Muse

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TBTL! Are you saying boo or boo-erns?

I was saying boo-erns.

I should have prepared, but I just watched TV.

Just like the drop says, I cannot contain my joy. I don't think I've ever related to a drop so much right now.

I can't contain myself.

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl the show just might be too beautiful to live slap jacking my name is luke burbank i am your host coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia i'm an activist and house party enthusiast? I am an enthusiast about this house, I'll tell you what. Especially because, watch out, Rachel Ray. I learned how to cook rice last night. When it comes to the future, you can never have too many cooks. I'm on a mission this week to cook every single meal that I consume, which is not the typical for me. But I went to Costco on Sunday. i got a hot air balloon but it doesn't make me think i'm better than everyone else i went to costco and i i didn't fully meal prep like i didn't buy specific ingredients to make a specific number of repeated meals and then put them in you know some sort of tupperware and freeze them but i do have in this house enough food to feed myself for at least the next week and i'm going to really try to i'm going to really try to lean into that as it were and you're going to hear each and every detail about me cooking rice and other things because well that's what we do here on tbtl which finds itself at episode 4 225 in a collector's series let the fun begin i wanted to talk about this yesterday and didn't get to it um the uh television that i've been watching well technically the netflix that i've been watching i don't even own a television i've been watching two things uh one is the uh everyone's in la show that john mulaney did kind of a limited series of like very loose like live talk shows and the other thing that I've been watching is called um Botkin and it's starring uh Will Forte who we love on this show and it's about a podcaster which is a thing we do on this show and you'd think I would absolutely love it I'm still trying to make up my mind I watched more of it last night because I didn't want to as I indicated yesterday in the promo section of the program I don't want to be too harsh on old uh Barack and michelle obama and their their their film production ways but this might be the second show that their company has produced that i've been just almost liking so we'll get into that oh and uh there is a headline right now in the seattle times that i think is some pretty bunk journalism i'd like to point out to anybody watching this is really bunk journalism or at least some misunderstanding what's going on journalism um so it might not even be the seattle times that may be reprinted from some associate press thing we'll dive deeper into that coming up but first we've got to say hi to this guy the longest running cobro of the show

may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships isn't he the best he's andrew walsh and he's

joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke the seattle times that reminds me at some point i don't know when it was i stopped looking to see if they ran my rant and rave i guess i just gave up the ghost on that but i'm kind of glad i think we talked

I have not stopped looking.

You've been looking every single day? Because I realize I haven't been to the Rant and Rave section in a couple of days, if not a full week here.

Is that because they haven't published yours? Is that don't get too close to your heroes, they have feet of clay kind of phenomenon?

It is. It's like, I feel like there's a good example of that. Like, I don't know, do you ever hang out with people in a band or something and then you have a falling out and you can't listen to their music anymore? I feel like I'm halfway remembering a feeling or experience I've had, yet I can't think of an actual example from my life.

Well, how about Barry Sheck from The Innocence Project? Jen, or is it you?

Oh, yeah, no, it was Jen, I think. Jen?

the show he wasn't on tbtl i think she might have been filling in for like you on ross and burbank

oh no no she maybe was filling in for you on ross and burbank and i was producing maybe

well no i was there i was oh you were there okay maybe she was filling in for dave there's only one more person it could be maybe she was just filling in for dan restione point being that was for the that was for the deep seattle i know it was i i'm fairly certain although at this age i saw i saw somebody on tiktok say you know when you're in your 30s you're almost old and when you're in your 40s you're almost young oh wow i was like dan yeah you just blew my mind yeah i

can't kind of it's kind of true right yeah yeah so we're talking with as with a friend who's about my age this weekend and um we're at a bar and like kind of a little restaurant bar and the server came up right as he and i were like just well with the quiz knows but if you bring your own beer it becomes kind of a restaurant bar if you bring a hip flask any any subway can become a bar a tavern a saloon uh anyway the server came up and i mean we were just like just so deep into talking about all of our various ailments and aches and uh and so my friend looked up at her and just said hey just don't get old which is yeah and he'll probably hear me say this on on the show and i love you to death buddy but that that was also such an old man thing to say i sort of feel

like i find myself saying that to young people now yeah it's like on a semi-regular basis like i'll say something like if i have any recommendations it's just don't get older

yeah and she but she said oh yeah i know i just turned 30 and then i just crawled under the table and wept for a little bit so anyway what were you saying though sorry i got you off off track here so uh the innocence project we lost so barry sheck is well i think barry sheck was actually

one of oj's attorneys too which you know we have attorneys in the audience and so i mean i think the idea of having a having a proper and prepared defense as part of the u.s legal system in other everyone no matter how heinous the crime they're um accused of everyone deserves uh a competent defense that's how the system works and yet sometimes you're like well you had to oj you

had to defend oj but barry was defending him in the um trading cards and collectibles and he lost

badly i got nine years off of that the longest the longest bid ever for somebody who shouldered in a hotel room door that was a kidnapping charge by the way oh my god that's what they got him on dark but anyway um barry sheck was he was one of the he's part of the dream team but he also was very well known and i guess is well known for being part of the innocence project and the innocence project is obviously something that has extremely good pr around it it's this group that goes in and and helps get incarcerated people freed who did not commit the crimes they're accused of and so that right there is like you know you're already you're already on third base with me and certainly with jen that you're working to exonerate innocent people but he came in and her i don't even remember this happening but her memory of it is he would do the interview we're talking talking talking and then the second we went to commercial so like we'll be back with more on russ and burbank and then he just picked up his like wall street journal and new york times reddit no eye contact with anyone particularly i think including jen which irked her immensely so i don't have an answer to your question about somebody quote-unquote famous who's on my list now because of a personal interaction yeah but i but i i know someone who has that and it turns

out it's barry sheck i just and now i'm just redoing what i did at the beginning of the show which is very not interesting me not being able to recall something but there is a very specific emotion a feeling that one has when you go to revisit a certain kind of art or something that you previously loved but you can't anymore because you have some sort of personal connection to it for me i feel like it's usually rooted in tbtl embarrassment in a certain way yes exactly well

it's me sort of somebody who you knew from afar and then met and were really let down

i did stop listening to tbtl when i started working on it i guess i ruined tbtl for myself So the only thing I could do was stick with it for 12 years or whatever it's been. So, yeah, I feel I, you know, Fugazi might be a little bit like that with me because I told you and it's now now it's so long ago. And I feel like as a different person that it's it's it doesn't weigh me down as much, although I don't listen to Fugazi all that much anymore anyway, just because.

Is there bad stuff around that band and behaviors or something?

It's bad stuff of my behavior. It was just a silly thing. I mean, I told you the story forever ago. There's no reason why.

Oh, Ian McKay? Were you in a room with him somewhere?

Well, sort of. I was in the opposite of a room. I was outside with Guy. I can't remember Guy's life. name but he's like the guitarist and he writes usually like one song per record or something and I kind of I tend to like his stuff but I remember they played at Kent State literally on campus which was rare but it was part of some sort of a May 4th kind of memorial thing of course that's the day that the students were shot and so there was every year on May 4th there's some sort of remembrance but also there's a kind of I don't know some sort of a you know it'd be wrong to call it a festival but for some reason fugazi came to play on campus on may 4th one year and then and it was a great show and then afterwards me and some friends are just hanging out at some picnic tables on the you know right outside like in the little kind of student union area uh and and then gee just comes out i think maybe he and ian both come out but then gee just sort of sits down at the table with us and is asking like where can i get a vegan meal around here like really right on brand and actually my friend was there and she's vegan so I actually had some help but I just I hate I don't know why I brought this up because I still don't like telling it I know I was just like a kid but like somebody gives them something to sign I can't remember the details or I don't want to remember the details honestly but like somebody gave him something to sign or something and then I think I signed it too or something like I just didn't I didn't want to oh that's not so bad it was just I did uh yeah I mean yeah I mean I didn't I just feel like I maybe I was doing this thing of I wanting to not seem super impressed by somebody who I was super impressed by, you know, like now, like I, I'm not somebody who wants to be around fame or even grand talent. Like I know you got to meet some Beatles at one point. And yet you work with me every day. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you've just really, maybe you've really grounded me. Keep it cool. All these years. I'm still waiting, still hoping someday you give me your number,

signing everything that people ask me to sign after.

I'd really like to text you sometime, but I've just got to get that. got to get them digits um but anyway yeah i just send most that through my people but they'll

definitely pass the word on to me but anyway yeah so i just i do remember there's a time that's not nearly as bad as i was i don't know what i was expecting you to say i was generally acting kind

of aloof and i just it just reminds me of one of those times where i i was just acting i didn't know how to act and so i acted in a way that i found to be deeply deeply embarrassing in hindsight and i think it made it hard for me to listen to fugazi for a while after that because i now had this personal connection which made me uncomfortable i think that there is if you

are doing the kind of work where occasionally you are going to cross paths with people who are either well known or they're just people who you kind of respect their work i feel like there's a bit of an arc because for me it's i definitely was very like wanted to neg if i met a famous person when i was younger or somebody who i really liked my knee jerk was to really assert to them that we're on the same level that's what I was doing yeah I remember running into Jeff Tweedy after a show so I'm sure I've told the story before but Jeff Tweedy from Wilco we went to see Wilco play there used to be these shows in Seattle called summer nights at the pier which was actually so great um and so like one of those piers down on the Seattle waterfront kind of like where there's all that you know where they took down the viaduct now and it's all that kind of beautiful waterfront property and everything um there i was there with i don't know some months ago becca and i were on a little jog going down past the art park and i said oh my god there used to be they used to have concerts on this pier and wilco played and it was i think it might have been when yankee hotel foxtrot cheese louise so it was a long time ago it may have also been around the same era of the i am trying to break your heart documentary yeah it

was peak wilco obsession for me right yeah and that's i had never gotten to wilco anywhere near like you did but for me that particular era i think for a lot of people too that's kind of their would you say that that's sort of what is widely regarded or at least yes i think that was kind of

because they you know that film was uh i think amongst a certain group of of film goers it was kind of a sensation yeah it was kind of the story of them getting dropped by their label but then actually making a record that was wildly successful and then there's a wildly successful kind of concert or you know music doc about it and so i don't know how we got this memo but we heard that they were going to maybe wilco was maybe going to be at the tractor tavern in ballard after the show because there was somebody playing at the tractor and for those that don't know the tractor is this i love the tractor so much i mean i haven't been there in 10 years but but back in the day it's a real fave of mine it's just this great little bar it's kind of quasi honky tonk in ballard and they have a lot of shows a lot of kind of americana roots you know shows that come through it's just a really good spot i would love actually for us

to play the tractor sometime that'd be great i can play tambourine or wait do you mean do a podcast a full musical a full music who podcast to the musical um yeah merrily we drone along the tbtl podcast musical it's definitely the type of place that you would imagine jeff tweede just hanging

out if he's not because it'd be somebody playing there who wasn't as famous as jeff tweede but who jeff tweede really liked yes exactly and so we heard that he was gonna they were gonna be over he was gonna be over there and we went so we all went over as a group this was also i mean just imagine being like in your 20s when you did stuff like that i went to a full-on concert andrew and then went somewhere else because there was a rumor someone from the concert might be going to that

other place right it's all you didn't just go home and watch cnn until bedtime i probably had to get

up at three in the morning to go produce the kirby wilbur show on kvi at this point i mean it was but so i this i want to just really really manage expectations here i want to level set I actually don't think level setting and manage exercise is the same thing level setting. I think is saying here's what we're gonna try to accomplish with this And I think managing expectations is saying here's what we're not gonna accomplish with this What we're not gonna accomplish with this is a great end to this story But on the subject of just not wanting to let on to famous people or people that you admire that you admire them We go to the the tractor we look around We don't see Jeff Tweedy or anyone and then we go we're just watching the show and then somehow I turned to my left And it's Jeff Tweedy is standing right there In this very small room And I'm like, I cannot believe this is happening to me right now And Instead of just saying to him Hey, I am like Such a Wilco fan or something I think he had made a reference on stage About Either In Sync Or he had made a comment about a boy band On stage at Summer Nights at the Pier He had something about One of those bands And when I turned to him instead of just saying what I should have said And what I was feeling Which was like hey man your music has just been Really really great in my life And it's just made my life so much better I think I said something like Yeah my kids are really into NSYNC too Or something and I started broing down About the fact I think it was something about how his kids Liked NSYNC more than like Wilco or something And so I just started I just jumped right I didn't say like hi I'm Luke I just started Talking to mid conversation about Something he had said probably had already forgotten about by the way on stage and you know what that's like Andrew like we say so much stuff during this show and we retain very little of it sometimes a listener will be like oh and when you said that thing and it's like it's whiffed out of our mind I jump in mid-conference I'll get text messages

