Muse

First time at the program, I can always spot a newbie. It's my fifth year with Wings. I guess Paul McCartney's got nothing on me, huh? Love, take me down to the streets. It's not a Wings song. Yeah, it's one of their hits from the 70s. I'm not sure which one. It's not a... It's not. It isn't? No. I think it might be. That's not... Nobody sings that song. I don't know about that. I'll have to Google it. The TBTL! Well, well. Here we are. I want to congratulate you for being on time. I got recognized on the street today. Guy had already met me and then forgotten he met me and then recognized me from TV and then remembered me again. Do not put that on the imaginary radio show. Hey, you sound like I... You might be a little bit jealous, babe. You know, and I... I know a little something about being jealous because people have been jealous of me my entire life. I feel so full of... What's the opposite of shame?

Pride? No, not that far from shame.

Less shame?

Yeah. All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Get on the magic carpet and ride. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

A lot of people think I'm confident, but I'm actually just loud.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia where the sun has receded behind the clouds. And we're looking at a kind of a gray, slightly overcast day, but that's fine. You know, into every life, a little bit of overcast must fall, as they famously say. So we're going to get through it. We're going to focus on the positive today, which is, of course, The fact that we've arrived at episode 4,236 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. I'm going to focus right now on a pitched battle that I'm having with a company in China called Lit Fab, where there seems to be some confusion about what the color orange is or when the color orange starts to become apparent in a certain lighting sconce that I ordered. This is so confusing, Ron. We'll go to the tape, and by that I mean the email exchange between me and the LitFab company. Also, this is a story that's been on our list forever, but it does have some interesting deets in it. A New Hampshire lawmaker whose tote bag was turning up wet for months and months has finally figured out what was going on. We'll look into that, and we'll look into the life of this young man, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He was king of the tuk-tuk sound. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I told you that I'm not going to distract us from the top stories today. I feel like the last couple of shows we've done, Monday and Tuesday, as it were, I've been very ball-hoggy with the top of the show. I've distracted us. I have kept us away from what we're here to do, which is serious business, gosh darn it. and the serious business today is what is orange?

Is that your Jiminy Glick impression? No, that's just... What is an orange? What is a Bill Hader? And let's also just be honest about it. That was getting more grandmotherly than I meant it to.

I have a bit of a cold. You can maybe hear it in my voice and I'm having a little bit of trouble talking without coughing today too.

Phoning it in today as I believe what's really happening.

I am planning on... You and I have a meeting with Senior Vice President Of Did he get a new title? Of fart jokes and Instagram posts John Sklaroff later today but then after that I think I might have to just Do what I have not done during the course of this cold Lilo? Which is yeah like drink I think Genevieve has a little bit of NyQuil upstairs I might have to just like Honestly eat some fuh

Are you robo tripping again?

I used to do that in college Don't do that kids

That sounds like, with how much I don't like the feeling of having the allergy medicine make me feel spacey, robo-tripping sounds, that's when I think you drink too much Robitussin, right?

You drink a whole thing of Robitussin DM. I'm not saying to do it. I'm just saying that it's something that I did in college for a period of...

What's the experience like?

It's very trippy and surreal, and I enjoyed it a great deal.

So it's like hallucinogenic in a way.

Not hallucinogenic so much, and I mean, not like you're going to say, hey, is that a unicorn talking to me? But mind warpy in a way, I mean, again, I mean, this has been where I'm going back decades and I remember doing it. I try. I tried it once on like a Thursday, liked it so much. I did it again on a Friday. I just remember I had within the first time I tried it. I did it four times in one week. Imagine what a good co-host I would be if I hadn't done that. And then I don't think I continued that habit.

much longer but i remember getting very into it in a very short period of time and i remember it sort of like just you really feel like your own little you're in your own little world like you're in um maybe you're in a little glass fish bowl around your head or anything but everything was i just remember everything being kind of like woozy and fun and you know um i was into i remember just being into the idea of like i'm in college let's try things you mean like studying no like

fun things like that and it's a weird coincidence your chest cold cleared right up yeah exactly i was never sick um i uh it's the robitussin just wore off two days ago you would what if one of

these days you're cold what if i one of these days i open up my microphone and i'm smart inarticulate and it's just like oh the robitussin wore off that's amazing i was just thinking about this this weekend and maybe it's not a coincidence because i do have a cold and i've been eating a lot of cough drops but at one point this weekend where was oh I was in the airport usually if I'm waiting at a gate but I've got some extra time and I'm feeling a little snacky my go-to snack is pretzels and a bottle of coke from I told you I wasn't going to distract you at the top of the show from um Hudson News which by the way have you seen any of the fancy Hudson News news is now where it's like self-checkout well not only the self-checkout but from the outside The facade is kind of gold, and it says, Passages by Hudson. I took a photo.

I'll make it the show. All the news that's fit to rebrand.

Oh, my gosh. It's now. I mean, I saw some regular Hudson news, but then I saw a fancy one. But there's one called Passages? And it's Passages by Hudson. And they don't have any pretzels, just like they have flavor blasted stuff.

I think that was a rehab I went to in Malibu at some point.

Yeah, exactly, right? So anyway, I went to a real Hudson news where they actually had my small, like, you know, Snyder mini twists or whatever I eat, and I didn't want a Coke, so I got a Dr. Pepper, and I also had a cough drop in my mouth, so I'm sucking on a cough drop, and then I took a sip of Dr. Pepper, and I was like, whoa, that tastes just like Robitussin. So if you ever want to know what robo-tripping is like, but you don't want those side effects of feeling like your head is in a fishbowl, just drink some Dr. Pepper while you're sucking on, I guess, a cherry-flavored cough suppressant.

these are the reviews for the Hudson it's called passage by Hudson at Sky Harbor there are four Yelp reviews um let's see uh Donna said the passage by Hudson that is between gate one and

gate five is that the one you went to it is exactly um it should be between three and four

but anyway yeah Donna could be I don't know wait no between gate three and five no no mine

this was in the main area that was between terminal three and terminal four it's like in

this area that is not okay terminal well so you met you went to the good one because donna did not have a good donna gave this one star she's from houston texas by the way uh they should be taught how to serve their customers i walked in looking for a sweatshirt i walked around in a hurry why because i'm trying to catch my plane imagine that in an airport attempting to catch a plane i had lost my own jacket and needed one for the plane we had tied an onion to our belt as was the fashion at the time. Wow. I commented, I really needed some help. The woman that is behind the register is looking at something and not looking up. I ask a question. Do these only come in small, medium, and large? And she said, they're mostly large and extra large. I said, okay. I said, I could really use some help. Clearly, I'm in a hurry. I look like I'm in a hurry. I look like I need help. She turns back to her phone to ignore me and just lean over the counter and do whatever she wants to do. I said, wow. I could use some customer service. She walks towards me and says, even if you want to be waited on, I won't be waiting on you because of your attitude. And I said, let me get this straight. I need help, and you don't want to wait on me? You're not going to take my money? And I said, you're not very customer service oriented. And she looked at me, and I took a deep breath, and I said, you know, I've been in customer service for a very long time. And she turned around, and she walked away like she was going to go find somebody to tattletale. And I thought, I don't have time for this, or I would definitely wait to talk to your manager. Clearly, she has a chip on her shoulder already. Why? Because she is clueless on how to take care of customers. She seemed very entitled, so I left. Why? Because I have a plane to catch in just a few moments. I found out where another passage by Hudson was located, and I purchased what I needed, and I ran back to my gate. The gentleman, Ken, at the other passage was professional and kind. He acknowledged me the minute I walked in the door, even though he was busy putting drinks away. Why? He cares and knows what the heck he's doing. Please train your people to look people in the eye. Please train your customer service representatives to actually stand up and serve their customers. Her taking an attitude. Attitude, towards me, when I'm the one who needed help? Attitude of entitlement was shining brightly. I won't return to that store, but I would go to the other one. Ken at the other store? Excellent. Visit that one. And then she includes a photo of a sweatshirt she bought that says Phoenix on it. What a journey.

And where to begin? The idea of being loyal to one of the Hudson newses in the same airport because the staffing is better trained in what I think is a gross misunderstanding of how these things are staffed.

Also, how many different places in Sky Harbor Airport probably sell you some kind of Phoenix-related sweatshirt? But she was like, okay, this passage by Hudson is not working out for me. Let me find the other one. Oh, my gosh.

That is almost made up. It's so perfect. That's theater. Wow. And by the way, good cold read on that, by the way. Hey, thanks. I was kind of proud of that. You were really going for it, and it worked. I'm not joking. I'm like, oh, okay. Maybe this is what other people see in you. Maybe I'm starting to see it.

You dubbed undergrad minor in drama really shining through. Why? Because I had some talent, Andrew. Yes. Why?

I didn't know that you were an undergrad in drama.

