Muse

Ah, look at that kooky ol' cookie jar. You like cookie jars, Kenneth? Well, I guess I never thought about it that much. We had a nice one back home in Georgia. Had a bear on it. I remember when my mom's friend, Ron, would come over. They'd go into the bedroom to sort out their paperwork, and I'd just go ahead and stare at that cookie jar. It was almost as if I took every problem that I ever had and I put it inside that cookie jar and I sealed it up so tight that nothing would never ever ever get out. So I guess to answer your question I'd give cookie jars about to be TBTL I'm starting my own podcast. Hey that could be fun. All right

everybody who's ready to laugh i can't hear you that's not true of course but cheer louder yeah are you seriously detaining me again am i being rendered no you're being friendered

so just please accept our compulsory hospitality if you had a favorite saying what would it be

life's a party rock your body it stinks all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live it is our turn

my name is luke burbank i am your host a highly paranoid very large individual talking a bunch

of nonsense coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where we are looking at another gorgeous absolutely gorge summer day here on june the 25th It's like I'm walking on sunshine. Yesterday I was wondering if we can call June 24th. Can we call that late June? I'm ready to call June 25th late June. It's also my dad's Blur's Day today. So happy Blur's Day to old Walt B.

Blur's Day today.

Turning 70 years young today. We are turning 4,235 in a collector's series. today and let the fun begin we're also going to celebrate with a cake confetti and balloons it's going to be quite the day here uh we're also going to talk about the kind of stuff we usually talk about on the show which is something that happened to me by way of the internet that left me kind of frustrated welcome to the internet and actually has me currently feeling frustrated i am in a a real pitched battle with the chinese company over the question of what the color orange actually looks like classic case of fruit blindness um so we will get into that i've got visual aids as well because this is of course a highly visual medium although we are videotaping the whole dang thing i get all prettied up now for this so maybe we can put the video out potentially um this guy's always looking pretty and i will tell you though he's the longest running co-bro of the show maybe best known for his depictions on the tall ships but lately he has been contradicting me at times on the program which i really don't appreciate we had a meeting right before the show and he's agreed that we are going to stay now in perfect alignment on all

things there is no friction there is no you know tension here oh they're entirely on the same page

about this he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke

Do you want to hear a sound that your phone should never make? Okay. Let's see if this will work now that we're rolling. It was doing it a second ago. Ooh. Wait. It actually sounds a little bit like the Star Trek Enterprise, doesn't it?

Wait, hold on. Yes. We are getting so close to finding that Russian sub.

Spock, sabotage the system.

Yeah. You know what that... What in the heck fire is that sound?

You know, I dropped my phone in the shower today.

Wait, come on. I was using... You brought the phone into the shower. Spock, sabotage the system.

Of course I brought the phone into the shower. I was using the new soap app. Do you not use the new soap app? Do they not have that for the iPhone? It gives a really good lather. Boy, that would be an interesting app. I did. I would listen to the... Not the daily. I listened to, what is the Morning Edition podcast? Up First. I knew that, but I had to ask you that because I had to cough. No joke. That was one time I actually knew it was called Up First, but I needed you to say that just for two seconds so I could mute myself and cough.

I love the idea that when you're a kid, you watch Up Late with Gilbert Gottfried, and when you're an old person, you listen to Up First. Right. Presumably. is it the same I've never listened to it but is it the same host as Morning Edition is it just kind of Morning Edition, but a compressed version? Do they have a whole different set of hosts for that?

I think of it as almost like, I guess an appetizer would be the wrong analogy because you would never serve an appetizer that's part of the same meal that you'd be eating. It's not like you're going to get chicken niblets before you sit down to a meal of chicken biglets. Bitch. Chicken biglets. Wait. Possible show title. That raises something that I really like. These are the best Cajun chicken niblets I've ever had. Can you remind me, we need to talk about chicken niblets in a second, because I have something that's been bugging me all weekend that I need to talk to you about. You're on fire today, and I love it.

Hold on, I'm writing down.

I'm a mess is what I am.

That's great. Sometimes that actually makes the best content. Chicken niblets. Okay.

Okay, so remind me to ask me about chicken niblets, because I have a question that I don't think you can answer. You'll be the third person I've asked this question to. I think you're really the wrong person to ask it to, But maybe somebody in the audience can explain something to me regarding chicken niblets-esque food. But, no, I do. I like to listen to Up First. Now, it's sad. I'm not listening to the podcast Up First because I am up first. Ironically, it's because I'm up last, and I want to know what I missed on Morning Edition. So when I'm in the shower, they're already in their post-Morning Edition programming, and I just want to kind of hear the headlines. And so what up first is it is whoever is hosting Morning Edition that day, those two hosts will do a sort of a mini little, again, sort of a whistle wetter of what's kind of like what the three big stories are or maybe two big stories and maybe something more featurey that sort of reflects what will also be in Morning Edition. But I don't think it's like like in other words, like if somebody in morning condition might have a package, they might do a two way with that reporter or something. And it's usually about, I don't know, 15 minutes long or something. And so I will often what I do is I have the phone. I literally have the phone. If you'll recall, the Galaxy S10 was the phone that was advertised during the Super Bowl and other major events. They showed Snoop Doggy Dog pouring champagne on it to prove that it can handle like moisture.

year do you remember these ads i don't but it definitely sounds like a thing that could have happened yes it definitely happened there was a i mean that's that seems like exactly the person

you would hire to do that in an ad oh no oh no no no it was little wayne it was little wayne oh yes i do remember i'm sorry little wayne snoop dogg is in so many super bowl commercials i got it wrong

little wayne is literally three feet of height between you can put two little waynes in a trench coat you have almost have a snoop dog i actually just remember being kind of charming

isn't it little way walking through a convenience store he's like in a mini mart yeah he buys a thing of champagne and he's just pouring it over his phone as he's walking the whole point is that these things can handle like kind of moisture or what have you well i guess you know my phone isn't broken but it's got a little tear so i'm trying to turn on the podcast up first and the phone slips out of my hand and it goes clankety clank down and onto the under the tub floor it's very loud the phone is generally fine but it's got a little teardrop um push notifications and it says please send me to therapy i just need to talk to somebody uh no it says uh check charger usb port moisture has been detected in your charger and so then i forgot about that and And I came to my desk, and I plugged in my charger, and I got the Hunt for Red October.

Yeah.

Yeah. So anyway. They don't like that at all.

They're very, very worried. Same thing with my iPhone. They're very concerned about water intrusion. Yeah, exactly. And it seemed, in my experience, that happens at the absolute worst time. Like, the phone is almost dead. It's thinking. I've been, like, driving before. actually what i did once that was dumb was i i my phone didn't seem to be charging it wasn't linking up well with the little lightning what i don't forget what the terminologies apple uses for putting in the charger but like i do this thing where i will lick the electrical i'll lick the thing that is doing the charging to see if there's a charge you know how when you kind of

lick a battery to see if it still has some life left in it i i do remember doing that as a kid i would never do that as an adult the the sensation just it seems so awful to me you can do that with

these little power chargers i didn't know that i can do it i used to have to do it all the time you know i before you i had uh or before you like you and before i had this uh camera setup i have now this blink stuff i had this google nest situation which was pitched to me by the wire cutter at the new york times as being really good but i the cameras kind of suck and they would they wouldn't charge and i was always trying to figure out if it was the camera if it was this like weird very proprietary charging cable they had it's unlike anything i've ever seen and i think

I think you have the doorbell camera, which I think charges from something different, but these Nest cameras that I had used a, again, I'd never seen anything like it. It's like a little, imagine like a very, very miniature hockey puck. Like that's a quarter inch in diameter, but it's more like an oval. So it actually in no way resembles a hockey puck. I just have Stanley Cup on the brain because of the last name I was Game 7. I imagine a very small oval, and it has these little metal kind of contact points coming out of it, and you nestle it into this nest cam. But anyway, I was always having problems, and so the way I would figure out if the charging cable was working was I would lick it because it would shock your tongue just a little bit, not terribly so. So I do that sometimes. I do the same thing with my phone. Anyway I licked the thing to see if it was sending a charge To my cell phone and then I tried to put it in my cell phone And then it was like water intrusion Red alert But of course I was Doing that because my phone needed Battery power If I remember right it was I was trying to use Waze to get to like a film shoot It was like a thing where I did not have 20 minutes for the phone To decide that it was no longer And I remember like trying to do a version of like Reverse CPR where I'm sucking the moisture out of the little thing in the phone as if that would work. My breath probably inherently has more moisture in it than whatever I'm trying to remove from the phone. It was a bad situation.

