and i as hosts of the show might be like really like you can't just why'd you have to send us an email to break up with us or whatever like why can't you just stop listening and keep it to yourself now here I am using my platform to complain about another show that I'm sort of starting to dislike parts of so I feel a little bit petty doing this but like I've mentioned before on the show that like this weak spot of Dan Levitard is how much he loves comedy but I think he is so dumb about it like he really I

already know where this started with you have they been deconstructing the tom brady roast yes

so i got to a point with him when he started talking so here's his general and i'm sure like if you're not already one of these people you know somebody like this like he truly believes that the greatest sort of the highest platform of speaking truth is comedy you know how there are just some people who put it on this pedestal and feel like if you take away the ability of a comedian to say something controversial then we've lost all ability to communicate and like he thinks very this gets very much into the kind of the Jerry Seinfeld of it all that has been in the yeah in the conversation recently Genevieve and I dove deep into that um on our last what he said on the New Yorker radio hour what he said the New Yorker radio hour which is sort of I listen to that entire interview um by the way and that was the first i was like really like p left wing pc bullshit or whatever he said i was like you really think that's the problem well he start

well it's funny because he starts with the premise that there's nothing funny on tv anymore he starts by saying back in the day you come home you had all in the family you had this this and now there's show me where is it now you really don't think there's funny things on tv and also this is the

problem with people about comedians and cars getting coffee i mean seriously like what i mean is his his idea of television is the is flawed first of all like exactly only if you turn on a vacuum tubed device and your dog comes out and cocks their ear while they watch it with you you're watching television it's like dude what a what a what a sad conception of what

television is these days yeah and actually i and i was actually more we're all over the place now I was actually more angry at David Remnick for not who was interviewing him for not like holding, you know, throwing some of that back in his face. Say, wait, you don't think there's any funny television right now? Like there's I mean, Hacks is a great example that would also sort of, as Genevieve says, sort of reflect the situation that Jerry Seinfeld finds himself in as time goes by. It's just like it's such a flawed premise. and then he sort of like belies his own argument later on when he says well you know some of these controversial jokes we made on Seinfeld we would just we would find a way to make them funny today we would just write different jokes it's like so though right you just he was like that's your

challenge your challenge is to figure out how to keep making it funny I was like exactly well said

yes exactly but then you know he still went home after he didn't have like Genevieve thought it was nice that he at least got there and I'm like yeah but he didn't get there in a self-reflective way He still left that studio thinking that left wing culture has killed comedy, which it just it's just not true. Not that everybody thinks the same things are funny, but there is a lot of funny stuff out there. You might not know it from listening to me, but there is still a lot of funny content out there. But anyway, so back to the lebitard, he's kind of got that old school. He's not as old as Jerry Seinfeld, but he's still got this sort of like this idea that like even if I don't agree with it, like nobody should clip anybody's wings when it comes to stand up. He just like puts it on such a pedestal. And then they started talking about like the roast, the Tom Brady roast, which, again, like this is why I shouldn't have brought it up because I didn't watch it. I don't go in for things like that. I only knew about it through the Levitard show. And honestly, when he starts talking about comedy these days, I just fast forward like I used to on other shows when they like when the Kevin and Bean show would talk to like an MMA fighter. I'd be like, yeah, I'm not into MMA. I'll just skip that part. So I'm like, just take that attitude. Don't get irritated with Dan Levitard, just fast forward through it, but it's becoming a bigger and bigger part of the show. And here's here's my point. Here's what I'm getting at. This is where I finally said, and for that, I'm out. And I stopped my pod player and I set down my darts and I started watching baby reindeer games. They're like him and one of the other characters on the show were both like kind of on the same page, like finally, like real comedy, like live. and people are just no-hold bars, gloves off, saying anything they want, like comedy is back, blah, blah, blah. And then the one clip they play is, I assume it's Jeff Ross, whoever's hosting or whatever.

When he talks about Bob Kraft.

But all I heard, you know what the joke was? Hey, can I give you a massage? No, no, it was, hey, want a massage?

It was joking that Tom Brady, because Robert Kraft, the owner of the Patriots, got in trouble for going to a massage parlor and getting a massage or attempting to get a massage that ended in a sort of a sexual release. I actually don't even know if it happened or if it was a sting operation, but he was charged with that. Charge is dropped, by the way. Turns out if you're Bob Kraft, you can afford some pretty decent lawyers in Jupiter, Florida. But Jeff Ross's joke was that Tom Brady went in to the Patriots when he was an underappreciated rookie and said, I'm the best decision you've ever made and do you want a massage? That's the joke.

okay well it's still not that great but I guess it's a little bit better all I heard was was Jeff Ross saying you want a massage and I was just like so angry that these I'm gonna say I was gonna say knuckleheads but I'll say fellow broadcasters thought that like comedy is back because all you have to say is you want a massage like acknowledging something that is edgy while Bob craft is in the audience and is going to take the stage later if I understand it correctly like that's edgy but that's not funny like you are so they were so confusing the idea of quote-unquote comedy being back and finally comedians can be comedians and then their example of it is just saying the word massage in front of bob craft and i'm just like you guys are fellow broadcasters

that will forever become the most withering insult you can level on the program now you know my dad god andrew hey andrew you were being a real fellow broadcaster the other day

you know that my dad I think I've told you this story before but I find it charming and I think it's okay to tell here for a while there when we were I think it was kind of my parents were maybe sort of freshly divorced because I remember living with my dad in Lakewood Ohio and you know palling around and stuff a lot together and he was really trying to be a more sort of like emotionally generous person when it came to slight offenses out in the world somebody cut you off or whatever instead of like you know honking or whatever just internalize and just think that's a that's a brother in the Lord you know my dad's a religious person I think that's that that person is a brother in the Lord and so he's told me like honestly that he was trying to do that more and then it just became shorthand for us to be like look at this brother in the Lord over here like it just became shorthand for a-hole I love it that's great that's actually

