Muse

Tell me about yourselves. What sort of music do you guys like? Rock? Yeah. Funk? Yes. Country? Yeah. Hairband? Yes. Synth? Yeah. Blues? Yes. Jazz fusion? Yeah. You like sports, Jermaine? No. Brett, sports fan? Not really. Brett, you read? Yeah. What do you read? I read the newspaper. Yeah. Favorite part of the newspaper, Jermaine, what is it? What? of the newspaper what is it pages nope uh articles i don't really have a favorite part you got a favorite part of the newspaper um i like the stories about animals when they've escaped from the zoo cool so you guys got any questions you want to ask me no no okay so i'll I'll flip it back. You guys ever grow a mustache?

T-T-T-B-T-L

Uh-oh, guess what day it is. Somebody tell me. Uh-oh, what day is it?

It's Friday. Friday got to get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend.

Were you just using a synthesizer? Nope. So you mean to tell me that all of those sounds were coming from your body? Yup. I'm the president of rap music. And I need to work with you right away. Targus, Targus.

Okay, T-Bone, time for some serious crunching. Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Don't miss the Sausage Fest. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

You don't need us telling you that it's bad.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia. Another beautiful day. Absolutely beautiful, beautiful day here in southern Washington. People are like supping out on the river. They're stand-up paddle boarding, which I've never seen before out here. Because when I say the river, it's not like some lazy river that, you know, I don't know, some smallish river. You might say, this is the mighty Columbia people. Think more Mississippi than like some little creek running through the campsite. And these people have supped their way right up to Cottonwood Island and they are lounging on the beach. I don't know if any of them are listening to TBTL. It's too far away for me to see. Although let me get my my binocs out. I'm now looking through my binoculars. Nope, nope. None of them are listening to TBTL, so we're going to talk to them about that. In the meantime, thankfully you are here for episode 4,233 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. And again, thank God you're a listener to TBTL. Hopefully you're also a supporter of TBTL, a financial supporter, because, of course, that's how this show exists. We have the TBTL-a-thon 15 coming up. Thank you for being a 10. And we have some news on that

That cash could really get me out of a couple of jams

Involving what the Zoom nights are going to look like And also the question of if it was a real idiot idea

What an idiot

To decide that we are going to hand make a friendship bracelet of thanks For each and every person who donates any amount of money at all This could be thousands of friendship bracelets that we are going to hand make Three fellows Who have almost no experience In this space as far as I understand We're going to look at that And we're going to assess the wisdom of that plan Here on the show today Oh and we're going to talk to this guy Longest running co-bro of the show Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships I think this guy's sense of humor never developed Past junior high school He's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now Good morning my friend Sup Do you see yourself supping ever, by the way? Because I wouldn't have seen you as a rollerblader, but that's something that you've done.

Well, yeah, but then you saw me stopping a rollerblader. There are a few things in my life.

Yeah, but you tried it.

I did try it, but there are a few things in my life where I said, you know what? I've tried this, and I'm now stopping this. I mean, there are obviously tons of things in life that one gets into and then maybe slowly stops being into over time gradually. Like the Mariners. I didn't even check the phone Not great

JP Crawford needs to learn how to hit with Runners in scoring positions

Nobody can work a count like JP Crawford I was just going to say that Rollerblading was the one thing that I really wanted to be good at And I tried it for a decent amount of time On the reg with my friend Nicky And we would practice At some point I was like, you know what? This hurts too bad My feet never got used to this I clearly don't have that strong of a core or whatever it takes, balance, whatever.

Well, supping is probably not for you. That's what I'm saying.

That's what I'm saying.

I think that that would probably be even harder than rollerblading for me. So I'm guessing that that is not for me. But I could be one of those surfers who lays down on the surfboard and just paddles out. I couldn't then get on it and then surf back in. But I could do the probably paddling part.

Absolutely. Endless summer style. Just laying on the board, enjoying the waves and the sea air and all of that. Oh, hey, look who else we have here. It's our good friend. Hey, Romano. TBTL employee numero uno, John Sklaroff. Hey, buddy. Hey, how's it going? Good. Have you ever supped? Yo, a sup.

That's the extent of my... No.

You've not done the stand-up paddleboard thing?

No. I would hurt myself. Have you rollerbladed? When I was like a little kid and they were first becoming a thing. When I was like 10, that's like, oh, I think rollerblades were like a thing. But other than that, no.

I don't think I've ever stand-up paddleboarded either, but just because it doesn't look like fun to me. I don't know why it's the number one. Maybe it's a Pacific Northwest thing. You must see it out on Green Lake and other places, Andrew, just a ton of supping. What are they doing on the mighty Mississippi or the thousands of lakes in the land where you are, John?

Lots of pontoons. It's more boat culture, but people definitely kayak and do paddleboard and that kind of stuff for sure. There's a lot of that in the Adirondacks near where I used to live. Where they do the chairs. Where they do the chairs. Oh, I do that.

I do that sport. Adirondack. Or Shea's Lounge.

I'm a little worried for these suppers, and both of you will get to see this firsthand when you come out here for TBTL-a-thon 15. But like I was saying at the intro, this river is a pretty big thing, and it has enormous boats going through it at all times, like container ships and things. You know what I mean? It doesn't seem like a place Where you should be supping I'm a little worried for these Although they seem to be having the time of their life Right now they're sprawled out on a sunny beach Probably picnicking I wish I was doing that Why am I doing this show right now?

Because you care about the listeners Who are going to support us for another year of TVTL That's exactly why

That's 100% why And because I put in the time to neti pot my nose And I might as well make use of my Do you hear this Just the ease With which the air passes through That passageway now Actually that sounded like a death rattle That actually doesn't sound good at all Now that I'm doing it It's better than it was

We need a bigger neti pot

This is going to be the format for today's show I bring something up and then ask you both Have either of you ever used A neti pot or a navage Or anything that passes saline water through your brain and flushes out your nostrils john i've i've done the napot once or twice uh

my wife jess uh she's she she'll use it from time to time and once or twice i've dipped into it uh but it feels it feels i don't know i don't know if the results uh justify the me yeah for me personally i mean if you want to do it great but oh i want to do it yeah i wanted to do it this

is how much i wanted to do it after the first time i immediately did an inventory of how many salt packets they sent me because you get sterile water you warm it up and then you pour it in the thing and you pour in like when you buy the neti pot it's not i keep i need to stress it's what i don't like about the neti pot is i think they're porcelain they're like an upside down tea kettle thing and you pour them and then it makes the water go through your nose but i like the one that i got is plastic so i can squeeze it like a water bottle so i can really get that thing shooting but it comes with a bunch of little containers of salt little sleeves that you put in the salt each time and i this is how my brain works the first time i did it i was like that feels so much better that then i was immediately like do i have enough salt or do i need to start buying more salt for this there's like 80 salt packets by the way but i want to know that i can

do this 81 times andrew have you ever done it i have never done it sometimes i shoot the um garden hose up my nose but that'll work that's more recreational water honestly no that's glad you're shoot it up your nose no that's fine have this is i'm going to use this as an opportunity to um do something that's probably not super fun for the listeners apologies we'll get back to the good stuff in a second but um this whole idea of spraying things up your nose or potentially squeegeeing things out of noses i'm always interested in hearing our comparing our experiences of listening to mariners games on our various digital audio streams like sometimes i listen on like a local digital stream. It gets a little complicated. Sometimes I listen on the MLB app. Sometimes I listen like you on Sirius Radio. And I'm interested in knowing which of the national ads we hear that if we're hearing the same ones. And have you heard this PSA that is in very heavy rotation? A friend of mine brought it up to me just this weekend. So I know that he's been so

to it a lot you hear the same exact commercials every single break and there's a PSA for I believe keeping your kids safe by buying the right sized uh car uh carrier for them what do you call it a chair car seats for a kid but they get to it in a very strange way you have two dads and they're comparing notes about how much they love their kids because the stuff they go through and the first kids like I want they're the first fathers like I love my daughter so much I want one sat threw a four-hour soccer match in the rain for her. And then the other father says something very graphic. Are you familiar with this commercial? No.

This is the first time I hear. Have you heard this during the Yankees games, John? Or do you listen to the Yankee games?

Not on the radio, typically.

You don't like those announcers. I always think about that when I hear them. You don't like the local Yankees. Not a John Sterling guy?

Sterling's at least gone. He retired abruptly. But, yeah, their broadcast teams are never good. It's the one thing about them I really dislike.

Well, the teams are good. We have a great broadcast team and hitters who can't risp. Right. At least I'll take an on-field product and worry about the announcing later.

Yeah, I'm not complaining. Don't get me wrong.

I don't hear those ads, Andrew, but you're saying that does it have to do with nasal irrigation?