You were reverse Nintendo cartridgesing it, right? Precisely.

That is a much better way to describe it. All right, let's talk chicken nipples.

Yeah, we actually do have to talk about this. This is something that popped up, and I've been dying to bring this to you, and I forgot yesterday.

You've already asked three people this question. They haven't been able to give you a satisfactory answer. And you think that I am uniquely poorly suited to answer the question. So I think you are when ready.

Well, I think part of I think you're going to you're going to be able to associate with the scenario here, but not what was actually on my plate. So I was on the road this weekend and I found myself kind of kind of on my own for dinner in a town that is very unwalkable. Phoenix, I'm looking at you. and peace and love peace and love but it's very unwalkable like I was staying at a place near the airport and I wanted to I was going to walk to a convenience store and I saw that as a mile and a half away from my hotel and I was like oh that's perfect now it was 113 out so maybe it would have been a bad walk anyway I you know that was in the evening that was at like seven o'clock we haven't

even talked about this part of your trip yeah you were in extreme heat which which I don't think of as being anyone's favorite climate, but particularly maybe not your favorite climate.

I mean, I had to take a very quick trip to Phoenix for some family stuff. And honestly, when it's that hot, it's almost like going to the moon. They don't let you outside much. It doesn't affect you that much.

Right, or going to Minnesota in January. It's all underground tunnels.

When I was checking into my hotel, Bonvoy, by the way, I was very pleased with... Bonvoy to you, sir. Thank you. It was kind of a bigger hotel with kind of a pool area and stuff, which i didn't even know uh but my point is when i went to check in the guy's like okay you're in whatever room and then he's like go all the way through there and he kind of points around the corner and it looks like i can go outside like kind of through the pool area and i don't know if he saw something on my face whatever he said no i'm not going to make you i'm not going to make you go outside it was like exactly like it was kind of like oh it's so strange to live in a place where people say don't go outside it's almost unlivable out there but then i'm like wait a second in the winter in the midwest and all kinds of parts of this country if you're outside for very long it is inhabitable in habitable inhospitable uninhabitable uninhabitable i think is maybe the word i'm looking for indubitably indubitably inhospitable did the show be

indubitably inhospitable i feel like that should both be the name of this episode that was their

second by the way that was musical they ended up with bonvoy but their second place choice was

indubitably inhospitable indubitably inhospitable i'll never remember conrad bonvoy was like no

that's a terrible school conrad bonvoy that was a blending of like many hotel magnates conrad hilton i believe was the was like a big important person in the hilton family but of course that's not the marriott family in fact i don't even know if marriott is someone's name actually it might be because there's the high end of Marriott. One of the high ends is the JW Marriott, which makes me think it's named for, like, John William Marriott.

Anyway, so I was there. For the most part, you know, you're inside most of the time. Everything is, you know, kind of air-conditioned, more temperature-controlled wherever you are. But I had landed, and I kind of was, again, just kind of like kind of on my own on Friday night.

And I was like, okay, well, I did have some errands to run. Like I needed to pick up a card and stuff. And so I'm like, oh, well, I'll walk down to this place. And it was a mile and a half away. And then I'm like, oh, that's great. But then I'm like, oh, wait, I should put on walking directions, not driving directions. And it was like, oh, this will be 4.5 miles away. And it will take you an hour and a half. Because like there's just no way to navigate. It's all strodes and highways. And you know what I mean? Like it's just not. I mean, again, I'm by the airport in Phoenix. But like Phoenix is just like all. I did not see any roads that were less than like five, five lanes across. So anyway, what do I end up doing, Luke, when I need dinner and I'm in a place like this and the options are limited? I go to an Applebee's. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. You do. Now, what is it? So I did exactly what you and I will often do if we're on a road trip together. I walk in. I sit at the bar. I order myself an IPA of some sort, and I stare at the menu for a long time. And I have some go-tos. As you know, sometimes I'll get like the bourbon steak. I don't know if you would remember that, but sometimes a bourbon steak or something.

I do remember that. I think we were in Eureka, California, maybe when you got that.

The first time I got it, I think while I waited for it, I told you this is probably not going to be very good. My grandfather used to go to Applebee's, order the steak. And send it back, right? Well, at least complain about it. And we'd be like, well, you're at an Applebee's. And then I get the steak on my grandpa. This is actually pretty good. like no no shade to Applebee's um having said all that this time I'm like I'm in the mood for something that's kind of like a finger food I don't want to sit down to a big meal at first when I sit down there's plenty of elbow room around me but it's a Friday night 113 degrees didn't put you in the mind of a pot roast right or the pot pie that they had on the menu I believe um but uh but then as so I'm like what do I want what do I want it takes me a while also like there's just various factors like by the time I place my order I've already had like two ipas and i'm already kind of feeling the effects of that a little bit and not to also those eat like a meal right exactly those are pretty those are pretty filling i was kind of surprised that i was still hungry but i was like well i really need to eat something before i go back to the hotel because again it there was not like there was a there was like a kind of a bistro in the bottom of the hotel but like i didn't want to eat there and i can't explain that can i ask

because yeah it's now it's past nobody's going to show up at your hotel which bonvoy type property Are we talking about a residence in a courtyard?

I was like super impressed with it. Like I was looking for a place that was just as close to the hotel as possible. Cause I had a really early flight on Sunday. Sorry, airport as possible. And so I was actually reading the reviews more carefully than usual. Cause I'm like, I don't want some hotel that's just like, you know, it's got a major name brand on it, but it's just been sitting there since 1950 and you can still smell the smoke in the room or whatever. And so I was, I actually read some reviews and it wasn't like super expensive, but I was like this is the one that has the best reviews I mean it's an airport hotel it's not like people are like saying hey when you come to Phoenix make sure you check out the Courtyard Airport Marriott or whatever but when I

showed up like the Sky Harbor Courtyard

exactly yeah exactly but the thing is it was very clean it was I don't know how new the building was or how recently it was refurbished everything was very like the bathroom like was was like kind of modern it had a modern shower I've got eyes on this but not so It wasn't so modern that it didn't have a door. You know what I mean? Right. It was just like I was very pleased with my hotel room. I've had some bad luck with those recently. So anyway, but the thing is you are really landlocked there unless you want to call another Uber. So I had taken an Uber down to a Walgreens to do a little shopping. And then I'm like, well, there's an Applebee's right here. I go to the Applebee's. I sit down. Like I'm telling you, the bar is not super full when I get there. there's a few people there but then by the time I'm ordering my food it's getting really crowded and I have very little room around me and all the more I don't want to sit down to a big plate of food I just need something that I can sort of nibble on and what is Applebee's famous for?

If only there was something that you could nibble on but it was not so much it was almost like a

niblet almost like a niblet almost like a riblet and that is what sure that is what Applebee's I I mean, I've seen commercials for riblets, or I've heard of them. Like, I've never had a riblet before, and I'm picking, what do you, have you ever had a riblet? Let me ask you this. Have you ever, have you ever had a riblet? Have you ever, have you ever, have you ever had a riblet? Have you ever had a dream you could do anything, including eating a riblet? I don't think I have. Okay, good. Don't look it up. Now I have your attention. I am looking it up. I'm actually looking at it. No, no, before you do that, tell me what, oh, okay. Well, then before you looked at it, what did you, what would you think it's like?

what would you think a riblet is like to be honest with you if you told me riblet i would assume it didn't have bones in it i would assume it was that they had uh you know they had lowered the barrier to entry for eating this food product because like a chicken nugget is like a

a piece of chicken, but minus any kind of work for you, the consumer. You know what I mean? There's no bone, et cetera. If I heard riblet, I would think, oh, this is going to be – in the way that like a short rib – we had this conversation a few weeks ago. Short rib is very easily eaten. You're not gnawing it off of the bone. You're not dealing with it in the way you would like a spare rib. I would assume riblet is an easier version of a rib to eat.

Another menu item that Applebee's and a lot of chain restaurants have is something that they call, and I know this is controversial in some circles, that they call boneless chicken wings, right? Which are not actually chicken wing meat that they remove the bone from. The controversy is that it's actually probably some breast meat and some other dark meat maybe that is not actually wing. But the point is, if you like chicken wings, but you don't want to eat it off the bone because it's messy or it's a bit of a pain, then you get the boneless chicken wings, right? Well, I figured that a riblet is the exact same thing with ribs. it comes out and it's like it tastes like it tastes like ribs it's rib-esque material

but but don't end up with sauce all over your face exactly while people are sitting right next to you at the applebee's at sky harbor and and so and that you can maybe poke a fork in it and

just pop it in your mouth like a boneless chicken wing only it's pork or whatever so i order i'm like this is perfect for right now so then it and it comes it came with like mashed potatoes and so So I'm like, okay. Oh, you know, that was on me because I didn't want the coleslaw. So that's on me. So anyway, by the time the plate arrives, what I get are these long sort of flanks of meat. Flank isn't the word I'm looking for. Whatever. I mean, it's a flank kind of, I don't know. It's like these long, thin pieces of meat that look nothing like any kind of rib at all. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. I guess I'll just cut this up with a knife.