sometimes it'll just be like all caps like cheese it exclamation point I don't I I have no idea like what or when you are listening to that that has anything to do with my life and sometimes I try to puzzle it out sometimes i ask and lots of times i just say indeed cheese it's indeed queen

so i just jumped in mid-conversation about like some boy band with him because i thought it was a connection point it's like i have a kid who also likes that music and you have kids that you've expressed kind of somewhat i guess you know ruefully that's the kind of music they go towards right now and so i thought like instead of just being like hey man i'm really a fan i wanted to connect with him on this level that was very kind of like even and like we're all in this together dealing with our children who like boy bands and it was loud in there and you know you're

trying to make small talk and allowed i was trying to make small talk that was a callback to something

that he i'm sure totally forgot he even said and it's it's it's loud so it's loud small talk i'm yelling over the band it's just like it was not at all my finest hour but it was i guess the reason I bring it up is because I definitely had that impulse early in my career I won't rehash the story I've told a billion times but of course I also was kind of unintentionally very rude to Ethan Hawke the actor when I saw him and told him about a puppet show I had seen based on him that was clearly just a roast of him but like so but my point is that there's this arc where so that's how I was for a long time and then at some point and because with my TV show job I guess in my live wire job, I do have occasion to sometimes talk to people who are either pretty well known or who I'm a big admirer of their work. And you know what I say to them now, Andrew, when I see them, when I meet them, I just say, I'm a really big fan of your work. Like it's like I had to shed took me, it's taken me like 25 years to go through the stages of dealing with someone who who's famous or whose work I admire. Now, if they are famous and I don't admire their work, I do not say

I really admire your work. And if they're all standing in a room together and you're meeting them all at the same time it can get a little bit awkward jeff and that's happened i'm a big fan of your work sarah nice to meet you i will sometimes big fan of your work i will sometimes andrew when

i'm doing live wire and i'm coming down from i kind of get changed up in this little kind of green green room although it doesn't have a door has no door on the room and there's always a moment where i'm like a turtle out of their shell i'm in between my street clothes and i haven't put my suit on yet it's like shirt is off and other shirt hasn't gone

on yet and i'm like please god nobody walk by here really so it is a room it's not a green area it's a green room but it doesn't have a door it's a greenish area with point and they expect people

to change their clothes in there well they're okay in fairness because i love this place the Alberta Rose Theater they're my favorite people there is a little kind of screen that's kind of fabric screen that's like clothes pinned up in the back that you could kind of stand behind yeah but it's also like a little bit of a hassle so point is I wanted to make sure everyone knows I don't have some like beautiful green room that I that I relax in and and you know people I don't know come cater to me or something it's just a room at a theater that's where I'm hanging out kind of trying to figure out what I'm going to say that night all that is to say when I'm on my way down sometimes from that room I have to go down I usually go outside the theater and go around to the main green room because I don't want to walk into the theater when all the crowd is already there and they're just kind of waiting around because I want the first time they see me to be when I come out from the side stage I feel like there's something a little demystifying when the host just saunters down the aisle like unless you really make a thing of it you know yeah and that actually wouldn't be the worst idea but I've I usually go out I sort of exit the building and and then I go around to the green room, and sometimes as I'm getting to the green room, which is where all the guests are, I will rehearse in my mind what I'm gonna say to each guest about the project that is affirming to them without me selling out my actual feelings on it. So, you know, I really endeavor to try to have an interesting conversation with everyone we have on that show. But of course, there's a range of my experience with the books that are written, with the films that are made. I like some of them just personally more than others. doesn't mean that we can't have a great conversation but i'm i i really have some problem going like to somebody i just i loved this book when i didn't love this book so i'll have to i'll have to practice some other little thing to say because you're right there will be a couch andrew and there's three people sitting there two of them are authors one of them is a bag of grain i've got to get them across a river it's interesting yeah one of the two authors can't be in the boat at the same time but the grain can't be in the boat with one of the authors One of the authors is a scorpion, I think, although I'm not sure why. So I will sometimes just try to think of something I can say that sounds, it's compliment adjacent. But if you were to really break it down, you would notice that what I wasn't saying was this is an excellently done book.

Great binding. I mean, I have never seen such nice binding in a book before. And the type, the font for days. How did you settle on this kerning?

the punctuation the periods that indicate a sentence is ending or a comma it's not ending

how did you do it how do you make take me into the process um i have a question for you i want to go back to the um it's related to all this but back specifically to the jeff tweedy example and i'm not just i'm not just doing this because i don't want to hear you talk about rice i know

it seems like i'm just stalling how dare you even say that that rice was freaking bomb dude actually

we should talk about the rice so i can name the show minutia rice instead of minute rice that just came to me um i was going to ask you if you and i might have even asked you this at the time but of course jeff tweede is one of the people that you interviewed certainly for live wire

during I think yeah during the pandemic it's sort of an asterisk yeah it's a bit of an asterisk because um you know it was not we weren't all in the same room but he was but I did interview him

for live wire yes is that the only kind of significant interaction you've had with him

since this time in your 20s is is that like no I'm well I don't let me think I've talked to him now at a number of festivals because I've talked to him at Sasquatch side stage pretty extensively Because I had kind of weaseled these passes Or whatever, you know, to the side of the stage And Wilco was playing that year So I think I talked to him I think I talked to him kind of a lot Literally standing on the side stage of another band Playing, we just happened to be I don't know if this counts or not But we were standing next to each other For like A good two hours And chatting, and I think, Andrew I might have said to him in those two hours Hey, one time you were playing Summer Nights at the pier

See, that kind of get what I was going to ask you was let's just focus on the live wire example now. But were you conscious of this being an opportunity where you could sort of wash that other awkward memory out of your brain? It doesn't sound like your your awkward interaction with him that you have some regret over ever led you to stop listening to Wilco.

At least that's not what I'm picking up. It made me listen harder for secret messages that he was sending. to you about in sync um but uh i wasn't sure if like you sort of felt even if even if that awkward memory didn't dog you quite as much as say the fugazi memory dogged me or whatever that was fugazi what you did no it was it was real and it was real awkward um i i wonder if you were if you're sort of glad that like you now have a much better a much better kind of reset hundred percent that not that he's probably no offense here not that he's probably spending a lot of time considering you one way or the other you know like his his memory and again i'm not saying this to but you know goodness knows what his memory of that particular zoom is you know he might i mean if a specific memory if a specific part of that conversation came up he might recall it but i'm also sure that he does so many media things and during that time so many media things on zoom i don't think that he he's remembering and connecting the dots of meeting you all these times having said that you know who he is and you know who you are and you live with yourself and i'm just kind of wondering if that was one of the many benefits of being able to do like kind of a long form interview with him that you just sort of got to reset things and maybe kind of wash away some of

the cringe yes that is exactly what happened and i think also just i've been fortunate that in because of my job stuff i've now had a pretty a decent number of opportunities to talk to people who are fairly well known and i've it's gone a lot better than that i mean just in terms of my level of comfort interacting with them like i feel like i've like that was me in high school trying to hit a curveball and now i feel like i've gotten you know i'm no cal raleigh and true i'm not walking off grand slams you know like a carl weathers par excellence but i just i i think I probably also don't cringe too hard at it because I feel like okay I kind of have learned how to do that a little better and I've had enough chances I've had enough reps at doing it a little better that that's moved that that's become like oh well that was funny when like I would my knees were knocking because I was talking to Jeff Tweedy at the tractor yeah like but if I wouldn't if I just my if my job life would have taken a different turn a different direction and I did something outside of this it probably would loom a little larger because I probably wouldn't have had a chance to talk to him or other people like him and I probably would have been like man I really I got my cup of coffee at the big time Can you tell I got a lot of baseball on the brain Yeah no kidding No but you're right I think that that has washed that embarrassment Out of my mouth which means There's obviously only one way to fix this For you Road trip to Gies

Get him to the Gazi Will be the name of the movie As we However many years

Get him to the Gies To get him to the geese. I have a slight problem with American people who go with the French pronunciation of their name, Guy.

I mean, would it make you feel differently, though, if his parents are French or something? Because I really don't know the background of him.

And honestly, anyone can say their name however they want. I understand that that issue is more mine than geese. But, like, there's something about—I think because also I just grew up—I knew a couple people named Guy, or I knew Guy Smiley was a thing. Sure. And then the first time I heard like Guy Lombardo and his flying Canadians, I was like, what? Really?

It's actually Guy Lombardo?

That's what I heard in some like late night commercial was maybe and maybe that person who was, you know, doing maybe that was just a one off. But you'd always hear it as Guy Lombardo.

I feel like it, although I don't really even I wouldn't have even been able to tell you who Guy Lombardo is.

Andrew, who says we're old, litigating the pronunciation of Guy Lombardo and his flying Canadians?

Nobody else is doing it. That's all that's important. That is true. We are carving out.

There's no one else alive who remembers Guy Lombardo and his flying Canadians.

Here, I'll young it up in here for you a little bit. What did I do on Saturday night but go through this big record pile that Genevieve sort of accidentally obtained? Actually, maybe more on that later.

That sounds like code for Stoll.

Yeah, I don't know. She said there was a truck.

Your Honor, I accidentally obtained these unmarked bills from the bank, which they placed in a bag.

I'm trying to figure out a way to talk around it. I'll just try to summarize this as quickly as possible, although I kind of wanted to bring this up in another context later. But Genevieve, she came into my office a couple of weeks ago, I think, and said, hey, I'm thinking about getting this kind of piece of furniture that I would have to restore. but it's basically this old chest like kind of a I can never remember the word for it not a dresser but like one like what do you call a dresser that you put in the living room like a you know like a like a credenza a credenza that's exactly it a credenza or a hutch except there's one of those old school kind that has a um record player built oh yeah I saw a picture she sent one she sent a oh of course you and your little rodent leaves that little triangle that I'm excluded from

um okay so you know all about this yeah i've seen it so it's yeah and she came in she said hey this thing is on you know this thing is up for auction she's on a lot of these kind of internet auction sites and i was like honestly i'm not super into it i mean i know you can swap out the hardware and stuff but it's not it's pretty far away from being usable for us it'd be a huge project and also i'm not hugely in love with even when it's fixed up it would be okay but it doesn't seem to kind of match the other stuff we kind of got going on in this in this area and she's like well i can i can fix it up and i can we can make it like record storage and i'll pull out all the electronics um and i was like i don't know not for me and she said okay that's fine and then she leaves and then she comes back later and says okay i bid one dollar on it just one dollar and i'm sure somebody else will take it i'm like okay whatever i don't even think i said anything like whatever and then um a day later she comes in my office and says so that thing i bid one dollar on i won and i'm like oh god okay so now we're gonna have this thing living in the garage for a while but um she said But if nothing else, it comes with a bunch of records in there. I'm like, all right, whatever. So she goes somewhere and she picks up this piece of furniture with the record player in there. And the first thing she did was pull out all the records. So they've been just sitting in kind of a pile on the floor. The ironic thing here is, and I'm not saying this to, I think she feels a little chagrined that she went through with all of this because now she doesn't want to restore it either. Oh, no, really? Yeah, I don't want to make her feel bad about it. It is what it is. But I can relate, believe me. Yeah. And I appreciate that she even has the drive to even take on a project like that or the idea. I don't even try and then quit on projects like that.

Right. So you skip right to failing.