It does in a way. The other father says, you think you love your kid. I love my kids so much that I once stayed up all night, like, suctioning mucus out of my daughter's nose using a special device. And I can't remember exactly how he says it. I know what he's talking about. I don't have kids. I've never had to do that before. But my friend who even brought up this commercial this weekend, he does have two kids. Like, he went through a phase with them where he might have had to do that kind of stuff. But it is unnecessarily graphic to get us to use car seats, I would just say.

yeah i'm guessing he used one of those uh kind of bulbous like i don't even know what that thing is called but when i was growing up that was the thing you fill up with hot water and your parents would like kind of press into your ear if you had an ear infection but but i think it has another purpose which is to extract mucus from the nostrils of kids although like i mean let's be honest When I was growing up, we had to extract our own mucus by blowing our noses. We didn't have adults hovering over us all night, putting a mirror under our nose. Well, my parents did that just to make sure I wasn't a vampire. But we didn't have parents sitting around monitoring us at 2 in the morning to clean out our nasal passages.

Right, although you did grow up to put a mirror under your nose quite a bit. if all the rumors at CBGBs are correct I'll be honest with you this ain't allergies baby

this is something else a little booger sugar

that's my least favorite nickname for almost any drug I can't think of a nickname for a drug that I like less than that

I don't even like that I don't know why I said that I like Bolivian marching powder there are other better names for that stuff I don't know if John's screen froze or if he's just super troubled by this. Maybe a little bit of both.

I think both, but he's definitely frozen.

I think John's screen is frozen. But in the perfect expression of disappointment for where this has devolved to. The commercial, Andrew, that I am a little over on the Mariners broadcast, again, because of how I sort of listen to it, which is on Sirius Satellite, because I live down here kind of near Portland and we don't get the games on the radio at all. I mostly just get Promotions for Chris Mad Dog Russo's show which I'm sure you now Know you want baseball the Doggy's got your cover I don't hear

As much as you do but I Heard it right now but I've heard it after You've done the imitation Of it so I always find it Incredibly entertaining because I think of

You doing the imitation and John you know From Chris Mad Dog Russo as a New York

I grew up I grew up on 660 The fan with Mad Dog Mike and the Mad Dog just the most bloviating oh god I know Francesa it's just ridiculous

so mostly I hear that but sometimes I hear these Les Schwab you know friend of the show by the way Les Schwab we love them but I'm ready for a break from the commercial where the kid is like I consider myself a competent backseat driver brakes mom

I actually like the current kid you like the kid well here's the deal you might not have heard in like in in in great repetition the earlier version that ran last season or for the first half of last season my god i really could go on about this forever and why not it's a friday for about maybe the first half of last season they had a daughter talking to her dad and there was something about the kid that was so much more like naggy and kind of awful and i didn't like

Breaks please to be naggy

but this is the well it's not quite as bad this is the one where it's the boy and his mom right and the boy I don't know because

I've only heard the radio I don't know the gender

of the child Breaks please might be the one with the daughter which is really really irritating I feel bad for that kid because I think she's a good actor and I've seen the TV version I mean just cute as a button but I feel like it's directed in a way that makes her much more kind of naggy and annoying to her dad but then there's one where there's a mom and her son in the backseat in the car seat and i love their vibe and again maybe it's only because they beat me down with the first one but they seem more like they're on a team together the the son says something like i don't know he says something about the economy and the and the mom's like you got that right

one it's like yeah because she's going just because we're watching our wallet doesn't mean we have to well we have to you know have problems with safety or whatever they say it slightly better than that um and then the mom's like that's heard that or whatever it's like i'm just saying If I get in the car and my kid, who only exists because of me irrigating their nasal passages like a goddamn Florence Nightingale, if they get in the back of the car and they go, brakes, please, they're walking. Yeah.

I have some unfortunate news for us, which is that I could not find. None of this has been recorded.

That's fortunate news for the listener.

You would think that the first thing I'm going to say is the unfortunate news, but it gets unfortunater. So I was going to say I was looking to see if I could find the radio ad that I'm talking about with the two dads talking about this idea of, like, sucking snot out of their kid's face. And I can't find – it's really hard to find radio commercials and PSAs. However, the Ad Council does post – they have video versions of these that air on TV. And in this one, it doesn't show the two dads talking. That's a device that they need in order to explain what's happening in a radio-only commercial. In the TV commercial, we just see, and I'm going to play this, although I don't think there's going to, we see a dad waking up in the middle of the night. The baby is crying, and he is going to suck snot out of her face. But, Luke, it is not with one of those bulbous things. He has a tube in his mouth and then a device that he's going to, he's like siphoning it off. Yeah, so when the two dads are talking, and it says.

Out of their nose at 4 a.m., then surely you'll check NHTSA.gov. Snot out of their nose. Here, let me go back. I'm very glad about parents. Meanwhile, you're putting your dog in a high chair for the last eight years.

You're a parent of a very furry child. That's right.

Wow.

Andrew, well, that's a great poll. I guess. They're trying to connect. But again, this is a commercial for car seats. I mean, it's a PSA for car seats. Don't you also kind of feel like, and maybe it's because I listen to still a fair amount of like, largely forgotten radio like i'll listen to am sports radio or talk radio or things i feel like when you start to hear mostly government psa's the whatever you're listening to is not long for this world it's like we're no longer competing in the space for like new cool products we're mostly just getting tire commercials and u.s government expenditures and this one specifically

airs on the mlb app and they really do just play for every break which means you know like that's between every half of an inning plus any kind of like pitching change or any any any kind of change in the action like that they literally will run the same psa's over and over each break and sometimes they back them up butt to butt the same exact one just because they're killing time in fact yes have you guys heard the one and i cannot figure out what it's for it's like some sort of astrology voice it's like a woman's voice with this ethereal sort of soundscape around her and then she reads some sort of uh a um what do you call it a horoscope a horoscope a horoscope for a but it's like baseball related and they never mention a product a service a psa i have no idea

what it's a baseball related horoscope is she saying like she says julio rodriguez is being such an Aries right now? It's second

person, and it's not about specific players. It's more like you go into the clubhouse with the confidence of a younger man. I don't know, but I shouldn't say that. I don't know. Can you guys chat for a while, and I'll see if I can track these.

What were you going to say, John? Actually, this is a good opening while you're looking for that, Andrew. This whole PSA reminds me of a joke that my Hebrew school teacher told us back in the day. I didn't know you went to

Hebrew school how involved is that like is it after school every day leading up to your bar mitzvah or is it is it like a is it a lifetime situation we I grew up in a conservative temple

which is not the most conservative it's like a step below orthodox but I did Sundays we would go for like an hour and then Mondays and Wednesdays for like three hours after school we would go and now when you go on sunday do you go to temple and you also do hebrew school

or is it in lieu of temple temples on saturday sure i know sunday is testing you and you pass yeah sunday thank you sunday is just like school more schooling um but oh wow yeah but when i after i was bar mitzvahed i said to my mom i'm like i'm not doing this anymore did you have a theme

for your bar mitzvah you sure did the new york jets hell yes j-e-t-s oh john i just i just learned so much about you yeah and your whole just like every i just encapsulated it right there first of all i absolutely love that were i to have had a bar mitzvah it would have definitely been seahawks related right but also man it just i have never i'm always rooting for the jets by the way like i just want you to know that like i i i remember the like what freeman mcneil that was a little before me but i when i was i'm older than you and i remember the jets were really good in the freeman mcneil days and i always thought the jets had a really cool logo i just think it's a cool team they were yeah they've just been suffering for so long and now that i know that they were also your bar mitzvah theme i'm like really yeah i'm i'm i'm all the way is aaron rogers their quarterback yeah well even so i'm still rooting for the jets i i want i want 12 year old john

sklaroff well how old are you in your bar mitzvah well boys are typically 13 mine was a few weeks

early so i was 12 i want 12 year old john sklaroff dreams to come true and i want a jets if the seahawks can't make the super bowl i want the jets to make the super bowl i will tell you

one of the first jets games i remember going to they played the seahawks and won the jets won like 42 to 7 i remember that game i think it was absolutely hammered i think it was a year the the jets went like three and 13 or something ridiculous and they i remember that

was early in the season and we went back and just got absolutely clobbered by the jets i i'm trying to remember who our core quarterback was rick myer who was probably in the rick myer era yeah he was a poor man's joe montana because he also went to notre dame and he wore the same number i think

as montana i think i think poor man's joe montana is generous even he was oh yeah no no i mean that

was the sales pitch they were like right he's he's like another joe montana and then he went and got absolutely clobbered by the jets andrew have we bought you enough time for the internet research can i tell this can i tell this please yeah buy me a little bit more time i have a bit of an update

so this whole like who loves you most right so anyone who's our audience who's jewish understands there's something called jewish guilt right like i think other ethnicities claim it too but jewish mother guilt's like a real thing and i apologize saying jewish mom's listening uh so the joke is there's three men sitting on a bench and they're all or excuse me three uh elderly women sitting on a bench and they're all uh debating over whose son loves them the most and the first one's like well my son the doctor sent me and my husband on a cruise around the world last year for my birth thing it was wonderful and the second mom goes well my son the lawyer you know threw a huge anniversary party for me my husband and flew all of our friends and it was the greatest party ever and the third mom goes yeah well my son goes to therapy three times a week for 125 dollars a session and all he does is talk about me that's right that's right do you talk about your mom a lot in therapy John she comes up I feel like I always thought