really great I mean uh that was a that was actually a interesting story a little view into your life with your dad which I love and a perfect place to end this which is why I'll extend it a few more seconds and just say like first of all everything I've heard about that roast it there people got off some good jokes but the whole environment sounds like a nightmare they had it at the forum like where the Lakers used to play so there was like 20,000 people there which is a great great venue for for comedy it just the the energy seemed weird there was like people with their face I don't know why I it felt like it was more sporting event than quote-unquote comedy which I don't know why that matters to me but it just seems like if the idea of these roasts was like the friars club used to get together in kind of a smoky back room and give each other some guff this was really had become a whole other kind of animal um but but the other thing i would just say is like we like you said we can all agree uh or disagree on on what is funny and what is not funny but this is the to me this is the kind of bedrock principle of this whole idea of of of you know left-wing culture has killed real comedy Everyone is allowed to say whatever they want They still are Any comedian can get up Louis C.K. can get up on stage and say whatever he wants And he does all the time It's just that free speech also extends To people who are not comedians Or who are other comedians People in the world who have blogs and podcasts Are also allowed to say whatever they want So Seinfeld can say whatever he wants He can say to David Remnick Left wing PC, BS is ruined comedy um and then uh also we can say i don't think so that is not cancel culture that is not like i just it's the strangest it was like you know um judy gold was on the comedian judy gold was on um mike's show the gist she'd written a book that was basically the premise of which was you can't say anything anymore and i listened to the interview and i was i was absolutely flummoxed by how facile the argument was from judy gold which was basically this comedians should be allowed to say anything they want and if you don't like it you should not be allowed to say anything about it right it was it was the flimsiest argument ever it was basically saying only one group of people get free speech and they are comedians and if you don't like what comedians say you need to silence that it was literally the opposite of what they think like what they think everyone's silencing the comedians when in fact what they're advocating for is the people who don't like what the comedians are saying to be silenced now I will just throw this

out there just so in case anybody thinks that we're missing the point of the Jerry Seinfeld thing as this conversation sort of spins out I think Seinfeld's argument specifically wasn't that you can't say anything as a stand-up comedian I think actually no saying that like in fairness on stage is the only place where you can do comedy because it's like kind of a self-selecting crowd and you can learn from your audience directly what works and what doesn't he's saying that there's more of an institutional amongst like let's say the networks or the netflix i'm assuming that we're talking about the streamers here too although he has a new movie out on netflix which i actually kind of want to watch um i don't know if you have any thoughts on that but anyway he's more saying that there's an institutionalized fear of saying the wrong thing that makes it hard to get projects produced if they're edgy or jokes onto the screen in anything other than a stand-up

sort of um situation that's a really good point thanks for clarifying that and you're exactly right like the the what he was yeah i don't want to mischaracterize what he was saying on that show because he was saying he was sort of um you know he was he was praising the practice of stand-up comedy because he was saying it is the last place where there are no network you know there's no network feedback on your stand-up comedy as far as taking jokes out that you can say whatever you want so so that is that's almost directly the opposite of what i was i guess i meant more generally the notion that uh the only kind of real comedy is like or or like what you're how you're describing levitard's take on the whole thing which is like true comedy can only flourish in an environment where people can say anything they want and i mean i guess my point on that would just be like, people can say anything they want. Like tonight I could find an open mic. I doubt there's one here in Fairfield, but I bet you I could get up to Frisco and there's one. And I could, if I got my name in on time, I could get up on that stage and I could, other than yelling fire, I could literally say anything in that, that open mic night. Then, and then it's on everyone else to have their feelings about it. Was it funny? Was it not funny? Did you know what I mean? Like I don't need, I'm not trying to explain this to you. I just, i just find the argument so so weird even thinking about like our friend lindy from the text me back podcast and how she famously had that sort of showdown with a stand-up comedian because she had the temerity to say i don't really think jokes about sexual violence they're not funny to me and like that the chill that sent through the stand comedian the the community of i'll be honest Unfunny stand up comics Who were so threatened by this notion That somebody said I don't find that funny Like that was so threatening It's like the people I see in the Home Depot Near my house that are wearing these shirts that say Fuck your feelings It's like how fragile are you That you need to enter this Home Depot Where I'm simply trying to buy some unsanded grout And you You're so worried That I might Express to you that my feelings Are that I don't like something you're doing That you gotta get in front of it by wearing a shirt That says fuck your feelings That has like a stick figure Humping something that represents feelings This is a real thing that happens Andrew In ex-urban America You don't see it because you're in your liberal bubble

I'm the one who wears the shirt around here

If you get outside of your liberal Your coastal elite bubble Down to places like Fairfield, California Where I am right now You will see people wearing t-shirts And it's really one of those Graphic design is my passion kind of things where it's like it's it's both the message but it's also how bad the design of these shirts is just google f your feelings shirt and tell me if you see the one where it's like a stick figure humping feelings it's just such bad design that's almost the more offensive part to me

of the whole project i like the idea if you just get out of your liberal bubble and go to a place like rent and like i'm just trying to think of like my liberal bubble is like get out of your liberal bubble and go to Lake City, Andrew, and you'll start to see what the real world is like. Because the joke is my bubble is so small. I should really be on stage. One last point that I wanted to make. It's not even a point. It was a suggestion. If you haven't already, Luke, if you have already participated in this, we don't have to get into details here. But I mentioned that I was kind of mad at David Remnick for not like pushing back on Jerry Seinfeld more and asking like, you know, what seemed to me to be pretty obvious questions like you don't think there's funny television anymore question mark um david marchese did this i guess it was a podcast i was reading it as a new york times interview with uh david marchese interviewing um marlon wayans

and oh yeah people have been sending me that have they supposed to be really good i just stumbled

on it yeah and so i kind of realized halfway through is a i'm just reading it as a q a and i won't go into too much detail here because we have to we have to move on for sure but um i'll just say that like the tone was so much better Marlon Wayans says some pretty some pretty whack stuff and then Marchese will sort of push back on it in a way but they're still like really buddies about it and like they'll both sort of like point out like oh yeah I guess that's a flaw in reasoning or one of them will make the other one laugh or like it's like I this is a really good example of like me still like Marlon Wayans still not convincing me of some of these some of these opinions about like what you can and can't say or why humor has to be offensive or something like that like we still don't see eye to eye on it but it's like two people having a real conversation about that is both respectful and funny and serious at the same time um i i can clarify what

that is i haven't listened to it yet but what it is is a new show that is with a lulu garcia navarro and uh david mark cheese that's the first i've learned about his last name because they all work for the New York Times it's kind of part of the New York Times audio empire and it's called the interview and it's a once a week interview with someone I think it's kind of their spin on like fresh air and I've been hearing ads for it when I listen to the daily and it sounds very promising so I think that Marlon Wayans thing is part of the kind of the debut of this new New York Times audio program just FYI if you're curious

I didn't know Lulu was at the Times I'm behind the Times we all

well not you and I but everybody else if you if you can get if you get to a certain level of media notoriety and you're good like lulu is i think the lulu is one of the best out there you will eventually find yourself at the new york times audio true with uh you know with people who may make sounds such as

and even interesting right

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.

Everybody razzle-dazzle.

All right, let's thank those dazzling donors who have been supporting TBTL with their generous donation of a dazzling amount of dough. It's how we can do this. It's how we have not yet been absorbed by CD Baby.

I'm working on it.

And then changed the name to TBTLAF and then faded into even more obscurity than we currently operate under. We've got to thank Ashley Wilson, who's in Dallas, Texas. Ashley says, hey, guys, no notes. I'm pleased to be able to support you dummies and your ridiculousness. John, not included in the above insult. Again, I feel like Sklaroff is cooking the books here. Like when the compliments are flowing He's included when the insults are flying He's not included

I'm looking ahead to the next dazzling donor too He's definitely got his fingerprints all over these

Okay yeah well I guess it is what it is Ashley says I want to share my favorite fundraiser Called poorly drawn pets I've participated Didn't he do a lot of the soundtrack For you know That high fidelity movie There's a lot of poorly drawn pets in there

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I follow some Instagram. I'm going to look something up here. You go ahead.