I skip right to just like putting my baseball game on the easiest level and just getting Homer after Homer. It's just what I've been doing lately. But anyway, so I have all these records. The irony is and I did have to tease her a little bit about this. now we have because my issue was i have been buying so many records that i don't have a place to store them she bought this thing as a possible future storage situation now what we've done is doubled the number of records we have and have less space for them than ever because now i need to find a place to put these probably a lot of them will go back to goodwill in fact maybe it would even be a maybe a little bit of a segment on tbt i can go through some of them are hyper local including some like um chorus or band recordings on vinyl of like garfield high or some some local high school or something i'll go maybe i'll go through home of quincy jones and oh right leave kenny g oh kenny g is definitely uh south seattle yeah garfield yeah he was either garfield or maybe franklin guy that would make sense um but i so what i find myself listening to is like like most of them are exactly what you see when you go to a yard sale like there are no great gems in there there's a couple that i'm curious about that i need to do more research on there's like a there's there is like one Beatles 45 and a Doors 45 which I'll just you know kind of keep but there's just like so much like movie music like I have like now I have like the proud owner of three or four Henry Mancini records I think so I'm like I'm listening to like literally Henry Mancini and the the blue trumpet of somebody yeah there was no Pink Floyd or there was no Pink Panther or Pink Floyd there's no Pink Panther in any of the Mancini records so anyway I just listen to a lot of old

I love the idea of a Pink Floyd Pink Panther like kind of shared universe where you have like the Pink Panther trying to sneak in to steal another brick from the wall it's a collision of those universes hey Pinky

leave those bricks alone here I'm gonna play something for you while we're here anyway if you don't mind sorry I've really taken this over but we're gonna get to Rice in a second one of my favorite things in in this little pile of records were not just 45 but the really floppy kind of 45s that literally used to come in magazines as an audio advertisement are you familiar with these i won't play this

whole thing would yeah they were they and they would be a square but then yes sometimes the record you just play it as a square my memory this could be a faulty memory but what sometimes was the record perforated so you could kind of yes pull it out of the square this one i'm going

to play for you here is perforated and but the square is maintained on it and I will not be pulling it apart and this is really funny because this the record that I have is so scratched up and old but they're trying to sell you like kind of new swing records and they're saying listen to this old scratchy sound and then listen to how it sounds now and the funny thing is is my record of this that I inherited is already super scratchy so it's so mockable but also it's pro I'm guessing that the enhanced sound is in stereo but what you're going to hear is a mono version of this but it's still i just love this shit right here

those jerrys didn't stand a chance against boys. Keeping it young over here. This is so good. This is the sound of the 30s. The sound of the swing era. Kind of scratchy after all these years. If only it sounded like this.

So good. All I hear is more reverb on that.

Our boars are coming home, and your victory garden won't be the only thing that's growing, ladies. The Aragon are one of the other great ballrooms. But try to recapture that excitement by digging out your old 78s, and you're in for a disappointment.

So they'll just go back and forth between this old scratchy one, and then they'll play another one that is enhanced. Oh, then it just skips for a while. This is very clever, actually. Yeah, what, you mean back in the day, sending this out? Yeah. Yeah, I love it. It's exciting.

So the record is representing the low quality and the high quality, at least, of the era. So you can digitize that? You loaded that in?

My record player's in the other room, but I run this aux cable, so it's always run through my board. Now, what I was just playing for you was a recording I made of this. I wasn't playing that from the record. But yeah, as I was listening to that, I'm like, I should roll on this. This is pretty dang cool. That's amazing.

I love that could even be an intro for our show. Now that we've established for people some context of what it is. Yeah, I love that stuff. I we we should move on to rice. Oh, yeah, I know. We're all waiting.

Listen, here's all I'm going to say about it.

I when I mentioned at the top of the show and I'm I'm in very and I'm inevitably trying to become a different person in my life and one of those things I'm trying to do is now that I have this little kitchen in my in my house kind of pretty functional and I've got all my little overpriced caraway pans and this that and the other I'm like trying to now get a little more into cooking and get a little more into eating foods that I kind of know the origin of as opposed to things that are super processed or frozen pizzas or you know whatever else i'm things i might pick up down in town to to sort of horft on as i'm driving home you know a burrito of some kind and not even get home with the food like that's i know that's not your move because you're like you don't eat in the car generally but i have a real problem because i do a lot of intermittent fasting with like there's a place called victorico's it's like a kind of taco place or of course my beloved taco time I'll get stuff from taco time from the drive-through to eat at home and I will eat all of it with one hand endangering myself and the other people on the road as I'm like you know like super distracted with this food and then I get home and I just have like fast food bag detritus in the car but you want to talk about an emotional

cratering yeah you know what I'm surprised now I haven't pulled this move in a while but there was a period I feel like I don't know maybe whatever there's a period where like on maybe a hungover Saturday or something I would like do a fast food run for me and Genevieve it's been a really long time since we did that maybe in our 20s or something but like that was kind of the one time I kind of would like just you know lean into the temptation of fast food but what I started doing during this time was knowing that I would have that urge because I was so hungry so I was buying special menu items as my drive home hors d'oeuvre you know as my as my appetizer like i'm thinking specifically it would usually be some sort of uh you know a chicken finger situation or chicken mcnugget situation or like something that i can like especially from wendy's or burger king like okay yeah i've got the burger and fries or whatever that i'm going to be the main course the main course but pop pop needs a treat and so pop pop's going to eat some chicken on the way

home I do that with taco time now I really want to go to talk with I'm a story is that I'm a new man Andrew who cooks food for him yeah like a big boy but like I'll with taco time what I'll do is I'll get a crisp bean burrito or I'll get a mini soft taco like from the kids menu and the idea is that's my that's that's my little something I'm gonna have on the way home but then I have some sort of medical condition where if if I'm not eating a lot during a given day i i don't have a tremendous amount of hunger i don't i'm not like oh gosh i it's it's two i haven't eaten i'm famished that's not really how my brain works but the second i ingest one calorie some switch flips it's like when you have to go to the bathroom real bad but your body knows we can't do this right now and then as you're getting closer and closer to your front door it's going all right we did our part yeah now it's time for this underwear to

do its part how does that how does that happen how does the but i mean i have such memories of like get on that one scientists and like the in you know around here if it's winter time or whatever like the feeling of it would maybe we can call them um coach drop moments like the time you're running into the house so quickly and you're just like ripping off your coat and throwing

it on the floor as you race towards the bathroom yeah and and you somehow usually the for me the experience is you're you're like driving and your stomach is like oh hey we need to something needs to happen and you're like oh gosh this is all right this is not very convenient and then your body just somehow kind of like puts you know your body puts it on pause it just knows but then it unpauses it once you got eyes on the physical building like if i've had apartments where it's like you get to the apartment building and it's like and then it's like you get in the elevator and it's like and then the worst of it is like you're looking down the hall and instead of seeing those two twins from the shining you just see your apartment door and like am i going to get the key in the door fast enough to get into the apartment to get my pants down anyway yeah um so all that is to say what sometimes when i start when once i pop i can't stop so i will sometimes eat all all of the food that i've ordered even if i got myself an appetizer but my point is i was in the costco and i was gonna buy i've been buying for a while now like rice that is just it's microwavable rice it's in a bag you rip the top you microwave it it's super duper easy and it's basically fine but like how does it come out how does it come out so does it come out pretty

consistently uh because i've never i've never tried that before is it pretty consistently like cooked through but not clumpy because rice is kind of a little bit difficult to get i i don't have a rice maker i just make it in a pot and somehow i'd luck out and i feel like my rice turns out pretty well but if it's if it can be finicky like you can underdo it or overdo it very easily

you know what it's i would i would um compare it to it's like instant mashed potatoes it sort of does the job but it's not as good as if you like sat down and used a ricer and made you know like my brother-in-law josh will make the mashed potatoes at thanksgiving and he does this thing called a ricer that like pre kind of slices and mashes them and they're like the fluffiest best mashed potatoes you've ever had in your life don't tell my mom that my mom who today by the way said a text to hawk squad said only three of you wished us happy anniversary yesterday what up with that wow were you one of the three well as i clarified on hawk squad i wished her a happy anniversary in person on sunday oh but still day of you gotta follow up your mom pipe and smoke it

get it how many years 46 wow congrats walton sue love it it's a good run it's a good run now some

people will note that i'm 48 that's right because i was two when they got married that was part of how i figured out that walt wasn't biologically my father like seriously i was looking at their wedding album and i noticed i was at the wedding and i thought that's how does that work i mean that's i'm not even kidding that is when i first had a sense that this guy who's my dad was not

biologically my dad and you're like immaculate conception happens all the time i've read about

it in the bible yeah so um anyway i i was i've been telling becca about this i'm going to start cooking and i'm going to learn that and so i told her i was like i think i want to learn how to make rice because that's a staple and it's something that's just a good skill to have it's not like you're right it's both kind of not hard but also hard to get it really right you know like applying water and heat to some rice is not is not super difficult but like getting it really down is is the thing and i so i said this to her and then i disappear down the aisle at costco and then i come back and i'm holding a flat of bags of instant rice and she and like she's so nice to me and so careful with my fragile fragile ego but she just she couldn't help but kind of laugh she goes she goes didn't you just say you're learning how to cook rice and now you just brought back like a lifetime supply of microwavable bags of rice and i was like yeah that's a good point okay okay all right it starts now i hear it now it starts now so i took it back and then i got a big bag of basmati rice uncooked but heavy too yeah don't you can't you imagine like a

slightly bigger version that you could curl up on like there's something so comforting

about a big bag of dry rice isn't there yeah or like a stack of them as you're as you're either living in the back of a chinese restaurant trying to get on your feet and that's your bed yeah or you're riding the rails yeah and you happen into a you know your other friend is sleeping on a hay bale and you're sleeping on some sacks of grain or rice or something so i get this bag of rice and um i mean again just to both level set and expectation manage the point of this

Thank you.

story is just i just made rice in the instant pot last night and it was really yummy and it's such a small thing it's like you know you obviously i was mildly hurt i told becca about this i was like hey i made rice it was really good she goes uh did you rinse it first and i was like was i supposed

to i always i i forgot that you're supposed to do that i never do that you don't rinse it oh okay you're supposed to but and i gotta say and like i'm being serious here like i don't brag about things like and this would be a pretty weird brag but somehow and i don't know how it is like i know Genevieve struggles making rice on the stove and we have like a kind of a I can't remember what it's called an instant foodie ninja thing or whatever and so I think she uses like the um

that's what I use I haven't we haven't I have an instant pot here that I used yesterday for this

whole thing so is it like a pressure cooker she uses the pressure cooking setting or something so I don't even know how to mess with that somehow like I just make it on the stove and I just like with a lot of patience kind of let it you know you let it you get it to a boil then you let it simmer for a long time then I just sort of alternate with the lid on lid off until it's the right consistency I also kind of line the pot with some butter just with some butter which always helps I suppose but anyway yeah so I was unfamiliar with I kind of this insta pot I wouldn't

even know where to begin doing it that way it's I mean that's that's why this story is so silly and I was somewhat tongue-in-cheek when I said look at Rachel Ray because literally what I did was I washed this rice just so you know I mean it sounds like your system is working but the idea behind washing it is that it can be a little starchy and if you get it washed so that the the runoff is clear you've kind of gotten rid of that starch can add to clumping potentially okay that's good and that's probably for people that aren't like it sounds like you're really babysitting this and really making it like if you're me and you're lazy and you want to just like put it in the instant pot hit the literally there's a button that says rice i hit the rice button and then it just goes to town it weighs the water i'm also kind of happy because i got this this instant pot I bought this instant pot like a couple of years ago because of course it was a big online thing and it was one of my again one of my rebranding attempts where I was like yeah what if I just start making kind of healthier food in this instant pot because I do love things that are crock potted I love you know who doesn't and I thought well maybe if I have this instant pot that everyone's talking about I'll like cook rice in there you can cook all kinds of stuff and I'll just become this person who has ingredients and I put them in a thing and then I apply heat And then I eat that. That could be who I am. Not the guy who's horfing down taco time with one hand driving on Calama River Road. You know, like that. And so did I do that? Absolutely not. But did I do that last night? Absolutely.

You would hide your old wrappings. You just use the Instapot to like hide your old like taco time favors and everything. Can I ask you a question about this? So this does not also do what an air fryer would do. So this is honestly, I'm just so dumb about it. No, but I also have an air fryer. Okay. Oh, you have a set?

That could got me the air fryer. Okay, okay. Because it's, you know, supposedly healthier. You can air fry things, and they taste real crispy and good, but you didn't submerge them in grease, I think, is the pitch on the air fryer.