that was just a trope and then I started going to therapy and I was like there is a lot of mom talking I've got myself I've always have really leading into that I was like I'm not gonna be one of those guys lying on the couch being like you

know thinking it's all about i sit on the couch in my oh yeah i've never actually i'm not i don't

go to therapy in a new yorker cartoon when do you think when do we think the last time is that someone actually like laid down on a couch to get therapy in modern america that's a really good

it seems nice like they can take my blood at the same time after yesterday's show right as we learned recently on the program take a sample of my blood and talk about it um today's uh or this week's New Yorker caption contest how do you guys feel about the New Yorker caption contest

oh I've got thoughts that have been expressed on the show ad nauseum but I'll do it again I love the New Yorker cartoon so much I love the caption contest I have never had a good idea for the caption contest even once and I once made it a goal I think we did it on the show I think it was a project in the radio days we're like we're gonna apply for this we're gonna submit until one of us gets in um jen and i and neither of us ever got in and i realized after a few weeks it's a like i have an actual like deficiency in this department for somebody who thinks of themselves as relatively humorous i look at those pictures and nothing comes to me as which one of the three stooges is it i try to think but nothing happens i look at it and i cannot think of a joke and then when i look at it the next week i'm like oh my god that's such a great idea why didn't i think of

that it seems so obvious once it's there remember about a year ago I submitted a caption not even for the show but

We ended up talking about it on the show. It was like it was two hikers and they had their houses on their back. And then I thought I came up with a really good caption. I have no idea what it was anymore. I only remember that. The reason I bring it up is this week's cartoon is it's somebody laying down on a therapist's couch. So your example of saying I go to therapy in a New Yorker cartoon is like spot on to this week's caption contest. You see the guy laying down on the couch and behind him, the therapist has left his chair and looks like he's sneaking out the window. Like, that's the joke. You've got to caption that. And I saw one person that I follow on Instagram captioned it. This is what we call the Freudian slip away or the Freudian slip out. Oh, that's not bad. I thought that was pretty good. That's good.

How about, like, secondbetterhelp.com?

Secondbetterhelp.com.

Betterhelp.com? Oh, I see. Unfamiliar with the dominant therapy model in the United States of America?

Why is this?

I got a settlement from them of $9, by the way. reason i don't even i must have i did better help for we did add did we do ads for them we did ads

but then you also i don't know remember if you i remember you talking on the show about using them

that was outside the i think i used them i think i paid i was paying my own dime for that to the tune of a re i recently got a refund of nine dollars through a better help settlement what

was the settlement for do you know we're not advertising for them anymore we can spill all

i didn't read that far into it i was just surprised that you know i thought first of all i thought it was something spammy and i was like i was like compliments to the to the scammers because you do have me dialed into someone who does need a lot of therapy like that was it wasn't like hey um you know uh speedboat there's a settlement from like sexy speedboat.com or something i don't know some cool guy thing cool harley davidson.com like no it was better help did you wrong on therapy potentially to the tune of nine dollars i was like well this does seem like a thing that could happened to me and sure enough i looked in my venmo they had venmo'd me nine dollars oh really

they did via venmo yeah that seems that seems that's weird like a check or something yeah i got i got an email recently asking if i wanted to join a class action lawsuit one that had not been settled yet um and i immediately thought it was spam as well luke and then i did a little googling on the address it came from and it really did come from a place that does you know some lawyer's office attorney's situation it was came from an attorney situation that does often get

involved in these the law offices of situation situation and probably legit yeah so it's the

jersey shore yeah exactly it was about they said have you gymmed or tanned or laundered too much you might be in for a settlement anyway but i was like i read enough that's not the pull i expected you to have i almost spat out my tea that was so good but um i was a little what was it for i can't remember i could look i can't remember what it was for but it was one of those things where when i went online to kind of read more about it to make sure it was real a bunch of people in comments on reddit or something are like yeah you can sign up for this but you're literally going to get like three dollars i'm like yeah i am going to get like three dollars and maybe it's just not worth it for me to get involved and share my information with this

situation as I described it that's the weird thing about the class action lawsuit model is I mean I guess if we're looking at it as punitive or as a kind of a reason for companies to try to you know sort of operate in a in a respectable way I guess there's some financial penalty there but as the person I mean we all get those emails like oh you're part of the AT&T settlement is like You may be entitled to up to eight dollars if you, you know, provide us with all of this annoying information of like your cell phone bill from this period of time. It's like, no, it's like it feels to me like the attorneys and I'm not anti attorney at all, but it feels like the lawyers in these things are the ones that have put in a lot of time and are going to get a big payout. The actual it's very rare that one of these things is putting any real money back in anyone's pocket.

It's almost like why do they exist for what it's worth? this was tax act i found it it starts with there's something about these that just seems so sketchy it starts with text at least it was a tax slayer that is bolded underlined and italicized this is a court-approved legal notice you are not being sued i think every email should begin with you are not being sued by the way honestly i could use that i could use that too that's a real question

i told you i turned off my mail preview of my mail that was being delivered to me because i was like i don't need to see i got this letter from the irs and i was like oh no it's happening and then i realized it was for tbtb and it was very standard yeah business related stuff but i was like i don't need to see a preview of mail that's going to scare me when i open the mailbox i'd like to just

get scared once instead of twice you'll be shocked to hear this but tax act was apparently sharing our information uh our private information with uh meta and um facebook and google and all of these things so they are suing but they all right so this is gonna sound defeatist maybe but like you know it's like the whole tick tock band this is related to that we're like oh china's gonna have our information it's like okay mark zuckerberg has it google has it like they all have my information right i'm just like defeated at this point it doesn't matter i'm the both the consumer and the product is what it is this is like the dystopian hellscape we live in american capitalism i say a few weeks before we ask people to give us money but like what does it matter do we care no i mean actually gap care

about that i'm with you on most of that stuff too i like i don't feel like going through the hoops of signing up for this thing and just to get like three dollars down the line and yeah every i'm kind of with you i don't get super worked up about it but i do think anytime we can hold these massive um companies especially these tech companies try to keep them in check it's not it's i i applaud anybody's efforts to keep this in check at least somewhat certainly

yeah I have because since I've lived out here um and I'm not real close to a lot of this is just my excuse by the way I could just orient my life differently so that I actually still bought fewer things online which I think we can all agree would make the world a better place if we all kind of went to more local stores and just didn't like order everything off Amazon as I again I make the excuse that I that I live kind of in a semi-rural part of the world but that's just laziness on my part but the for me the where i've just seen my personal information and also just my my sort of um preferences and things just go absolutely crazy on the internet is just in purchasing things off of instagram it's just insane how quickly i go from like browsing a hyper specific product on the internet to it's the only thing i see advertised on instagram like and i wasn't on instagram i don't search for things on instagram it isn't like i was on instagram and i was like uh show me um you know this kind of hand railing for a deck but i looked at it somewhere else and that somewhere else shared it with instagram and now i'm all i'm seeing are like for instance i bought a couple of speaking of adirondack chairs i bought a couple of uh like chair outdoor kind of smallish adirondack ish chairs for the deck here and now all i see is outdoor furniture it's the only and i didn't buy these things on instagram it's totally insane

Luke, when you made that comment, you were talking about Liquid IV a few weeks ago, and I posted some of our reels making jokes about getting targeted by ads. Like, still, nonstop, when I'm, like, scrolling through Instagram or whatever, it's just Liquid IV ad, Liquid IV ad, Liquid IV still. I'm like, all right, I get it.

You know, that only – What's that, Andrew? Sorry to interrupt. I was going to say I went into some great detail. One might say too much detail. A few weeks ago when I bought this computer, this new computer, which is, I'm already forgetting what brand it is, but it was a brand. It's a Razor gaming computer. Thank you. It's a Razor.

It's for games.

You're the one who had to sign off on the receipt. I'd woken up that morning basically not having heard of Razors except for that my buddy Hauser had told me to look into them. I do a little bit of research online. I find out there's actually a Razor store here in Seattle. So I go. I buy this computer. This all happens within probably three hours, tops. I've already got the computer. I don't need to have it advertised to me anymore. But all the algorithm knows is I was in the market for a Razer computer. And so still to this day and much heavily a couple of weeks ago, I'm just getting all these ads for Razer computers. And I just want to say, fella, I have you. We're a family now. You're already here.

Andrew, we have Liquid IV in our house. Like, Jess uses it. Oh, really? So it's like, yeah, what are we doing? Sorry, Luke.