Well, I did. I started out there, but I actually did not technically get my minor in that. What happened was I was very interested in like performance arts and things involved with acting and such. And so I took I thought that's what I was going to do. I did as an undergrad, I was mostly taking like classes through the drama department. And then I remember vividly and I won't mention the name of the person, but there was a person in this acting class I was in who it just didn't seem. This did not seem like something that was really up their alley. you know it takes all kinds and this was just a person this was like the person at the first passage not ken at the second exactly yeah precisely and so this person finished their like monologue or their scene or whatever and i remember watching it and kind of thinking this is um you know how are we going to find a way to gently let this person down that this is not really probably playing to their strengths and the rapturous applause that went up from everybody in the class i mean it was right out of like barry before people start dropping like flies like just a hyper supportive environment and then i thought well they clapped like that when i did my scene am i also very terrible at this and i just don't know i thought i was doing okay but also how can one know when if this is just like an amniotic sack of unquestioning support that They were all just, like, enjoying, and for some reason, that was the thing that made me think I should probably figure out a fallback plan, and I went with journalist, that good old, reliable, solid, bulletproof industry of journalism.

Well, at least people aren't just going to, like, tell you you're doing a great job. Like, I feel like your peers and colleagues in journalism are always going to be challenging you to maybe do better.

It is almost the polar opposite in terms of how the feedback works, both from the consumers and, I mean, less so then, but certainly now. And also, yeah, from your colleagues and other people. It is not a place where people are going to just tell you, that was incredible what you did, even if it was not incredible. Right.

I'm sending you a photo of this passage by Hudson. It will be today's show pic, but I need to email it to myself.

You don't want to use a picture of Donna holding up her Phoenix sweatshirt, which I feel we can use.

I didn't know she was in it.

And guess what she has on her wrist? Donna, listen. Donna seems like a lot, okay? I'm just going to have to be very honest.

I picked up on a little bit of that, too. Why? Why? Because she has a plane to catch.

Why? Because she has. Now, listen. People have all kinds of different things going on. But in this, I'm just reading so much into Donna from this photo, okay? She's holding up this sweatshirt that says Phoenix on it. or it's a different sweatshirt that starts with the letters p-h-o-e what else could it what pharaoh what else could she possibly be spelling i'm in big fan of soup i'm yeah yeah right i'm using context clues to assume this is a phoenix sweatshirt but she's holding it up and taking a picture of it in the airport which makes me think for one thing i don't know if she was in that much of a hurry to catch her plane because when i've been late for my flights the last thing i'm doing is documenting my phoenix sweatshirt yeah or in fact even buying or buying a phoenix sweatshirt exactly right like nobody wants to be cold on the plane but if you're about to miss the flight like if you're in the kind of hurry that donna is is is sort of proposing here or like saying she was in then it seems like the sweatshirt becomes a kind of a secondary concern this is the thing though she's also got what i believe to be one of those anti-air sickness patches on her pulse point of her wrist. OK, like it's a little thing that almost looks like a Band-Aid, but people will put these sometimes behind their ear. It's an anti-nausea thing. Now, we probably have listeners that have kind of pronounced, you know, you could have it through vertigo or other inner ear issues or whatever. Like, it's a thing that people suffer from and it doesn't sound like it's any fun. And I'm not trying to besmirch anybody who it needs to use this medical technology if it in fact works. but something about donna having uh you know this much thought about passage by hudson this much shade to throw on the person who was on their phone this much love for ken the photo of the sweatshirt and the fact that she's also battling debilitating motion sickness

it just seems like a lot going on for one person i mean she literally said if i had more time i would ask to talk to the manager this is this is a this is a stereotype of a of a person walking through complaining about customer service.

We can find out, actually. There's a hyperlink to Donna. Let's see.

Is this actual Yelp? Oh, that's great.

This is Yelp. I'm just going to run through this very quickly. Donna, what I want to see is if she... I'm going to give Donna some credit. It seems that she is overwhelming leaving positive

reviews. Good! I was going to ask. Okay, so it's not just even a mix of good and bad, but overwhelmingly positive. She's not just going around complaining about customer service all the time.

No, and that's what I kind of wanted to find out. I'm going to tell you some of the things that she's given a really positive review to. Troy Rodriguez, DDS, cosmetic dentistry in Sugar Land, Texas, five out of five stars. Wow. Loves Dr. Troy. Mala Sichuan Bistro in Katy, Texas. We're getting a five out of five stars Loved it The Bridge Church of Sugarland, Texas Only four out of five stars I do not understand why worshipping in the dark Is so popular Why? Donna's favorite word is why, by the way I do not understand why worshipping In the dark is so popular Why hide? Intimacy is life and light I brought my 82-year-old mom In love here to walk into darkness and have to ask to help find a seat? It's worship, not a concert. Why? Because I have some faith to catch. I still gave the church a four out of five stars, so I want to be very clear. This was recent. This is February of 2024. All right. Okay, passage by Hudson. C, previous comments. That's getting one out of five. Let's see here. where the J. Lart Organic Salon in Katy, Texas got five out of five stars and a photo of presumably Donna's pedicured foot. Oh, wow. Some people pay extra for that. Feet pics entered the chat. Uh-oh, Andrew. What's up? We're getting back to a one-star review. Berkeley Eye Center of Katy, Texas. One out of five stars. Zero personality at the front desk. Zero friendliness. zero smile in that woman's eye who is the one who greets and represents berkeley and its doctors zero response to me when i said anything i want a person to greet me and i don't appreciate being treated like a number and then audrey the business manager from the eye center said oh i love we are very concerned to hear this feedback we would greatly appreciate an opportunity to speak with you. Please contact us and ask for the manager. We hope to hear from you soon. Here's what I didn't see coming. Five stars for Signature Care Emergency Care Center, Colon Emergency Room, Houston, Texas. Dr. Henderson, Sarah G., Laura H., or Elaine M., and Brasida M. We're all professional, caring, thoughtful, insightful, and listened. I'm not fond of hospitals Donna isn't one of those people who loves hospitals

I'm not one of those people who's going around saying how much I love being in the hospital

I'm not fond of hospitals but this was a pleasant experience thanks to all of you I will give clean fast informative that's the review I'm going to give Donna credit on this because like most people if you're at the hospital it's not your best day it would be easy for this to be a real bad experience but keeping keeping sight of the fact that everybody treated her well oh no andrew uh-oh watch out starbucks of west chase texas

one star uh can i guess that this is not about the coffee but maybe about the service

there are zero stars for this location on purpose first of all we noticed

three bugs flying around where the pastries are. And although they say at the counter that they are not supposed to serve that, that is not entirely accurate. Employees serve from that area all the time. So it's not appetizing to see bugs flying around. Secondly, when brought to the attention of the person serving us, they said it was fruit flies. There was really nothing they can do about it. Basically blew off our comments like, why are you saying that? So that wasn't very welcoming either that's really all they're pretty friendly here but that alone that is disgusting have a good

day now i i will say this and i am being totally honest here donna is full of surprises like i thought i had donna pegged but i don't i don't fully have donna pegged obviously customer service is very important to her and i won't lie like eye contact is at the top of donna not just eye contact but a smile in the eye i think that's a lot to call ask for honestly she said specifically

there was no smile in her eyes and like i'm glad at least donna is a woman because if this is a guy saying this oh sure oh yeah it's getting real weird real fast but honestly like i expected all

of them to be like i expected her profile to be nothing but negative reviews from people who didn't have smiles in their eyes or didn't feel like putting up with her bs as she comes like kind of because when you read the first review i could just imagine the energy that she came into that first passage with you know yeah but she is somebody who's saying who's giving credit where credit is due she's not just a complainer she's also somebody who when she gets good service she likes to go to yelp and praise those people and sometimes she even has to say i'm giving zero stars because i'm not a big fan of fruit flies but you know what at least when they didn't help me they were friendly about it all right donna you contain multitudes i have to also give five stars

For Donna's outsider art When it comes to her photos that she's posted To her reviews We've already discussed the Phoenix sweatshirt And there's just so much happening in the photo She's also posted a photo of the Starbucks

Oh, you're getting a knock on the door

My mail person Is dropping off

And she knocks on the door Just to give you a little wave

To let me know The mail, the envelopes and stuff goes in my mailbox But if it's a package Because a lot of that gets shipped through USPS she drops it off at my door knocks and waves and Andrew the surge of embarrassment that courses through me doing this I might as well be in here like nude in a vat of jello no she probably enjoys it like I don't think I think she does don't don't get me wrong I think she's probably like oh that's cool that guy's doing some sort of production in there like you look fine

right now you're talking into a microphone into a computer which a lot of people do these days it's fine your head your arms are crossed your biceps are bulging I see your thank you welcome to the gun show you've got a gun show going on you're looking at there's no reason to be embarrassed you really need

to shake that it's it's I well house how's that how's that construction project of your glass house coming my friend yeah but honestly I don't think I

get in my head as much about people seeing me talking to a microphone as you do now I know yes I guess what I meant public even like even doing vox pop like Like, I'm not a big fan of it, but when you and I went out to do one, I'm like, I can just sort of put myself in a mode of just like, this is who I am right now. Just like I block things out, sort of. I remember even even our our comfort level way back in Australia when we were at. I mean, what a bizarre place to do that. And again, you're leading the show, which is a more difficult thing to do. But still, I just remember just feeling the uncomfortableness pulsating, radiating, radiating off of you in a way that it wasn't it didn't it doesn't quite get me that bad. Not that I'm not that I'm a confident man, but I just sort of feel like it's 2024. Everybody's talking in the microphone.