Okay. I've participated in the campaign held by the Animal Rescue League of Iowa, but if you Google it, there are many humane societies that also do the same, such as the Humane Society of Tacoma and Pierce County. Description. Here's what it is. For a $25 donation, we'll draw your pet. The catch? We're a whole lot better at caring for animals than we are at drawing them. We can't promise what your drawing will look like, but we know it'll be memorable.

I love this. I really love this. What a great idea.

They should charge more than 25 bucks For this by the way I'm sure you can donate more But like I would love A absolutely Disastrous drawing of bubbles

Yeah right

It just looks like a person who Like basically a drawing of bubbles That I would do because I'm also somebody who's not Artistically inclined in any way This is Ashley now When I hear my dazzling donor message I'm going to post The pics of my dogs Gemma and Walter on the stens page they are fantastic and perfect a win-win that's it i hope all the tens are doing well sending love to all so this is what ashley would encourage you to do google poorly drawn pets and then maybe uh engage with one of these humane societies in your area that's doing the poorly drawn pets project and then when you get the poorly drawn pet back please post a picture this is me now uh on the stens page what a fun little interactive thing because i would just And then maybe a side by side with what your pet looks like and then what the drawing looks like. I love this.

A little clarification on that. I'm Googling poorly drawn pets. I don't know if this is something that is widespread or did Ashley say otherwise. I think this is specifically of the Humane Society of Tacoma and Pierce County, or at least that's the first result. You mentioned Iowa, right? Oh, did Iowa do? Okay, I guess I'm sorry about that.

I participated in the one held by the Animal Rescue League of Iowa.

Maybe Google just knows where I am, so it's giving me a bunch of site specific results. but poorly drawn pets seems to pop up the Tacoma Pierce County one right away but yeah this is pretty amazing I oh my god I'm looking at these things I don't know if you are too

I'm not it will tear our communication asunder if I try but I'll trust you I'll trust you on that thanks Ashley great recommendation Maestro

on your mark get set get set now ready ready go everybody rattle

Hey, it's our friend Charles Phipps In Columbia, South Carolina Charlie says It's like Phillips without the L's That took me way longer than Phipps I was like, okay Carry the one Hold the L Subtract and then Oh, Phipps, right

You were going to say the hips

I was Charles is in Columbia, South Carolina As I mentioned And says I'm a listener Who hides my listeners ship. Well, we're hosts who largely hide our host ship, Charlie, so don't feel bad. When my wife asks what I'm listening to through my AirPods, I tell her it's an audio book. Okay, now I feel a little... Are you ashamed of us? It's funny. I love telling the listeners they should be ashamed of us, but when I hear they're ashamed of us,

it hurts. Don't admit it.

Let's see. I don't even try to explain why saying hey dummies to my dogs is affectionate. I guess I donate as a form of Penance for being a bad listener I wonder if that's If Charles is saying that because

He's being a bad listener because he denies us thrice before the cock crows.

I believe that's it because it says, the next line is, it also, I listen to every minute of the show. So that makes me think that you are a great listener, Charles.

You're a great listener, Charles. And listen, that's between you and your God. Like whatever, if you want to talk about us, if you want to not talk about us, if you're listening to every minute of every show, you're a great listener, to quote Tony the Tiger. P.S. Are you kidding me? John is great.

Right what's with this

The move to biz was appreciated I was tired of giving money to an organization I had no connection to Well Charles you've said You've written a lot there my friend And you've keyed in on how it is And why it is that we wanted to go independent When they approached us Asking if they could start reaching out to the tens About putting American public media In their estate planning I believe that was when we said Where is the eject button on this Because we just felt like That was not something that we We ask so much already from you, the tens of listeners. There's lines that we won't cross, and certainly not to support a bunch of things that, let's be honest, aren't related to the thing you were listening to and apparently liking, which is TVTL. So I'm glad, Charles, that this actually, you know, this had the desired effect, I guess. Our departure from that entity, well, first of all, is just in time and that it and that it made Charles happy and inspired Charles to continue supporting us as an independent project.

Thank you, Charles.

Appreciate you.

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

all right um i just wanted to mention that becca and i saw the fall guy over the weekend and i thought it was very charming it was nice to go into a movie knowing that it wasn't going to take itself seriously knowing that it was going to be way over the top and and it was just going to be kind of silly and you know to use your term or genevieve's term kind of a popcorn movie like that was nice i tend to i don't watch a lot of that stuff and i tend to watch things that I think are going to change my life like Reindeer Games starring Ben Affleck and Gary Sinise and because of that then I have this whole other metric by which I judge is it successful or not like did I was I really worried about how the movie the fall guy was going to turn out no did I feel like the bad guys were being extra bad guy in a way that was silly yes did I like it was just it was a really fun experience for me to absolutely lower my expectations for what the cinematic experience is going to be and therefore I really enjoyed it

yeah yep that's the key and there was um like I mentioned earlier that Jerry Seinfeld has this new movie out about pop tarts it's like I think a fake reimagining of the history of pop tarts or whatever and like my expectations I haven't heard anything about I don't know if I think it dropped on Netflix this weekend maybe I don't know if it's good or bad honestly but it seems like up my alley But I was really bummed to hear that it's not in theaters I was like, oh, I'll definitely see that And then I heard, oh, it's just on Netflix I might watch that I think I'm out of step with a lot of people here But for me, I will go see a subpar movie in the theater Because I like the theater-going experience so much I'm less interested in just putting something on as background noise Well, not background noise, but something that isn't that good It's not going to hold my attention at home Where I have so many other dartbots competing for my attention