I, yeah, I heard, I was listening to, I want to say it was either Chris's show or Ezra Klein's show, but they were talking about the kind of digital, like, advertising world. That's why I think it might have been more like Ezra's show, because Chris is usually more on the sort of politics side. But the person on there was saying, yeah, actually, these ads that we're also worried about are really not that, maybe here's what it was. It might have been saying if we're worried about like political ads targeting people on these meta products and giving these people bad ideas about politics that we can kind of relate it to like the advertising that we see online and how ineffective that is a lot of the time that it turns out you could tell people a bunch that like Joe Biden is old. But if it's a shitty ad, it's kind of like a shitty Internet ad of like those T-shirts. It's got like an old guy wearing like a weird T-shirt. The Washington Post has some of the worst versions of this. Like the the things that go around the articles in Washington Post will just be like for like a barbecue spatula and then like an overly buff old guy and then a drawing of a human colon. And it's like the weirdest push, not push ads. But but anyway, they were they were saying that one of the things about Internet ads that and particularly Instagram ads that are dumb is exactly what you both just said, which is. The system currently is oh this person bought this thing now. Let's just keep advertising them this thing It's like no, that's a dumb approach. I just bought it. I have it show me something else But just showing like for instance this railing that I bought this particular

brand of railing that i bought for the deck i now get thousands of ads for that railing and it's like i have it's i don't know what it is 150 lineal feet of your product mazada leave me alone

although when you lock onto a product that is just fun to look at anyway it's nice i've never bought a a hat off of instagram but it no but it they know that i like baseball and that i like baseball caps somehow probably not hard to figure out and so i get these ads maybe you guys do too since you're baseball fans like i will get these ads for one of the major hat companies and i can't tell if these are officially licensed by the mlb or not but i think they must because they're like

variations are like very cool arty variations yonkies and the los angeles i think it's i think

it's above board the digers yes um i uh so anyway but have you have you guys seen these and like there will be like a slideshow of like literally 40 of them and like some of them will take the mariner's logo but then kind of put a splash of like floral like kind of interesting arty flowers behind them some of them are god awful some of them are vintage some of them are really really cool and i gotta say i don't think i have any plans on buying any hats off of instagram i don't think i'm ever gonna buy anything directly off of instagram again because i had a bad experience last time having said that i'd rather have ads that are fun to look at and i will flip through every single one of those hats so i kind of don't mind in that way or i'll purposely try to like look at a bunch of watch ads so that a bunch of nice watch ads are shared with me i'm not gonna be buying any watches anytime soon but they're nice to look at andrew i get those from new era

with the different new era yeah yeah yeah and i get uh like a bunch of the because new york sports i follow sports teams and so one i kept seeing was for the mets and it was like it was outdoor themed and so there was like a sea bass or something like a fishing iconography like big trees i'm like yeah when people think of flushing queens sure they think of the great outdoors

that is that is that is really bizarre which by the way to bring it back to tbtl and your involvement therein for a moment john um the other day i accidentally on my phone my instagram app i didn't realize this but it had flipped over to the tbtl account oh yeah personal account because i'll get notifications all the time like so and so has replied to the tbtl reel or whatever and I just kind of ignore them. I just stay and I kind of try to stay in my own lane and let you handle that. But every now and then, sometimes the login will get reversed if I hit the wrong button. And the other day I opened up what I thought was my Instagram and it was like, you know, TBTL stuff. But then all the suggested content was very specific baseball stuff. And I think it was like New York baseball stuff. I'm like, why am I being fed all of this baseball? I'm like, oh, this is the TBTL account that John runs. And so they think I'm you. I was like inside your brain somehow.

It's funny. The amount of baseball specifically that shows up in the same thing every time I open, more so than my actual personal feed. It's quite funny.

Log in. We'll do that on your own account, buddy. We should only be.

It could be a lot worse.

Yeah. I get a lot of bikini barista commercials for some reason. I meant the New York Jets.

I meant the Jets. All right. Speaking of questionable internet commerce decisions, after we thank some dazzling donors, let's talk about the TBTL-a-thon 15 and also if this handmade friendship bracelet thing is just as bad of an idea as it's starting to feel like it is to me.

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.

All right, let's thank some of those afore referred to Dazzling Donors. We're getting down to the sort of end of the line here, which is kind of fitting because we're about to have another TBTL-a-thon. I just want to say, if you are a Dazzling Donor and you have not heard your message read yet, get at us because we're pretty much wrapping this thing up, right? I've actually got the two relevant parties here. John and Andrew, what is the official messaging around Dazzling Donor Messages?

I would say, if your name is Kate and you haven't heard your message yet, we will get to you on Monday. Although that is the most common name amongst our listeners. Yes, exactly. So that could apply to 30 to 40 people. Right, exactly. So, Kate, you're coming up. But then I think we're wrapping things up on Monday unless any really late breakers come through.

Yeah, think of the Dazzling Donor Messages as being that big stone wall that's going down. and you're Indiana Jones, and you've left your dazzling donor message on the wrong side of that, you better grab it now, or that wall's going to come down. That's right. That's right.

Does that mean – where's the whip coming to play?

That's a personal conversation that I'd like to have off my –

I thought you were going to say that's what she said, and I was like, man, you're bringing it back.

Bringing it back. I know, right?

It's cyclical. I want to be on the cutting edge of bringing back. That's what she says. Maybe not.

Can I be on the cutting edge of bringing back my wife? That never stopped for me, unfortunately. King of the castle. King of the castle.

Something is arriving. Something that's arriving is the name Paul Daniels, who is our first dazzling donor today of Wichita, Kansas. Thank you, Paul. Yeah, home of the Shockers, right? The Wichita State Shockers. Very, very decent basketball team. They kind of punch above their weight, I think, the Wichita Shockers do. Paul says, I started listening to TBTL to fill a podcast-sized hole in my life. After a few years, it seemed polite to give something back. Then I started giving a little bit more to get some swag. See, it's all working. We never quite know, and we have meetings about this. Are the donations to support the show? Are they to get the swag? Are they a little of both? It sounds like for Paul, a little of both. So that's good, because we've got some cool swag coming up for the next thon. When it came time to shift my donation from APM to TBTB, I decided to re-evaluate my contribution. I thought about how much to give and why. I'm not paying for just a podcast, because I can get that for free.

Shh, Paul, don't tell everybody that.

We're trying to low-key that part of it. I'm donating to support the TBTL community. TBTL and the Tents have been with me through a lot without realizing it. The world needs more community and more TBTL. Spend it wisely or don't and turn misadventures into content. That's where I come in, Paul. P.S. Thanks for making all the old episodes available. As a former drunk person, I can confirm that drunk people are so meta.

That's right. I kind of forgot we didn't have the full archives available at APM or only through.

And you did all of that, Andrew, I think.

It's been a hell of a year, you know? We haven't taken a, I mean, not to like pat ourselves on the back, but like I recently, I was doing something and maybe like stressed out trying to get something done on deadline. I don't know what it was. I'm just trying to make myself sound busy, but I was doing something and all of a sudden I was like, man, around this time last year, we were like, will the feed shift over? Will our entire show, our entire raison d'etre, our entire ability to reach it, like will this even work when we flip this switch? And we had like kind of several moments like that, all in pretty quick succession, and it all went fine. And then I forgot about it. But every now and then it's nice to remember like that this has been a hell of a year with a lot of change.

I was thinking about that the other day because we, the three of us, were having a meeting that I called in 14 minutes late to. And we were discussing stuff for the upcoming Thawne, and we were just talking about a variety of topics. and I felt like this and I was in the car with Becca so she could kind of overhear my part of the conversation and what's weird is I felt weirdly proud of us I felt like this is a real thing like we have meetings and we have a budget and there are thousands there are thousands of thousands of people who interact with this product like we had a thing and we thought is there an audience for this and importantly are there folks like Paul Daniels who are willing to step up and support it and that was not a for sure thing and would people close one account with APM and open a new account with TBTV and like just all of and this is really to your Andrew and John your credit of all of the kind of like back end stuff about the content and about the intake of the of the financial support and all of that and you both have done an incredible job with that really and truly like I don't know I had this weird rush of pride talking about our business that the three of us have with my girlfriend overhearing it. I was like, yeah, this is like you think I just pack a lunchbox and go out to that room and pretend to do a job five days a week. No, it's a real

thing. And I'll just say, regarding some of that back-end stuff, that's what she said.

My wife.

Wawa wewa. Maestro. I'm so sorry. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go.

Everybody rattle, settle. Well, well, well. It's the official real estate agent of the TBTL universe. Well, the official real estate agent of the Andrew and Genevieve universe, certainly. It's Sarah Nichols-Smith, Seattle, Washington. That's right. I believe Sarah is also a trained attorney, right? A trained lawyer.

Yeah, she also goes by the smartest person in the world, I think.

This tells you how great the lawyering game is. You could go through all. My cousin Kellyanne is another example. Went to law school, went to Notre Dame Law School, which is remains to this day the greatest accomplishment of anybody on my mom's side of the family, even above podcasting. And did the practice for a while and was like, this is a this is a this is a challenging, challenging situation. It moved on to other things. Yeah. Which I'm always, I guess I just feel like if I went to law school, first of all, I'd never stop talking about it. And I would never do anything else because I would be so pot committed to the law school thing, the lawyering thing.