It's true. Here's why I said glass house. I wasn't actually referring to this. What I guess I was trying to say to drag you down into to you're a crab trying to get out of this bucket. And I was like, get back down here. What I was going to say is I know it's not rational. It's physical. Do you know what I mean? Like an embarrassment that lives in my bones, not in my brain. Yeah.

Yeah.

Like that's the feeling like she like knock, knock, knock. First of all, I never exactly expect the knock, but it's like knock, knock, knock. So the sound kind of jars me. And then, like I said, it's a physical wave of embarrassment that is totally independent of my rational mind, because you're exactly right. I'm not doing anything weird in here by 2024 standards. I'm reading Yelp reviews from Donna R. from KD, Texas, to my friend Andrew. I'm doing normal job stuff. Now I'm uncomfortable. Now that you say it like that. Let me talk about this photo, though. This is great. it's a photo of what looks like an immaculately clean like cat glass cabinet counter area at a starbucks we've all seen it we've all seen them it's got the the pastries displayed and the various things you can buy and it just looks like it looks like something starbucks would using a promotional pamphlet and here's the here's the

caption this is a photo that donna has taken although you may not see them there are three bugs flying around not cool we were told they were fruit flies but that's a one i mean a three fruit flies knocks it down to one star and she mentions they are pretty friendly here but that alone i did she mean the flies are friendly we need more details let me reach out to donna One person, by the way, found this helpful. So, I mean, listen, Starbucks at this point and all of these coffee places, at least a lot of them, are really they're more of a, you know, Jamba juice than they are a coffee joint anymore. Right. Like there's so much fruit that's being infused into things and sweetness and stuff like it is an absolute breeding ground for fruit flies. Like I can't even imagine I have fruit flies in my kitchen this time of year, and I'm not making a whole bunch of acai, venti, acai, whatnots, you know, whatever they're making at Starbucks these days. Like three fruit flies sounds actually pretty good.

I'm impressed they kept it to three. I feel the same way. Again, if I were to walk into any kind of establishment and there were a whole like there's a swarm flying around. And again, fruit flies, you don't want to think about like, oh, where was this fly landing before it's landing on the lid of my macchiato or whatever? Like, you know, you and your macchiato. I don't even know what that is. I think it's German. But one of those classic German macchiato. Anyway, so I understand that. I'm not trying to say that this pestilence can't be gross, but I mean, three is really not that bad. If everything else knocks it down from a five to a nothing or a one. Yeah.

I mean, there are like, I think we've probably hit most of the high points. I'll just kind of summarize here. Nine round kickboxing and fitness gets a five stars. Chick-fil-A gets a five stars. Snooze AM.

Did you have kickboxing on the bingo card?

I didn't. I didn't think those were the feet of a kickboxer when I read the pedicure review. Multitudes, man.

I'm not kidding.

I mean, the snooze and AM eatery in Katie is getting two stars because of something having to do with how long it took to get some of the stuff. Kroger's getting two stars. I love this story. I love everything about it. But today, my comment only has to do with outside. The employees came outside to smoke in areas where they know they're not supposed to smoke. They are supposed to be a certain amount of feet away from the public entrances. I hate sitting outside where it is pleasant just to smell smoke when I am allergic to it. And I'm also battling a debilitating motion sickness.

Why is she sitting outside? Who sits outside a Kroger for fun? Maybe she's waiting for a rideshare or something.

Let's see. Ty Spice gets five stars. Mossy Nissan is getting five stars. And then, let's see. Oh, you know what, Andrew? Chili's, one star. Is it about ribbons? Food was great. but our car was broken into. So this has nothing to do with the Chili's, the inside of the Chili's restaurant. This has to do with what happened in the parking lot. The food was great, but our car was broken into. The police said this parking lot is broken into every other night. And they have no camera on this side of their parking lot, even though they are fully aware they need a camera and that they have regular break-ins. So that tells me that management does not care about its patrons at all, won't be returning for their lack of integrity in the community. Two people found this helpful.

Lack of integrity in the community. Also, what's a camera going to do other than show you the guy that you're never going to catch who broke into your car?

I also highly doubt this is the manager's call. I believe the manager would happily buy many cameras because they're not the owner. The managers, probably the owner has decided to make whatever budgetary decisions that they've decided And then, let's see, because the one-star reviews are more fun Let's just focus on the last one before we get out of here The Sam's Club of Richmond, Texas, coming in for it with one star Probably won't be back It's my second The greeters are great after that People who work there Andrew, are you ready for it? You know what they say? Whether you're a musician or even a radio host, play the hits. Yeah. And we're going to get one of Donna's greatest hits here. The people who work there don't look you in the eye. Why? They are young and talkative to one another and behave as if you have interrupted their conversation. The clerks who check you out have zero people skills or experience working in the customer service arena. They don't put your items in a carrier, which is just rudy iCloud when you have a bunch of loose iCloud. I have a feeling somebody maybe was voiced to texting here. I think maybe she means rude, but somehow it got changed to Rudy iCloud.

Okay. We have a bunch of modern ska band.

They don't ask you if you need a box. They assume you don't. When I asked for a box, they acted inch eminences again. Donna, tighten it up. One star for your attention to typing detail, Donna.

Yeah, let's write a review of this review.

A review of Donna's review of the Sam's Club of Richmond, Texas. When I suggested they smile since they are in the service industry, they copped attitude instead of considering what was said.

How do you expect any, like, you really go in there and say, hey, you should consider smiling. And I'm assuming that's how it came out of Donna's mouth. You really expect that person to be like, oh, my gosh, you're, oh, my gosh. You know what? I'm in a much better mood right now.

Nothing has changed the course of my day like you admonishing me for not smiling and now suddenly i feel like smiling like that would be the hardest moment to smile their store was close to empty which i did not mind it was clean great but if your staff can't serve with professionalism then you need to hire more mature people who know how to work with people and for people costco wins again wow yet no reviews for costco what well they don't need it i mean i guess they could give a five star so uh that's um that's a little that's a little view into donna's life and i think we're all richer for it i would say to donna that like i i think reading these reviews with some amount of self-reflection wouldn't be the worst thing um just to kind donna doesn't and this is you said this already donna doesn't seem like just one thing like Donna doesn't seem like somebody who's just sort of without any sort of Donna doesn't seem like she's just mean and mad at everybody in every customer service experience in fact most of the reviews are five stars so she is someone who both enjoys what she feels is a good customer experience and we'll talk about it but is not shy about mentioning a bad customer experience but this thing about people not smiling or looking her in the eye I I feel like that is That's a hill that she is going to die on Very much alone Like I just don't think she's going to win In the world that we live in With all of the things that are changing As far as generationally And the automation of everything I just think going around being mad That you're not getting a big smile And direct eye contact In every customer service experience Is only going to lead to your own frustration

Having said that, Luke I would say I think you could smile more

now that this is a video product maybe i should try to consider with your eyes with your eyes please smizing smizing smizing is that what they call it really is that like internet talk i believe i want to say i don't know if it was invented by um no i don't know if tyra banks invented it on

america's next top model but i think it was popularized by tyra banks okay gotcha sorry I'm just talking is I was not joking when I said, is that Internet talk? But it came out of my mouth and I just could not have sounded younger when I said, oh, is that Internet talk?

Hello and welcome to Top Story. You know, Andrew, you were apologizing for for hogging the ball on the show. But first of all, that conversation about the airport, I think, led us to one of the better segments we've had in a long time. It was just Donna's Yelp reviews. Yeah. And also, television's own Chris Hayes did reach out to us this morning to say, your Riblet story was classic TBTL. So, there you go.

Well, we are definitely going to talk about your experience with RoboChem here in a moment, or whatever that company is called. But I just want to say, here's what I was avoiding doing at the top of the show, but you're just tempting me too much now. I just have to say it right now, just to close the loop on one thing. The whole point of my Riblet conversation yesterday started with, how are you supposed to eat these dang things the bones don't stick out you don't know where they are they're just the bones are their money they pull your hair up but not out but since yesterday's conversation i've gone online i was looking for show pics for yesterday's show and i was looking for photos of riblets and in every image i see like official you know photos released by applebee's the riblets that they show are small ribs where the bones actually do come out like you could

The one that I saw on the website when I looked at it yesterday, it sounds like it was very misleading based on what your experience was.