and it helped that it was a rainy sunday and also the fall guy was only out in theaters because you know it's a big you know action movie let me tell you this though by the way and this is i can't believe i'm saying this i thought the stunts were fine i mean i thought it was cool but i went into this thinking like i am gonna see stunts because that's the whole point the idea is ryan gosling as a stuntman of course this is kind of loosely based on the tv show that i am old enough to have experienced the fall guy that used to be on network television when i was a little kid and he was a stuntman that all the ladies really went for um and lee majors i believe played the fall guy and this was just kind of like a sort of a movie adaptation of that but directed by a former stuntman and something that was kind of interesting is that and i don't know if they're doing this more now and i just haven't been to a movie in a theater in a while but before the movie started you had the director and ryan gosling kind of recording a little message almost like the video interpolation message that we love to play of tom cruise and the other guy but like it was just kind of saying like hey uh this movie is about is about stunts and it turns out that there are these people that we're going to call them stuntmen but they're obviously not only men that have been doing a lot of the really hard stuff in movies forever and they get no credit for it and this movie is a love letter to those people that take those you know that to put their their bodies on the line to make these things happen like they just kind of had a like a slightly heartfelt message being like what you're about to see is a lot of people doing a lot of really hard stuff and it's you know stuntmen i thought well that's an interesting beginning to the movie right like or at least you know thing that runs before the movie like we're seeing ryan gosling as ryan gosling like they're risking the fact that we've already they've already taken him out of the character of whoever the whatever his name is in the movie it's like colton colton laser or something he has like the like he has the most ridiculous stuntman sounding name of all time but um anyway i i thought the movie was fun and enjoyable i was and and also it got great reviews i like had a great review in the new york times like it's rare that you see one of these big budget movies that's full of stars and that's broadly appealing that also gets good reviews but it did so i was like all right well let's go it's a rainy sunday i enjoyed the film i was pretty surprised to read then that it's it debuted i'm trying to remember the last movie that was the it was the number one movie at the box office but with like 28 million dollars and that was so low that it rivaled like the last time a number one box office movie opened with that kind of low you know level of box office revenue was in the 90s and it was like a kevin klein movie it was like french kiss starring kevin klein or something it was really going back and the takeaway was because by the way all the

trailers that we saw leading up to the movie were just for you know the new minions movie um the uh shoot what were the other ones just a bunch of movies that are just based on things that we already know about a bunch of sequels really and now granted we're in a movie that is all about special effects and and it's like it's catering to the people that are most likely don't want to see a fast and furious type of film but even so it was just like one after the other of things that were existing intellectual property that they're just doing and oh is the new um mad max fury road one but it's like furiosa it's getting into this other character you know and and and whatever it's like and i you know i guess the people making those movies kind of know what they're doing because it turns out the fall guy which i thought was like a fun entertaining movie is as of right now anyway and one of the things they put in the times piece i read about it was movies like this can have a sort of quote-unquote long tail on them like it's the full story is not written on if this movie is going to actually be a success or not it might it might just take a while and it might actually get like you know decent when you have a movie that gets good reviews and people seem to like it but it's not making money you can sometimes have the effect of like people hear me talking about it or people tell their friends and then you get this it ends up working out eventually maybe that's what will happen with this movie but i just felt i found it a little sad I guess that that it just was re it was sort of reaffirming the the the notion that really we just all we should be making are like a mode the emojis movie three the poop emojis like origin story because that's all we really want to go see in the theater environment I guess well I

do think that the trailers before a film definitely reflect the film that you're watching and you're in there watching a film that is an existing intellectual property you're you're watching something that is a tv show from you know the 70s early 80s that has been turned into a movie and so therefore that's they're like oh this is the audience that likes that kind of stuff so i'm not i'm not saying that you're wrong that that is a trend in movie making obviously it's a lot of reuse of ip stuff but it also makes sense that that's what you were being exposed to in this particular movie theater and also you enjoyed this movie that was based on existing intellectual

property so well that's the funny part is it's for the purposes of this argument is not considered intellectual property existing because it's from so long ago that nobody knows about it well but seriously that was the thrust of the times article was that that basically the fall guy they were just treating it as if it's a completely new thing and and they were attributing part of its lack of success to the fact that it was an existing ip that it was not that it was not that it was not because it's from an 80s movie it's from an 80s tv show that's from so long ago that nobody remembers it so they they had it in a category as if it was like you and i sat down and wrote a totally new movie called the fall guy basically that's interesting now again i haven't seen this

and i haven't seen what i'm about to reference but i mean i mean i guess it's sort of like maybe there's a decade different but it's kind of like they did that with 21 jump street too and they like took an 80s tv show and totally reimagined it imagined it totally reimagined it um as a movie and kind of took it I don't know I guess I don't that's I mean I didn't read this New York Times piece but it's just sort of funny I guess it's just like they're like this doesn't count because people don't remember it as much as they remember Knight Rider or 21 Jump Street well I mean I don't

I can't say about those other things but I guess what what I took away from the article was when they talk about like you know existing IP they're talking about movies they're talking about Harry Potter you know they're talking about things that like Fast and Furious, Harry Potter reboots of the Hunger Games just like things that have already made a bunch of money and are just being endlessly spun off or redoing something that's still from only like 11 years ago first of all there's no scientific opinion on this like this was just the person writing the piece in the Times But they were – the way that they were describing it was that this was an indication that audiences just – that it's really, really difficult to sell audiences on a completely new concept as opposed to just telling them it's another one of the movies from some kind of universe that you are already kind of familiar with.

Now I'm putting you in the position of arguing on behalf of an article that I haven't read, but did they mention like Oppenheimer or like Barbie obviously is IP, but the concept of what like last summer seemed like, and again, I know it was just one summer.

That's such a great question. Is Oppenheimer existing IP?

Well, Barbie, I'm sorry, maybe I spoke to Barbie.

No, no, but I just mean, I love the question of is Oppenheimer. That's actually a really interesting question because it's like, well, no, was there an Oppenheimer doll? No. But also, did he lead to, like, one of the most terrible moments in human history? Yes, he is kind of existing IP.

You know, I mean, I guess that was a biopic, so it's still – but, like, I don't know. I just – and, again, I know that, like, one kind of iconic summer of these two movies being released at the same time and people, like, going to one. And then the – I mean, the whole cultural phenomenon of what was happening last summer I think was pretty amazing, especially when you throw in the Taylor Swift stuff, which is not part of cinema, I understand. And well, it became part of cinema, but just like it sort of seemed like last summer seemed like a very special summer for American culture. To me, there's just like a lot of stuff going on. And a big part of that was the Barbie Oppenheimer thing. Now, that's not going to save the theater industry forever. But like the fact that like people were talking about going to the movies in ways that I had I hadn't seen since I don't know. I'm going to exaggerate here, but I'll say like Jurassic Park or Batman 89 or whatever. like it sort of belies that a little bit and again i'm not saying that's a silver bullet and it's going to save the industry forever but like there are clearly some things that can still capture

the public imagination sure and i i don't again i don't want to overstate this article mostly they were just pointing out that it this last weekend was what's considered the beginning of the summer blockbuster season uh-huh and they were noting that it was it was it was you know it was a low number for that you know if we're going to call that like a thing yeah the summer blockbuster season i don't i don't think they were trying to say therefore the movie industry you know movie theaters are are dead i will tell you this a couple of things about that theater that we went to one i was really surprised at how seriously the concession people were taking the question of whether or not somebody paid for their concessions because there was a guy in front of us he was getting some popcorn and a soda or something he was doing I wasn't paying close attention to him but when it was when he walked away from his little popcorn situation and it was our turn to step up oh by the way we also had to buy our tickets there because I don't even know if they open the box office anymore I think they've realized that I think that what they're trying to do by the way is just get us to buy everything on our phone so we show up with the tickets on our phone I think the the whole term box office is is soon to be you know antiquated like we got to the place and all of those little you know that little little weird circular speaker you talk into or whatever completely shut down and just a little sign that said around the corner that said buy tickets at the concession stand so they've figured out and by the way they're not dumb oh here's what we're going to do why are we letting people buy their tickets from a person who can't also sell

them overpriced popcorn yeah i've seen it i mean i go to the movies quite a bit or from time to time I've seen it both ways. Most of the places I go to, I think of Thornton Place here or whatever, they still have that talk through a speaker, which is just like I wasn't good at that when I could hear. Now I'm like an old man holding like a horn up to my ear. Yeah, please, two for Oppenheimer. Anyway, yeah, so I don't know. I've sort of seen it both ways. It might depend on staffing too, I'll bet.