I will say this. I think that knowing the law also enhances your profession, even if it's not specifically being a lawyer. And I will say that, like, in all seriousness, I feel like every time Sarah comes up on the show, maybe people think I'm laying it out a little bit thick. But it's in all seriousness, Sarah was amazing to work with. In all seriousness. In all seriousness, Sarah was amazing to work with. And the reason we have this house was because of Sarah's like knowledge of just kind of deep knowledge of how things work.

And it's not what was the offer, bully offer.

We enacted the bully offer, which the second Sarah said, well, we could try a bully offer. Genevieve's eyes got so wide. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this is definitely the way Genevieve doesn't even know what a bully is right now.

The positive side of bullying.

Exactly. So anyway, but I will say that I know that from talking to Sarah, knowing Sarah, that I think her background in law makes her so good at her job here. So I think that's kind of relevant, too. But all right. I've said enough nice things about Sarah. I'll let you read her message now.

Sarah says, hello, hello. I'd like to promote two things with my message. The first is giving blood and or platelets. Wow. I want to mention Sarah wrote this before hearing yesterday's program. Which got extensively into the topic of blood donation. Exactly. And the fact that Becca donates blood like crazy, and Andrew is under-hydrated. That's right.

I kind of mentioned that that was going to come up in a dazzling donor message. Yep.

Aside from the health benefits to the donor, yes, the donor, there's something awesome about not being able to pick who receives your blood. You just know that they are in need of life-saving measures, and you can help. It takes about 40 minutes, and the needle poke hurts less than most vaccines. But still get those. They're important, too, adds Sarah.

And drink water.

As TBTL's official realtor, I'd also like to make an offer to potential clients and referrals. If you're a 10 and you use me to help you buy or sell your home, I'd love to sponsor you as a dazzling donor in the next TBTL-a-thon. I'll be your TBTL dazzling donor daddy, if you will. this will be in addition to my usual closing gifts which are rad if I do say so myself I will back that up I would love to know what because I you know when I bought my little house I had the guy who was my real estate agent was a sweet guy you know this I'll be honest the fish kind of jumped into the boat I was literally at the McMinimins which is a hop skip and a jump from me and I was sitting at the bar having some dinner and I mentioned I was up here to look at a house and the guy said i'm also a real estate agent and i said do you want the job and he said sure and then we bought the house um but he gave me in like i mean honestly it wasn't much more than that yes and like um and i got you know first of all who i don't know if we is we we as people who are lucky enough to be able to buy a house if you should get a present or not but it's i guess it's kind of a standard thing now it was definitely like a nice gesture but it was not something like I'm sure Sarah Nichols Smith would give you, who's like a cool TBTL listener. I basically got a thank you gift basket that was not from somebody of Sarah's caliber of coolness. Peace and love to James, my real estate agent.

I'm going to purposely not say what Sarah Goddess has probably come up on the show before, only because

Stuff from AdamandEve.com

Are you familiar with a place called Lovers down by the airport? Also, there's one up north, too. I've got a punch card. Since I became a North Seattle resident, I learned that there's a, is it up in Linwood?

I'm two punches away from a French tickler.

I'm two ticklers away from a French punch. So they have a lot of different deals going on right now. There's a lovers up in Linwood as well. Now, I won't say specifically what Sarah got us because, you know, like, I don't know what she'll be getting folks in the future or whatever. And I don't want to put her on the spot. But really cool. Something that we use a lot and are super appreciative of specifically.

Okay, the caveat is that I expect you to allow me to speak in drops as we work together. This is now Sarah talking again. Because I'm sick of saying slab jacking to myself in my head all the time. It comes up rather a lot. I could actually see that because, think about this. Sarah is showing some of her clients a home. There is a part of the patio or driveway that's sagging that can happen. And she realizes this this this is the perfect job for some kind of slab jacking. But she knows better than to just say that out loud to, you know, to one of her customers. Slab jacking. Because they may not know the context. Exactly. So can I reiterate?

Because I feel bad for like kind of droning on a second ago. So I want to reiterate what Sarah said.

here you hire her she will sponsor you as a dazzling donor on top of all the other benefits of hiring her yes it's a pretty sweet deal yeah i'm sorry that i just i i stepped away from it

i'm so close to sneezing oh i can see it on your face did you do it i did you did oh you muted

yourself i thought you were doing it like a dad joke or something because i watched you sneeze

but i heard nothing i i of some years ago i think i promised to be the kind of person who sneezed on the microphone but there's been something about just how allergic i've been lately that's made the sneezing has gone from being kind of like a fun joke to being an actual distraction in my life like i've been sneezing like hundreds of times a day yeah it's not cute right now i feel like it's it's annoying to me and the listeners what's your longest run as far as like consecutive sneezes do you think i think i had an eight parter yeah i think i had an eight part series um in bed while it was daylight so there's a lot to unpack from that you know it's it's it's getting it's staying light very very late here in the northwest right now this time of year but i'm also going to bed very early because i'm old and allergic and i got in bed at about 9 15 a.m recently and it was still broad daylight out and my dad was downstairs watching my dad who's 70 years old stays up later than me just if people want a view into my cool life and I then sneezed eight times and I just heard quietly from down the house bless you

my dad quiet lone voice two floors away saying

bless you to my sneezes

now if you're not this is back onto

Sarah's message if you're not selling a home or buying a home in the near future or if you live outside my region I can still help I'll sponsor you at the daily donor level if you refer me to someone who hires me or if you let me connect you with a realtor in your area reach out to me on instagram it's nickel smith it's at and then nickel n-i-c-k-e-l smith and make sure you mention you're a 10 in your message or you can email andrew at tbtl.net and andrew will connect us

did you know you were being looped into yes i did in fact that might even be the easiest way to do it because i know that um sarah doesn't um whatever instagram is one way to do it but also you can just email me directly and i promise to connect you uh thanks luke and andrew and john for another

year i'm looking forward two question marks to having you help us all get through this year's election cycle oh okay i thought the two question mark were like is tv chill going to exist yeah i think that's more like a you know are we is this nation still going to be here on november 6th is it no is november 5th the uh the it's the first tuesday in november correct that is true but i

don't know what the date is this year i'm looking it up as we speak i feel like it's usually november

4th but this year it's november 5th and i've only noted that because i've got uh as we all do a lot riding on this and somehow it being on a not what i think of as normal day i can't tell if that's

good luck or bad luck it is november 5th but i got a question how it could possibly be november 4th on most if it's always a tuesday that that day must move around a lot right it must i don't

maybe it was november 4th one time and i just now think of it as being the but it's yeah the first tuesday we you know let's uh if this tv telethon goes well and if we still have a show we gotta we gotta build some i don't know what we're gonna do i mean that's a big thing in the life of the show and the life of us as people the day after that election i mean we're gonna have to come up with some kind of a strategy we we i mean the first time that that very awful thing happened it caught us by surprise and we just kind of went with it in the moment and it ended up being i think very cathartic for our listeners we can't just do that again i can't play the song oh girl i'd be in trouble if you left me now like i did the day after the 2016 election we've kind of used that up i

thought you were going to say if the tb telethon goes well we start our own super pack to make sure that people like mayor jen and mayor nigel get re-elected to important posts it starts at the

local level that's right you know so anyway well sarah thank you for that generous offer uh to a potential clients and tbtl listeners i mean again you could do a lot worse than our friend sarah nickel smith as your official real estate agent consultant friend liaison sarah liaises she does she liaises more by 7 a.m than most people liaise all day it's true okay so she rises and grinds. So anyway, thank you, Sarah. She liaises, I just laze. That's the difference. Thank you, Sarah. Hello and welcome to Top Story. Alright, we have called together this august panel of the three people that work on the show to talk TBTL-a-thon and some specifics here.

including an announcement around the Zooms that we're going to do this year as part of the Thon. This has kind of been a tradition, I guess, for maybe the last few. Anytime we've been like in a kind of static location, which we're going to be here at the Madrone Hill Studio, we've tried to really take advantage of that to do some connecting with the tens of listeners. And I will hand this off to the two of you. What can we say about these Zoom nights, if anything?

And I will just say, just to add clarity to that. But, yeah, I think this will be our fourth year in a row doing it, right? We started doing these Zoom nights. We did a show and tell back in 2020, I believe. Last year we did sort of our own version of an Antiques Roadshow. Oh, yeah. Tentiques Roadshow, is that what we called that one or something like that?

I don't know if a lot of that valuation that May put up was, if that bore out. I felt like they were really, really shooting from the hip.

I also got an email from that lawyer's office situation saying that we're part of a class action lawsuit because of last year's Zoom calls and the valuation of the products they're in. Is PBS suing us, actually?

That's a good reason to take part in these Zoom nights. You may be entitled to some kind of settlement after being part of it.