I guess the thing we have is kind of like it's a bunch of things combined into one. I mean, it's not a lovely-looking device, right? Like, the reason I never wanted this was because I didn't want this on our kitchen counter, both for a space and also they're like the printers of the kitchen. I feel like there's such an eyesore. I mean, the convenience of having a printer in my office now, you and I used to have our printer wars because I never had a printer and you did. And it is convenient. But I just think that, like, printers are some of the ugliest things to just have, like, in your office. And I don't understand why they don't make them look better. And this Ninja Foodi thing just looks so stupid. But now we have a kind of basement kitchenette so I can keep it down there. And it doesn't offend the eye any more than any of its surroundings do.

We don't want you to have to cut that out. What's that? Oh, in the Bible it says, if your eye offendeth thee, pluck it out. So this is what I'm – I don't know if I set this little kitchen of mine up very well because, you know, I'm not an interior designer. I tried to follow this thing called, like, the triangle rule. Do you know about this when designing a kitchen? No. Because I built this kitchen. Me and my dad built this kitchen from literal scratch. It was a random room that had nothing in it, and we made it into a kitchen. And the triangle idea is that you want the things like the workstations to kind of be a triangle to each other for just like functionality. So like where the sink is versus the countertop that you're going to be prepping food on versus the stove versus the fridge. There are some kind of like basic geometric things that make a kitchen kind of work versus, you know, we've all been in a kitchen. Like, why is this here? Oh, yeah. You never want to reach. Like, that's not where you would put that. It makes no sense. So I was trying to avoid that since I was starting from scratch. what a lot of people do is they hire someone who knows what they're doing to like draw them up a plan i didn't have that kind of money so i just kind of winged it and i don't know if i got it right or not but one thing that i am happy about is i have this drawer this very big drawer

that's under the countertop that is my unitasker drawer yeah it's got the toaster the instant pot the um air fryer and my coffee grinder it's got all the stuff that i don't want to live on the

countertop and it's just right there it's an actual drawer is it a cupboard with it's a drawer okay do you have any of those we don't have anything like this but man i a boy could wish um the kind of cupboard where you open the cupboard but then like the you can like kind of pull out like not a drawer but whatever you can pull out the contents of the tray you have I have one of those

Andrew that actually what it does is it's utilizing dead space in the back corner so you got with a stove and then you have a countertop next to it which is a cabinet but the problem is you can't get to the deepest recesses of the cabinet because the side of that is being blocked by the side of the stove so what they make are these like it's almost a lazy susan but instead it just cantilevers out so it's these two trays that um that you can put stuff on and then you push it back in and then you cantilever so you you can store even though you can't really get to that back area so i don't give it up to the designers at ikea they're actually pretty clever with some of this stuff but all that is to say i felt the reason i felt good about this rice thing was because i actually used this stupid instant pot that i bought i actually made this rice from scratch it actually tasted really good it seemed healthier i had some lentils with it and then and then i had extra and then i put it in this i bought these pyrex um it's like pyrex snapware it's basically tupperware but it's glass because becca's on me about p fasts you know how there's like those forever chemicals and plastics that are in everything now including our tupperware and so she's like you got to go with the glass pyrex that's the way to do it so smart um it just felt like and it didn't hurt that the mariners won an exciting game it's just like it felt last night like some of these systems that i'm put that i've always been trying to institute in ways of being in the world that i can never quite achieve in a very minor way it's like some of those things some of those stars kind of aligned and it was kind of a it was a good feeling because i feel like i'm always i'm always doing i'm always trying to set up this version of myself and then falling short of that version of myself um and and every once in a while it's like it kind of works out the way that i was hoping it would and it's just like oh cool this is okay that this is what this is supposed to be about you make the rice you eat some of the rice with some lentils it's a pretty healthy meal for you the mariners win you put the leftovers into a food containment thing that's maybe not poisoning you with plastic you put that in the refrigerator you have some of it for lunch tomorrow this is how people operate this is normal people they're not driving back from the casino

inhaling taco time all the time i feel like the whole forever chemical thing was really just a missed pr opportunity for the industries behind it like you just you pitch it like oh this we found a forever home for our dog like this like a diamond is forever like exactly you're like these are my you go out to the garage like these are my chemicals but then you can turn over here like these are my forever chemicals like i sort of went to jared jared um so yeah forever chemicals doesn't sound like the worst there's one thing that i wanted to mention to you i don't know if i can if i can describe this properly but in that movie hitman um that oh i think i might watch that tonight by the way oh yeah it's on netflix now uh let me know what i missed um when i got up to use the restroom in the theater and I missed one part um but uh there's something you know I kind of described the plot of it the other day but essentially the character at first before he gets deeper into the plot is pretty much like um portrayed as a very unassuming uh college professor who leads like not what I would say a sad life although I think some people would kind of view it that way and I think the movie sort of does a does a pretty good job of trying to like portray him not not as pathetic but also to somebody looking at his life might look down on it he you know you know comes home from college from you know teaching at the college or whatever and he's got a couple of cats that he likes he's got glasses he's a little nerdy and he lives alone uh he's divorced but it's a nice tidy little apartment you know but there's a scene of him sitting at his kitchen table and he's eating his dinner or whatever but he's eating it directly out of those little gladware things that like the small little the type of thing that you would do food prep in right and or or i just put leftovers in you know uh when i'm done like i told you i roasted a chicken last week or something and so like i'll put all the leftovers in smaller and smaller and smaller containers as we continue to eat the leftovers until you're like eating what you know you have one of those small little let's say four inch by four inch little plastic containers and he's eating directly out of it like sitting at a table you know um in his little kitchen And he's literally saying in the voiceover right there, just kind of like, you know, maybe my life isn't for everybody, but I, you know.

it's a simple life and i and i like my life but for me like that little touch of him eating out of the container instead of putting it on a plate just really it was something because first of all i'm very familiar with that move and you also get the impression he's eating healthy right there's probably somebody who plans his meals out but there was just something about him eating directly out of the plastic that just told you everything you needed to know about what the filmmakers were

going for in that scene well i um that's why my body is so much better than glenn powell's andrew because I don't have all those PFASs in my body. Oh, my God.

That guy, I just...

That guy is on a media blitz right now. It's crazy. Have you read the...

Did you read the... I haven't read the New York Times profile.

No, I read the headline, which was, Glenn Powell is willing to play Hollywood's game or something to that effect.

Oh, I didn't remember that. Oh, in the Times, it was like...

It was like Glenn... I think it was something to the effect of, like, Glenn Powell is ready to be a Hollywood movie star and kind of, like, he has no problem with, like, doing it on Hollywood's terms. And I was like, boy, you were not wrong Because now I keep seeing him on these TikToks He's on every, we could probably get him on TBTL right now, like the Amount of media that he's doing to promote This movie and how game he is I see him doing these borderline cameos Where he's like on some smallish Seeming podcast where he's like shouting Out someone's, you know, cousin who's having a Bar Mitzvah or whatever, like he's just In full, it's actually very charming because He's not An aloof person yet, it would appear Even though he's probably going to become really famous and a big movie star someday. But he's in that mode where he's really singing for his supper. It's kind of interesting

to watch. He is as my grandma might say, a looker. I'll tell you that much right now.

We was hoping for some razzle dazzle. Razzle dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle dazzle. On your mark.

On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody razzle dazzle.

All right, let's thank some dazzling donors who are supporting the show with a dazzling donation of dough. We could not do this without the generous support of folks like Ian Kohler of Seattle, Washington. Ian says, Kohler, like the toilets, no relation. You don't come from the toilet fortune, Ian?

Kohler makes nice stuff. Any Kohler stuff in that new kitchen of yours, Luke?

I don't think so. One of the toilets might be a Kohler. I just buy whichever toilet says it can flush the most pool like billiard balls have you been in the toilet you put a new toilet in your basement right?

no I removed the toilet and then resealed it and put it back I probably should though

if you've been in the toilet section of a home improvement store you'll notice that all of the toilets now have these signs that show you they're very vivid too demonstrating how many billiard balls you could flush down this toilet if you needed to. And you're just like, could you show me the bowling ball options? Yes, please. I have a condition. Ian says, is it that time already? And I'm late again. That sounds about right. It's been another incredible year. My lovely 11, Steph, said yes when I asked her to marry me. Nice. Hey, Mazel Tov. And we'll be getting married in August of this year. She is the brightest part of my life And I'm very lucky that I found her Aww Say yes to the Steph That's right Actually I think it's say yes to the toilet Wait that's what I do Say yes to the Ian

Can we name the show Colder Than Ice I think I would do that

Life has gotten better every year I've been a dazzling donor Which may or may not be a coincidence It's not a coincidence Ian I'm here to tell you there is a causal relationship Between supporting TBTL and having a good life. TBTL has been a constant companion over the last 11 years, and I'm very appreciative of Andrew, Luke, and John for keeping this pod cart rolling. While this is no longer applicable to Too Beautiful to Biz, I still encourage the TENS to check their company's non-profit donation matching policy. You can easily double your impact to your favorite charity with almost no effort at all. Once again, thanks for all you guys do. I look forward to checking in next year, maybe on time for once. Yeah, that's a great point, Ian. We are not anymore a 501c3. Even though that was my – I said, let's just tell Uncle Sam that we're a not-for-profit.

I was willing to change my name to 501c3 and be like, are you a 501c3? Technically, I am.

Yeah, right? But John talked to some legal eagles, and they said that's probably a bad idea. So here we are, a for-profit business, minimal profit.

They were actually birds, though, too, so I didn't really take their –

But, but it's a good point, which is if you work for a big, a big outfit, they very well may have a matching program for your donations to worthy charitable institutions. And like, why not? Why not double your money?

Also, okay, so we were.

We are not a non-prof, so that kind of matching thing doesn't apply to us.

Let me clarify. Just because we don't make any profit doesn't mean we're a non-profit. It just means we're a business that's hanging in there.

We're also a minimal profit. But let's say that you're thinking, I want to support TBTL, maybe even at the dazzling donor level. And then you're like, boy, it would be really nice if I could get my workplace in on this, too. But the boys aren't working in a non-profit anymore, can't get those matching dollars. there's nothing preventing you from going into work and maybe just saying to your boss or your colleagues hey check out this podcast I really think you'd enjoy it and also they rely on support of listeners like you and and the people around you might say but we're not listeners yet and you say start with the support start by supporting them and then you will become a listener because you've already invested in it like there's nothing stopping you from making that argument

and be like janice i bought your kids cookies yes and wrapping paper for another year yes how about a little reciprocity i like my charity is this weird podcast your charity is your kids no one

asked you to have could we do something like that could we create like those sign up sheets where people take in the break room yes i feel like that would be and you know you get maybe some TBTL swag or

then we have the listeners who are mad because they have to go door to door collecting for TBTL but then some listeners' dads just go into Boeing that was the thing that made me flipping furious when I was selling pepperoni sticks as a kid for Bagley Elementary School I was beating the bricks man

you were selling pepperoni sticks? That's funny that was never on our list of things

selling slash consuming

was it Oberto? Was it the local Oberto?