I just think that it's – I mean, I just – get back to me in two years. Now, I promise you, I would be unsurprised to see that that part of the movie theater attending process or whatever you want to call it, movie buying process, goes away because I just feel like they've realized, wait, why do we have a person out there? You can buy it on your phone. You could buy it at the concession stand. I just think it's funny because box office is such a term that we use related to this whole experience of movies. But anyway, get up in the concession line to both buy our tickets and some concessions. when the guy in front of us walks off to go see his movie the the the i'll say kid because this person was probably under the age of 20 who was going to help us was apoplectic he was like what the he looked mad scared annoyed confused and the reason oh wait are you tired are you hungry are you why i was and the reason i was noting this was because i thought we were late for the movie The movie was supposed to start at 1.50. What I found out later was that apparently the trailers didn't start. Or the movie, we had more time than I thought. The movie started, quote unquote, at 1.50, but actually the movie itself wasn't going to start until 2.30. But I was kind of stressing because it's like 1.49. And I'm like, we're in line. And I just, and of course we got in the wrong line, so it's taking forever. And now we finally get to the front. And I just would like the person to sell me these movie tickets quick so I can get to the, I want to see the trailers. I love the trailers, even if they're for Minions 4. So I was noting that he wasn't Helping us and he just looked and he just Looks at us and he just goes that guy didn't even pay

For his snacks he said that to you

Yeah to us and I was like Oh oh weird Huh and he goes yeah That guy just didn't even pay he just didn't Even pay and he goes I don't Know what to do I don't know what to do and To be honest with you I would have thought his Answer would have been like eh whatever yeah like I just maybe this is like the Fox newsification of the internet but you just see all these cherry picked examples of people just kind of running amok and just being like yeah whatever and like what are you gonna do about it you can't touch me you can't like we didn't call the police on me over popcorn like i just i honestly also i just kind of figured that if if you had a bag of popcorn you just walked away without paying the teenager behind the thing would be like whatever this kid was not whatever he was like he was like he got on his radio he was like i need to talk to somebody and then a different kid comes over it's very funny seeing like two 19 year olds try to relate to each other over something that they have no experience with like the the other kid was i don't know if he was just the manager because he was taller but like this these two just read thin the 19 year olds one of them much taller comes over and they're just like what did he look like and then someone gets on another radio and like the entire operation ground to a halt over the matter of this guy stealing this popcorn and i had a theory which was i don't think he was trying to steal the popcorn i think he just didn't hit the final button on the tablet to you know what i mean like i don't think this was brazen snack theft i think this was a person who was probably about my age who just didn't get to the fine didn't feed the didn't fight the final boss of buying this popcorn on the screen at the regal theater at bridgeport town center whatever the hell it is you know what i mean like i actually almost do this plenty of times where it's like you think you you're hitting okay yes thank you fine no tip whatever you're just like going through your thing and then there's one more like okay you have to hit but the way this was treated was like this guy I was surprised they didn't call the cops

I kind of I find this charming though I mean I kind of so I guess I was a little confused there so it was the person who walked away with the popcorn it was that person who maybe didn't hit the final button like was it one of those tablets where the person spun it around for them or something like that or is a self-serve kiosk i think i made did i doze off during that key part

of the story i think it was one of those like not self-serve kiosk you know there's a person there but it was some kind of a thing where you had to like hold your card up to the tap or scan it or whatever so i'm just i'm just saying it was one of those typical digital transactions we all do all the time but i thought a much more logical explanation for what had just happened was not that a 45 year old dad type decided to try to in broad daylight steal popcorn and a soda and just be like sue me sue me for what which was the way that this kid was reacting it was like i was i didn't want to get in on it i don't want to get into it so i just but i was if he would have asked me i would have said i'm guessing the guy just didn't hit the final button on this but so as we Finally are starting to get our tickets And I'm buying our popcorn I did say to the kid I go wouldn't it be funny if I just Didn't pay either and he wasn't he didn't Think that was very funny he was really in his head About it he was he was like he was Man it was serious business and I Look over to my left and they have like frog Marched the guy back out they Found him by the way which is crazy Because he had just like he was a very Nondescript looking guy of About my age who had by the time These guys got on the radio disappeared Into the dark Reaches of the movie You know where you go to all the different movies Like I was like how are they going to find this guy Are they going to go into each and every Movie and like Go with a flashlight on everybody's face And find the popcorn thief Like what are they going to do I don't know how they found him but I look over and they have now brought him back out and he's paying. And he had the look on his face of, I'll tell you what, he looked exactly like a person who just didn't hit the last button when they were buying the popcorn. With zip ties on his wrists. Exactly, exactly. Like who was being carried out by the police. He was just kind of like, he didn't seem at all perturbed. He seemed a little confused, but then he was like, okay. And then he was just paying and then he just went to see his movie, which I was, it was in a way it was charming because I think it was it sort of like I said it belied this notion that is being pitched to us by again like Fox News and other people like that that we live in a lawless society right that we live in a world where everyone just walks out of Home Depot with a with a shopping cart full of stuff and that and that in Joe Biden's America there's absolutely no punishment for breaking the law and it turns out there is it's at the Regal Cinema at Bridgeport outside of Portland And they are taking it very seriously with the snacks.