You're definitely entitled to something. So anyway, we're going to continue this grand four-year tradition this year with Zoom nights on Monday and Wednesday of the Thon. Now, Monday is the 8th, right? July 8th. And then the Wednesday then would be the 10th. We'll get into the details on the timing. But, John, do you want to talk about what the theme is going to be this year?

Yeah. Are we announcing the official name of the events, too? I think we're ready to do it, yeah. I'm ready. Yeah, so in line with us crafting and creating these bracelets, we are doing TBTL Presents I Just Crafted My Pants, which – I can't believe you came up with that, John.

Pretty good scoop. Whoa, whoa. Barbaro approved. Oh, I was wondering which one of you just made that shortle. I'm, like, looking at you, I'm like, where is that coming from? Yeah, it's Craft Nights, and you decided to call it Oops, I Just Crafted My Pants. No, not oops. Not oops, sorry, I threw that in there.

I threw in the oops, but then, yeah.

No, what are we calling it? TBTL Presents.

I just crafted my pants.

I just crafted my pants. And we even have a cool logo that you whipped up, John, which I love for the Zoom. So if I understand this right, and you two can correct me, the plan is going to be to get together on Zoom Monday night and Wednesday night. And it doesn't matter what time zone you're in. Some years we've broken it up that way. This is just a, can you make it? If you want to come to both, great, whatever. and then it's like have you crafted something did you make something that you'd like to tell us about but also like i'm not a very crafty person at all is there just something that somebody else crafted that you have maybe your grandmother made something maybe you maybe like i've got this um you know what i got in my house now is this like it's not in a bottle but it's like a ship in a bottle hold the bottle which let's be honest is the hard part so farnum why'd you phone this one my grandpa made like a model ship that's now sitting on a shelf in my house i could show that on the craft night even though i didn't make it it was a craft that farnham burbank made or even

and i'm being serious about this unless you guys want to vote me off the island um i think even if if you have somebody in your life who made something in minecraft and they want to screen share that i would accept that as crafting get off milf island i think i think that was something

we are very uh liberal with the term crafting right because like if you brew craft beer if you absolutely do something else arson like we don't want to feel people if you made a child and you

want to have them sure jump on and and tell us a joke like what the idea is let's all hang out together yeah and and if you have some kind of crafts and stuff that that you want to show us that's awesome but we don't want that to be a barrier for entry right right but if you also

did sew something or needle point something like awesome we'd love to see it and talk about and

share it with we will not be assigning a monetary value no we will be judging well we're always

judging i mean i'm judging both of you guys right now as well and by the way um i had a conversation with a long time 10 and dear friend of the show jen joyce who's a big part of the making community and we are making jen we've always called her that's right is um and as long as her uh internet is stable enough those nights she should be uh along for the ride both nights as well she's

We really focus more on macrame than internet connectivity these days.

Right, exactly. So anyway, so that'll be a lot of fun, too, a way to connect with Jen again.

And what are the times? I don't know if this really matters right now, but what are the times on these things?

6 p.m. on Monday, the 8th. Pacific. Pacific time, sorry. West Coast time. 5 p.m. Pacific time on Wednesday. So we're just staggering them by an hour a little bit in case the time differences help anybody. And like Luke said, you don't have to, we'll have signups. John's going to create some signups so that we can kind of get you.

the proper zoom link and make sure that you're all registered to join us but aside from that you can join one or both or whatever we're just trying to paste these in a way that everybody who wants

to join can i want to clarify the registration it's just so you can get in the room it's free to join oh yeah we you know obviously it's during the thon we'd love for you to donate but anyone who wants to be there we would love to have you there anyone listening yep and we should do this

i think we've done this in years past we should also um you know open up the like lobby the hangout area a little before the show starts because what i've noticed is it seems that the real fun for the tens is hanging out with each other in the zoom lobby once we start talking it kind of the enjoyment goes down pretty quickly um but the idea of just getting to like see each other and and and and and message each other and kind of hang out virtually i know that's something that people really, really like. So it'll be fun, Monday night and Wednesday night. Now, the other thing that may or may not come up during those sessions, but what I do think will be a running kind of theme of the week and the question mark, and something that the listeners, it sounds like, are already very nervous about is this question of these friendship bracelets that we are going to try to make. Here's the good news. Becca has already, at her house, sourced a large glass jar that we can put completed friendship bracelets into. I asked her how many she thought it could hold, and she said she thinks like 2,000. Okay.

Wow.

So the good news is we have a place to put the friendship bracelets that we – now all we have to do is make 2,000 friendship bracelets.

But I like the fact that we can visually keep track of this. We can keep showing this jar, and we can see our progress. Because I'm assuming that we're probably, if this is for every single person who donates, we're probably going to need to make about, what, $10,000, $50,000 of these things? God, that would be amazing. That would be amazing.

I bet you more like $1,100. John, what's the numbers? How many, if we had to make one for every donation last year, every, like, I mean, we're talking in the somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000, give or take? In that range. Yes.

Okay. It's a real, like, damned if you, damned if you don't. If we don't hear our goals, we're kind of screwed as a company.

Well, then we don't have to make the bracelet.

Right. That's the upside. So it's like, do we want to have jobs and pay our bills, or do we want our hands to be permanently damaged? Although, Andrew. Yeah, Andrew's got a head start on that, apparently.

Yeah, I've been working that one for a while now. I also have an idea. I mean, one person gives us $1 million. We just make them one huge bracelet using huge beads, and then we're out. Absolutely.

We stretch it from here to wherever they are.

Here's a dazzling detail for you on this, which I think is pretty funny. Now, not all of these bracelets are going to be exactly the same. First of all, we're making them by hand, so the colored beads will, you know, obviously vary on each one. And also we're going to have, like, I don't know, a handful of TBTL sort of slogans and sayings that we'll be putting on them. And we're not going to say what those are right now, but I will say, and I hope it's okay that I'm revealing this, I just think it's so funny. John, you've already ordered all of the beads, so we have all the letters for these sayings that we need. we have all the letters that we need, except one of the sayings has the letter H in it. And for some reason that we can't figure out, the letter H is on back order. So you had to hunt down a place here in Seattle, actually in my old neighborhood of Roosevelt. And I have to go there next week and say, hi, I'm here to pick up 4,000 H's, or no, 400 H's. 400 H's, exactly. So I'm really

looking forward to that you guys i don't i can't i'm sorry i have to give it away what the drop is

that we're going to be putting on holy shit snacks that is not it that just doesn't work without the

h no there's a lot of h's there it sits so here's i have a i have a question of about the kind of like how much technology we're allowed to involve in this i got an email which i don't have right in front of me again talk about bad planning the computer that i use to talk to you all and to do the show is not a computer that right now allows me to check my tbtl email account so i'm always talking about these emails based on memory but somebody reached out and maybe one or both of you were linked on this but they sent a link to a tiktok video that i guess they're 11 upon hearing about this project recommended and it's like something called a bead spinner oh i've been getting text messages about that and i looked it up and i still can't what's that i'm just so

confused as to our email is it's a gmail how can you not access gmail on a computer let me just

can i just take a moment to explain that gmail sucks ass i love it i have like 17 different

gmail accounts and they're all linked together and they're easy every single time i log into

i'm okay you know i'm trying to do right now i'm trying to log in to gmail and let's see if it will Let me do it. Oh, okay.

Actually, now I'm in.

Anyway, people, I don't know. Somebody sent a video of how it works. I was a little confused by it. I guess the spinning device helps you put a bunch of like kind of the generic kind of colored beads on there. It whips them on really quickly. Kristen was one of the folks.

Kristen saying, my Swifty Five was telling me about bead spinners, which a lot of her friends use to make their many, many friendship bracelets. Bracelets are not very expensive, and they may really help you on your righteous mission. Mission and then it's a tick-tock that says using an electric bead spinner for our eras tour friendship bracelets have been a game-changer But I watched the video have either of you watched the video. Yes Yes, so it starts didn't help me understand really what's going on