I promise you, if that's what riblets used to be at Applebee's, they've changed a lot. We know that we've seen a lot of those, like, huge companies that serve food and stuff. We've heard about their products changing. That was a story on TBTL a long time ago, how, like, various companies. Shrinkflation. Not just shrinkflation, but do you remember? Isn't there another aspect of like the actual ingredients changing and some of our most beloved like grocery items? Remember that? And so like, yeah, we know that, you know, these corporations are finding always finding ways to cut tiny corners. So I don't know what the Uber example of an Applebee's riblet would have been in 1999. But I will tell you that in this particular Phoenix parking lot, not too far from the Sky Harbor Airport, the riblets are not as advertised in Applebee's commercials. I am telling you they are impossible and I just want to acknowledge that what else is not as

advertised Andrew is this sconce that I ordered from an online company called lit fad now I I'm not sure if you can kind of see here I'm going to adjust the camera for you Andrew and I'm not always sure what is and is not in your field of vision but if you can see behind me can you see

those that are hanging down like a sexy sort of naked blow-up doll thing I don't know if that's Not that. No, not that. Okay, wait. Next to that? Okay, yes, yes. No, am I looking at the lamps from the ceiling? Yes. You see the color of orange those are. I've commented on those before. Maybe off air, I think, when I catch them in your camera. They're beautiful lamps. I'm very proud of those. Those are the ones that you installed yourself, too. You got a new ladder just to install those things. I did. They're beautiful. They look like they almost make me want candy.

Yes, I was very pleased with when they arrived. I was very pleased with the the kind of the color and I was I will admit I was proud of myself that I Faced my fears and I wired them in myself and installed them Because I had decided for a period of time that I wasn't going to let The things that intimidate me around this home improvement project continue to intimidate me So that's kind of it emerged as a theme those two pendants are that sort of orange color Like it's a kind of a candied orange color even and then I've got a couple of wall sconces that are over on the far wall that are the same color of orange and i was actually i was i didn't really exactly orchestrate it that way but it turns out that that all of the light fixtures in this place turned out to be exactly the same kind of specific color of orange which i thought well that's actually fun now let's keep that going as a theme and there's one more uh light fixture that needs to go in here in the madrona hill studio over what is going to kind of be the kitchen area and right now it's just like like a bare light bulb that's just waiting to be replaced with some kind of a sconce. So I go online, like a couple of months ago now this was, and I'm looking around for like orange flush mount sconce is the exact search term that I'm using, and I end up finding something that looks perfect. It looks like it's exactly the color of the things that are already in here, and it's reasonably priced. I want to say it's maybe in the $50 or $60 range or something, and I go ahead and click order, and I'm excited to get it in the mail and to install it, and maybe even to have it here all set up by the time you and Sklaroff show up for TBTL-a-thon 15, thank you for being a 10, which I'm just learning is a week and a half away, which is troubling to me. Is it possible to push it back by one to four months? Because I, in the words of Steve Bruhl, I'm not ready. I'm not ready. You have to do it at some point. so imagine my surprise when this thing literally took two months to get to me when the sconce finally shows up andrew and let me just hold it up for you and show you the color oh no that's like almost is that like an earth tone orange it's an earth tone it it's you know it's more like adobe it's exactly it is the exact color of adobe it should be in some in like a southwestern yoga studio or something i don't even i don't mind the shape of it by the way the shape was was never in question this was supposed to be the shape of this sconce but it was supposed to be

orange like a like the orange that is in those lamps above the they they it really pops you know

it's a real accent exactly and like i said i by i sort of accidentally managed to have a consistent color theme going and i wanted to continue that i was i was excited by that so i take this thing out of the box and i'm just immediately like oh wow yeah that's uh that's definitely the wrong color they just probably you know mixed it up that happens all the time um so i mean oh wow i also at about this same moment have received an email from a lit fad support and i thought oh i bet you here's what happened they probably have some sort of check and balance some sort of self-auditing system that goes through and it figured out that oh we sent you the earth tone sconce instead of the bright orange sconce that you ordered because this lit fad support email came through the same day that the sconce showed up but here's what it said it said dear luke burbank after inspection your order number seven two eight nine five five has

been fully delivered. Please check the package in time. Upon receipt, please inspect your purchase and notify us of any missing parts, faults, damage, or incorrect items immediately. You are advised to contact our customer service within 48 hours of receiving your items if there is an issue with the product. Please make sure to take a picture or quick video demonstrating the problem. Providing pictures of the product, the packaging, and the labels on the outside will allow us to greatly speed up the process for you thank you for choosing lit fad in order to offer you a better service let's see we will listen to your opinions with an open mind what okay thanks uh president she did you did he personally said this we will listen to your opinions with an open mind as long as we agree with them so i think well it's been one hour since i received the package they clearly sent me the wrong thing so i take a photo of it as instructed and i said hi there so my sconce was supposed to be orange and it is not could you please ship the proper one thanks l and then i include photos of the sconce that is very clearly not orange and then that's at let's see i can't tell you exactly what time because it's converting to some international time but basically an hour later i get a response from lit fab support dear luke thanks for replying i need to inquire with my colleagues before i can reply to you thanks for shopping on our website have a good time have a good time have a good time regards lit fab and then i respond they're like three days go by and i respond hi what's going on with this issue the wrong color was sent thanks luke and then i get this response about two hours later dear luke thanks for replying the response i received is that this color is the correct color for the product you need to install it and open it before it will turn orange thank you for shopping on our website have a good time regards lit fad are you at this point having a good time i am having the opposite of a good time why andrew because they've sent me the wrong color of sconce and nobody from lit fad has looked me in the eye or smized at any point in this customer and i work in customer service so now i'm starting to get a little testy and my testiness is based on two things one this is like very sort of in the classic sense becoming a bit kafka-esque right like it's becoming bureaucratic and sort of ridiculous in a way that is getting silly like you have to open the package for the product to be

orange like what and you have to well they're saying that you have to install it and turn it on for it to be orange right it'll be orange when there's light emanating from it is i that's how i

took that sentence to me yes you said you will need to install it and open it before it will turn orange i think that's a language thing and i think what they mean is install it and turn it on but that but right but sconces aren't on all the time thank you my exact five five out of five stars for you for getting there because that's exactly my point although now i am getting a little testy with the lit fad folks because i feel like they're just trolling me i say the package i respond the package is open look at this picture it is not the color orange attached is a photo of an orange wall sconce for comparison to the item i received on the left i'm holding up now in this photo andrew the this earth tone sconce they sent me and the bright orange sconce that's on the wall of the madrona hill studio why didn't you see them side by side it's it's quite it's quite

shocking the difference in these two products but you're taking a photo of something why didn't you just grab a screen cap of what is on their website i mean because you wouldn't have bought this thing

oh i don't think they even have a website anymore i believe this was a one-off uh some ai created bot website that i bought this from i don't even know where do i even find a look i see did you this is an instagram ad no i think no it was internet but i mean it was deep it's almost dark web like it's i should probably you know what that's a good idea i should have tried to find find like the website you whatever it was they were advertising that's so weird so you like i'm

i'm not trying to give you a hard time i'm just honestly trying to wrap my head around this like you're making me not have a good time right now and they've clearly instructed me to have a good have a good time i understand no i mean you do a lot more internet shopping than i do obviously um we're probably almost like polar opposites when it comes to that except i've been unfortunately buying more things from amazon lately because they make it so easy and i hate myself but um like it's always you know i always when you buy something i always have a link i can go back to or whatever you there's you bought this on some place you don't even know what the seller is

i'm at their website now what i would have to do probably and this is a good idea is if i were to go back to the very first oh yeah here we go i found it oh sleek modern oh andrew well here's the problem it's all

in the photo. Yeah, can I see what it looks like? Can you email me that? I'm going to try,

but here's the problem. Let's see here. I'm going to see if I can get back to the... This is where we go from good radio to bad. The only answer for a bad radio is a good guy with a good radio. It's hard for me to get to a very, like an enlarged photo, but I'm going to just send you I'm going to send you what is on... Let's see here. Anyway, sorry.

Don't worry about it. Sorry, listeners. Hey, I want to say to the listeners directly here, the shows are going to start getting good when we start asking you for money in a couple of weeks. So just wait for it in the meantime.

What we have to do, unfortunately, much like Apple kind of slowing your phone down so you have to buy a new one, we have to make the show pretty bad leading up to the thon so that it seems a lot better when we're trying. Exactly. That is a good point, Andrew, is sending them an example of what I was presented with versus what I ended up getting, but I didn't think to do that. What I thought to do was hold this thing up next to something that is orange and go, like, compare these two. Okay, so now let me see if I can get back. I am now getting kind of mad at them. I'm, like, starting to use all caps. Like, the package is open, and the is is all caps and stuff. So they say, Dear Luke, thank you for replying. You need to turn on the lights before they will display orange when they are on. Thank you for shopping our website. Have a good time.

They always say have a good time.

I feel like that might just be boilerplate for them. Now, this is when I'm becoming slightly unhinged, Andrew. This is when I'm really starting to – I'm entering my Donna R era here.

What do you want at this point? What do you ask – I just want – Your money back, right?

I want my money back so I can buy a different scotch.

They don't have what you need. I'm willing to send this thing back to you. It'll be in good shape. Give me my money back. Yeah.

That's all I want.

I know you probably don't want to say the actual dollar amount, but we're talking – this is something that is not – this isn't something you can just eat the coffee.

Probably on, it was $103.

Okay, yeah, okay.

