Muse

Cut. Kyle, I don't feel like we're capturing the essence of the show right now. You don't call cut. You don't have to direct your man. OK, no, I'm sorry. And I respect you as a director. But quite frankly, I think you're losing control a little bit. And I have a better idea than what you're giving me right now. So let's cut and start again, starting now. Cut and action. Go. All right, let's roll sound. And also roll sound.

T-T-T-B-T-L.

Guess what day it is. Guess what day it is.

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

We are not ramping down. We're just getting started. Nothing stops this train.

Nothing. Nice software. Mmm. Boy, you sure don't talk like a machine.

Um, maybe try one cooler and faster. and louder and better and less insecure and more just cool this is stuff so funny by the way did

the comic come up with this because some of this stuff like i feel like i could see somebody doing

their act well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a friday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live is it too old you get a fish sandwich my name is luke burbank i am your host i'm an activist and house party enthusiast coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where it's just a spectacular day it's just so beautiful in the weather department oh ma pa it's just beautiful maybe less so in the news of the world and news of the country department sending love and light to similarly minded folks out there who are dealing with a lot of unpleasant news on this Friday morning. Tell you what, I'm choosing to just not engage.

I don't watch the news because I'm a kid.

I'm giving myself permission to hit pause, to step back from the news continuum on this Friday morning and just do a little bit of self-care. Some people consider this show right here, TBTL, to be a form of self-care. I'm not sure if it's covered by your insurance. Ask them. But I can tell you we're at episode 4,238 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

I need to see a doctor about this bell. This thing has still got some problems. Let's see. 4,238 in a collector's series. I will tell you, our friend, listener Bobby, sent us four brand-new desk bells. and uh just they just showed up unannounced in the mail one day and it was a very thoughtful gesture except uh when i tried to uh ding them none of them worked i don't know what he spared every expense on these desk bells so we're still working with this thing and we're gonna make it work my friends uh it's gonna be a great show i can tell you that why because andrew has a heck of a story he went to the h store oh and the adventure begins again and had a real adventure trying to get some supplies for these friendship bracelets that we're going to be making as part of the TBTL-a-thon 15. Thank you for being a 10. You know, we're making friendship bracelets for anyone who donates at any level. We will hand make you a TBTL-related friendship bracelet and mail it to you. I don't really know the economics of this. If somebody donates $1, we may lose money on this. We'll certainly lose dexterity. But that's the plan, and we're sticking to it. So we will talk about that with our good friend John Sklaroff, who is TBTL employee numero uno, and also this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is a soulful rocker from New Hampshire. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. How are you feeling on this Friday here? Oh, you know I think I am Feeling the way that a lot of folks Are feeling after that Debate last night, which of course I spent most of this morning Convincing myself that it's Not really a topic that we need to get into On this program because You know, there are lots of other places Where people can listen to analysis I did find myself in the Unusual position This morning where I actually chose to disengage I kind of mentioned that in my little intro, but I don't usually do that. Oh, by the way, let's also say hi to TBTL employee numero uno, Mr. John Sklaroff.

Hey, Hermano.

Hey, buddy. How are you?

Hey, so the way I distracted myself last night was fan casting who I'd want to play myself in the TBTL TV movie that you guys were talking about yesterday. Yeah. So Horatio Sands as an option. Wait, who? Horatio Sands. That's good.

Oh, okay. Another option, Seth Rogen. Oh, sure.

I could see some Rogen.

Yeah. So those are my top two I think could play me in our movie that we're going to pitch to a studio.

This is going to sound like a dumb question, but we were talking about a TBTL movie yesterday. I have zero recollection of that.

You said Suzanne Somers was going to play you?

Oh, yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. In the made-for-TV biopic of TBTL, please. More specific. No, no. Sorry. It's all flooding back to me now in my terrible reference.

I don't want to lean too much into the Judaism, John, but I think Eli Roth from Inglorious Bastards.

Oh, the bear Jew.

Yeah, because that's part of your Instagram handle, right?

It is. Yeah, my sister for years called me Brother Bear because of the movie and because I'm big and hairy. And then the bear Jew came around, so that was definitely a big influence.

And is a badass character. He is.

I think he's a little too bad for me. And also, he's a big Boston Red Sox fan in that movie. He's celebrating Ted Williams. So I can't.

Is he a director, too? Am I right about that? If we get him attached, could he direct this project, potentially?

He does mostly horror films, like Hostel.

It would be a very, very different kind of interpretation of the TV Chill universe.

Luke has a puzzle that I must solve.