No, which would have made a lot of sense right? The cobbler children go without shoes it was some national you know brand but they were really long oh fun pepperoni sticks yeah thin and really long yeah and they would you it'd be like a long plastic bag with a drawstring at the top and it'd have like i'm gonna say 20 of these pepperoni sticks and they sold for exactly one dollar a piece and you were supposed to go around selling them there would be the people the people who always won this like sold the most and therefore got the scooter with a handbrake um their parents worked at like boeing and would just like bring in three four five bags place them in the break room and it's like hey if you grab a pepperoni stick throw a dollar in i didn't have that kind of system going for me uh because walt pretty much worked by himself at signworks so i would go out selling these i would go door or knocking would you like to buy a pepperoni stick the problem was this stirred up a powerful hunger andrew and so sometimes i would dip into the profits of course i'd be like i'm three miles from home um uh i'm i'm i'm starving i'm just gonna have one i also by the way loved pepperoni sticks at the time i'm just gonna have a pepperoni stick to um you know get the get the calories to make my way home and then i'd be like that went down really fast maybe one more pepperoni stick just to double check if I like them this much and next thing you know I'd eaten like five dollars worth of pepperoni sticks and I'd sold five dollars worth and eaten five dollars worth and I don't know how I made up the difference I'm sure some kind of shady accounting yeah you know a couple

of things about this all of the things that I had to sell and again I think I was the beneficiary of my dad taking probably sign up sheets into work or whatever and also him being the boss probably didn't hurt either um but and i can't remember what types of things i'm guessing like kind of cookies and i don't know those chocolate bars did you do world's finest yeah i think we maybe did chocolate bars but the thing is for us the product was not up front that's what's interesting about this that you sign up and you say yeah when the order comes in i'll sign up for this many boxes of these cookies or whatever and then you kind of you make your donation and then you forget about it and then one day you know your co-worker comes in and says okay here i've made good on the promises here are the boxes of cookies or chocolate bars or whatever it is you ordered it's interesting that in this case they gave you the product up front and also that it's a meat product like that seems interesting to me like you got this sweaty boy no offense luke you got this sweaty boy showing up you know at your front door and like holding out like cute and sweaty but cute which is what you put in your profile i believe um you know just sort of hand you know gripping well becca swiped right on it gripping a pepperoni stick an extra long pepper like waving they were individually sealed still though there's just something kind of odd about that i'd also say that these extra long pepperoni sticks at the workplace that sounds like a recipe

for shenanigans well i mean whatever shenanigans went down at these mythical places where parents were just selling huge amounts of products.

for their kids it got rectified you mean if somebody came in and just like nicked one maybe the parents you know maybe Kenny and Isla Higgins's dad you know just made the thing right you know

maybe he just covered the five or ten dollars I mean shenanigans like physical comedy shenanigans got these really long phallic well I wasn't even going there necessarily but sure phallic gestures, but also just like they sound like little whips. I feel like you get your little... I mean, how many people are having sword fights in the lunchroom with these pepperoni sticks? I feel like it's not appropriate.

Have you ever been to a business?

I've been to some very fun businesses. I think you're thinking of Chuck E. Cheese. Hey, I've read my fair share of Dilbert, Luke. I think I know what goes out of it. Are you thinking of Charles Entertainment Cheese? I think I know what goes out of it.

The only thing that put Me off of these finally was when I read The ingredients and the like number three Ingredient was beef heart And now listen I love it in a band sure

Actually I don't love it in a thing I'm eating I don't think you would love it in a band I think that would be the opposite of what you're saying

I don't think I'm a Addie was trying to get me into some sort of Captain Beef Heart Situation lately because she's gone so through The looking glass on hip music That now like she knows every single kind of hip music And she's gone all the way through to like You know captain beef heart levels of like you know of like next level ironic music consumption that's

not ironic or whatever but i have i have some doubles and i'm not even joking of these uh henry mancini records if she wants me to toss any her way oh she would be down for that i bet

so the when i read that in the ingredients i was kind of turned off and i think that helped me stop eating the profits but that's a long-winded way of saying thank you ian yes for the support We couldn't do this without you. Maestro?

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

We've also got to thank Tiffany Heiner of Campbell, California. Heine liked the 57 sauce minus the Z. Mm-hmm.

Do you go in for the 57 sauce? I don't, that's not a staple that we keep in our fridge.

We could only afford Heine's 56 when I was a kid.

Mm-hmm. I do, on the rare occasion, it's like a, I guess that's like a steak sauce, huh? Maybe we do have some hidden up.

A1 is the steak sauce.

Oh, yeah. Well, what is 50? That's a great question.

I think when I saw that, I thought it was a ketchup. But you're right.

What is a Heinz? No, I think it might be close to a steak sauce, too. I think it might be in the same family as A1. Yeah, you know what? You're right.

I'm looking at it. I think you're absolutely right. A1 might be a totally different product.

Just a different brand of a similar product, I think.

Yeah, I bet you A1 and Heinz 57 are pretty similar in the flavor department, would you guess?

That's what I'm guessing, which is a pretty Worcestershire – you got me to say it. Right. Which is a pretty heavy Worcestershire flavor, right?

Now I'm – let's see. On the – why is it Heinz 57? Let's see. Because I guess they also – I think they also have – there's a 57 maybe on the ketchup bottle as well, but it's not called Heinz 57. Yes, yes. That is true because that was their brand. So the Heinz 57 is its own thing, like an A1 sauce. And then there's also, let's see, what does the Heinz 57 mean? Surprisingly enough, Heinz didn't start out with ketchup at first. If only I had done an entire television story about ketchup, Andrew, you'd think I would know this. Based on the bottle's label stating 57 varieties, you think the company grew to make and sell 57 products. But as it turns out, Heinz was producing over 60 different products, including ketchup, by the time the number 57 slogan launched. God, what is this, TBTL? Get to the point, Internet. it um inspired by an advertisement he saw promoting 21 styles of shoes heinz knew he needed a slogan with the same intrigue so he chose his lucky number five along with his wife's favorite number seven and he married the two he combined the two numbers to form 57 i knew i liked this guy

i'm big on my lucky numbers i always thought 57 and now this was the ingredients right no i always Thought it was the number of products that Heinz I thought it was like Baskin Robbins 31 or whatever yeah I always Thought it was like oh and then 57 Might have been the 57th recipe they came Up with or something

No it's it's He's me playing roulette going well 14 was my basketball number And 35 is in between 14 and 7 which is my baseball number So we got to cover that and then 7 because It's over on the side that's just An outlier I'm an

excellent driver. Anyway, I knew I had a lot in common. Hey, Luke, he, he has a sauced him. Sorry. Go ahead. Let's read the, go ahead. Nobody has to acknowledge that. That was

Tiffany says friendos. Since I started listening in 2012, I've moved back to the U S after 20 plus years. just ahead of the 2016 election good timing tiff uh went through the worst kind of separation and experienced the indescribable loss of my dearest friend oh i'm sorry yeah that's a that's a lot yeah to process all at once at once in 2023 i made the hard decision to go to an intensive outpatient program to get my mental health and relationship to alcohol back on track good for you tiffany um uh through this all the tens were there with me quick with advice comfort and encouragement and cards i'm incredibly grateful for you all mental health is critical but incredibly personal what works wonders for one person will make another scream inside i encourage all tens to seek something that works for you uh to let just a little bit of the air out of your overfilled mental balloon many eaps sponsor therapy sessions what do you think an eap is i don't know I'm going to look that up. Online coaching or access to apps like Calm. YouTube is a rich resource for meditation and affirmations. Please take care of you. What you do is so important. Yeah. It's a very, very good reminder.

It's an employee assistance program. So it's probably something that is based, I'm guessing, in your...

So here's the new plan. When you march into your boss's office, before you ask them to donate money to TPTL, Ask them if they have a matching plan For various mental health services And things that might be helpful

And you're sure in that order though? I think that's I'll get back to you tomorrow

But my gut, first thought, best thought Is the mental health of the listeners And then And then the donating Although I do like the idea of a picture of us on a jar And it's like one of those jars that just has a slot You can only put money in Screwed on real tight so you can't get it off Just sitting by the non-dairy creamer

You know what? I'll put some Oberto. I'll put some Slim Jims next to it if that's going to help get people to donate.

Tiffany, thank you for supporting the show, and I'm really, really glad to hear that it sounds like you're doing better right now. And I'm really sorry that you went through all of that and have been going through that because that's a lot for anybody to deal with. So we love you, and we appreciate you, and we're so glad to be here for you, and we're glad that you're here for us. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. I believe we're over the river today, my friend.

How far into this are we? Oh, my goodness.

73-ish minutes or so. I'll take some of the blame for that. I'm going to do one of these really quickly. I don't even want any follow-up questions on this, Andrew.

So when you say follow-up question, do you mean you're going to ask a question, And then I'm going to follow up with a question or like what are the parameters on what?

The parameters are zip it.

So when you say zip, you mean like a zipper, like on my jacket or more like on my pants? I'm just confused.

There's just been this story that's been pretty big here in the sort of greater Oregon area because it is a little bit wild of a rodeo in Sisters, Oregon, which is kind of down on the way to Bend, Oregon. I don't know why that's relevant information, but, um, a bull named Party Bus got loose and, um, and, and injured a few people, which is, which is upsetting. And in fact, I've seen the video and, um, unfortunately, like it's one thing if somebody who's riding the bull gets injured, it's like, well, they were kind of in on this. It's like, this person was randomly just walking near like the snack bar and got flipped over by the bull is okay. by the way everyone is fine which is which is a relief but um the headline that i saw in the seattle times today is party is over for party bus rodeo bull who jumped the fence in oregon and i was so bummed because i was like they're putting this thing down oh they are no they're not oh okay but don't you think doesn't that sound like doesn't that headline make you think the party is over for party bus the rodeo bull who jumped the fence in oregon i'll be honest with

I saw this headline today. I did not click on it. I'm clicking on it now for the first time, but I saw it in the Seattle Times. And no, I didn't make that connection.

What would party over mean to you as it relates to this story? Like what party do you think is now over for the bull?

I will be honest with you. I didn't consider it that much. I do remember seeing that headline like twice today because I was looking for some other stories or something. Never clicked on it. But for me, like to the degree that I considered it, just sort of like in the back of my head in that way that you're not really paying much attention to a headline. I figured some famous rodeo bull was retiring or something. Basically, that's all I thought. I didn't know there was any tragedy involved. But I know where you're going with this, and that is a good point. I mean, it's not like, oh, the party of having to be a rodeo bull.

The party of having your testicles tied up in a knot while a human being tries to sit on your back and everything.

in your dna and the history of your species says this is a threat to my very existence party bus the three-year-old bull that jumped over the fence at a rodeo in sisters oregon um uh will no longer be participating in the rodeo i think the party called it's just beginning the party is only beginning for this bowl of not having to deal with this shit anymore yeah

Party beginning for party bus would be a better like. Yeah, I mean give him a golden watch. Yeah

This guy is gonna be like and I really did I really and you know I have kind of this I have a like intrusive animal empathy and some stuff around this It's probably my own BS that I'm dealing with but when I saw that and I legitimately thought are they put They're putting this thing down the parties over because for me I would never see retiring from the rodeo as I here's the thing. I don't see the rodeo as being a party for the bull Yeah, I think what the bull is doing when you get on its back is an indication of how much it doesn't want to be at this party.

Well, that's the I mean, and that's the headline writers, right? Like, I don't know how the rest of this article plays out or if they try to like sometimes they try to lean too far into like punniness or something, which is somebody who kind of enjoys a pun and is like trying to just force them into the show all the time. I'm actually I really hate when there's some sort of like, you know, like a hot dog story will be literally the best example of it. right like some sort of punny headline like wiener takes all and then the entire short article is just every hot dog pun possible like I god it sets my teeth on edge I hate it so much so I am scanning this article here it seems like the article by Andrew Miller is straightforward it's just this this um headline which was probably not even part of the original article that's probably just a headline that the Seattle Times people came up with I'm guessing but that's I I agree with you

100% on that that and also someone's just trying to write a clever headline, and it's fine, but it's just It's to me. It just speaks to the fundamental Miss the fundamental flaw in the logic of what we think is going on for these animals in the rodeo Yeah, like party is over for cow that is running in terror and then has its feet lassoed together So a guy can stand on its side and and and rope it fast You know it's like none of this is great for the the animals are not loving this They are really psyched to not be a part of this party, not to be like a super wet blanket. There's also this little detail. Let me just take this from being like my little knee jerk thought on the headline to just, I don't know, a very like sort of polarizing statement about what seems to always happen with law enforcement. So there's three injuries. There's the woman who was flipped by the bull. And again, her, it looked like what happened to her was really serious and scary. And it sounds like she's okay. There was a local restaurant that posted a photo of her eating breakfast the next day. So we're very happy that she's fine. There was two other injured during the escape, but not directly by party bus, Andrew. One was a Deschutes County Sheriff's Office deputy. A sheriff's office representative said was who injured his knee trying to corral the bull. It's like that's usually how it happens. Like that's that's that's just I don't know. That just seems on brand. Like I feel like that's, you know, I don't I'm not quite following you here.

that's not a that's a statement not a follow-up question or whatever i'm not allowed to do

no what do you i don't know i just feel like i feel like there's this whole board the airplane first everyone's in the line of duty i know that's not really how it works with law enforcement but you know what i mean like there's this reverence around these jobs and it just feels to me like when you have it's i let me put this way this is why i'm saying i should why i don't even need to go here i don't need to be anti-law enforcement right now but it's just kind of like i don't know I just feel like – let me put it this way. I'm not shocked to hear a Deschutes County deputy blew up his knee trying to amble after this bull because it seems like a lot of the workplace injuries for law enforcement are non-contact injuries is what I'm trying to say.