It was $89.19. I have this because I just sent you this little breakdown. It was $89.19, and then it was $15 for shipping, which, by the way, is rich because this thing sat on a container thing at, like, Long Beach for a month and a half. So, whatever. It was taking the slowest boat to get here. But, so, I just want, yeah, I just want a refund and to send it back. But here's the other thing. They don't want this back, Andrew. because what they're going to send this thing back to china they're going to what put it back on the shelf and sell it to the next sucker who doesn't know the difference between earth tone and orange like this this is the really what this is is a larger conversation about the e-commerce world we now exist in where things items that we buy are worth less than the hassle it is to ship them to places because of the global supply chain so that they don't want to just they don't want to give me a replacement item or a refund because there's no part of that works from an economic standpoint for them like this is they're going to try to do everything in their power to wear me down and obfuscate and make this hard on me and by while also instructing me to have a good time until i just get bored and go away and i have this 89 sconce that isn't really the color i wanted because there's no mechanism for them to get this thing back and give me my money or a replacement where it doesn't end up just like causing this whole deal to not pencil

out yeah yeah absolutely that's how a lot of this stuff works i mean and i understand what you're up against here especially it's not a it's not a major retailer it's not somebody that you're gonna like leave a leave a review on even overstock or you know what are those what are those other like more like what do we call them not freemium but like those uh wayfair the wayfair or whatever it's not like they're even and even though i hear horror stories mostly from genevieve um of like nice things that we've bought but then they come and it's just like oh my god the box is all beat up and it doesn't come with all of the parts or whatever i've you know you've heard a lot of horror stories but i do feel like at least wayfair like they have a brand that they are trying to protect yes and i don't think what is this globo cam i keep calling it that what is lit fad i don't

think they're really i don't why do i need to keep repeating this to you the the memorable and very clear what they sell name lit fad is it making an impression on your dome dude right um like well i said this yesterday uh at the end of the show that this is kind of in a roundabout way slightly an argument for using amazon because had i bought this through amazon it's sort of amazon's problem even if this is a vendor even if it's in the amazon marketplace i have found that there's decent recourse with amazon.com or like you said wayfair if you're buying some or probably etsy as well any of these larger umbrella institution institution that's giving them too much credit these businesses these cold-blooded profit machines there's there's something to using them because if you have a Thank you. it's kind of on them to fix it they don't want they don't want a donna one-star review if they can avoid it whereas i don't think lit fad really cares what i do or say they're just out there in the wind sending people sconces of the wrong color here's my response i don't care if it turns orange with the light on i said i'm getting a little bit crazy now it needs to be orange like all my other fixtures while it's on the wall so it matches I bought an orange fixture not a purple fixture that turns orange

purple I don't see well I don't know what I was earth tone I see that as an earth tone yeah certainly but you're right I'm looking at the listing

I was triggered

I'll say I'm looking at this photo that you sent and it is you know it's a small photo it's like postage stamp size and it is turned on and that's not they should first of all show you various photos of this thing turned on turned off from the left from the right to the left to the left um i'm kind of like a beyonce kind of character yeah i was thinking more cupid shuffle sure what

is that down down do you dance do you dance okay down down isn't that to the left to the left to the left to the left to the right to the right isn't that the cupid shuffle i have no idea i'm

just enjoying it oh you were going to the left to the left yeah but i kind of stumbled on it it was it was very embarrassing for everybody involved especially me so just remember we're setting it up for the thawne everyone that's just bear that in mind it's gonna get so good um we're taking calls so you'll be able to hear your um fellow tens and that'll definitely be better than hearing me stumble but we're ending every call with have a good time we might like i kind of want to end the show with have a good time going forward but that'd be a pretty abrupt change to tradition i I suppose I will say like I'm looking at this thing on the wall like they sent you what they thought they were sending you the biggest sin from them is not showing more photos and maybe if you don't mind me saying maybe a bigger sin from you is also like not buying something that where you get a bunch of different angles on it and because it does look like what they sent you is in the photo but the biggest sin that they've committed color is different they've listed it as

colored orange and it doesn't even list it as orange and it doesn't even look orange plugged

into me honestly i'm looking at this again it's very tall i'm enhancing i'm enhancing i'm taking off my glasses and leaning into the computer and getting sexy it is pretty yeah you take those glasses off my friend i have uh i've shaken my hair out um and i've taken that your problem with

hitman was that the main thing that differentiates sexy glenn powell from professor glenn powell is

just the glasses um no that i don't know but that's part and parcel with if you would say that I had any issue with it it's that I told you because you've now watched that I realized from

I was going to have to suspend my disbelief a bit kind of a thing

on almost everything though for me from the story from the way I mean do we want to get into this right now from the very opening I have more from Lit Fad very opening scene of the movie how quickly he is thrown into this situation is unbelievable the way that I can't remember the actor's name but the woman who plays the main lead opposite of him I find her to be incredibly charming but again the way she acts doesn't seem to line up with the motivations like you just have to suspend all kinds I think it was a very enjoyable movie but if you're looking for any kind of verisimilitude this is not the movie for you

I appreciated that heads up from you because I ended up very much enjoying the film but because I was I was expecting there to be something even more ridiculous in my mind like something even harder to sort of believe could have happened than what I ended up seeing so you kind of set me up for success with that okay i'm glad i did okay so here's the thing where are you showing it they're showing the photo that they're showing me has the light on which makes it look very orange to me and it's also listed as orange and i'm realizing andrew that um everything it's the other thing is all of the other sconces all the other lighting fixtures whatever you want to call it that i have in here also bought from companies just like this in china maybe not specifically i think one was called Sonesta same exact thing happened like it's called orange I don't I mean up until the getting the wrong or what I consider to be the wrong product or at least a product that was misleading all the other stuff it's apparently this is all getting made in China now at least the cheapo stuff same thing happened you buy it's called orange you buy it it sits in in California on a pallet somewhere for months and months so it gets over from China pretty fast then it's like they're probably finding the lowest bidder of somebody who will throw it on a big rig and drive it up here right and then it gets here and in both cases of the sconces that are on the wall and then the dependents that are hanging they're orange like they were called orange online and that's what they look like they look orange so here i am i'm buying from another chinese company that's making these and they're calling it orange and my expectation was it would be just like the other things it was all kind of purchased a similar supply chain if that makes sense you know what i mean so anyway i am uh annoyed with the company litfad i send them a series of increasingly annoyed emails um including let's see i said i don't care if it turns orange with the light on it needs to be orange like all my other fixtures when it's on the wall so it matches and again i want to be clear this is not even a first world problem this is the firstest of first world problems and i know that in the like i'm sounding like donna in this like in in the in terms of like things that really matter in the world the sconce not being the color i want when the light is off is such a low level concern and i'm being like i'm being very tetchy in your words andrew with these with this person who by the way is just somebody at a computer somewhere in china if they're even a human if i'm even talking to a human and not a very very good ai bot but i'm getting increasingly mad i said i bought an orange fixture not a purple fixture that turns orange and then the last response from lit fad uh as of yesterday thanks for replying by the way i hear all of this in bob odenkirk voice oh yeah thanks for i understand i understand thanks for replying this product presents orange instead of purple which can enhance its orange color when the light is on thanks for shopping our website Have a good time.

And that is where we are currently at with me versus with the case of Burbank V Lit Fad.

So what's your next move? How about you just write, and I don't think this is going to probably unlock it, but maybe you just need to shift the tone. You need to get out of arguing. You need just to say, this lamp doesn't work for me. I need to send it back. Please tell me where to send it and how to get my money back. How about that? just like just change the tone and just say like tell please please okay thank you this doesn't work for me please let me know how how i will receive my money back and where i can send your

lamp andrew that is a very very good idea this new andrew the ball is back in their court now my guess is i'm going to compose this with you and the listeners listening okay so i'm going to

completely i'm going to shift here yeah don't don't argue this anymore you're like angry one

star guy to hey we can let's work this reasonable people can come to an agreement on something

hey there how do you say hey there in mandarin have you ever seen joe versus the volcano by any

chance uh i saw it at oak tree cinema oh nice do you remember many many years ago you remember

williams and his sister dahlia williams do you remember dan hadaya's um role in that i don't

I do love a good Dan Hedaya role, though.

He plays the boss in the most dreary work setting you can possibly imagine, which is like in a basement somewhere where Tom Hanks trudges in and he's miserable all the time. And Dan Hedaya has a scene that I'm looking for here, because I know I have this in my thing, where Dan Hedaya is on the phone with somebody and just keeps saying, I'm not arguing that with you. I know he can get the job, but can he do the job? I'm not arguing that with you and Vives and I will just say that to each other all the time here I got 10 seconds of it right here but I believe it goes on for more than

dear Harry I know he can get the job but can he do the job I'm not arguing that with you Harry I am not arguing that with you

in my memory that goes on for like a half hour of him just saying I'm not arguing that with you I know he can get the job but can he do the job and that is how a lot of arguments in my life

go these days why why is there something that is inherently comforting about a riled up dan

hedaya or alan arkin oh alan character and i didn't why why is it away god i love that guy

these characters who are mostly playing guys who are pushed to their limit why is it that them being pushed to their limit is somehow calming to me it should be agitating well it's funny you

throw in arkin at first whatever you're gonna say i was gonna say cheers and i'm sure you weren't you didn't grow up in a house where people were watching cheers a lot but i do think that for our generation cheers is a very comforting kind of show like for me i would hear my parents or my dad listening to it and laughing um and so like that that was a very like kind of safe time in my life where i was in the protective you know custody of my parents or whatever custody was a very cold word to use there but care care maybe is the word i'm looking for but alan arkin i don't know i don't put those guys i i would never connect those guys in my mind in any way i always

found alan arkin to be a very comforting character on on screen and i don't know why because he was always playing a guy like in glengarry glen ross or in um he's in argo i think he was in you know he was in a lot of stuff before i was really watching movies um that it's like a

Thank you.