It almost sounds like it's sort of Korean style. Well. Like a Korean-style rib. Sort of.

Well, that's what I'm learning. At first, I'm like, oh, I guess these are boneless, you know, kind of flanks or whatever. And so then I start cutting into them. I'm like, no, wait a second. There's all kinds of bones hidden in these. And you're right. They're cut across. They're sort of cut across the ribs so that they are like when you eventually kind of dig out the bones, they're like little coins, you know? Like medallions. Like a medallion. Like a medallion. Like a 50-cent piece, if those still exist, about that size. and they're mostly bone and the bone is purely hidden inside of it i cannot understand world it is literally the worst of all worlds if i'm going to make a mess and eat something with bones on it then just give me the rib where the bone sticks out of each side and i can use it like a little handle and now by the time the food comes out and again i know i've been saying this a lot

sounds very unsatisfying in terms of like most being like a lot of gristle and a lot of dealing with stuff for like not a huge payoff of like what you want when you take a nice bite of a

exactly rib product i have no elbow room i'm trying to cut around these things i can't you can't eat it with a fork and knife luke i also have two things that make it worse a mustache and numb fingertips my friend numb fingertips this was like this started out when i walked into that applebee's in the in the middle of a parking lot by the phoenix airport in case

someone is just tuning in it's 113 it's 100 it might be 112 at this point because maybe it's

like eight o'clock at night so you know um i i mean it is literally in the middle of a parking lot i walk in this applebee's i'm like you know what when i'm here i'm framley like this is where i need to be right now it's air conditioned they have beer on tap i can get some appetizers at the bar you know watch the i think there is a dodgers angels game on i could follow my fantasy baseball players and just like chill this was going to be a great then go back to my hotel room and get some sleep it was like it started off like the perfect vibe by the end the bar is packed i am jammed in there people are on every side of me and they're like it's like it's their everybody else is having like a friday night you know and they're all everybody's talking across the bar and it's like and i am in the middle of all these people trying to eat mashed potatoes and the world's most difficult meat product that is covered in sauce and i can somebody explain to me the proper way to eat these things and why they are popular what what is the benefit of these things they were

they were impossible to eat and i'm still angry about it well i believe i can answer one of those questions and it's my go-to answer for any time there is an inconvenience in our life during the during an event involving commerce when there's an inconvenience in us the consumer's life it is because the company is trying to make more money i promise you these riblets it's some cut of meat that nobody thought you could sell people before like maybe it's they can get five servings of riblets out of Thank you.

you know something that would if it was baby back ribs or whatever spare ribs they could only get two servings out of like i promise you that it is an attempt to sell you an undesirable piece of meat that's doused in some kind of sauce so that they can make more money and keep their food cost down i promise you this is not because america cried out we need more riblets we need ribs that are harder to eat less satisfying and messier nobody said that i promise you this is an attempt

by Applebee's to make money that's my theory well I'm sure you're right about that I guess my question would be the why why have they become a mainstay and why have they been popular now I want

to make it clear just so I don't are they a mainstay is my next question I don't know enough about this world did you see anyone else ordering riblets at the bar no no nobody was eating food

they were all partying um I uh so a couple of things you mentioned like kind of like those Korean Colby or Galby style ribs are often cut across I love those things I don't want to sound like i don't know my way around you know i know that some ribs are cut in that nobody's doubting you and you're meeting yeah exactly but even those like when when you when you and i've i've grilled those up a lot i love those things but you can still see the bone you see exactly where the bone is you can grab that little bone and use it as a again kind of like a little a little handle and it's a finger food and i know a button and i know how to eat those but with these riblets you don't see where the bone is they're buried somewhere inside and they're long and they're flat it's you know what it's like yesterday when i was working in the yard we have these um like old stepping stones in a certain part of our yard that sort of make a little pathway but they've been they've been kind of overgrown over the years so that the grass just keeps on encroaching on them more and more and i saw these things as small little stepping stones and then yesterday as i was cleaning up the yard i realized whoa i can uncover so much more of these stepping stones in the yard i don't know if they're slate or what they are they're probably not slate um and you can just like put your hand underneath the grass and just pull up and expose so much more of the stone underneath that's what the bones in these riblets were like you did not see any of the bone at all it was like an expedition now the thing is i feel like these i feel like since the 90s i've been seeing commercials for apple's riblets like they're like a really i feel like this is one of the things

that apple bees provides that they're still there i that has not been my experience here's what i know is that Tony Roma's was the place for ribs oh yeah I know that Chili's had the song I want my baby back baby back that was Chili's though I feel like I don't think of Applebee's as even being a place for ribs I think they're of those of the of Tony Roma's Tony Tony Romo's of Tony Roma's Chili's and Applebee's I would put Applebee's third in line as far as promoting their rib selection in my experience ribs maybe but rib let's I feel like is a thing that they I have no knowledge I have no prior knowledge and again you and I have been to an Applebee's or two my friend I feel like that's new news to me I'm not saying you're wrong I'm just saying I've been missing that that's been escaping

my radar I've never gotten them before clearly but I'm on something called fluther.com and somebody writes here

definitely reliable

Marilty in January of 2010 says how are Applebee's riblet supposed to be eaten there isn't enough meat on the right I feel very seen right here there isn't enough rib to get it off effectively with a knife and fork and there isn't enough bone sticking out to grab individual ones with your hand so I hey I'm not the only one asking questions

next time you're not able to make the show

whoever wrote that post yeah exactly so anyway so you're never going to order

that again oh my god it was literally

as you said the worst of all worlds I do not understand what the advantage of Applebee's driblets are it's just they're impossible they're the impossible food now here is I think the

question on everyone's mind what did you end up eating later when you were about to go to bed because there's that sounds so unsatisfying you must have been if not just like actually hungry just kind of like spiritually hungry like you know what I mean like when you eat something that's really unsatisfying you don't get whatever part of your brain I my guess is that the part of our brain that feels satiated it's satiated for a few reasons one is the calories we've taken him but also the experience we've had eating something i would have definitely been going to that bistro at the courtyard by marriott and rating whatever kind of semi-decent thing they had there and eating that while sitting on the bed in the hotel here i want to play this commercial i'm going to

answer your question because it's going to be a little i think my quest i think my answer will be satisfying to you uh in some ways and unsatisfying spiritually and physically i just want to see. Here's an Applebee's All-You-Can-Eat Riblets commercial from 1997. Alright, we see two cavemen out in the out in the field somewhere. There's a giant mammoth stepping in their trap. They said a trap for the mammoth.

Oh, we can eat! Big apples!

He's a serving all-you-can-eat riblets. Hickory smoked, slow-cooked, and smothered in our tangy sauce. We'll serve them until you tell us to stop. Wait. Okay. Okay. We're getting somewhere. In this commercial in 1997. Wait a second. So let me just understand. Oh, yeah. This is elephant meat? Yes. What I ate was – did I not make that clear? I don't even think that's legal, dude. Me and one of the Trump sons, which is Eric. Did you pose with your riblet? Was the Jimmy John's guy there? No, I feel sad again. In this commercial, you can see the bones sticking out of the side. I feel like these things used to be longer and skinnier with tiny little bones. In the prehistoric days. With little bones sticking out the side so you could see where to cut around them. And maybe they've changed over the years probably as like food costs. And they're just making them like kind of whatever the cheapest way to make them is now. So here's what I did. I ate like two of these long things I did eat the mashed potatoes because they were satisfying and they were easy to eat and so I ate them but I really started to feel like I need to get out of here I just started to feel very claustrophobic and uncomfortable with this whole situation so I do ask for a box and I'm like maybe so I still had two whole like riblet shanks left over so I asked for a box did you walk back to the hotel No, it was too far of a walk.

I was just imagining you walking on a strode in a still 109-degree Phoenix with two sad riblets in a to-go box.

Gnawing on them. No, I got a ride back from an Uber driver who was like 20 years younger than me but went to Kent State University and grew up in Spain.

Whoa, small world.