Yeah, I guess it's not written up in kind of a heroic way. It just kind of lists what the injuries are. It's kind of like a sheriff's office rep said he injured his knee trying to corral party bus. I'm assuming that he was on duty too because it would usually say off duty so he was probably on duty I'm wearing a badge here I'm not trying to be a bootlicker here it just doesn't strike me as egregious in this case one of the injuries was this guy who blew out his knee trying to you know a giant rodeo I don't even know what a bull is

you're so right there's nothing wrong with this

it connects

It connects, in my mind, to a whole separate set of circumstances where I feel like I just have real problems with how policing happens in this country and real problems with, like, just, you know what I mean? This is a largely unrelated thing that makes... It stimulates something in my brain that's connected to a different and larger issue.

Right. Which is that like somebody, the police are abusing someone and one of the police officers sprains their wrist abusing the person. Right. And now it's assaulting a police officer. Right. Right. Right. Well, that's the kind of energy around this that I get mad at. No one's charged the bull with assaulting the police officer. I want to be very clear.

I'm glad you got that. There is a line here that I thought would trigger you more, which it says a spokesperson for the union representing the sheriff says that all of the body cam footage has somehow been deleted.

deleted i don't know how this is the body cam footage they would absolutely yeah you're actually right because it's open and shut andrew i got okay now it's just happening i got myself caught up in this i got myself caught up in this last night i was in the um i think it was i was reading the oregonian and they were like police release video of wild chase of of you know person who stole a car was being chased by police and it's from a uh you know portland i think city of portland police helicopter or something this is the second one of these things i've seen i saw one that the spd released seattle police department released and i gotta say it's great television it's such good television because you've got this bird's eye view of these cars doing all this crazy stuff but this is not a movie this is real life and like it's it's a very fascinating thing but i feel really dirty watching it because what i'm watching is a narrative that the police really want to drive yeah which is the world is an unsafe place we're the eye in the sky looking out for you like look at this lawbreaker who's driving around and by the way the guy ended up in my old neighborhood in portland like literally on a street that i used to jog on in a backyard hiding and they sent the canine for him but like when the this the listeners of the show don't need me to lecture them on this or anything but let me just put it this way when the police release a video it's because they want you to take away a certain thing from it and when the video does not support their general worldview you ain't never going to see it yeah it's going to be lost buried erased so watch any video released by law enforcement with a very very john desai yes even if it's good television like this when i watched all seven minutes of it i was riveted but i also hated myself i mean i was 100 percent absorbing their narrative tomatoes was nuanced let's just put it that way I know speaking of uh quality television Andrew I'm really enjoying this Mulaney show I I don't want um I don't want to make you feel like you have to watch it for the show or whatever but I do think you'd be kind of interested in it too just from a like you know it's just from a live television standpoint from a kind of you know entertainment production I I think you'd be I think you'd find it kind of interesting just the way that they do

the show i think it's really really good i feel like i'd need to but it's over now though right the live aspect is over there's something about me and this is wrong and i might find myself just like some night randomly clicking on it and then getting sucked into the universe but what i'm about to say is not something i'm proud of but like for things like this that were live specifically like once it's not live anymore it really feels like i missed the boat sort of like that would have been the most compelling part of this is that I'm actually watching something live on Netflix along with everybody else I'm not a huge like talk show guy and I sort of feel like it would be kind of hard for me to kind of get interested in this after the fact that's a good

point in that I think it would be very for me it would have been more exciting to watch it literally as it was happening I didn't even know about it until the first episode had aired so i've only watched it on delay but it does feel like it's live like it doesn't feel like they've not gone back through and like polished it up or anything there's it it it starts for me anyways it still stimulates that feeling of like i'm watching a live event even if i know it's on tape because i know it was live when it happened or whatever yeah i'm really into the aesthetic of the show it starts with so it's the show when it happened was at 7 p.m i believe at night in la And so like literally right at 7 The intro package starts playing And it's the like Wang Chung song To live and die in LA And it's a very specific Like 80s kind of Vibe but not 80s movie As much as like 80s television But in a way that's not It's hard to describe because to me it's Tonally perfect it's not just like a parody Like hey discos back It's like it's an energy that they nail Of like all these things in Los Angeles turning to seven o'clock street, you know, a clock on the street a guy is on Venice Beach doing a magic trick where he has like a something and he turns it into a watch and the watch is at seven o'clock and the way they do the zooms the actual kind of like film stock they're shooting in, like it totally feels like it could have been the intro to a talk show that was filmed in 1991 I like that

and also like really hammering

Thank you.

again even though you're watching it after it's kind of aired I like that they're really hammering the like this is airing at a certain time like realizing that that is their kind of a big part of their selling point and leaning into it that sounds really cool

and Mulaney comes out and he goes welcome to everyone's in LA it's 701 it's 65 degrees out it's very rooted in that moment which even though I'm watching it on delay I really like that vibe

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally appreciate that.

The announcer is Richard Kine.

Oh, interesting.

The guy from like Mad About You and the Alaska Airlines commercial and things. Lois. And it's great because it's like, it reminds me a little bit of like the dynamic on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me between Peter Sagal. Well, I would say everyone and Bill Curtis, the announcer, which is we have no idea what he's talking about most of the time if he goes off script. Uh-huh. But we love him and the crowd really loves him. Like the dynamic between Mulaney and Richard Kine is like, he'll like, so Mulaney was playing, as this was all happening, that was also the time when that Netflix is a joke festival was happening in LA, which was, I think part of the, maybe even a little bit the motivation for the show was literally like everyone in the comedy world had converged on Los Angeles for like two weeks. It was this comedy festival that Netflix put on Called Netflix is a joke And it drew in I'm not exaggerating If a meteor had hit Los Angeles three weeks ago The A, B, and C list Of all comedy in America would have been gone Just eliminated So I think that that was Because they had Seinfeld on the first week And stuff like that On this show But in the midst of all this Mulaney was playing the Hollywood Bowl So he's now hosting He's hosting his talk show But Richard Kine's like You played the Hollywood Bowl Over the weekend I know I make him Who am I making him sound like Wallace Shawn a little bit Inconceivable He was like Okay fine Here's my new Richard Kine voice You were playing the Hollywood Bowl

Perfect You knew it

God you dialed it

Sometimes I gotta play the hits

Andrew sometimes I gotta play the hits So Richard Kine was like You were playing the Hollywood Bowl This weekend And Mulaney was like Yeah I was And Richard Kine was like and i was so excited to go um because i wanted to get some lsd and then they cut to this like field piece where richard kind is like in tie-dye just going around the hollywood bowl asking people

if they have any lsd which was like so dumb and also what yes like who even takes lsd yeah it's not tied to anything in the zeitgeist or anything right now no there's no connection between the

hollywood bowl and lsd that i know of no and no one had lsd at least no that they let in and some

people were like you know i've got mdma i want lsd like he was people are on camera like offering

him md oh yeah there's like like you know it was and it didn't really have a great power out um it just was it just basically ends up with like mulaney comes out and is doing comedy and then this cuts to richard kind who i guess we're to believe has gotten his hands on some lsd because

he's now tripping balls oh it's just like the rest of the show he's acting weird no no no in

the video package they come back he's normal in the on the set of the tv show right but it it feels really like letterman like like i don't know the early days of letterman because i was kind of before my time but maybe like the mid maybe the sweet spot of conan or letterman those kinds of shows that just like are kind of a absurd then so this is what they do they take on a topic each of the first episode was coyotes or coyotes because they were having a kind of a thing in la And they talk to somebody who like is an expert on it And then they bring it, it was like, I think it was like Seinfeld and a coyote expert This one was talking about trees, it's actually an interesting story I'm thinking about doing this for Sunday morning About palm trees in LA Which is that the iconic palm trees in Los Angeles Are not native to LA And they're all dying because they're all 100 years old They were planted 100 years ago Which is the lifespan of one of those palm trees They're also pretty bad at being trees They use a ton of water They don't provide a lot of shade they're like like they look kind of cool they look iconic to us now but like there's much better ideas for a tree in los angeles yeah as far as providing shade for people and stuff like

that the people who set up los angeles just did everything wrong i mean they sure did i mean just like from just creating green lawn like they tried to just create this this oasis but i mean literally that's what chinatown's about right like they just they just sucked all the water

down from like Owens, the Owens Valley or whatever.

Yeah, let's plant the worst trees. I remember hearing about that when I moved there too. It's not just the lawns and everything. It's like, let's plant the worst trees possible. Hey, let's try to grow as many almonds as possible.

It's just like ridiculous. I will tell you, the politics of trees are really interesting, Andrew. Trees, they're all around us, but who gives a shit? I noticed this on the police video that I was watching yesterday. I'm being totally serious. So the guy.

leading this guy is doing like an hour chase with the cops and the cops have backed off this was the police video the Oregon Police Department released to the Oregonian I'm watching this person drive around a kind of economically marginalized part of Portland and it's just you can just see everything and then the police back off because they're like this is unsafe and we're still following on the helicopter they still know where he is and I think this is probably two hours of this guy driving around with the cops just kind of Keeping tabs on him and the number One thing I noticed when he gets into this neighborhood called Irvington which is the neighborhood that I used to jog In I didn't really live in Irvington I lived In something called Sullivan Gulch But he was next to Irvington the first thing I noticed About this police video from this camera From this helicopter Leafy beautiful leafy trees Everywhere it's like the neighborhood Is just full of trees it's almost more trees Than houses and I'm thinking of that Compared to the marginalized Neighborhood the guy was driving around the before the first visual indicator to me that this was rich people because irvington is a very very wealthy neighborhood it might be the most wealthy neighborhood in in portland the first thing i noticed they got beautiful mature trees there in irvington yeah like i mean the politics of trees really is is really a very fascinating topic and shade and who gets shade and who doesn't

and things like that that's going on in the neighborhood chat you know it sounds like they're putting in um you know we live in like a little neighborhood that's you know there are some there There are some small apartment buildings around us that would be low income housing and then mostly single family homes. But, you know, we need housing. And so I know that like one of the houses in our small little micro neighborhood has been sold and they're developing it. And so and people are like, well, what happened to the tree? And like a lot of the whole, you know, like people like kind of talking about how people are clinging to trees. It's weird to be anti tree. I'm not anti tree, but people are clinging or suddenly falling in love with trees because if they can if they can fight to keep a tree, well, then they can keep it a single family house next to them as opposed to a place that can maybe, you know, like, I don't know, supply housing to four or five or six families or something like that. But it becomes about the trees. And so there's this like debate going on about the process for removing this tree on this neighborhood listserv that I wish I weren't on.