And same with Dan Hedaya, who's like the dad. He's Alicia Silverstone's dad in Clueless, I believe. Wasn't he Nixon in that kind of weird Nixon biopic thing they did?

Dick, yeah, that's a great movie. Isn't that – that's by one of the directors you like a lot, I think, right? Anyway.

Russ Myers?

It was Russ Myers. No, who directed –

Nixon had enormous, enormous breasts.

He really did. Oh, maybe not. Andrew Fleming. Is that a name that you're familiar with? I thought that was somebody that I think I'm confusing this with that's got Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams. Michelle Williams. Yeah. And Dave Foley, Harry Shear and Dan Hedaya.

That's a really good movie. So here's the email that I've sent to I'm sending the lit fab. Hey there, this product is not going to work for me based on the color. How do I return it for a refund? How do I return it for a refund? Thanks, Luke.

What do we think? Can you throw in have a good time at the bottom or is that getting too dangerous?

have a good time see I don't know if that

works for the podcast I don't know if that works

for the what if that unlocks something what if that's like a cheat code

I honestly I love that I love that as a joke but if I'm being your friend and giving you honest advice don't put that in there because I just did do you already hit send on that oh yeah oh yeah all right because it's a little

bit teasing I look through the windshield not the rear view mirror of life okay

yeah no but I didn't realize you'd already hit the gas I didn't realize you were next to a brick wall and then Hardy hit the gas, though. That was the thing.

My guess is that the have a good time will be completely lost on whatever person is putting this through a Google Translate program. That being said, here's what I think the outcome will be. They will politely say that the window for returning this has expired. Have a good time. Which is ironic because I got this two or three days ago. You know what I mean? i ordered it a couple months ago but because of the vagaries of global shipping it was it only got here a day or two ago and i'm very sure that they are going to very politely not unlike philip seymour hoffman's character in the big lebowski they are going to politely and kind of officiously tell me that it's actually outside the window of being able to return it have a good time that's that will be the response but let's just see what they say if you can't return it maybe

Maybe you can sell it to a nice person named Rainbow Spokingham on Facebook Marketplace.

Have a good time. A very nice bot. You know what I'm going to do if they won't take it back or give me my money back or whatever is I'm just going to put it in the bathroom here where it doesn't have to match everything else because it would be fine. There's a vanity in the bathroom and it would be fine above the vanity in the bathroom. And I'll just have to leave the light on 247.

so that it's always orange yeah because that i will i will admit it doesn't seem like you have a lot of kind of earth tone thing and that orange that you're going for veves and i sort of fell into that a long time ago you know our house was not as nicely appointed but like veves is a huge fan of orange and so in new hampshire we even painted one of our kind of a right in our entry way a wall like a pretty pretty like kind of rich but bright kind of like your lamps uh accent wall orange we always love and for a long for the longest time genevieve had um had refinished these chairs and uh polstered them and kind of an orange color as well which kind of set off some other things in our house i love what you're doing with the orange and i know what you're going for and like yeah an earth tone sort of adobe color is not it right that's why i just have to leave

the light on actually you know what i could probably paint this that color of orange no i

I mean, I don't think so.

Why don't you think I could do that?

Well, I mean, you could paint it that way, but then I do think that might look odd as the light comes through it. I could be wrong about that. I mean, you're right. If it was just an object that was, like, mostly turned off, if it was a vase or something, you could just paint it that color orange. I guess I was negative there.

I'll ask Walt.

Yeah, well, you know what? Yeah, why am I even waiting on this?

He'll be here any minute waiting for Walt Doe.

Yeah, maybe you could. Maybe, like, you know, I was picturing, like, a heavier paint, but you're right, maybe, like, a spray paint.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm I'm I'm I'm willing to give it a try anyway. Yeah. Hey, how much have you been following? I mean, following the story, as I guess, sort of happened and is now just it is what it is. But this crazy story of this Vermont. I might have said New Hampshire at the top of the show.

You said New Hampshire when you tease this. I think like did this come up last week? I don't know. You and I were talking. I went back and re-listened to a show.

It's all culturally the same place to me.

And I had heard you say I didn't notice it in the moment, but I went back. I'm like, oh, you said New Hampshire at the top of one of the shows. It is Vermont. And I'll tell you how familiar. Let me tell you what I know about this story, because then you need to fill in fill in the gaps. I saw this as it was reprinted in The Seattle Times, but from a from a national publication, I think like the The Washington Post or something. Yeah. Like sort of rewritten it. aggregated it so um i was left with a lot of questions which i'll lay out for you but essentially there are these two state lawmakers in vermont one of them kept arriving to work hanging up his bag somewhere and then coming back to his bag and finding it being wet and at first he thought well it must have been like the snow you know snows a lot in vermont um but was confused by it but then noticed that it continued to occur i think he ends up setting up a camera or somebody ends up setting up a camera and they catch his colleague who I don't think they use party designations, but a colleague who he disagrees with on some major issues had been pouring glasses of water in his bag as it hung somewhere. And so he then took this new video evidence and presented it to the person who then apologized profusely for her for her petty behavior. But what I want to know is what do they disagree about like sort of what sides of the eye oh i did see that it said including issues like abortion but like how are the how do these two people align with their politics and you know what other dazzling details can you give me because i feel like i'm just

i have so many questions well you actually laid out most of the story there pretty well and and with most of the same detail that i have i i was able to check out the source material which was a reporter named kevin mccallum at seven days vermont.com and this is almost a media story as much as anything i'm just really glad i read the washington post article and then they said as first reported in the vermont alt weekly seven days and i was like i'm just glad to hear there are still alt weeklies out there that have people doing journalism like that just made me really happy that they're you know it's that that's still going on and so then i went to the uh the original article which was written by this reporter kevin mccallum and it's pretty much exactly how you laid it out the headline is lawmaker apologizes to house for quote wet bagging incidents um a republican vermont lawmaker apologized on monday to a democratic colleague for repeatedly pouring water into his tote bag so her name is uh they are they are showing party here for some reason

the washington post did not mention anybody's party so i thought it was one of those things where technically they're not aligned with parties. So can you remind me? So it was the Democrat pouring water. Oh, okay. So it's a Republican pouring water.

The Democrat is Jim Carroll, who was having his bag with water poured into it by a Republican, Mary Morrissey. The fallout from the strange incident spilled onto the floor of the House of Representatives. Well, Kevin.

Kevin.

Kevin, come on now. When Representative Mary Morrissey of Bennington, and a Republican rose to her feet. She apologized to Representative Jim Carroll, a Democrat of Bennington, so they're both from the same place, for what she called her disrespectful conduct. Quote, I am truly ashamed of my actions, Morrissey said in a halting voice to a hushed house. Morrissey was caught on video pouring cups of water into Carroll's canvas tote bag as it hung outside a committee room. As first reported by Seven Days, Carroll used a spy camera mounted in the hallway to find out how his bag was getting wet almost daily two videos which carol released after seven days requested them under the public records act clearly showed morrissey dousing his bag with a cup of liquid now if you go to the website for seven days you can watch the video of this woman doing it and it's very very interesting just because i don't know i mean we live in a cctv kind of world and yet somebody doing something that is this low level but is caught on video is still very fascinating right like if we have a somebody robs a bank there's going to be footage of it if somebody does something in the public space that's illegal we're going to get grainy footage what we don't have as much as is clear footage of someone just doing something hella petty like yeah right yeah um let's see morrissey said she had apologized to carol personally and publicly and that she planned to make amends through the ethics committee process it was conduct most unbecoming of my position as a representative and as a human being and is not reflective of my 28 years of service she said um carol said that while he heard the sincerity in her voice he was sad that morrissey hadn't come forward before the videos caught her in the act but he said he was willing to sit down with her as awkward as it might be to try to resolve their differences quote we have to start somewhere he said what motivated morrissey remains unclear she has claimed to have had no idea why she did um this the thing that i think is interesting is that these two people grew up together by the way like they're they're friends since childhood apparently like they grew up in bennington they know each other i believe they are both roman catholic and he became a democrat and she uh became a republican and apparently she holds very very strong beliefs around this subject of abortion and felt upset with him that he was, you know, he did not see the world that way and he was voting Democrat on the issue. And this may have been part of what just caused her to kind of snap and start doing this weird thing to him. She felt like she had to do something and

she didn't know what to do. She was so upset about his policy choices. Let's see. Carol said