Yeah, I had a lot of interesting conversations with Uber drivers or Lyft drivers over the weekend. But anyway, so here's what I did. I got back to my hotel. I think I was actually fine for food. I don't think I got any more snacks or anything. I was trying to go to bed early, so I went back to my hotel. I binged more episodes of that show, Fallout, that I told you I watched this weekend. Which you've been using a lot of audio from on the show this week. Yeah. To my delight. And so we can talk about that. I binged that show this weekend. I really liked it, and I think you're going to watch it, too. Maybe we can talk about it on the show. But anyway, so that night I didn't end up snacking anymore. I think I was fine. But here's where I can maybe paint you a full picture of hotel life that I think you'll appreciate. The next day, the next evening, I come back to my hotel room and I hadn't eaten any dinner or anything. And I'm trying to figure out, do I take an Uber somewhere again? I had to get up at like 5.15 to catch my flight out of there. I was like, I don't know. And then I was like, oh, the riblets. Oh, I should have done that. But instead, I remembered the riblets. I had two whole things of riblets in the fridge that I hadn't eaten the night before with some cold ass fries. So it was Friday night. I went to Applebee's, ate half of my meal there, took the rest back, put it in the fridge. And now it's Saturday night the next night. And I'm like, I guess I can just devour those riblets. So I get a washcloth from the bathroom and I put these babies on my lap in a desk chair and cold and I watch fall out. and there's nobody around to see me and I just have no silverware, no plates or anything. I'm like these cavemen.

Bath towels, wiping sauce on a bath towel.

I will say I had a couple of napkins so I didn't end up with that thing that I've often ended up with in a hotel room after feasting which is just like the nastiest white washcloth possible where you almost want to throw it away. I want to leave a note explaining

Meaning there was pizza. You're not happening upon a crime scene.

Exactly, yeah. But luckily, there is a pretty bad feeling that I get when I got to sit down to my messy meal with a white bath napkin. Even as clean as it is, it just says something about where you are.

And you're sitting often on a bed. You chose the office chair.

I chose the office chair, and I'm just gnawing into these things. They say that your teeth aren't tools. Well, in this case, my teeth were my tools. Well, your teeth never stop growing.

If you don't gnaw on a riblet, it'll just go right through your jaw like any rodent.

Genevieve also has bought me a scratchy box for my fingernails, which is good. So anyway, that was my hotel eating.

See, this is a way that you and I are very different. And you often self-report that you feel like you ate so much food or you ate too much or whatever, you know, for like what it is you like. And what I commonly say is I've been out to many, many meals with you. And you always eat what seems like a standard serving of food. That's how I think you and I are different. I go through pretty sustained periods of, like, not eating anything. And then when the switch is on, when I turn that little hockey puck over from red to green, like I'm at Fogo de Chao, then it...

You really have hockey on the brain. I do.

I mean, I did think it was interesting that Edmonton almost came back to win it. Oh, did they? You know what really happened was I was watching a guy who was sweating a $500,000 bet on the Edmonton Oilers, and he didn't hedge.

Wait, what do you mean you were watching him?

Well, on TikTok, I had been seeing clips of a guy. So Edmonton was down 3-0 to the Florida Panthers, and they stormed back, and they got to 3-3, and then they ended up losing in the seventh game. but my my way into the story was there was a guy who had bet on a variety of sports outcomes and the last one that he needed to have hit was the Edmonton Oilers to win the Stanley Cup and I believe it was 550,000 he was going to win he's like a regular dude he's not like a rich gambler dude and he could have when they tied at 3-3 he could have taken like I think they would have given him you know 300 000 of his 550 or something right he could have just cashed out a significant portion of the bet but he didn't and so i actually found myself quite interested in that game based on someone i've never met but anyway i do have hockey on the brain but all that is to say uh you know if you go to one of those meat swords places they usually have some little indicator of i'm either eating or i'm not eating and it's like green and red and like if it's on green it's like just keep it coming and if you flip it to red it's like my body is trying to process this absolute nightmare I'm putting it through um uh that's me when it when it goes green it really goes green and like for instance on that Saturday night and I know you had a kind of a busy uh weekend and like a lot going on and that kind of thing we're getting back to that hotel room on Saturday night based on what you were up to and stuff it would if I were in your shoes I would have been like okay we're here there's air conditioning we're you know we're on the glide path now over this weekend and tomorrow We're going to just get on our plane on time and fly home. Oh, wait, maybe, except the plane will be delayed by three hours.

Yeah, exactly. Which happened.

Point is, I would not have stood for cold riblets and some cold ass fries because I'm so, like, I need to reward myself so hardcore. Like, I need to, like, I need to smash that hunger button and that satiation button so much that I would have been, like, door dashing or ordering pizza or getting in that, like, lift and going somewhere. like that would have been for me i i'm just such a like i'm always dangling these carrots for myself of rewarding like oh i got i'm all done with something now my reward i want my reward i constantly hear the voice of christoph waltz from inglorious bastards when he sips a beer and goes it's like a reward i constantly have that in my which you know has led me to various problems in my life with complicated relationships with substances and the like but it's just like Like, I just, I would never have, I would have never tolerated that for my celebratory Saturday night meal. But it sounds like it was actually pretty yummy.

No, actually, it wasn't. It was, you're absolutely right. And I actually am with you on that feeling. I made some mistakes on Saturday. Actually, I have regrets about it. Like, other than being able to tell you this story and have you envision me, like, putting these riblets in my mouth in a hotel room and shaking my head like a dog to try to get the bones out of it. I do like that. but um imagery no but what else i did was so i wanted exactly what you're describing because one of the things when i'm on a trip like this and like the last time i was in arizona staying in a hotel room like i my thing is often i'll go to a pizza hut i go to these places where i never go in my real life right i never go to applebee's in my real life and if i'm gonna have a little hotel party by myself i'm probably gonna find like a pizza hut and and like and drive my rental car there and pick it up and bring it back. And what happened to me on Saturday was I was really in my head about having to wake up early the next day, which, again, as you said, like I I had a flight at 8 a.m. and I was like, I'm going to I'm going to get back to Seattle and kind of, you know, have as much of a Sunday in Seattle as I can. And then I got to the airport super early, got there at like six. I got there like quarter after six for an eight o'clock flight, was all ready to get back to Seattle. And then once I'm at the airport, got a notification from Alaska that because of staff issue staffing issues my flight was not leaving until 11 so i ended up just having five hours of wandering around the airport googling the ceo of alaska's salary loaded at talking stick

casino until three in the morning and been fine had you known yes exactly totally different saturday

night there was something called the arizona casino that was a uber drive away from it it's called talking stick i believe oh the one i was looking at on the map just said eric or casino Arizona or something maybe it's the same one I'm not sure um but I honestly was sort of tempted to do that one of the nights but I was like I don't know but anyway what happened to me on Saturday was I think I just like I wanted exactly what you're talking about that feeling I'm into that but like I I couldn't pull the trigger on anything Luke everything felt like a pain in the asked to me, And there was zero walkability by the different possibilities and then just shut down.

I had already just taken an Uber from like across town. I had just taken like a 35 minute like Uber or Lyft drive with a driver who was super interesting, but also was one of the people who fled Afghanistan when the government toppled in 2021. And so, yeah. So like when when everything collapsed in Afghanistan. And so like it was a fascinating but incredibly heavy conversation that I had in an Uber until I finally got to my hotel, get out. And at this point, it's like, again, like it's probably up to like 108 degrees or something. And I get into my hotel room and then I'm like, what am I going to do here? I want to finish like watching this TV show that I'm really enjoying. I want to have myself a little hotel party. I know I've got some food in the refrigerator. I also know that I don't really like the food in the refrigerator. I know one is very hard to eat, the riblets, and there are a few things I dislike more than refrigerated fries the next day. But I took them in my sort of like hoarding way on Friday night, just being like, I don't know what the future holds for me. I might be.

Well, you're also watching a show about a dystopian future where everyone lives underground. So that might have been seeping into your country.

I'm like, I may be sitting next to a strode at some point just needing these fries. So these might be what keeps me alive. Exactly. So I get back to my hotel room. I'm like, what do I want to do here? Do I want to find a place and go get some dinner and then come back here and try to go to bed early? Do I want to sit down and eat these old riblets and fries? But I'm thinking that's probably not going to be enough. But I'm also really hungry right now. What am I going to do? And here's how I think it went down. If I recall the order of things, I think I started with the riblets. I sat down. I turned on the TV. And I think I watched an episode of The Office or something. Again, I'm watching stuff I don't watch at home either. I'm watching The Office and eating, like, my old Ridwits and fries.

Hotel TV does not count. It is not part of your real life, as we've established.