but are and check in on yeah well you consider just walking away the emails automatically come

in i honestly didn't ask to be signed up for this and honestly sometimes you see stuff on there sometimes there's stuff on there that's just nice but a lot of it is and and also hey listen i'd be i'd be lying if i said there isn't a lot of problems in our neighborhood too like there is a house that at first i was like these neighbors and the way they talk about this one house is way over the top until i kind of realized oh no it's definitely a chop shop like there's a chop shop being operated like you know maybe two blocks from where i live and there's no denying that at this point you go by you see tons of kias with license plates removed and yeah no there's this whole thing about how the cops finally got one and i know all of this from the the email listserv it's like some motorcycles were stolen at first they thought it was just one and finally a cop did come and like waited outside the house all day to get a warrant and then went in and didn't find just one but three of these motorcycles that these bikers had tracked to this house because they had put like a homing chip in it or what it's not it's not like they're birds whatever those air tags are whatever and so they actually did they did get these i remember reading along this high drama story in my email and then literally hearing outside my window as the three motorcycles were finally recovered at the end of the day and they celebrated by revving their engines and driving out of the neighborhood and i heard it and like but still gave them back i would

think they'd take them into evidence or something i don't know what they did as far as examining them

but i heard the motorcycles drive away but also like it's one of those things where it's like for some reason there's nothing no no arrests or anything like that it's still operating as a chop shop because when the you know police show up anybody can be like i don't know what's going on we rent i don't know i don't know how they get away with it but either way it's just like sitting there operating so i'm not trying to make it sound like i mean the neighborhood list serve is it would be weird if people weren't concerned about some of the stuff that's going on in our neighborhood because there's some bad stuff going on in our neighborhood but then also i see stuff just kind of like literally just like i saw a suspicious guy walking down the street i'm just like what does suspicious mean like a person walking down the street is a person walking down the street like your definition of suspicious can be rooted and probably is rooted in some things that are probably racist and classist as well so i don't know there i have mixed emotions about the

whole thing but i'm in too deep now luke well from some tv that i've been enjoying to tv that i can't make up my mind on have you heard anything about this show botkin no um except maybe from you i did mention it in passing yesterday yeah as a thing i um i can't remember where i heard about i thought maybe it would be on your radar because it is a tv show about podcasters which is what 90% of television shows are now about and people doing pod yes and gutty works commercials and gutty works medicine commercials remember the one of like the two the two like young women who have a podcast in their garage they have like an on-air light this is they have the cutest little podcasting studio but one of them has to keep leaving to go to the bathroom or whatever oh oh oh yeah you mean

those ads i yeah yeah sorry prescription drug ads yeah the the people in those the nothing is everything type of ad someone's doing a podcast but it's like the most idealized version

exactly yeah and you're just like okay I see you bought all the accoutrement but anyway go ahead

I was excited to buy about the show because I love Will Forte and because I'm always curious about Holly like to your point Hollywood's kind of representation of podcasters and what they how they think it kind of works and how they portray it in things and the basic plot of this so far is that um you have will forte is kind of like a he's not really ira glass but he's basically like a podcaster who's won a peabody award in the states and he's had worked in public radio so you know fill in the blank of whomever this might sound like to you and he wants to come out to ireland because there was a like a 20 years ago at like a halloween festival in this one town in ireland in county cork bodkin is the town um three people went missing there was basically a mysterious disappearance of some people he wants to come do like a true crime podcast about it and there is the other main character is a woman who's a like hard-hitting investigative journalist for the guardian like i don't even know if that's a thing anymore by the way i read the guardian god bless but like i think that's been eliminated probably from the budget but for the purposes of this television show she's like a serious real journalist who writes print about you know hardcore crime and stuff but she's done she's been so she's she's uncovered something so dangerous in her reporting in the uk in england that her editor orders her to go work on this podcast with will forte and this researcher that he's brought with him so you've got will forte this researcher And then this hard-boiled real journalist And they're all in this town of Bodkin Kind of investigating this mystery And Will Forte's character is just endlessly naive And just kind of like doofy And this Irish reporter is endlessly hard-bitten And just won't give an inch on anything And I keep kind of wanting to like it And I keep kind of being like, ugh And you know what it feels exactly like to me? That Julia Roberts movie they made About the kind of like weird apocalyptic thing yeah people couldn't talk or couldn't see this is where i leave you is it where oh no i'm thinking

of something else i'm sorry i'm thinking of that one where you i brought up before on the show i

don't know what you're talking about there was it's it's julia roberts it's her husband is ethan hawk uh everyone calm down everybody hang on to your phones don't toss them leave the world behind hmm that sort of rings a bell we talked about it on the show it's Mahershala Ali is in it as well so basically like Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke go out to a fancy Airbnb out in like I don't know Long Island or somewhere kind of outside of New York City they go out to this really fancy house for the weekend just to kind of relax and get away from it all with their kids and when they go out there weird shit starts going down there's some kind of attack on the US and Mahershala Ali and his daughter show up and they're like, this is our house. Like we own this house. We were just renting it out for the weekend. We were in the city, like at the opera and we need to stay here because, um, well, my daughter, Mahershala Ali's daughter, I think wanted to be where she felt safe. And there's this initial night of like, are these people who they say they are, et cetera. And then it just becomes like, Oh, the world is kind of, there's a sort of a world war three going on outside of our, outside of our, this house. And we don't have any way of really figuring it because the radio is down the TVs down everything's down and I love movies like that and that's also produced by whatever Barack and Michelle Obama's production company is but it just it was like almost there but not quite and this show Bodkin is like almost there but not quite for me what it feels like is it was made or at least executive produced by two unbelievably smart talented people who have no experience in the world of creating entertainment like it It feels like a show that might have been produced by some very well-meaning, brilliant people like Barack and Michelle Obama, who are playing in a space that's not really what they do. Like it's almost there. It's like if I tried to make one of these, this is what it might look like if I was lucky. It's just there's some kind of skill that like Jordan Peele has and Hollywood power player Wynne Rosenfeld has when they make a show.

It's because what they do is shows and movies. This is what they do. What Barack Obama does is be a transformative president and one of the best human beings I've ever observed in my life. I don't know if he's the best at deciding on the plot arc of a show about a podcast.

Why do you think they're doing it? I don't know that I've been so, let's see, is it Higher Ground Productions? I believe so.

This one, if I remember right, though, the credits don't say, maybe it says higher ground somewhere else but it says like executive producers like michelle

and barack obama i'm on the higher ground production website by the way i love their logo it's it's evocative of like an 80s television logo like an 80s almost like um pbs logo sort of and then bodkin is the first thing that's listed i'm not even joking like i don't follow this stuff that closely um how does this fit into their life's work or like why why this is it just money I mean, it doesn't seem like that would be a consideration.

I can't imagine it would be for money, honestly. I don't think that's how they're motivated.

Exactly. I truly, you know, I'm truly asking. I wonder why. It would be one thing if it was kind of like, you know, well, we have a certain message that we want to get out there. And the best way to do that is to have your own production company. Or is it just like because in this day and age, if you have a certain amount of power, you have to have your own production company. LeBron James, Tom Brady, everybody of a certain power level has to be producing something so that when the time comes, you can represent yourself in your own production.

Well, I will say this, some of the, I'm just looking at a very quick kind of rundown of some of the shows that they've done, and they definitely seem to have a kind of a social message to them that's a good one. So Rustin, which I assume is a biopic of Bayard Rustin, Crip Camp, which I actually saw Crip Camp. That was about a summer camp for like disabled kids. American Factory. I don't know what that is, but I'm guessing it looks like it looks like it's a documentary. I'm sure it's probably has to do with kind of labor and how that works. And then Leave the World Behind. There's a critical like a very critical scene in Leave the World Behind where I want to say it's Kevin Bacon am I remembering right I think Kevin Bacon plays like the neighbor out on Long Island and you have basically this point where Ethan Hawke and Mahershala Ali have to go next door for help somebody's I think somebody's oh one of Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke's kids is having these crazy medical problems and they go over to the neighbor and it's it's I think it's Kevin Bacon and he is like one of those guys it's funny because when I am I'm I'm 99% sure it's Kevin Bacon, but when I picture him, he's Chris Cooper from American Beauty because he has an inherently Chris Cooper energy, which is sort of trucker hat, don't tread on me, you're going to get shot if you come in here, I'm protecting my family and mine, and there's this really intense kind of climactic scene, and what this really is, what's really playing out, this is in Leave the World Behind, what's really playing out is a political philosophy of basically progressive ideals versus conservative ideals and the progressive ideals are we're all in this together the world is ending we gotta we're stronger together than we are apart and the kevin bacon perspective is i will shoot you if you come onto this property because i have resources but they're for me and mine i got mine yeah so i i guess my my point is i think all of these productions i don't know what bodkin's point is going to be maybe I'll find out if I watch the whole thing, but to answer the question of why would they start a production company? I'm guessing it's because they were thinking this is another way to Sort of push the conversation and it doesn't good not everyone's gonna tune into C-SPAN But people will tune in to leave the world behind and not even realize that what they're observing is a conversation about how we are in the world Yeah, that's a really worthy. I think that's a really worthy endeavor. I'm not even saying Any of these shows are bad There's just some point where I kind of like It just doesn't quite Like in the Bodkin I want the hard-boiled Irish journalist to get a little bit of a new personality Like we get it We get it, you're annoyed to be back in Ireland You think these towns suck You don't want to be there I used to have an acting teacher And you've seen some of my work You know I'm a recognized master in the field of acting I used to have an acting teacher at the UW who would say

If you're doing a scene And you're a character and you know a character is going to end up Here I'm just indicating like a high level Let's say the character is going to end up at a 10 In whatever we mean by that In pissed offedness In excitedness In arousedness Yeah If the character is entertaining this Like I am right now If the character is going to get to a 10 in the scene Don't start the scene at 10 for the character There's nowhere else for them to go.

It's like, how many babies can you fit in a tire kind of thing? That's a great question. It's a Zen thing. It's like.

She learned it, she learned it, she learned it Then she forgot it, I'm just saying, when did she learn it?

I didn't mean to derail you, I know what you mean, yeah, of course

They've just written this character so unrelentingly

It's called Headroom, it's called Headroom in the audio industry Thank you, I turn the knob up

And then turn it down on the actual Program so you have a little Headroom on this Character, and I'm just like And then they're doing this thing where She keeps seeing this wolf And it's like, this is to me such a Trope-y thing now, where it's like A person who's like in a normal thing is now seeing a wild animal that's out of context and the question is is the wild animal real or does it represent something and like she literally at the end of the first episode after going through this and she's seen the wolf inside this like bed and breakfast um and asks the proprietor do you have a dog and the proprietor says no and then at the end she sees this wolf standing on a road in the dark and she says something like Get out of here. You wolf Just like that's great writing. I don't know who I don't know who they had Did they have the Pete Buttigieg write that are they bringing in the whole getting the whole gang together? This is the one thing that like I love people to judge for the record I'm just trying to think of no unlikely Obama adjacent person Like if this was just made from the people that do this God the pod save America and the Obama's are just the people making these shows now

He's the secretary of laughs um i uh i don't know i mean the one thing that i'm a little bit stuck on here and again i haven't seen any of these things and so which gives you a unique perspective which gives me a unique perspective but i love them no i i uh i just don't see the creative failings of these productions it's it's just hard for me to imagine that that goes all the way up to the obamas because i just don't think that they are the last i don't think they're the last word on the creative decisions I you know it might be I agree reflective of the people that they're hiring I guess

I totally agree I don't think that they have like final approval on the script and I think honestly I've never met Michelle or Barack Obama but my sense of them is they are so smart and smart enough to know what they don't know and would be very like this isn't really what we do I would but but I guess what I would say is these are two people that I hold in such high regard personally there is nothing well that's not true guantanamo there's very few things that either of these people have ever touched that i have not thought was excellent you know what i mean like

i i feel like these are two people was excellent at what it did by the way you should listen to the

the latest season of cereal you know all about guantanamo yeah that was a dark joke you know i

honestly until you said that i kind of forgot that that was still that was still on his watch

something else by the way that i just learned today listening to our friend chris hayes's podcast why is this happening it's a whole episode about kind of like the answer of antitrust you know movement if you will this idea of like it was really also a political philosophy do we think that it's bad when industries have like one or two businesses in them and therefore can control everything or do we think that that builds inefficiencies and then uh they were talking about he was talking to a guy who actually worked in the obama administration on this topic who was like, it radicalized me being in the Obama administration because we just let everything go. We let all of it happen. There were so many huge mergers that happened while the Obama administration was in charge of things that it's kind of galling, actually. They definitely did not come to that from the perspective of, maybe we shouldn't let Live Nation by Ticketmaster. Maybe we shouldn't let Facebook by Instagram. Maybe we shouldn't let, and it's like the list goes on of these of these of these mergers and acquisitions that like looking back on them like, well, that hasn't made the world a better place.

You know, I love the fact that you listen to a podcast and now I'm going to ask you a bunch of follow up questions about a podcast that I could just listen to. But how much of that falls to the executive office? I would feel that that's more congressional oversight. I mean, I guess you can you can push on those things if you're president, like looking at, you know, some of the antitrust stuff. But I always feel like it's congressional hearings that tries to get to the bottom of this stuff.