Morrissey had verbally harassed him on several occasions. This included chastising him for voting in favor of enshrining the right to an abortion in the Vermont Constitution, telling him that his deceased parents would be ashamed of him. Morrissey's legislative biography indicates that she's Roman Catholic. Maybe Carol isn't. I don't know. I just know they grew up together. Carol also told Seven Days that after he returned to the legislature from a stint in rehab following his arrest for driving under the influence, he overheard Morrissey who sits one row behind him tell colleagues he looks soused to me so sounds like she kind of had it out for him okay um a summary of the incidents written by capitol police chief a john polo polo way rather says the video could indicate that morrissey committed the crime of stalking which is defined as two or more acts that would cause a reasonable person emotional distress polo way said that carol chose not to press charges the situation was the basis for a question last week on the nationally syndicated radio news quiz program wait wait don't tell me where peter segal jokingly described the incident

as a case of wet bagging i see they're also calling it vermont's water gate which is kind of clever oh that's not bad actually here's okay so i've now examined the footage and i have some it's weirdly intimate right yes okay for starters which is how people have described my love making i love really are you sure um i love what have you been reading what did donna say classic vermont tote bag is this tote bag is i i wasn't sure what kind of a bag it was i don't know if i remembered it was a tote bag you probably just said a bunch of time it's from

it's from the capital right it says on the tote bag i can't tell what it says i couldn't tell

if it's from the capital or from vermont public radio but it's one of those tote bags that is classic it's like a heavy canvas sort of off-white with the green bottom with the green handles coming off the top of it i mean it is such i mean i lived in new hampshire for a long time i can't tell you how like how new hampshire this is you just turn over the earth in new england and you

just find bags like these it is so i mean that if you dig down six inches the next layer of soil

in new hampshire is these tote bags delights me so much um but also what i think is interesting is I think I was picturing more water. There are two videos here, at least that's what I'm looking at. And in the first one, she has, like, picture a clear solo cup, one of the smaller kind of clear solo cups, not the size of a big red one you'd see at a kegger or something.

She was not coming from a kegger. We want to clarify that.

No, she was not coming from a kegger. There are no keg stands involved. But she has one that has maybe, I don't know, a half a cup or three-quarters of a cup of water. She doesn't pour the whole thing in there. The first one she walks by and pours, I don't know, like a sips worth, like a like a yeah, like not too much more than a sips worth. The next one shows him kind of like messing around in his bag a little bit, making sure it's dry in there. Maybe I'm not exactly sure. Then walking away. And then the moment he walks away, she comes in out of frame with a cup that she dumps the whole thing in there. But it looks again like there's only like a, you know, you know, maybe a chug of water and they're not very much. So she's not, like, soaking it. She's just doing it enough. It's very Roald Dahl. I feel like Roald Dahl stories always had, like, spouses doing things like this. Like, I'm going to do a small thing. Like, wasn't there one? I think this one was maybe the husband gaslighting his wife or maybe vice versa in that. But, like, just sawing off, like, a fraction of an inch of the table legs each day so it gets smaller. So it gets shorter and shorter over time. And like just doing these things that you wouldn't notice right away. But over time, you feel like you're losing your mind. Why is my bag a little bit damp? This is a bizarre story because she did it many times, right? So many times that he then had to set up a camera.

I'm obsessed with Roald Dahl's writing shed. Have you gone down this TikTok or Internet rabbit hole? Actually, I don't think I saw it on TikTok for once. Roald Dahl, for all of his success, would write in this little, very humble garden shed. Whoa, hello. Sorry, sorry. Let me play a little bit of this for you. This is Roald Dahl taking some presumably British show in the 80s through his writing process. Can I play you just a little bit of this? I don't know if this is going to pay off or not. I've been expecting you. Come with me and I'll show you around. This is my little workout here.

it's up at the top of the gardens and uh i've been here about 40 years i think and now it looks

like a more sort of a cuter british version of one of those little sheds you see in the parking lot of a home depot or lowe's you know that are like for sale for a thousand bucks or something like it is just a teeny tiny little thing um that he's been writing in for like 40 years and what i really love about it is when he gets inside i'm going to skip forward a little bit it's pretty cluttered and he has this whole situation he does with sharpening his pencils and this pillow that he puts on his lap to put his thing down i wasn't expected to be tidy in here it's never swept out

or dusted because no one's allowed to come up here to do that i'm the only person who ever comes in

So he's sitting in like a kind of a like an armchair now, and he's putting a like a little like almost like a Scottish looking tartan kind of blanket, like a wool blanket over his legs to stay warm in his little riding hut.

And every morning I sit down and I get myself really comfortable like that is the right slope.

He has this weird kind of round thing that he's sort of made. Almost looks like, you know, those foam things that you're supposed to roll on the side of your hip to, like, work out your, like, T-band or something? I don't know.

Is it, like, wooden?

Well, they actually do. The one he has looks like it might be cork or something. But, yeah, just imagine, like, a wooden tube kind of thing that looks kind of like he homemade it. And he puts it across his lap to support this weird device that he's built, This like tray that he's going to sit on his lap on top of this wooden round thing. And it has a cutout in it for his belly so that he can fit in it. So he's like, it's like a half moon shaped notch in it. So he can put this tray on his lap so he can now write.

My writing board.

He calls it his writing board. I put there.

Put my light on. I sharpen my pencils first. It's a funny little thing that I've had for years. It always works. I put them in that. Pour myself a bit of coffee. Well, there's all sorts of funny things that I've gathered on this table beside me here over the years.

And he kind of goes through a little tour of the stuff in there. I found this, because as somebody who aspires to be creative And yet has Not, other than like this I guess if we call this creativity Like as far as like, what is the writing process What is the process of like, of being creative I for some reason found it very interesting His little rituals that he would do And what the environment was that he needed to be in To, and he had to have his coffee And he had to pour it just so And he had to have his, in his chair With his blanket over his legs And his pencils had to be sharpened And then it was time to start the work

He had to have his anti-Semitism just right. I was just realizing that. I'm not trying to be a bummer, but I got to acknowledge it. I mean, he literally, he's like, it's unambiguous with him. He literally used the word to describe himself. Yeah, he said, oh, yes, I'm an anti-Semite. So you got to acknowledge that. But in fact, Genevieve reminded me, Genevieve, I forgot that Dr. Seuss had all those just yesterday. I'm trying to think what we were watching and she brought that up. Yeah, and then remember those racist, those like straight up racist Dr. Seuss cartoons that came out? like i don't know 15 years ago or maybe they were always public and somebody just shone a light on

it that's a bummer power out donate now 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 all right emails or females yeah i got it yeah

Yeah. Do you want a V-mail? I got a V-mail for you. I do not think this listener left their name. If so, I apologize. I will let you identify yourself if you did identify yourself. Show yourself. Show yourself. And maybe there's a reason. Maybe you wanted to put some privacy around the story, which takes place in the bathroom.

Hi, Lincoln Andrew. This is Emily, and I was just listening.

Like I said, this is listener Emily. Yeah, yeah, very, very cloak and dagger.

This is Emily, and I was just listening to Andrew's story about needing a bathroom at the gym. And I had my own bathroom adventure right in my own home this morning at 4 a.m. I got up because I had to pee, went in the master bathroom, and turned on the lights.

and started to go, and a bat dropped down onto the floor. We live in an old house, and we've had a couple other bat instances, so it wasn't as shocking as I guess it could be, but it was still pretty darn shocking, and I went from being groggy to being very awake and very petrified. I grabbed a towel and stuck it over my head and tried to finish peeing and just sat there frozen. I just couldn't move. All I could do was whimper and say, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, and I just couldn't move.

I do that in the bathroom a lot even when a bat's not there.

I had the bat brushed against my bat. Oh, no! And that gave me enough of a jolt of fear to get up and make my way to the door. I ran out of the bathroom, slammed to the door, and then I'm in the bedroom again. And my husband told me later that he thought that I was whimpering and saying, oh, my God, because I was having some sort of a gastrointestinal issue, which I think is really funny.

You hear your partner in the bathroom. He's like, oh, God. Oh, God. You're just like, you know what? I'm going to put my earbuds and give them some space. I told you. Lay off the garlic. That's right.

Anyway, the power out to the story is that my husband went in there to the bathroom to deal with the bat, and it was nowhere to be found. So I guess maybe we'll deal with the bat again because we don't know how it got in and we don't know how it got out. And kudos to my very nice husband for being willing to do that and for also believing me that there actually was a bat in the bathroom. And it wasn't just me having a moment. Anyway, love you guys. Power out.

Is it better or worse if that bat was actually a vampire?

Do all bats bite? I don't think so, right? Like, I think that's, I think, an important distinction here. And I don't know the answer to this, but, like, if a bat were to fly into my house, I would be totally freaked out because I would assume that it wants to bite me. But I'm guessing that that's actually a small subset of bats that actually would, like, you know, want to bite you and drink your blood or, you know, that feed on the blood of other animals. I'm guessing that that is not how every bat kind of makes their living, right?