And so, and I'm sitting there, and I'm feeling very unsatisfied by this whole thing. But I'm also like, all right, now I've been back in my hotel room for, like, a half hour. I don't feel like necessarily going back out. I'm so sick of calling Ubers to go a half a mile away or whatever. And I look down at my map again. I'm like, is there a gas station around here? I'm like, OK, there's a gas station about it's like less than a mile away. It's like eight tenths of a mile away. I'm like, I know it's hot outside, but I could really use a little walk. I just like walking. And I'm like, I could just use a little walk, walk off these riblets, go to the gas station, get myself a couple of beers and whatever snacks they have. Right. And so I do that. I head out. It is the worst walk you could ever possibly imagine. Just like, again, just I'm walking along a highway. essentially there's a side there is a sidewalk on one side the uh the arizona lottery building is there just like a bunch of like weird ass business centers and stuff in like that it's just and i'm i'm immediately sweating and all of a sudden i realized oh i'm wearing i'm wearing jeans nobody wears jeans around here on a on a on a walk to the gas station so i get to the gas station i buy myself a couple of like lucy beers and then uh or you know those big cans of beers or whatever and um they have some slices of pizza there i'm like should i get a couple of these slices of pizza they're just like sitting under like the the heat lamps and that doesn't seem

really good they're sitting out on the sidewalk outside of the am yeah i mean honestly make global

warming work for you yeah honestly i should have gotten the pizza even though it didn't look very good and it was gas station pizza i should have gotten they were in their little triangle cardboard containers you know i could have just gotten two of those thrown them in my knapsack instead i'm like no i don't want to pull the trigger on that just get some snacky food i really made the wrong decision here i end up getting two packs uh now keep in mind my riblet my leftover riblet dinner is already behind me i've walked it off to the gas station now i'm getting out of there with two tall cans of beer and a um and two packs of of of peanut butter cracker sandwiches you know like

those two little mint like you would get out of a vending machine if you were my dad's my dad is fueled by peanut butter crackers and nutty buddies oh god a nutty buddy's good i get two of those

and then one of the i did it all wrong i wanted the experience that you were talking about and i did it all wrong and i got like a little package of like those little cups that come with like twisty small twisty pretzels and hummus you know what i'm talking about you can break them apart yeah I think so and so those are my three snacks and then I walked all the way back to the hotel room by this point these new shoes I'm wearing I'm realizing are a little bit too narrow I shouldn't have worn them for this walk my feet are killing me I'm sweating my ass off and then I get back to my hotel room with my beers and crackers and hummus and pretzels I'm just like I just didn't do this right I should have done what I should have like just door dashed a pizza But looking back, I made a lot of mistakes on that Saturday night. I'm just thinking. And I don't want to you're you're plenty hard on yourself, so I don't want to add to this. But I'm just trying to think of something that I would be the least inclined to eat in 110 degree weather. And probably peanut butter crackers would be pretty near the top of the list because it just I just imagined you next to the strode. They just find you your desiccated husk with just like a peanut butter cracker lodged in your airway because no matter how much you chewed it, there was just no in that heat. There was just absolutely no getting that down.

Just like crumbs in the brush of my mustache.

And it's just like, it's just formed into a solid ball of airway obstruction. Oh, yeah. Peanut butter cracker at 110 degrees.

Yeah, well, I mean, I didn't eat them on the trip. I did get back to my, I got back to my air-conditioned hotel room.

How long did it take for the beers to cool back down in that mini fridge?

Yeah, I mean, it was, I mean, again, it was less than a mile walk. So it was only like, you know what, like maybe 10 minutes there and 10 minutes back. It wasn't like I was on some sort of grand hike. So, you know, I was fine in that regard. But no, I mean, I knew I knew I had done my Saturday wrong. But honestly, even talking about it now, I now now I somehow I have more regret now about not.

Oh, that's not that's not the goal of this program.

No, I know. I know. But you're absolutely right, though, because I just want you to know, I know exactly that feeling you're talking about. Now, you're on the road so much more than me. But that idea of being and I think I mentioned this in some sort of context yesterday as well. Sort of like, well, I don't have any choices, so I might as well be my worst self in this hotel room or whatever. Yes.

I had that in Iowa some months ago. We did Livewire at this Mission Creek Festival, which was in Iowa City. It was a really cool festival. But I was a little stressed about it.

I'm looking forward to hearing it.

There were some recording issues. some portions of the program were in fact not recorded, which is tough, tough news for me to hear after we went all the way out there and did it. But I was a little bit anxious about it because what I found out as I was on my way there was we're not on the radio in Iowa City, which I thought we were. And so I was like, will anyone show up? It turns out it was a really great show. The audience was awesome. The guests were great. In fact, we've rebooked most of the guests for this fall for live wire you know the dry run went well yeah exactly now let's record it this time but anyway this is not a particularly interesting story but like i just had that perfect moment of like i was had been pretty anxious and then the show was done and it was done earlier than normal because we because of the scheduling of the festival and everybody else was going kind of out to have their time but i wasn't really feeling like being too wild or socializing i just wanted to get back to my hotel room and there was like a euro place like it's a college town right it's great it was like a college euro place that i went in and like just got you know a one of everything

non-meat related do you like falafel do you do a falafel wrap that's non-meat right yeah i did

that yeah I love that I got fries I got a cucumber salad thing I got like extra tzatziki I love I would just put I'll put tzatziki I don't know if I'm saying that right but I put that on everything that's just the best so I remember just getting back to the hotel room and like turning on the TV and I think it was the first 48 was on which is a kind of a crime show that I watch with great interest not 48 hours and also not the movie 48 hours but you know there's a show called the first 48 which I actually think is pretty well done it's a it's like cops but less hyperbole less kind of like backing the blue and it's more like what are the nuts and bolts of an investigation of a crime that's happened it's pretty it's a pretty sober rendering of the situation I think but I get back to the room and it's like I'm done with the show nobody needs anything from me I have like $35 of food from this Euro place the first 48 is on the episode it's just starting I lay all of this food out on this like countertop and just sit down on the bed I take my little suit off hang it all up put on my you know my shorts and my t-shirt and just sit on the bed and take one fry out of this thing and eat it and I'm like this is the best bite I've ever had

in my life did they have one of those like little tables with wheels that kind of slide under the desk did you bring that thing

over to the bed what was your i wish this was the um what are what are those the graduate you know the the graduate hotel yeah in seattle that's now it used to be called the hotel deco when i was a youngster they've got those everywhere and somehow i keep staying in them i've now stayed in the graduate in eugene i've stayed in the graduate in seattle obviously and i've now stayed at the graduate in iowa city and they're great i love them but they did not have the little roll.

table that was the one part that was not ideal i had to go between i the count like this counter area and then the bed to get my refills of things but still that feeling of getting into the hotel room having whatever the thing that was kind of making you anxious behind you and just tucking into way too much of a sort of food that may or may not be regrettable is that's a special kind

a feeling so i'm looking here and the courtyard phoenix airport does have availabilities this evening and tomorrow evening should i book us two rooms to get us the kind where that's got the door

though that you can open okay we're gonna give you a big old redo what i'm sorry what is the door i'm already you know the kind of hotel rooms where they you can you can connect them with through

the door oh yes oh i'm sorry yeah so the two rooms so that we can i want to make sure that

The two rooms you get us have a door that – so I don't have to go out in the hallway to come see you and make sure you're doing it right.

Yes, yes, yes. I thought that was a reference to something that I had locked myself out or something.

I want unfettered access to your room so that I can make sure you're doing this right, okay?

Okay, sounds good. Usually there are two doors, right? Don't they have a door at each side so that one of them can lock in case somebody starts a fight?

And I'm the weirdo who always opens mine and pushes on the other one for some reason. I don't know what my plan is. I'm always just curious. Like these are both locked, right? Like, I'll open, because, you know, you can open yours, the one that's to your room, and then what you'll have is just a flat door with, of course, no handle or access, because that's their door, but it's just a flat door, but if they were to not lock it and you pushed on it, it would open into their room.