I think it's a philosophy and a worldview. So you're right. Congress has Congress has a huge impact on what you can really get done as the president in sort of any direction, pretty much short of like executive orders. but it is also just a worldview like do you think and the thing that they the point they make on chris's show today that's so interesting is i think we the age we are and the way that we think about antitrust you know breaking up ma bell and stuff like that is really around just the consumer experience does if these two airlines merge does that make prices go up on tickets and does that mean less recourse for the consumer and if that's happening that's bad and that's by the way something that kind of came about from like this sort of Chicago. school in the 80s around like reagan's time of like a way of thinking about antitrust and and and not a question of philosophically is it bad for corporations to have as much power as say government agencies so regardless of maybe the price goes down on your coal but is that still good for the coal industry to just be one company like not just using the price of something as the measure of is it good or bad for the society but asking should we have private organizations that have this amount of power in the world or is that bad for democracy and that's the kind of piece that's really fallen off in the last 40 years or something i mean amazon is the perfect example of

that and i think about it every time i buy something off of amazon i would say two years ago the occasion of me buying something off of amazon was pretty rare to the point where i was like double checking everything a million times because it's so rare that i do quote unquote online shopping right um and now i'm so quick to just to buy something off of amazon we've been prime members for a long time so the free shipping really helps but like every time and you realize like you're getting things so cheaply and you're like yeah but i'm just i'm i'm you used to say something about like if you would stay up late and drink or something you were sort of mortgaging your future or you had some line like that oh well yeah i mean something about that somebody

says borrowing happiness from tomorrow yeah and i we're doing that getting hung over is basically going uh tomorrow's gonna suck for me but i'm just gonna take a loan on that i'm gonna take a payday loan on my happiness tomorrow exactly like i'm getting you know i'm getting uh really

cheap uh ring lights for 30 but i really feel like what we're doing is kicking the can down the road and handing just more and more power to this company that we're gonna be like totally lost without because they've run every other smaller business you know out of business right

And as long as, and we're still, I think, to a degree in the honeymoon phase as the consumer, like with Amazon, where prices are generally like, I think Amazon is keeping prices relatively low and there's a high convenience factor. And there are relatively small businesses that operate within the Amazon marketplace, although they have a lot of issues with the way Amazon treats them and forces them to set their prices in certain ways and delists them and ruins their SEO if they don't play by Amazon's rules or use Amazon's delivery services and shipping services. So it's super messed up. But we're still in the good phase with Amazon. We're in the phase where they're playing nice. It's like we haven't even entered the phase where if they just decide to be bad, like overtly bad if they just decide yeah we're just in charge whatever we want like we're we're so so screwed yeah right absolutely so anyway i should be getting a delivery yeah any minute of a coffee maker andrew for out here in the studio is it like which i did order on amazon i hate

myself i um i'm just thinking about your your facebook marketplace thing here i'm gonna say something here that i haven't run by you and i haven't run by genevieve and so i'm on some risky

territory here the two trusted advisors in your life and you haven't checked in with either of

us on this well what i'm going to say may cross the line between um podcasting and actually um i don't know doing something inappropriate with these uh with this narrow cast um but honestly i think the plan for this record player thing that um genevieve got is to just i think at this point like because you know like you say it's a big I keep on wanting to say veranda it's not a veranda it's a big you know a big it's not the water it's not a veranda it's such a Miranda whatever you're such a veranda whatever you would call this piece of furniture that literally has and Genevieve plugged it in and apparently the record player actually still spins and it's got a speaker built into it too and I'm just sort of like if I were a different person if I were into woodworking like I think of our friend like Aaron Roden he's like the perfect combination of like woodworking and craftsmanship in that way but also he's really audio stuff so he's made these really beautiful speakers and everything i'm i assume this is not a project that he would be um interested in because i do think that like getting this thing kind of into nice shape um is going to take a lot of work and and and uh tender loving care by somebody so the plan right now i think is to try to just give it away one more time and then probably just smash it up and take it to like the dump which just kind of bums me out because i sort of feel like somewhere out there in the world there's a person with the right interests and passion and you know interest in audio and woodworking who would like take this thing because there are they're not making more of these you know so i was gonna say and this is the inappropriate part like if there's somebody listening and it sounds like something that you'd be interested in i'm only gonna ship it within the 48 you're gonna leave it in front of the illegal chop shop no i i don't know i i really i didn't

i don't want to invite anybody you don't want to get into like brokering this whole thing i don't

I don't want to, yeah, or have somebody, like, take something and then it becomes a burden to them. But, like, if there is somebody listening who's like, God, I would.

love to get my hands on that thing right now it's sort of slated for demolition so let me know but

well i'm i'm gonna be i'll i'll be honest with you too andrew if i can since we're we're both just uh like shirley mcclain's uh memoir we're out on a limb here um i i was surprised that there was an auction around this like because when when when i saw a photo of it and i was and and vips was like oh yeah i wanted an auction i thought wow i'm i'm amazed there were multiple multiple bids i didn't know i didn't know actually how it unfolded in the auction because i see a fair amount of that kind of stuff and it's so cool looking but it's it's stuff that's sort of heavy that's kind of like expensive to fix it's the kind of thing that a lot of times is kind of coming in and out of people's lives let's say gratis yeah and so what it was like there was an auction like oh there must be something about this that i don't understand that this is there were bids on

this because it doesn't look yeah because it's you know like i said it would take a lot of work to get it and it's one of those things where like i didn't want i told genevieve no i don't want that thing but then she kind of did this anyway and she didn't think she was gonna I think she was just sort of caught up in the moment and said well yeah bid one dollar so again that is what it is but for me it's like when it wasn't my responsibility I didn't care I just didn't want it in our house or garage but now we have this thing and I look at it and you plug it in and somebody built it and the turntable moves you're just like god dang if I were a different person like this could be one of the coolest things like if you got this thing you know fixed up and then You walked into somebody's house. If this thing was in somebody's house and it was kind of fixed up, I would be obsessed with it. I would be like, this is the coolest thing in the world.

That's why I'm a little surprised you're not the person for this, Andrew, because you... I don't know how to do any of that. But you love projects. Sort of. And you're an audio guy. Because I was thinking that the division of labor was going to be Veeves might go to town on the kind of re... The sanding and the re... what's the word I'm looking for? The just kind of sprucing up of, refinishing of the wood piece, because I know Genevieve has done that on a lot of stuff. And then you, if you just like completely pulled out all of the electronics and then just put like a regular, somehow installed a regular turntable in there and a couple of cool speakers, you'd have, like you said, a really beautiful object that was also super functional. That seems like that would really kind of play to both of your guys' interest and strength.

I'm not, I'm really, like i like my audio stuff as far as like kind of figuring out audio chains and plugging stuff in but like i'm not i don't know anything about like really speakers or or that type of stuff and honestly like do i like a project like i like you know like i like sitting behind like i like photo projects i like various you know the types of projects i like you know this is the type of thing where i i wouldn't i wouldn't want to do that project i would want to get to the end i like enjoying what are you me i i get to no i actually feel like you more would be like even everything you're doing with your home like i sort of feel like i would i would try to make enough money to have somebody else do it or something like i'm just not i have no that was my by the way that was plan a i have no inclination to like to do construction related stuff or rebuild stuff like i just want to get to the end where i can enjoy it yeah i i'm mostly that way

As far as this place goes The sweat equity has been Because of it just being the only way to get it done I'm with you Can we skip to the good part Is my general philosophy of life But I guess I think of you As somebody who You enjoy the projects you enjoy You enjoy archiving things And certain projects where you Digitize stuff and you organize it And you label it and you post it on YouTube Or whatever You like some of these projects And I guess I incorrectly assumed that extended to anything that was kind of incremental and, like, you know, a process, you know, step A, step B, step C, et cetera. But that doesn't apply to everything for you. It's just certain kinds of projects.

Yeah, I mean, I like doing things behind my computer. I like sitting. I'm a big fan of sitting. And so, yeah, and I can be very meticulous about certain projects. But, like, I'm not super – I don't consider myself super handy, especially these days. I don't even feel like doing projects. Well, yeah. I mean, that's another thing.

This is coming into your life at a time where you're dealing with some physical stuff that would be the opposite of wanting to get in and deal with that little stuff. I will tell you something, you've brought up one of my very favorite topics, and that is the topic of sitting.

Welcome, everybody.

Try to pull us, YouTube.

Well, this episode will never see the light of day in Tanzania.

Parts of Micronesia. And the Solomon Islands. All right. Actually, I'm curious. When we post this show.

And when you get your little list of places, yeah, of also content we play that we're getting in trouble, does the sitting song from Brian Jordan Alvarez and the other person whose name escapes me, does that get dinged or not?

Tune in tomorrow. Oh, by the way, you tuned in today. And now, of course, we're at the two hour mark, so nobody will hear this anyway. But I did reach out to the person who runs that that Instagram Instagram page with all the about your cutting comments. Yeah, because it's a you know, I think most people probably heard yesterday's show, especially if you're listening this far to this show. But it's an Instagram account that features like little pages and covers of children's books, like mostly like kind of vintage books is really, really cool. What is this Laguna Vintage? And I had posted a kind of what I thought was a silly comment under one of their posts was a silly feature that featured Oscar the Grouch. And I was worried that they took it down and I worried that they took it down because of my comment. like it was inappropriate or something, I reached out to them, and the person who I think just runs a bookstore, I think in Laguna, I would assume, wrote back like, no, no, no, no, that post wasn't performing that well. We pulled it down. I'm so sorry you felt that way. Then we ended up chatting back and forth like all day via Instagram because they were like, oh, I used to work in Seattle. I used to work at Elliott Bay. We were trading Elliott Bay bookstore stories and everything, so it was really, really cool.

You made a friendo.

I made a friendo.

I'm so glad to hear the end of that story and that it wasn't, that you started some kind of online kerfuffle that then ruined the post. Otherwise, like you said, completely innocuous and only positive and loving posts. Yeah, yeah.

And this person seems really, really cool. So there you go. Cool.

Tell them to do some posts about Tacky the Penguin or Nona the Red Racer, and then I'll start posting some comments.

All right, I will.

Some very spicy comments.

I never raised, you know, I never said anything about the fact that I have a podcast or that I was talking about it on the podcast, But clearly the person looked at my bio or something. I must have a link tree up there that links to TBTL. And so the person at one point, I don't even know who I'm communicating with, but just the person who runs this account slash, I'm assuming, bookstore, was just like, oh, I got to check out your podcasts. But I was like, well.

Tell them, well, do you have two hours and 23 minutes to burn waiting for us to mention this thing? Also, we have some TBTL breaking news. playing at the Portland Art Museum right now, or I should say on June 16th, Andrew, Mrs. Doubtfire.

Oh, really? So should I go?

So just if anybody would like a little, I don't know, kind of advanced work on that, I'll hook them up with my mom, CZB, who will gladly give them the download on the majesty of the film Mrs. Doubtfire. Nice. All right, thanks for listening, everyone. We are going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Go Mariners. and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

hey y'all it's lauren in jacksonville i don't know how i've listened to this podcast for almost 15 years and listened to every single episode and the subject of the goof off goose has never come up but when y'all mentioned it on today's episode i was in the gym and i think that i either gasped or squeaked. I'm not sure exactly, but it was definitely audible and it definitely got the attention of everyone else in the gym. I cannot believe that there are other people on this planet who know about goof off goose. So I have this, we've had this book in my family since I was a kid. And, um, it's become a little bit of like a family shorthand for my dear departed mother who was, uh, lazy like the goose. She, uh, didn't have the same kind of standards of cleanliness at her house that the rest of us do. And that was just okay with her. Um, so yeah, that lazy goose, uh, reminds us of mom. Like every time we see the book, um, just wants to do it tomorrow, put it, put it off to tomorrow and take a nap. So, um, anyway, we could all, we could all learn a little lesson from the goose that sometimes you just gotta you know take a nap in the hammock and put things off to tomorrow instead of being type a crazy like we try to be so anyway i just um i'll send a photo along but i just had to call because i i mean i wanted to dance i wanted to call someone i wasn't sure what to do um i don't know it's just one of those feelings you know when your favorite pod pals and your favorite book collide and it's a perfect vid diagram circle so love y'all and um yeah thanks for the Thanks for the enjoyable evening. Power out.