Yeah, I didn't understand exactly how it works But I know that the spinning part just helps you with like the non-specific beads, you know So you can put it into this right scene. It's it somehow whips the little

bracelet thread around it loads the wire up with the yeah with the part that doesn't say

colored ones and then by hand you would add the ones that say something specifically then you put it back in the machine to complete it i think but honestly like is that who we are like do we

want you are as a person who's doing none of this that's not true you don't want to sit down no i

was going to say first of all i think i honestly the last two days have been better i'm actually thinking i might uh don't don't do it dude you don't want me that throws you back if you like

just as you're like finally recovering and getting back to full strength if you then no i gotta help embark on this project and it sets you back i would personally i will personally make a thousand friendship i will personally pay becca to make a thousand friendship braces if it means you don't

have to re-injure anything i'm not going to injure anything i'm going to make one bracelet and we're going to we're going to make that one is going to be the most valuable bracelet of actually that's

a great idea i don't want to monetize your disability right now or your injury but like the idea that like if you want to really really donate at the highest level you'll get the the one bracelet that andrew is capable of for a donation of fifty thousand dollars for fifty

thousand dollars exactly so no um i don't know where do we come down on bead spinners because

because you know me, Andrew, I'm a, I usually like to try to solve my problems with throwing money at them. And I am fully ready to like, you know, you ever seen the people that get really into like fly tying, you know, like tying, you know, for fly fishing, by the way, shout out to, and many thanks to whatever 10, I think in Portland sent me a t-shirt. They did not sign it. They wrote me a funny note, but they didn't, as far as I could tell, they didn't sign it with their name but the t-shirt said podcasting i'd rather be rod casting and then it's like a silhouette of a person fishing it took me a second you should i'd rather be rod casting i'd love the

shirt you sent us a photo of it and at first it just took me a second because i was thinking like the rod father i was thinking of the name rod and then i was like oh oh no rod like a fishing rod

right that's how connected to the outdoors i am i'd rather be rod casting i mean it's funny because it does it assumes that a certain kind of person probably a guy who's really into fishing has been hearing too much about podcasting i don't know if that's a person i don't know if the same person who knows about podcasting also is very into rod casting yeah it's interesting because it's kind of

like what if it was just like am radio i'd rather be well i can't really make the rhyme work but it's kind of like how could you be how can you be against radio like just generally speaking it's

like somebody noticed that podcasting kind of sounds like casting a rod and then they just reverse engineer the t-shirt i love it so much by the way i'm washing it currently because i don't know where it's been but i'm going to start sporting that shirt a lot um so but but all that is to say the you know people will set up those work stations if you're really into tie uh fly tying it's a whole thing with like a light and a magnifying glass and tools and that's what makes it possible i've sort of imagined that for this for me to hold up my end of this bargain which is to the tune of around 500 of these friendship places five to 1,100 of these i'm going to set up a whole workstation i'm going to have bead spinners i'm going to have like anything i can do technologically or from a tool base uh to to to help myself do this i'm going to do that

you guys want to look into getting a couple of those do we have it in the budget yet do we need

get some of the donations can i respond to this idea i think a good uh practice for us with this is after monday we reevaluate like how many do we do on day one if we've made like 600 on monday i'm like this is great we're doing awesome we're pacing really well if we've made 43 on monday then i think we invest every dollar we can into all the technology if we made 43 all we need is

what a hundred days and then we'll be there like so that's it a hundred day tv cellophon you know

I would go to the store and I would see how expensive these bead bracelets are. So we bought a factory in Germany, and we are doing it a different way. We are making these affordable. Barry's beads. Barry's beads, yeah. So, yeah, we can decide how much we want to mechanize this.

Well, Andrew, you're going next week to pick up those H's. You should seriously inquire. Ask them about it. See what they recommend or if there is. And just kind of not changing subject, but just changing pace for a moment. I just want to highlight this to you guys. I don't know if you guys remember this. This was – yep, that's not helping. When we were at the 4,000th episode, listener Danielle Walsh's children made us –

I've got one of those.

Yeah. I think it's better than you can see now. And it just says TBTL, but it's awesome, and I keep it here at my desk with all my stuff.

I've got it in my bedroom on my dresser, which is slightly weird. I think it just had been in something else, and I put it on my dresser, and I haven't moved it. But I've got one of those, and they're great. And I use it as when I look at it, I think, God, it's going to suck to make 1,000 of those. That's awesome. It's going to be complicated.

I keep mine in my hope chest.

Because I hope I don't have to make 1,000 of these.

Danielle has little kids with little hands that can tie little knots. And that's the thing I get worried about.

What about Santa's elves? Are we opposed to a sweatshop? This is the quiet season for Santa's elves. Can we get them on the case?

Yeah, I like that. I mean, honestly, we borrow some kids from the listeners. They get to hang out with podcasting celebrities. You know, we do.

We call it a summer camp. We call it. We charge them. We charge them.

Oh, my goodness gracious.

Junior podcaster camp, learn about podcasting. This is our new revenue stream. Guys, why have we not been doing this? Basketball camp is so 2000 and late. This is a growth industry. Teach your kids how to podcast at our podcasting camp, where they'll also be making thousands of friendship presents.

I would bet all the dollars in my bank account right now that there is a podcast or a creator's camp or something like that. Oh, 100%. Right? There's got to be that.

But hear me out. Is there a rodcaster's camp?

Not since the state of New York got involved and sent a cease and desist.

Right, right, right.

so okay so anyway it sounds like we are the i'm i'm getting well i'm gonna first i'm gonna ask john for permission because he's the one that has the credit cards then i'm gonna order us up at least a couple of these bead threaders i don't think that they're expensive we should have those

on hand right i i'm fine with us doing that i would legitimately andrew since you're gonna be i mean i could go somewhere here locally in st paul but if you're gonna be picking up beads anyway i would just like if you don't mind asking like hey we're making a lot of these for a business a business project for business boys yeah and um like would you recommend it like what's how helpful is it like i would i wouldn't hurt to ask yeah so here's the plan i'll go i plan on going in

i think on tuesday they're holding a bag of h's for me so here's the plan i'm going to walk into the store called bead world i'm going to say i'm andrew i believe you have one that's a schedule one b i believe you have 400 h's waiting for me also me and the business boys are going to be making a bunch of bracelets do you have any spinners that's the line or just like what's

our is it really worth it or like what how do you like maybe even how you because i didn't see the video i don't know if i got that email please forward but like what's what's the real benefit

is it something i think it randomly i think it randomly throws it randomly throws the colored beads onto it just saves you the time of having to manually thread the beads that aren't the tbtl sayings onto the bracelet. That's the time save, I believe. Yeah, exactly. I was still upset at how much hand tying there was of this fishing line, though, when I watched the video. They were like, this thing is a game changer, and I assumed it was just something that you just threw all the elements in, and you hit a button, and then it comes out as a bracelet. Like a bread maker. No, it still looked pretty hard. Yeah, the tying. You could use the time saver. The tying is going to kill us. That is the thing. The person's manicure is flawless, and I mean, I chew my nails. I have no chance. Do you really? That surprises me. I have to say, I don't know if you all will be able to see this very well, but I think I have, as far as fingernail chewers, I have some of the nicest fingernails you'll see, because I don't, actually, I smashed my thumb in the door moving a couch for Becca because you think I have low T. Would a guy with low T smash his thumb in a door moving his girlfriend's couch?

That was payment for Becca to help us make these, right?

Well here's what happened I promised some very very Violet people a lot of money To help us with the thank you With the friendship bracelets And I did not come through with a payment And now I've got the thumb injury to show for it

You got it

Alright you guys I've got to say something

I'm very excited about this, Thon. I really am. And I'm very excited to hang out with both of you. I'm daunted by the project of these bracelets, but I think it'll be, if nothing else, it'll be entertaining, okay? So I want to just say that. I also want to say, we're getting towards the end of the show. Specifically, we're getting towards the end of my time with the show today. So I'm wondering, could I do something very inappropriate here? And could I pitch the ball? Could I lateral the ball to both of you for a Music for Your Weekend situation? and quietly bow out and quietly let you two bow in for doing music for your weekend.

That depends on John. Do you have a music for your weekend, John?

I have an artist that I actually sent it to Luke a while back when he was listening to music for the weekend. I don't think I got that. It's fine.

My email's been super crazy lately. I'm sorry.

You can't log in, I hear.

Logs in in one second.

Screw Gmail.

Oh, actually, no, it's fine. It works here. It's fine. So I could pinch hit.

Okay, sounds good.

And you've got our listener suggestion in the show sheet, right, Andrew?

Yeah, I was just checking that right now, and it looks like I do have it here.

And I wish I could be here for it because it does have a very – it has a Portland Airport District-specific reference, but I do think I should probably skedaddle. So could I leave it to you both?

Yep, sounds good. You have a good weekend, Luke. All right.

Bye-bye. Oh, this is – I've never done this before. This is amazing. This is like in a movie Where we're flying somewhere But I've got like a parachute on And I'm going to just like skydive out of the plane And you two are going to keep flying I'm just going to do some cool move

Just like adios amigos And then I just fall back Is adios amigos your catchphrase Is that going to be your action hero line Nobody's got that one yet I don't think

Have a great weekend boys Adios amigos

There he goes That guy's a clown There's 80% of his body All right, see you later

So Andrew, Luke is face I'm Mr. T Who are you from the A-Team?

I didn't watch the A-Team, I don't know it Yeah, I don't even, I mean, I guess Who's the guy with the cigar? I think that's face

Isn't it, because he's like the pretty face Because Luke's guy's hair all done up and stuff

No, no, no, hold on We gotta do music for your weekend But A-Team characters No, no, the guy who's like the boss of everybody's chewing on a cigar, B.A. Barakas. No, no, that's Mr. T. No, B.A. Barakas, that's Mr. T. Sorry. I am so confused here. Is it Hannibal? I think I'm thinking of John Hannibal Smith.

Yes, that's probably it. Most of my A-Team knowledge comes from watching Family Guy in the early 2000s.