Oh, see, I was picturing, I didn't realize that there isn't kind of a, I figured there's a doorknob on both sides of both doors, but they just keep it locked, so what, yeah, what would happen? That scares me to think about, like, you push it and then it opens. I know, I don't know why I push it, I don't want it to open.

yeah like it's it's it's actually a bad outcome if it opens like i don't want to be i don't now how do i close it there's not a handle on your side of it it's just flat you just have to like

it's a weird it's an ocd thing i can't help for it just run just run for the hills i'm sorry change your name oh i don't know what i would do if i walked in on somebody like that all right i'll

book us a couple of rooms thanks yeah you know how we're able to uh afford this expensive bonvoy lifestyle it's thanks to the dazzling donor speaking of which let's thank some we was hoping

for some razzle dazzle razzle dazzle that's right man razzle dazzle on your mark on your mark get

set get set now ready ready go everybody razzle dazzle everybody is this really andrew our last two dazzling donors of the i guess i was gonna say 2024 although uh we're gonna have another THON and it will be in 2024 I don't know if we'll get to the next batch of Dazzling Donors, Lord willing and the donations come in and we still have a show at the end of 2024 Are these the last Dazzling Donors of

2024? I think these are the last Donors of 2023 you might say, even though we're in 2024, THON was in 2023 maybe, but these are the last two Dazzling Donor messages I have on our list, so I think this will wrap things up, of course we said that on Friday and a few Last Minuters came in And so this is it, though. I think these are our final dazzlers.

Of course, these folks are donating a dazzling amount of dough. This is how the program can continue. And we are now, oh, what, coming up on two weeks and a few days before we will be. One week and a few days. Oh, I have a different on my calendar.

Oh, wait, when are you doing your thon?

I'm doing my thon. starting July 24th

we have the rest of this week and all of next week

right oh geez okay yeah it's really coming up TVTL on 15 thank you for being a 10 but before we get to that we've got to thank Megan Kelso of Seattle Washington our friend Megan

Kelso joined us for the winter games last year I believe that was a lot of fun author of the graphic story who will make the pancakes that came out last year

It's a beautiful, beautiful, handsome tome. You have that in your studio, don't you? I'm staring at it right now. It's up there by my window in a place of honor. And also the person who illustrated the I Anonymous that I submitted to The Stranger more than 20 years ago. Megan says, hey, Luke, Andrew, and John. Megan Kelso here. I like to think of myself as your TBTL comic strips and caricature correspondent, and you should, Megan, because you are that. Congratulations on your first year of independence. for my message i'd like to plug myself as you may know i'm a cartoonist and one of my recent projects is a public art commission for climate pledge arena i did not know this andrew did you know this i don't think so this is incredible it's an 85 foot long etched stainless steel comics mural

of my recent projects it's a public art commission um it's mounted on guardrails outside the arena just above the southeast corner the side nearest to the children's theater it's called crow commute and it's a portrait of seattle that works both as a map from south to north and the timeline from 1969 to the present day if you're ever at climate pledge and have some spare time check it out holy shit this is so cool i have been to climate pledge a couple of times and i

didn't know to check this out next time i'm this sounds amazing i'm not just saying that i know i'm

85 foot long etched stainless steel comics mural from our friend megan kelso called crow commute somebody go check this out and please take a photo like you know take a selfie with it in the background let's get eyes on this and send it to us will you is it cheating if i look it up

online. Yes, it is, Andrew.

Like when I looked up riblets earlier.

Don't cheat. But I do love that. I really love the concept of that, too. Something that is both a timeline and a map from north to south. That makes total conceptual sense. I love that.

This is amazing. This sounds like a very, very involved, ambitious project, too. An 85-foot long etched stainless steel comics mural. Oh, okay.

I see it here. Yeah, like I see on the guardrail slash sort of handrail thing. This is really cool. All right.

So everybody go check out Megan's work. And congratulations, Megan. That's incredible. And thank you, by the way, for supporting TBTL with Dazzling Donations. Megan says, much love and what you do is so important. I would say what you're doing is equally, if not more important. Public art that also serves as a map north to south. I would put that right up there with this podcast, Megan. So what you do is so important. And thank you for supporting our program. Maestro?

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready.

Go.

Everybody rattle, dattle.

Everybody rattle, dattle.

We've also got to thank Kate Freed of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Kate says, hello. You don't know me. I am a lurker. For upwards of 3,700 episodes. For 3,700 episodes I've been appreciating your skill And marveling at your ability to do this day after day After another long day And then you do other jobs Oh sure, over the years I've sent duller donations We don't call them duller donations Kate, please don't Don't, you know, put that into the universe But now I chose to dazzle Why, I ask myself Also, don't ask yourself that question

Just do it, don't think

Your place is not to ask why, but to continue sending them. Sorry if I seem distracted. My neighbor, Bob, has been really on a hot streak working in his yard. And I just looked over and he was, I didn't expect him to be in the part of his yard he was in. And he was shirtless. And I've also never seen him shirtless. How's he look? And I will tell you, it reminded me of the scene from True Detective when the Carcosa guy is on the lawnmower.

Oh, sure, yeah.

That was the energy that coursed through my veins when I caught a shirtless bob out of the corner of my eye. Maybe you'll paint some flowers later.

Is that what they say? Seriously. Paint some babies.

Well, it started with a deep desire to support the biz. I want you to succeed. Simple as that. We also want us to succeed, Kate. So we're really in agreement on this. Beyond that, though, why I continue to listen is that there is much that dazzles from your end. You're smart. You care about using language correctly, and you fact-check yourselves along the way. The listeners also help with that, Kate, which we appreciate, even if sometimes I'm snarky about it. Like when I told the person to calm down who corrected me on Mifo Pristone.

Oh, yeah, right.

It's funny. I just said that in passing. I was like, and calm down. And now I've been thinking like, oh, man, I hope I didn't hurt that person's feelings.

You didn't say that in your email back to them. You only said that on the show, right?

Yeah, I only said it here in front of thousands of people instead of there in the privacy of our own email communication.

Well, can I remind people of something and maybe even tell people something that they might not realize about something we say on the show all the time, and we make a video every week called Hey Dummies, and that all started with you emailing a listener. I don't know if this is the wrong time to bring this up. Do you remember? Did I call someone dummy? It was one of the funniest and most shocking moments on TBTL. I believe this was when I was, I think I was already in LA because I have a, I feel like I was in this one studio case, Sarah W. When you told me on the show that you had gotten an email of somebody kind of criticizing you, you definitely did not like their tone or whatever. I have no idea what the content was, but somebody sent you in what we might call a nasty gram of some sort or a critical gram or something, some sort of gram. And you, you're like, I'm going to tell you what I wrote back. Hey, dummy. And that was how you started.

I didn't even realize that whole thing is based on something I did.

And I think it was sort of something that was said on 30 Rock anyway, maybe. That's what made me put that phrase in your head. But you literally wrote back to this critical email you wrote, hey, dummy. And I just remember tensing up and laughing so hard. I was like, you didn't really start it with that. You're like, yes, I did.

Is that person still listening is the question. You are the person that I said hey dummy to angrily and you're still listening. Will you please raise your hand? Will you send us a message? Because that's so funny. I had totally forgotten that that was the origin of that kind of phrasing on the show or whatever you want to call it.

We've changed a lot. I feel like there's almost no – every now and then somebody might write in something that is like serious or critical in some way. And we might have to say, hey, listen, you know, and defend ourselves a little bit about something. often i'll just say well i don't think this person is right about what they're writing in about and but there's no need to engage maybe uh it's very very rare but i i cannot imagine any scenario in which you or i would respond to somebody in 2024 hey dummy is it that we are just evolving as people or is it low t i think maybe i think we're evolving as people and i think i think we are evolving as a people in our culture you know what i mean like i don't know well i don't know there are probably other you and i just don't have a lot of heart i don't think our audience

goes in for hard edged stuff you know and i don't either anymore that's what i'm saying like i feel like i was a i was a much harder edged person you know when this show started or at least i had i was much more brash in a way i was like well let you know like it or don't but i don't know I just, I felt like I just, I, I think I was a more aggressive person and we kind of leaned into it as a concept, you know, me talking about bar fights and posting pictures of myself after, although I injured my nose, not in a, that was a fight between me and the window sash of my old house was not the result of a bar fight, but like, yeah, that used to be, I just, it's, it's, it's an interesting experience to feel myself mellowing over the years. Probably for the best though, right? I think so. I think so. I mean, yeah, I don't know how, for people that remain un-mellowed, I don't know how they keep it up. I just don't have the energy for it anymore. Yeah, right, right. Anyway, here's what Kate has to say with the rest of her message. She says, you care about using language correctly, and you check yourselves along the way. You always acknowledge writers whose work feeds TBTL content. You unselfconsciously show your interiority, which sounds an awful like inferiority, the complex that needn't appear but does from time to time you are good people at the helm of a remarkable community and you encourage everyone to vote. Gosh Kate you've given a very generous assessment of what we do but I will sublimate my inferiority complex and say I think that's mostly you've mostly accurately described what we're doing here and then Kate says thank you and now I shall return to the shadows lose um i'm assuming kate cannot be out during daylight that's my understanding of the situation something very what kate does in the shadows about that about that ending uh line but kate hey thank you so much for supporting the show thank you for for lurking for all those episodes and now and now coming out of the shadows if if for only a brief moment to to talk to us and to to uh help us financially keep this thing going so um we really appreciate you and and hope that it works for you to be part of tbtl on a continuing basis as we uh as we come up upon this next

thought here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female

no man it's not from a female uh this story of my battle with a chinese company called lit fab andrew with a name like lit fab it has to be good you know it's lit i ordered their riblets and i've been very very disappointed now it's actually kind of involved because there's been this whole email exchange it's been going on and stuff so let me tell you about that tomorrow but in the meantime i know you've also had some uh voicemails that have been collecting at the tbtl voicemail line which by the way 206-414-tbtl 206-414-8285 if you want to call and leave us a message uh what

do you uh what are you hearing are you for this story and i don't really know i really don't know what's going to unfold when you tell this story about the conflict you're in with this company.