This is a very different type of story. But I kind of thought of you the other day because I have little tells in my behavior around certain stimuli, I guess, where I don't like who I become. And when I'm with Genevieve, I know that she can feel me subtly become this person. And this happened to us when we went to a Mariners game last week or something. And there was a guy, Luke, who you would have wanted to headbutt so much. Usually you go through, you have your ticket on your phone, and then they have a – there's a little special entrance for T-Mobile customers because it's a T-Mobile park. They don't even check – well, I shouldn't say that. They check everybody to make sure they're a T-Mobile customer. I say that to keep the lines down. i i am a t-mobile customer so i go in this whole line and i you know i scan my ticket uh which is on my phone with this little device and then you have to go through security and you know it's it's not a super um sensitive security device in other words you can leave your keys in your pocket i think you'd have to have something pretty you know pretty big and menacing in order for it to probably set the metal detector off but i think that's fine i think that's by design um but you

know you sometimes you can if you're T-Mobile customers are 30 percent less likely to commit

violence at a baseball stadium no we've done the research I think that's true probably of all of these things I think but they do have the little airport style little dish you can drop your keys and your phone in and they'll slide it through they are careful in going through people's bags like you're not allowed to bring any kind of bag that isn't a clear see-through bag oh man I think I told you about the story last year where they they confiscated my friend my friend put a bag within a bag he put his bag inside of the clear bag and then they confiscated his his tote bag that he had put inside my friend's clear bag they're like you can't take bags and they're like this is an empty bag if you unseam the stitches and it's just a piece of cloth that meant something it was from a theater or something that is no longer right anyway that really irritated me so they're going through people's bags pretty carefully um and then but but but again these devices are not that sensitive so usually i just leave my keys in my pocket and it's fine but there was some guy who was doing the whole loud airport security thing and this guy you could just tell he wanted to be a cop so bad he was just he just had that like that cop energy he's just like yelling hold your phone up to your chest walk through okay you're good buddy and just kind of like in this like both like condescending i threw a buddy on the end there i don't even know if that really captures his tone but it was like very just kind of like taking this job real serious he loved Barking orders at every single person Going through so I just put my phone in my pocket To see like he doesn't even know if I have A phone or not like whatever is he gonna make me take Out my phone and hold it up to my chest and I just walked through and it was fine he didn't really Engage with me at all but like the way he was Talking to everybody going through and like Yelling at everybody phone up to the chest walk On through all right there you go Phone up to the chest walk on through and Like I think Genevieve could feel me bristle I think I just walked by him just like somebody wants to be a cop But I probably didn't say it that loudly Real polite cop Exactly it's just like one of those things where I don't really make sense But like I'm just triggered In this way that I just like I hated this guy so much

That also would make me extra mad Because this is a voluntary fun Thing that we're doing I don't know why that matters Like whereas when you're flying it's like Okay it's you are getting Into a metal tube and going into the sky And it is like there's something that's More I guess feels legitimately law enforcement about the tsa it's like i'm it's annoying to me and i don't know i don't know why certain people want to be the person who yells at the tsa checkpoint but it's like we're just going to we're just going to watch julio rodriguez under wellness in the clutch can you just let us

have that can i ask you a question while we're here we got we got to wrap up um but how is he i looked at his average yesterday he's batting like 260 or 265 i Okay.

am i having little mini strokes every time he gets a hit like i don't think i've seen that guy

hit a ball since spring training how is he hitting 265 he had like two games where he went like three for four he raised his batting average by a hundred points over the course of two games were any of those hits for rbis probably not but probably not i mean no he's stranded but okay he no he's i i need to i don't know why why do i want to look this up i need to look up because i just want to be more angry at the world but like it to whatever degree there's a way of figuring out the stat of if someone is quote-unquote clutch which i know is a very squishy idea because if you you know if you do something good in the first inning does it matter more or less than if you do something good in the ninth inning i don't i don't actually even know the science on that but what i can tell you is anecdotally he i mean forget just the fact that he ran us out of the game the other day by just not even looking at the fact that the guy on third base had stopped running oh my god he ran us into it yeah he ran us into a double play that did not need to exist just pure inattentiveness on his part but like they're just anecdotally speaking there is just no mariner right now that underperforms more when we need him to actually do something like first of all i what does he have one home run this season maybe two home runs

like it's not good doesn't like yeah I remember him I do remember him getting I think he only has one because he got that trident that they get when they get a home run like the big thing in the in the dugout and I think he like kind of didn't want to let it go or something I think like Colton Wong did right I remember hearing about that hearing about that and that's the only home run I can I can look this up really easily but so I yeah to answer your question

with another question in the Talmudic sense um uh I don't know I'm not answering your question of the question i'm answering your question with a non-satisfactory answer which is the evangelical christian approach to it um but uh but yeah one home run we are not one home run how much how much are we paying this person to have one now granted it's you know it's may so he will

he'll heat up you'll have a month or something but it just makes all of the like and then they go to a commercial break and it's like we have who you know how those mariners commercials they're the worst the tv shows the tv commercials are are like good kind of like historically and and notably and famously good and the mariners radio commercials are the worst they have consistently been the worst they just find people and the direction is sound is like sort of obnoxiously hype as you can and talk about the mariners oh we have home runs oh we have julio with five ohs and it's like dude he just he just swung at all three pitches none of which were over the plate like that's what he's been doing like can we adjust these can we have more i mean i guess i'd be a terrible marketer but can we have more humble mariners commercials like julio like good guy great smile and a really good defensive player like that would be my promo you know i have

some intel on that i was taught a friend who will remain nameless but i was talking to somebody who used to work on who's a person in advertising and they used to work on those projects when back when the mariners commercials used to be like a thing on espn like they were particularly the tv commercials were so funny that they would actually broadcast they would play them on espn because it was like oh these are really good and over time they uh i guess what i heard was the advertising agency that was doing the jobs fired the mariners which has never happened before in history they

didn't want to work with that client anymore it was so much work i i don't know why they why they

decided to stop doing it but what this person told me this person had worked at that agency so they they know what they're talking about said that the agency fired the client which i don't i've literally never heard of that happening they basically just said yeah this is and i don't know if it was because the mariners were didn't want to pay enough or were slow payers or were too demanding or whatever i don't know what the deal was but what i do know is it's in house now the Mariners advertising the Mariners are doing the Mariners advertising and doesn't that just make

a hell of a lot more sense and again I need to just just for the record I mean I'm not really worried about I'm not really worried about this but I do know that we both have mutual friends who work in that advertising space and I don't know if they've worked on what they've worked on this season or more recently but I'm only reacting to modern Mariners radio commercials I heard this year that they released another batch of kind of almost like old school funny TV commercials but I haven't seen them at all um i just know that um there was one where um uh i'm blanking on which mariner it was was dressed up like that old picture of duane the rock johnson with a fanny pack um i think it was castillo luis castillo dressed up like okay anyway i think that hit our text chain as well um but uh so i heard that they're the tv commercials were good this year i haven't seen them but whatever's going on on the radio side is just like but