I would be surprised if any bat would seek you out. And I could be wrong. I'm just saying I know nothing about this. But, I mean, I would assume that any bat that would bite me would be because it's in distress and I am causing it distress by trying to catch it or trying to swoop it out the window or something. I'm guessing that if I'm just, like, sitting down on the couch and a bat comes in, it's not like, hey, that looks like a tasty treat and is going to come up and try to suck my blood.

Only three of the more than 1,300 bat species in the world are vampire bats. the common vampire bat the white-winged bat and the hairy-legged vampire bat i hope i don't get the hairy-legged vampire bat of all three that would sound the most menacing yeah um residing in central and south america these are also the only bats who consume blood and only blood for food and water oh well versus enjoyment i mean thanks for clarifying they're only doing it for food and water they're only doing it to stay alive have a fun time cold comfort if they're feasting on you when you're in South America.

How did Global Chem sign their emails? Have a good time. Have a good time, bats. Have a good time. This is only

for food and water. I think this is actually important because I see bats out here all the time. It's not out of the realm of possibility one could fly into my house, but I think what we need to remind ourselves is they're not here to drink our blood. They're basically just a freaky-ass bird. We can grab them with a towel and take them outside and let them go free. That being said, at four in the morning, I give Emily's partner full marks for bravery for going in there, but it also raises the question of where did the bat go where and they will be fine probably finding the the remains of that bat at some point if it if it went back to a wall and that's back into the wall or the attic or the belfry that's one of their favorite places that's honestly a very expensive bat

neighborhood to be in is the belt that's exactly right i also like picturing emily like just totally cam newtoning it just kind of like i can't i can't do anything about this bat right now so i'm just going to put a towel over my head and pretend i hadn't just thrown that interception

But I thought you were just describing Cam Newton's general fashion sense. Oh, no, no. Remember, I'm going to put on a giant Dr. Seuss. Once again, comes back to Dr. Seuss. I'm going to put on a giant ridiculous hat for this post-game presser. And maybe there's a bat in there. We don't know.

I kind of like his post-game style, but I've always disliked him. And I got to say, much like Aaron Rodgers, I feel like I was hating on Cam Newton before. No, I guess a lot of people. No, that's not true. I think a lot of people hate on Cam Newton. And then, you know, it got a little bit complicated. I had a friend who thought that it was a lot of it was kind of race based. And he got the black quarterback. Exactly.

But it's pretty fraught in the NFL.

But honestly, I just liked him because he because he went. He was either totally pouting because his team wasn't doing well.

He'd sit on the sideline and put his towel over his head. Or if his team was doing well, then he was totally obnoxious and like kind of rubbing it in, you know, the opponent's faces and the opponent's fans faces, which is, again, like that's all fair. Like that's all part of that's a potential way to react to sports. And obviously, it was really good at what he did. But as somebody who doesn't root for that team, maybe if I rooted for that team, I would love that. But as somebody who didn't root for that team, I just thought he was just so I thought that that behavior was pretty pathetic. Like you got to kind of choose one or the other, right? Like be the be the person who's like super celebratory when you when you win. But then when things aren't going well, like kind of keep your cool about yourself. You can't you can't be both ends of this, you know, unattractive spectrum.

Well, I think that that often is the same person because they're not good at emotionally regulating.

Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. You know, it's like a child play a board game.

Yeah. He's he's out of the league, though, now, right?

yeah i think he's doing some like um i think he i think he's doing some broadcasting the bat removal uh business i believe right yeah and he he's doing some broadcasting i think which he's probably good at um but also like remember and i'm very confused about what happened here but remember he literally got into a physical altercation when he was at some camp last summer or maybe right at the end of the football season i can't remember when but like recently it It was almost a world star style like video that came out of just like, but it was like some people were disrupting his camp and got violent or something. And he came down off the dais to break it up and ended up like, wow, I don't know about

that.

I think, I think I'm right about all that.

I'm also shocked that Cam Newton is only, is only 13 years younger than me. Oh my gosh. Like, I, I still think of Cam Newton as being like 28 years old or something. He's 35. He's a, he's a grown ass person.

Okay. youtube cam newton fights off three cowardly attackers hashtag nfl entitled cam newton yes

claps back i love the seo like because i look at so much tiktok it's just amazing what they've decided is going to get me to click or get people to click entitled is a very big word i know that's not on this one but like you there's something honestly as a kind of leading indicator this is really what the biden people should be studying what are the seo terms that we're using on tiktok because that indicates what people what piques people's interest and what people apparently are really looking for is an entitled person getting their comeuppance and half the time it's not even really what happens in the video entitled karen finds out she can't just steal from target you're like it's like body cam of somebody getting busted potentially shoplifting from target but it's like entitled is always in there because we do not like when someone is acting entitled which you think would be a way for biden to frame himself against donald trump

the ultimate entitled person yeah yeah you would think so this is where the show in the 88th minute pivots into how we're going to solve how we're going to solve the democrats problems in in the

presidential election entitled real estate developer thinks the laws don't apply to him

what were we watching oh the tv show fallout has a couple of various i think well maybe they're not super subtle but um there's this like one line of dialogue that uh somebody says some i can't remember what it is there somebody says i'm like you're so bad at business you'd um you'd run a casino into the ground or you couldn't run a successful casino or something like that and

you don't pay the piano tuners at your you don't pay the piano tuners in your building you know that's one of the famous ones that what is that there were i forget if it was at his casinos or if it was in one of his other buildings but basically if you want to get to the granular level of trump being an absolute miserable human there was a piano tuner or a piano tuning company that had to take him to court for unpaid services on piano tuning like that's the level of just like of how kind of thoughtless this guy is uh you know if he can leverage you if he has more money to kind of slow roll this thing than you do to fight it. He'll just not pay your company for any service that's been rendered.

You know, when we're listening to or when we were hearing your presentation of Donna's Yelp reviews before, when she was complaining about the fruit flies and the person at Starbucks says there's nothing we can do about that, I know I've told you this story before. I don't know if you would recall it or not, but me and some friends when we were in our I'm going to say early to mid 20s took a trip down from um New Hampshire down to um oh good grief what is the what is the boardwalk gambling town in Jersey um Atlantic Atlantic we go down to Atlantic City and I'd never been to Vegas Atlantic City Reno or anything like that before and um and we go we're like joking around about how we're going to go and get like one of those just

you know never-ending buffets at like the trump tower or whatever like trump had some sort of place the taj was it the taj and so we go there and we're like we're just gonna like totally like you know go and so we go to this place and it's um it's a huge buffet and we load up on all this crappy food or whatever and then near the end and i'm gonna say there's maybe six of us at this table we just see a mouse just like straight up scurry across the whole floor and i believe i I can't remember if it was running to the kitchen or away from the kitchen, but either way, it was pretty upsetting, especially after, like, eating a gluttonous amount of mediocre food because we were just kind of in our 20s and kind of making a to-do about the whole thing. And I remember just getting a sick feeling, and when we told this, I don't know if we had a server, we told somebody on the staff, and we just said, hey, you know, we just saw a mouse. What was the eye contact like? Well, they literally said, and I'll never forget, oh, yeah, that's a mouse. There's nothing you can do about them in a place like this. And we were just like. One star. We believe that there are things one could do to mitigate pestilence in a in a restaurant. And so I think we were like, no, we remember we really wanted to fight. And I think Genevieve led the fight. You'll be unsurprised to hear to get our money back or to not have to pay the bill or something like that. And I think they maybe gave us a discount. I think we found some. But they were just like, no, we're not giving you. And so you saw a mouse. Big deal. Like you ate our food. And we're just like, no, we feel sick and we need our money back. And I think we ended up maybe, you know, maybe they comped us a couple of the meals or something like that. But I did think it was a bad response. Is it possible that the mouse was actually teaching the chef how to cook by living in his hat, Ratatouille style? The mouse, actually, the mouse was on a little motorcycle. And I got to say, answer to the name of Ralph. Are you familiar with the mouse in the Motorcycle Children's Series? I sure am. Okay, yeah.

With the goggles on?

Yeah, exactly. Oh, God.

Why do the motorcycle goggles stand out in Ralph's outfit?

I love the mouse and the motorcycle, for sure.

Hey, Andrew, we should probably wrap things up because for those of you scoring at home, the Mariners are leading 5-1 in the bottom of the ninth, and Tampa has just loaded the bases with no outs. Andres Munoz just brought the tying run to the plate with no outs in the bottom of the ninth. So my plan of not monitoring this game has gone pretty well. If you need me, I'll be walking slowly into the Columbia River.

Just loading your pockets up with rocks.

That's exactly right. So, all right, we may or may not see you tomorrow. We'll see. It's going to be an adventure for all of us. All right, thanks for listening, folks. We will be. You know what? We will be back here. Come hell or high water tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. Go Trent Thornton. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

That's the most resigned.

hey dummies it's kristin in kansas city and um i am not an adorable child i am in fact a 40 year old woman but i do have a joke for you why are there pop tarts but no mom tarts because of the pastryarchy power out power out Let's go.