I want to be clear. I want to manage expectations. It's less a story and more a question of am I overreacting. Okay.

But you said there's a lot of emails to read. Are you actively working on getting Nina Totenberg to read those? Or can we get AI to do a Nina Totenberg?

At least an AI Nina Totenberg.

That would be fantastic.

Lit Fab. I've talked to you.

to my supervisor and they said that it is in fact orange burbank i will cancel the payment on my credit card this is ridiculous lit fab have a good day luke hey dummy um all right so that's

what i need to break out on this company so i've got a couple of voicemails here i'm going to play for you now i will apologize these are getting a little bit long in the tooth as you would say um but i think people will remember the stories that prompted them one from a few weeks ago when you were trying to navigate a Facebook marketplace and running in that you were trying to give something away I think or actually no you're trying to sell something for a for a for just a steal and uh ended up finding yourself face to face with various kind of bots and and almost people for some reason I'm still kind of unclear as to what the long game is there with those bots

but anyway we got this voice mail from Madison hey friendos listening to Lindsay from Madison

wisconsin here i'm sorry i said that your name was madison your name is not madison your name is

lindsey hey friendos listening to lindsey from madison wisconsin is it lindsey or malindsey can you play it one more time yeah hey friendos listening to lindsey from madison wisconsin here

i think it's lindsey in that i think there was a slight glitch in the line that's what i thought

i just want to just trying to give people the prop their proper due hey friendos listening

Lindsay from Madison, Wisconsin here. I'm time banditing just a couple days, so my apologies if this is now way out of date. But you guys are talking about Facebook Marketplace and getting scammed. I saw a lot of stuff on Facebook Marketplace, and I've been close to scammed so many times. The closest was one who, as soon as I posted something, like immediately got a Facebook message. And I went in, I was interacting with them, and they were like, for my own safety, I'm going to send you a code. I was like, wait, what? They're like, yeah, so you need to send me your cell phone number so that I can send you this code to verify who you are. Stupidly, I was like, okay, here's my cell phone number. So then I get a code, and it's a Gmail code as if you're resetting your password. So this box, real person hacker, was in my email, which I don't know how they knew that, but obviously they put it together. and then I stupidly gave them my phone number and then they were in my Gmail trying to reset my password by getting the six-digit code delivered to me. So luckily I caught it at that point and did a lot of password changing. But yeah, that kind of stuff happens all the time. So beware. But also I've sold a bunch of random crap that I thought nobody wants. So take it for what it's worth. But love the show. Bye, guys.

Just the thought of that. It's so violating. You know what I mean? When people talk about their cars or homes being broken into that feeling of just violation aside from all the loss.

I'd honestly rather them be in my house than my email. I feel like if that got them into my bank account and everything, like that's why I make sure to spend any money I have on home improvement. So there's nothing to steal from my bank.

That's smart. That's right. Make sure that you don't have any money.

Can't steal what I don't have. Take that hackers.

All right. I have one more voice. Oh, I'm sorry.

Did you want to, um, well, I was just going to say that like, Yeah, that is very violating. And also it's it's it's sort of dispiriting because I feel like I just don't know if we're all listen. This is the guy who's the voice of the cybersecurity for a major software concern on the east side of Seattle. But like it just seems very daunting to try to stay ahead of all of these bad actors. You know what I mean? It's just like they just it's like they all they have to do is figure out one vulnerability. and all the good people have to do is make sure there's never one vulnerability, you know? It's just so asymmetric in that way. It just feels like, is there... I mean, it just seems like it's trying to hold back this tide of scams and hacking and bad stuff, and it just seems like it's almost impossible. It has gotten to the point, Andrew, where I am now not furious when I have to dual-factor authenticate. They've just broken me on that one I'm just like, you know what, yeah, okay, text me that code I'll just do I'll jump through that hoop I've now come fully over to their side of things Like, yeah, this is just life now We're just doing this forever and ever As if it makes it a little harder for them And by the way, it sounds like For Malinzi Your wife's new name is Malinzi For Lindsay It sounds like that's actually what saved her Because that code needed to be texted to her

And that was like a light bulb

And they were trying to get that code That was the last thing standing between her and the would-be hackers I will say one other thing that Lindsay pointed out Which was she was able to ultimately sell a bunch of stuff Did I ever tell you that I did make managed to sell the two chairs oh I think that people were coming up your driveway when we ended

the show and so I think I assume that those yeah I had two different situations like that I had somebody that was coming for the lawnmower that was free and I was worried they were going to have a Trump bumper sticker they didn't then I had someone else coming up I think this was two different times on the show that people were showing up and I was like cliffhanger in it but they did show up they were humans they were nice they were normal they're opening a wedding venue down in town and they were going to take these chairs that I had had reupholstered and they were going to put them in the area where like the groom's party gets ready for the wedding which seemed very apropos because I had taken these chairs and I had them reupholstered with suit material wool suit material from herringbone like the pattern is herringbone like a really cool thing to have in that space yeah and I think I got $150 and it was like I felt very gratified all the way around that these were going to a good home that I got $150 that they were not in my way

anymore. I do remember that moment though because they were coming up the driveway and you said okay let's pause and then you were going to pause the show and then come back and let us know how it went but I said let's just wrap it up here and then we never came around to sort of here we are coming around to it and but I don't know if I'm right about this or not but as a programmer I sort of think people probably haven't heard enough about my hotel stay this weekend so I want to bring this back around to that for a moment um another thing that's been on my mind was how i watched my television show now i told you i watched the show fallout which is on amazon prime and as i'm staying at this um marriott i sit down i'm i'm not planning on watching fallout at this point i'm like i'll just watch whatever the tv kind of feeds me right i'm just like sort of flip flip flipping and then i get to those channels that are like netflix or amazon prime like you can enter in your own information log in with your amazon prime account i yeah and i was very leery to do it and i gotta say i went into quickly i went into old man mode which i realized this doesn't under scrutiny this my knee-jerk reaction didn't doesn't really hold up but i was sort of like god damn that's another thing like back in the day it would be like you stay in a hotel room and look we have hbo like we're providing playboy channel we're providing the content for you right like they literally used to advertise hbo on the signs of cheap hotels right like come in here we have air conditioning and hbo and it's kind of like now we have to we have to pay for our own content and carry it around everywhere we go but listen technology changes in a certain way they make it very

convenient but i was like listen i love wouldn't it be great if just like the sign on the hotel was like um you know it was like rooms available clean thumb drive port yeah right yeah because That's really what it is now is you bring your content or whatever it is. As long as the TV has a place you can plug your shit in, then you're good to go. I guess also it could just be Wi-Fi enabled.

Well, no. Well, that's the thing. I actually did bring like a special HDMI to USB-C cord so that I could plug my computer. I try to remember when I'm going on trips now to bring that so I can plug my computer in if I want to watch any of my streaming stuff or whatever. But in this case, the TV itself was kind of like, hey, do you want to log into your own personal Netflix or your own Amazon Prime? I'm like, well, I'm like three episodes into Fallout. I really want to watch Amazon Prime. I don't feel like dinking around with plugging my computer into this thing. So I'm like, I don't know, though. Do I? I mean, think about Amazon. Like I do all my shopping, not all of my shopping. Unfortunately, I do more and more shopping on Amazon that has all of my all of my personal information and credit card information, everything. Do I trust this hotel by the Sky Harbor Airport to like not steal my information in some way? but then i went through it or the next person or will they truly log me out at the end of my stay but i gotta say the way you log in they've made it so easy with you just hold up your phone to a qr code and like you're not really giving them access you're never you're never typing in your

own personal amazon password or anything when i said i hate those i'm i'm totally working off of old information because back in the day like some airbnbs would have that too and you'd log into it you'd get on an airbnb and it'd be someone else's account would still be logged in on netflix some stranger and i'd be like sucks for you but guess what i'm gonna power watch i'm gonna mess your algorithm up it's all gonna be chip and joanna gains when i get done with it it's all gonna be

silk stockings and usa red shoe diaries that's right no i uh i gotta say they made it they did it in a way that like you take a picture of this code you know you have the app on your phone so your phone knows you're you you take a photo of the qr code and then the next day when i went to went to log in again that it had truly logged me out so i guess it's like it is like you know technology is is changing and it looks like it was relatively secure but i really had to spend some time thinking like do i want to input my amazon information into this strange tv by the airport same thing I was with somebody in a rental car and they plugged their phone in and I could see like a hundred other people's like K's phone and Linda's phone and all these things. And I'm like, I know that I can't actually get those people's information, but it just seems like we're just being like.