sets my teeth on edge yeah i have a feeling that because i think there's been a real tonal shift and it's and the thing that's this has come up on the show many times the thing that's frustrating is it just seems like right after you know how they say like when you get put in the game then the ball finds you like it's your oh you know they put you in left field and then the first hit is right to you it feels that's kind of like a truism of baseball the ball finds you meaning you know that but um it's like it feels like and i know this isn't really the case but it feels like right after a particularly highly paid mariner be it julio rodriguez or somebody else kind of flails badly the next ad that plays when they go to the break is always lauding that yeah right and making me crazy like mitch hanniger running into julio and like effing up the ability to hold the runner at third because i mean by the way has mitch henneger ever heard it's the center fielder's ball all the time center fielder it's always the center fielder's ball and then right after that and like so then the mariners give up five runs in the seventh against houston and then it's just like the no fly zone it's like shut up right now please last thing i want to say about movie theaters when we finally got into the theater after all of the you know situation we also by the way very serious about taking our tickets i had like a drink in my hand and the popcorn and i had like the two tickets kind of in under like you know like i was i was going through but i was kind of showing the guy the tickets but with the stuff in my hands and he was like hold on hold on it's like taking them out he's looking at them he's tearing them they're still doing that by the way which is charming like there were so many i feel like i would have really thought you could steal popcorn and just walk into the movie at this point i would have just assumed there were no no rules on this but they were pretty serious about it but when we finally got in the theater i was like you know it's one of those things where you get to pick your seat so it's like we were like row not row e seats nine and ten or something and we step into the theater and now i guess they've kind of started the trailers and i don't know if it's just my age or what but i couldn't see shit in the theater and i was like they had no footlights there was nothing that was like illuminating what the aisles were like you'd think that they would just want to have a little light by each row so that you could see just even if you're at row e or whatever it was we were going to and then so i like my like something bright happens on the screen it's like a flash of light that i'm like okay i guess these i could see that where e is So we get to E, and then we walk down in total darkness towards 9 or 10, and then there's another flash of light when something happens on the screen, and then it's like, okay, I guess these are seats 9 and 10. We sit down, and then I'm sitting there trying to, like, take my, like, get out my, I had gotten the nachos as well because my body is a temple,

which is just, like, a plastic tray of tortilla chips and then just a corner piece of, like, that terrible nacho cheese, and then some jalapenos, which, by the way, $1.50 extra. for how many slices it was a good amount in fair it was its own bag it was a separate sealed bag

of jalapeno slices okay so they're like okay well we're buying these separately we'll charge separately okay although everything actually a buck 50 at the theater i mean i don't usually like i say i don't like to complain about movie theater prices kind of cliche but um given how high they are a buck 50 seems low to me based on like the standards that the industry has set

i mean it was the entire operation our tickets of a medium popcorn a medium diet pepsi and a thing of nachos was i want to say 58 wow yeah i think also we were paying more because we were in some kind of thing called x screen or some shit which was probably why no one else had a ticket in that theater and all it was was it's the it was the weirdest thing the the screen instead of just being in front of you they're also wrapped around the sides of the theater so that like you're looking at the screen and to your left and to your right i'd say like 20 feet back is still screen like 20 feet back from the front of the screen on the side walls is still the screen but here's the thing andrew they have not shot the movie in some special format yeah there's it's not there's nothing happening on those side areas that is like a novel viewing experience it's just

distracting yeah it's just like yeah like maybe if you make it if it's a new format you make a film and it's more like ambience on the sides like you just extend the camera view out and it's more like trees or whatever and it gives you a sense of immersion but like if you have to turn your head to the right to see somebody talking to somebody on the left that's weird and you don't

have to because they weren't, I mean, here's the thing. They're not putting any of the action over in those side parts. Like, it's, the action is all happening on the screen. I don't even know, it, I think it's just supposed to trick your eye into thinking you're, like, more immersed than you are. But I bet you anything that those tickets, because we don't know anything about these. We're just, like, the Fall Guy, 150, the 150 showing. And then, like, it's in Theater X, blah, blah, whatever, like, experience. I bet you anything those tickets are more. I should go back and check because doesn't that I mean and I know you're saying you don't like to complain about movie theater prices. I do, my friend. I do. And like fifty eight dollars seems like a lot of money for that amount of what we got.

Yeah, I just movie. I like one of the movies. And so he's really expensive. And I just I just don't think about it. I mean, I think Genevieve is not just OK with me saying this. I think she'd be proud for me to say this. like she's more into like if she knows we're going to a theater she'll be like wait I'm going to stop in the 7-Eleven first and I'm going to grab some like candy and a soda or something and she'll take it in and I'm like I don't I think I even said this to you the other day like I don't want to drink a Mountain Dew out of a Mountain Dew bottle in a movie theater I want it to be the pop I'm not going to sneak in a bag of popcorn I'm not going to sneak in candy I just have my thing and it's going to be expensive and I know that and if I do this a few times a year or whatever it is or once every couple of months like I know I'm just overpaying but honestly and this is where I'm so this is not this isn't normal or healthy and or defendable but i uh even though i know like companies like amc are these big corporate whatever it's not like there's some non-profit local theater company i am just kind of like well i don't want this experience to go away so like if i just pay out the nose for this i guess i'll pay out the nose if it means i'll be able to do it again next year in the year after that i don't know how long i don't know how long this industry is going to be able to um you know sustain as we recognize it and like i said that's my very much my preferred way to watch movies yeah i mean uh the the darkness in the theater

thing it really just might be that my eyesight is going but like we're sitting down and i'm trying to get these nachos out of the bag i'm trying to get these jalapenos out of their distinct bag and spread them across the chips and as anytime it's like what i didn't realize before this because i've never had this situation in movie theater usually you sit down your eyes kind of adjust and then you do your thing and i also feel like they used to have a little more low light in the trailers like it wasn't full darkness i also want i i think this was all related to this goddamn spacex screening or whatever like it was pitch black like you could could not see your hand in front of your face unless something on the screen was illuminating the room and then what i didn't realize is there's a lot of parts of even a movie trailer where it's not that because i'd be like reaching for a nacho and then suddenly it'd be total darkness and then i have to wait until Groot I don't know Who's the guy in Minions Who's the Steve Carell character Until that guy says something and they show him again And now there's enough light for me to grab a nacho Show more of those yellow Minions Seriously There were so many parts of a movie And movie trailer that's actually not lit It's just like the transition It's like black And I noticed this because every time it did that I couldn't see the food in front of me And again I know that I'm getting older I know my eyesight isn't what it once was But there was something going on in that theater And then Andrew, this is the worst part I know we need to get to emails and emails Or maybe we do emails and emails tomorrow But like My phone slipped out of my pocket And it went under the seat Ugh Under, my friend, under the seat Not into the walkway Not into the aisle Under the seat

Under your seat, not the seat in front of you

And there was no one sitting around us Which see previous comments about the fall guy Like we might have been the only people in the theater I I reach down to the side to just try to grab it I can't find it and I think maybe I just Leave it there but then I'm like I don't know I don't want to forget it Here I need and it's still in the trailers I'm like I need to deal With this I go to Becca I go can I have your phone I drop my Phone she's like sure I put her phone on flashlight mode And I get down and it Has fallen in the worst possible Location which is the furthest back and Furthest in the middle under the seat it can be And as I As I illuminate this With the flashlight on her phone I just see Years Of inattention There is no I can tell you this They may be cracking down on popcorn theft They do not have any system By which they regularly clean Under the seats They just assume That whatever It's like Vegas Whatever happens under there stays under there And we don't need to talk about it We don't need to deal with it. I swear to God, it was like fur.