Ah, the references therein. Would you like to start with your music for your weekend? Tell me what it is because I didn't receive that email.

yeah no i well because luke's the email for that no yeah absolutely guy um so there's this performer her name is it's pronounced bear but she spells it b-e-r um she's a local twin seas person she's been featured on the current you know mpr's music like indie music um i'm trying to think of what would be a good song just kind of on the spot but she has an ep called halfway i don't know if you're pulling this up in like spotify but she has an ep called halfway and i would say either slut phase uh or your air net sucks are really good ones um but i saw her perform at like a charity event actually a month or two ago and she's i think she's one of these performers that like in a year or two she's gonna be like everyone's gonna know bear you know i mean that's kind of vibe i get from her she's young i think you would be into her she's kind of got that like um how angsty is the right word but like punk rocky almost not punk rock like not quite like a soccer mommy but like that kind of like strong uh a female vocalist but like like with like a good sound you know i think you get into that kind of vibe and i go for that vibe too yeah

maybe even a lot of the stuff i've been playing lately in that vein has almost harkened back to

the 90s a little bit i don't know if this yeah this wouldn't be quite that but it's she's she's

got great sound all right sounds good i have the song here your internet sucks by bear

Thank you. Probably regret this in the morning But I'm sending you this song anyway There's a lot of things we never said A lot of texts I never sent And don't forget the times you text your

x when we were still in bed and yeah i'm gonna bring it up again please just let me get this off my chest i don't think that i wish you the best i like it when the uh is that a beat dropping that i hear

there i like it when it kicks in there about a minute in especially yeah yeah yeah i do like

She's got just, yeah, I recommend folks just check out if you're, like, into that at all. She's got, she doesn't have a ton of stuff out there, but what's there is good.

Nice, nice. Well, thanks for that. I'm going to play a song that I've been listening to a lot lately. I mentioned on the show recently that I have a playlist going that I've been listening to this summer. And I just, like, it's got just, I mean, I don't know if you do this, John, but I tend to, like, kind of collect songs that I've been listening to into a playlist kind of based on month or, I don't know, kind of era of my life or whatever. And sometimes I go back and I listen to them and I'm just like, I don't know, this is just a bunch of scattershot stuff that doesn't really fit together. But I got to say, I have really been enjoying this particular little collection of mostly new music that I've been collecting. And one of the songs on it that I keep coming back to is by the band Shear Mag, which is sort of a, I mean, the best way to describe them is they're almost just like, I mean, they're almost like quintessential rock and roll. Like they're a modern band, but they obviously are very influenced by sort of kind of classic rock and stuff that like stuff that would have just been rock and roll before we started calling it classic rock, you know, which is kind of weird because we slice and dice these genres up so much these days. But I got to see Shear Mag at the Vera Project here in Seattle. A friend and his kids took me and they have a relatively new record out. It's called Playing Favorites. I'm trying to think, is this possibly? I don't think it's a greatest hits. I think it's just called Playing Favorites as the name of the album. And the name of this song is Moonstruck by Shear Mag.

I left your place last night In the pool in eight But when I got home The sounds of that storm It's just been me for so long Gets harder just to go on I need some rhymes To keep me born Come on now My, my, my moonshot I kind of forgot how kind of funky it begins, too.

There's some funk influences.

But that's awesome. That was a great vibe. And the funkiness, the intro almost felt like it was a different song. Like, oh, this is like if you're sitting around a campfire, you're going to listen to this. And then it breaks into this other kind of song.

Yeah. I can't remember her name, the lead singer, but I was really struck. So the Vera Project, John, is kind of a – I don't know if iconic is too strong of a word. I don't think it is. It's kind of an iconic venue here that's vehemently all ages so that, like, young people can have, you know, access to some of the musical experiences here in Seattle. And I think it's an actual non-prof, and it's been around for a long time, and they have other, like, kind of –

That's awesome.

Yeah, they have a bunch of other kind of programs, I think, that they run through the Vera Project, And it's really cool. And my friend Aaron texted me a couple of months ago and said, hey, this band Sheermag, who I was faintly familiar with, is playing Vera. And I'm taking my girls, who I can't remember exactly their ages. I'm going to say maybe like, I don't know, 12 and 8 or something like that. Maybe 13 and 9. I'm not exactly sure. And I'm going to take them to their very first kind of rock and roll show. And so do you want to go with? I was like, oh, yeah, that'd be great. So the four of us went. And it was so cool. And I will say this sounds like, I don't know, it sounds kind of it sounds potentially reductive or cliche or something. But seeing Aaron's youngest daughter just be enthralled by the woman who's the front person of this band. And I was talking to Aaron a few weeks later and he said that she's still like talking about how she wants to be her. Because like this is this is why you want representation, right? Because in role models and everything. So I just thought it was like the perfect it was a really good show I loved hanging out with them and then to hear that like this girl who's also just like a super super cool kid is kind of like I want to be that when I grow up I'm like that's pretty awesome that's that's the power of the beer.

a project so that's super dope yeah yeah that's awesome how are those girls uh at tying little

knots very very good question i'm sending a text message right now all right uh let's transition here into the um final song of the day and we'll wrap up our week here uh this was sent in by listener roald hey roald roald is our inside man i don't know if you remember this john roald is our inside man into the supermarket exactly i almost said grocery store but supermarket is such a better word i gotta remember to swap those out and rold says uh hey guys your cd baby talk oh that's right we're talking about cd baby more than you'd expect in 2024 the other day um your cd baby talk reminded me of this song um look at you by win win is spelled w-y-n-n-e by the way she's a portland-based rapper who first came onto my radar from her youtube ciphers As Jay would say She's got flow In the video she does stand outside of And references CD Baby Have a great weekend That's right because the CD Baby building Is there in the Portland area It sounded like you Are you familiar with Wynn? I heard a sort of nod of approval coming

Oh no, actually the spelling of Wynn When you said it sounded like Randy Wynn Former baseball player That's what most people were thinking

That's where my brain went Yeah, no, I think most people were thinking that, so I appreciate the clarification. Oh, wait, this is Randy. A lot of people were like, wait, is this Randy Wynn, the former baseball player?

I don't think Randy Wynn is yet the end. Randy Wynn, one-time mariner, I believe. Oh, really?

What era are you talking about? You're mostly like early 2000s. Early 2000s. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, I have not heard this song yet, so I will play it for you. It's called Look at You by Wynn, and we're going to have to wrap up the show here. John, thank you very much for joining us today. That was a lot of fun to be here. By the way, it's been way too long since we've had you on the show. And I've been realizing that lately. And then I thought, well, we're getting close to the Thon time. So during the Thon, you will be on a lot more ramping up to the Thon. And then certainly during that week of broadcast, which, again, is going to be the week of July 8th. So everybody get ready for that. We're also, aside from the bracelets and the Zoom nights, we're also going to be making a big announcement about where our next TBTL live show is going to be this fall. So you're going to want to tune in for that and some other fun stuff as well. And, John, we're going to have you back on at some point before that to talk about what the other thank you gifts are.

Oh, I'm so excited.

They're really good, right? Yeah. They're really good. And I'm seeing some of the, like, proofs of them. I'm just like, oh, that's pretty nice. Love the bracelets. Yeah.

Throbed that to do the bracelet thing, but just really excited for this other stuff.

Exactly. So, all right, everybody, stay tuned for all of that as we build up to July 8th. In the meantime, have a – oh, and can you close out the show with me, John, in the normal –

Yeah, do you want me to take Luke's part or your part?

I'll try to do the first part, although it's a little bit hard for me.

Is that going to mess with your brain? It definitely is. That's why I was asking you.

I appreciate the help, but I don't want to turn down a challenge here. So I'll say to everybody, thank you so much for listening all this week. It's been a lot of fun. It's been a weird week on TBTL, and next week's going to be just as fun. So in the meantime, please, everybody, have a fun, safe weekend. Luke always says, go Mariners. I can't remember I think Go Yankees I'm sorry Do not Don't worry I'll beep that out Trying to think The Mariners I think They're on a They're on a road trip Right now But I think Things ease up A little bit After Cleveland If I'm right about that So either way Go Mariners Go eat a bagel And everybody remember No mountain too tall And good luck to all Perfect

Okay, I'm in effect I hit the liquor, but it hasn't hit my system yet Okay, let's hit the day Sorry, I missed your text He want a picture in the shower of my bitties wet Is that a litmus test? I'm not your Santa, baby You gon' need a simp before I start reciprocating While you grow on top to me and when I'm not engaging You don't cuddle me enough to do your litigating He want me to put out, he should go to CD, baby Little baby, he harder than ever, that's my oopsie daisy Blue your babies, you can't undo your 2K rating Not tryna show off, honey, who's parading Look at me, look at you, then look back at me That's embarrassing You see how my ass sit in these baggy jeans Don't make me send you back to therapy What's it say?

Well, it says, I love it when a plan comes together.

Power out.