You're not a fan of unprotected phone.

It feels like we're just being floozies out there, just hooking up with this car, hooking up with that car, like our phone that has all of our entire lives on it. We're just trusting that this Kia isn't, like, scraping our information or what have you.

That's a really good point. I hadn't thought of that. I usually don't let it grab my contacts only because that takes an extra five minutes. Yeah, right. It's purely selfishly motivated about, like, I just want to, you know, get Waze showing up on the little screen. But you're right. That's a good reason to not let it take your contacts in if it wants to.

All right. Let me just play one more voicemail for you, and then we'll get out of here because this has also been something I've been hanging on to for a long time. And it was inspired by a conversation that you and I had about, I think, maybe nose blindness to a degree. And I think you said that Becca, do I have this right? She's a bit of a super smeller. Is that right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Okay, great. So, and I think we were talking about.

She came over here this weekend and I was like, we had it all dialed in. We're having a nice time. Oh, no. We're making up some food and sitting out on the little deck. And I'm like, isn't this lovely? She goes, it is good. She goes, you can smell the pulp mill. I was like, what?

Oh, really? Like, I can't. Yeah. Oh, okay. Anyway, I think we also talked about why people like that are good in our lives in case there's a gas leak or anything like that. And Marissa left us this story.

Hi, guys. It's Marissa in Maryland. My voice is a little jacked up because I'm real sick right now. But I'll be fine. I was listening to what Luke was saying about how you want like a nose blind partner unless there's like a carbon monastroids leak. Like, so, like, way after I moved out of my parents' home, you know, they had gas. They had natural gas in their home, like, as their main source of, like, heat and all that. And I was, like, visiting one weekend, and I went into the laundry room, and I took, like, one whiff of the air, and I was like, wait a minute, is that rotten eggs? And neither of my parents could smell it because I have, like, a crazy, acute sense of smell. It turned out that their dryer, which ran on natural gas, had like a pinhole leak in like the tubing or something. So it had just been leaking out teensy, teensy amounts of natural gas into the laundry room. Now, thankfully, you know, my parents aren't smokers or anything, so I think it would have been fine. But they did get someone out to see to that, A-F-J-P. So it is nice to have someone around with a very, very keen sense of smell.

Okay. No mountain too tall. The irony is I bet you Marissa could not smell that well when she left that voicemail because she was all stuffed up with a cold.

They put that sulfur smell, that rotten egg smell, they put that in there, I believe, right?

Oh, now that you say that, I have heard that before.

I think, you know, obviously you'll notice it if you're getting a dangerous situation. I mean, don't even get me started on. And it's funny that, and I use the same term that Marissa used, which is, we call it natural gas. I mean, that right there is such a victory for the gas company. How natural is it that we liberate it from the ground, we put it in a bunch of pipes, and we send it to your house? Again, live your life. It's funny because Genevieve and I are so similar, but Genevieve's one non-negotiates that she wants to have a gas stove at some point. Do you guys have a gas stove?

No, we're working on it. This is the worst stove I've ever lived with in my life, and we're dying to get another stove. And I know they're not great for various reasons, but I'm sorry we're getting a gas stove.

I'm not here to gas stove shame you. Honestly, in the—I mean, the story around that, and I did a story on it, so I learned a little bit about it. And what's funny is the way that the gas industry is framing it is that, like, liberals are coming for everyone's gas stove. when the fact of the matter is liberals are just trying to say maybe let's not build every new apartment and condo and home with gas because it is long term not the greatest but they're not trying to come like make it so you and vives can't install yours or whatever and honestly like i'm not on any kind of high horse about any of these decisions but it is pretty funny that they really won the war when they got it called natural gas yeah no kidding yeah you know if insley wants

to come and take my gas stove from my cold dead walk yeah right yeah take it from my sulfur reeking basement no there are very few things that i'm like that about but i know everybody talks about induction we've had the conversations i'm just i'm just not interested i i our stove

right now is so bad and you have those kind of coils that stick up still we don't even have

coils we have one of those flat glass top it's obviously not induction and it's also whatever the cheapest version of of this kind of stove is and it's just like it's so bad like I know that it's it's a statement on my pans if they don't set you know if they don't sit totally perfectly on them but like there are meals that I used to make I used to make a pretty decent like homemade fried rice which is not a difficult thing to make but you need to be able to adjust the heat well and you it's good to make it in a wok and like if I the anything that I need to make in a wok is pointless on this stove because the heat isn't like kind of isn't licking the sides of the wok you know what I mean it's only heating this one intense piece down it's it's so bad and i am just i we're we're so are

you going to try to run you're going to run a gas line we're going to run a little line yep exactly

and we were just talking about that genevieve is thinking about getting a white stove why does that seem so weird to me like flying a kite at night i feel like a stove you know what i bought

a white garbage can for my kitchen i think yeah i think uh i think that that kind of stuff is in

style now in the in the kitchen once again we have a white garbage can we have a white refrigerator we just bought, for some reason, a white stove next to a white refrigerator just seems like a lot of white, for some reason, but maybe white next to black seems like an Oreo, so I don't know. And I don't want that brushed steel anymore, because even though they say they make some sort of fingerprint-less stuff for it now, it is so hard to actually keep clean.

Oh, it totally is. Everything in my kitchen is that, you know, kind of stainless or brushed steel, and it's all constantly covered in fingerprints. I'm constantly spraying it down with Mrs. Myers, which is probably not even the best i mean if only i knew someone who hosted a cleaning podcast it's probably the best thing i use mrs meyers for everything and i i don't even know what it's designed for but it's just my go-to all-purpose spray it on shit that i want it to look different can i give you a little word

of advice that i don't even know if this is good advice or not but this is how i live my life um okay so i also use mrs meyers type of stuff i always have an all-purpose spray around but i also have glass cleaner around and if you're not going to use glass if you're only going to use one bottle i would honestly err towards using a glass cleaner because it's whatever is in the on

the um on the stainless i do because basically yeah because you know glass cleaner that you

would use on glass and mirrors and stuff it is purposely non-streaky and so like basically i use all-purpose cleaner if i'm just going to spray down my countertops and wipe them down right and then if i'm going to clean something that is like streaky like again the brushed steel the glass the mirrors then i use my my glass cleaner but the thing is if i had to choose just between one of those well i can spray my countertops with glass cleaner too no harm no foul there that sounds revolutionary but you don't want to use through my countertops after that yes well you can see yourself looking back into them like mr clean it's really it's it's it's freaky and erotic um if you like well i have both not to brag i have both okay then if you have both yeah i would use glass try using glass cleaner on your um brush steel see if it uh see if it's less streaky when you're done because that's my problem like i love the look of the brush steel i would go for that certainly for the next stove uh at least like the front of it except i have such a bad experience with this one because if it ever had a protective coating it's worn off and then the fingerprints you know stack up but then when you go to wipe them off everything i use just leaves these long streaky lines and i have to like really buff it out yeah i'm getting the same effect so

aren't well this is good to know all right um i'm very excited about you going on the journey to buy this stove yeah i'm like oh man i'm excited to make fried rice all right well see something to tune in for oh speaking of um internet stuff i tomorrow i do want to talk to you about this fight i'm having and also how in a weird way i don't know why that's internet stuff early i was wondering too but i wasn't going to call you out on that thank you thank you just didn't

i play you this drop to start the show there's no friction there's no you know tension here oh they're entirely on the same page about this just let me go with my flights of fancy but i

was gonna say the weirdest maybe the weirdest thing about this whole issue i'm having with this it's a sconce that i purchased oh okay is that it's in a roundabout way it's kind of it's kind of an argument on behalf of amazon.com so we'll talk about that we'll talk about that tomorrow um and many other things i'm sure so please do join us for that in the meantime have a great tuesday take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

but it's not on tv then that's that's the internet thing okay power out