down there furry like a layer of stickiness from spilled soda and candy that had then attracted like a person goes and sat in that seat and they have a cat and they had their cat hair on them and then some of it falls off and now it sticks to there like it was an an ecosystem under there and my phone was right in the middle of it it was i literally and i'm not i'm not nearly as kind of like um you know i don't know not you're not germ phobic but like that stuff doesn't bother me as much as it bothers you but i was like you've got to be kidding me i disagree about that i think

that you're really sensitive to like stuff like in hotels and stuff like that like i think that

that's a good point yeah that's a good point uh this really gave me the the bad feeling to like and but i mean what are you gonna do it's your phone so i had like i got it out of there like

indiana jones like reaching into one of those crevasses or whatever like trying not to touch

the stuff on the sides i mean it was so ill and then i was like this is this is the one area of our relationship where i'm quite infantilized becca always has hand sanitizer she just like has a like a bottle of it like for all you know post pandemic she's a very very clean person and so whenever we sit down to have a meal i i'll be honest with you i don't always go to like if we're at a restaurant i don't instinctively go to the bathroom wash my hands and come back it's probably i should i just don't i don't think of it she doesn't either but she always sprays her hands and every time she does it it's a surprise to me that we're doing this like i forget every time and then we sit down and then i'm ordering or we're talking or whatever and then she's reaching in her purse and she's bringing out this thing and now the ritual is she brings it out she sprays her hands and i just put my hand out like a six-year-old please spray mommy like that's just i don't even say anything i just put my hand out she sprays one of my hands and i'm like okay cool i just was like double up i reached my hands over i was like give me both barrels don't ask me what

happened in the war take exactly breathe remove the top of the bottle and empty it it puts the

contents of the bottle into my hands like and by the way into my eyeballs because i i need I need to forget this ever happened It was upsetting under there

I don't need to get into this Because we should wrap up I have a voicemail I will play for you tomorrow I think it's pretty fun But we'll wrap up the show today But I will just give you my hot take on hand sanitizer In that I don't like it Like I need it in certain Like the situation that you're talking about It's like okay that's the best I can do right now I'll use it But like when I'm volunteering on Sunday We have like a bottle of hand sanitizer out there and I'm like serving coffee and hot chocolate. So I'm, you know, if I touch anything, if I touch my phone, if I touch money, if I touch whatever, like I'm always then like sanitizing my hands. And by the end of the hour, all I go to the, I stop off at the grocery store sometimes just so that I can wash my hands in the grocery store bathroom. And if there's a worse bathroom than a grocery store bathroom, I ain't seen it. Like it is for some reason. Oh, gas station bathroom. Oh, that is true. I have seen some worse, but like these bathrooms in the Safeway that I stop off at, or, yeah, Safeway. It's like, I don't know if they're developing film in there or what, but they like, they literally, it's just like the light, it's just like a blue light bulb, and it's like.

Is it the one, is it for customers, or is it that thing where you go through those like big rubber kind of doors back into the behind where the dairy products are kept?

Like when you were a kid, and you're just like, I should have gone at home.

That's some real lion witch wardrobe shit.

Wait, you mean the milk is the stained milk that I see out there? Anyway, no, these are more, like, customer-facing. They're kind of near the entrance, and there's one that always says out of order or whatever because somebody's done something terrible in there, you know, and then the other one, it's like, well, it's not great, but at least it's speakable, so you go in the speakable one, but it's always, like, I hate going in those bathrooms, but, like, I'll even do that. Like, there's just something about, like, hand sanitizer. Again, like, any port in a storm in an emergency, but after I use it, I cannot wait to get some,

like real soap and water on my hands yeah they have definitely i'll tell well it's not gross from a um sort of what the what the regular maintenance on it is bathroom but i'll tell you i'll tell you the bathroom that i think probably the most let me put it this way there is something called the home depot bathroom it is the bathroom at the home depot and i have more than once because you know when i'm not at ikea or cd baby i'm in the home depot and more than once i've been walking towards the bathroom and i've seen a guy coming out of the bathroom and i thought i'm gonna hold it purely based on visuals just like the look on his face how he's dressed i just think whatever happened in there um i'm gonna leave i'm gonna let god sort that out and i'm just gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna figure this out somewhere else and it's They actually keep those things pretty clean.

But I would just say that your average Home Depot customer, I just, I don't know, I've even verified it, but I just feel like it's not going to be something I want to be a part of.

Yeah, no, I understand that. And also depending, I also feel like these bathrooms that I'm describing here in Safeway, somehow they were just like, no, we don't want to ventilate these. They're like, well, we can do a little bit of ventilation. No, no, no, I want to do anti-ventilation for some reason on these. So anyway, that's also what we're dealing with.

Right, exactly. What can we do to, like, trap every single smell that's possible in here?

Right, exactly. What do they say when they're talking about, on Portlandia, the vape store? They're talking about the decor of a vape store. Two plungers. I think that says it all. Two plungers says it all. Yes, exactly.

I give this show two plungers up, Andrew. I think it was a fun episode. Even though we didn't get a chance to talk about Drake versus Kendrick Lamar, but you know what? That might have been okay. That might have been a happy accident. probably okay that's i think that that's i think everyone's going to be fine with that honestly

there are there are so many better sources than me on this like any source well i'll just tell

you this i read up on it last night just because i was bored and i just there's just not even that

much they're there for me no there's rapping back and forth but the thing is some of the songs i actually like the only thing that i would say about it is like there's one song that isn't even official drake pulled it down right away because he used an ai version of tupac and snoop dog and like wrote these lyrics that were sort of like sarcastically dissing kendrick lamar like that was my takeaway is like that one you have to watch on youtube because it's not on any of the platforms anymore and it's like i kind of like it like it's funny like some of them are just like the longer it goes on they're so in the weeds on the details of this beef that it just becomes like just so tedious sort of like oh god i think it's going to near the end soon because it's just getting too tedious the arguments back and forth they call them arguments i'm in a rap argument uh but earlier on the whole thing but earlier on there were some pretty good bangers

going back and forth between these see i think my problem is i didn't listen to any of it i just read like the literally the new york times breakdown of it and so i think absent the music I don't think I got the full sense of it But I would say the good news is We just did it Andrew We just discussed the Kendrick and Drake rap battle We don't have to do it tomorrow You're welcome listeners

Exactly they picked me up at the rap battle I made a pretty devastating rhyme about it

So we will be back here tomorrow With more imaginary radio though For you which is the good news I guess So please do join us for that In the meantime have a great Tuesday Take care of yourselves and please remember No mountain too tall

And good luck to all

Thank you so much for letting us rap. Don't hesitate, feel free to clap. Power out.