Although, honestly, you know, the listeners have described listening to the show as like being in a prison. Sure, yeah. As like being in a horrific hostel where they torture you and won't let you out for many hours. So, I don't know. I mean, maybe he's the perfect person to direct this. Back to our initial comments that I was planning on not talking about, but whatever. It is what it is. We live in the same sort of, you know, time stream as everybody else. And I think we're all kind of feeling this this morning. The debate was last night. it was not at all good uh for joe biden or for it would seem the future of democracy i was i was spiraling pretty hard last night and then i got up this morning and you know my typical morning ritual is to uh well first of all listen to a lot of morning edition and then i usually jump on whatever the daily is talking about new york times and you know i just i sort of immerse myself in the news and today i was like i just don't have it in me like it's making me have feelings that are that are just like really so anxious that i just felt like i don't need this in my life so i i didn't do that but i did see can i play one thing for you that i actually saw on tiktok kind of by happenstance from um jamel buoy the great jamel buoy um who i think of as being a really really smart person on u.s history and also on politics and things like that like this kind of put me in a slightly more this calmed me down a little bit his take on the debate could I just play this for y'all um and I don't know I'm playing this on TikTok so that the the audio is a little dicey it's a minute and 30 seconds and I'll just I will give you a preview of what he's basically saying which was the main thing that this was was a tremendous waste of all of our time and a thing that makes us feel bad but in his opinion is not necessarily going to be the that throws the election, that changes the course of the chances of democracy continuing to exist in this country. But anyway, here's Jamel Boone.

I was going to say, we all agree here. That debate was an unambiguous disaster. On one hand, we had a raspy and stumbling President Biden, who was quiet and occasionally incoherent. On the other hand, we had a deranged and incoherent Donald Trump, who, at the very as biden was saying like mostly truthful things trump had unleashed a kind of fire hose of just constant constant lies like you couldn't even no way possible to fact check them the moderators kind of just like let it all happen they were barely even there their questions from particularly good um a real waste of time i think and a real um you know a real indication of the dire state of things. Now to do a quick lightning round of questions. Is this going to impact the race? Probably not. The political science is clear on this. Debates have very little impact on the ultimate outcome of the race. Is Biden going to drop out? Probably not. You're going to hear a lot of calls from the dropout, but it's not going to happen. Is Trump going to drop out? Obviously not. In November, it's going to be Biden v. Trump. And although there'll be third party candidates in the ballot, my hunch is that they're not going to actually take that much in terms of vote chair. So this is this was horrible and cringe to watch, but ultimately probably is going to have that big of an impact. And it's just a reminder. It's a reminder of of the degraded place we find ourselves in.

All right. So that's Jamel Bowie's take on it. And for some reason, even though that is incredibly depressing, just as sort of like his assessment of things, it also somehow made me feel less terrified. The idea that this was not definitive necessarily that this because what it felt like to me last night was it's over. It just ended like the hopes for Donald Trump not being president were just dashed irrevocably. And I having watched that and thought about it more, I feel less that way as we record this. I'm wondering where you both are at.

I'll jump in if you don't mind. And I, you know, I'm really struggling about how to talk about this because there is probably a conversation that I would have. I'll start by saying this. I'm really angry today. And I was very angry last night. And what bothers me the most is how it's not. I've heard a lot of analysis over the past 12 hours since the end of the debate. And a lot of people are saying this was very early. It might not impact the results of the election as much as it feels in the moment because of all of these reasons of being an early debate. People not paying that much attention, whatever. But me as somebody who watched and I had to take breaks from it for what it's worth. It was like watching a cringe movie, only it was in real life. So I was like taking breaks from it. But I'm angry because I didn't like what I saw up there. And what I was starting to say a moment ago is I don't know that I can have the conversation in front of a microphone that I might have with you guys if we weren't being recorded. And that doesn't mean that I'm being disingenuous about things. And I know that we don't – I don't fool myself into thinking that we have a bunch of accolades who are going to do as I do or feel as I feel like most of our audience. Acolytes. Sorry. Acolytes is a different word. But like and so but I do feel more of a responsibility in doing that. But like I'm I'm furious at the person that I saw on stage yesterday and his and his decision to go forward with this to continue to. What about Biden, though? Like the feelings that I had about Biden during that, if I'm feeling that way as somebody who is in like the top one or 10 percent of people who are just terrified of another Trump presidency, you know, how how are other people feeling who are already not even just on the fence, but maybe thinking like, yeah, Biden's kind of a scary guy to have in the Oval Office as well. Now, I don't want to go too far down that line into microphones because everybody needs to vote and we need to do everything we can to keep Trump out of office. But, like, I'm kind of opposite of you as far as my emotions this morning. Like, I did something that I've never done before, like flying a kite at night, as Bart Simpson would say. I listened to Pod Save America in the morning. That's not a morning show for me. That's an evening show for me. But I was like, and I had to read the description of it before I hit play. And it said a brutally honest assessment of last night. I'm like, I can handle this because what I didn't want this morning was I didn't want people making me feel better about it. This doesn't make sense. This doesn't fall in line with, I think, anything else I've ever sort of said on the show about my feelings or political sentiments. But like I woke up this morning like I don't want a bunch of people telling me, don't worry about it too much. It's going to be fine in the long run because like I'm thinking beyond I'm thinking beyond the actual election day, whatever happens there.

And I just think that like we're in a historic thing. The president's job is not to debate people. I know the president's job is to make decisions. So I don't think that the issue is whether or not Biden is. Do we think do we think that Biden will be incapable of actually serving in the job of president when he's at the end of his next term?

That's the end of his next term. That's the question. I mean, that's what I'm saying. Like a lot of people, including, you know, I listened to probably like an hour, an hour and a half of, you know, MSNBC immediately after the debate. And, you know, that's something that Chris was that was bleak. Yeah, it was really bleak. And, you know, you have like maybe I'm sliding a little bit more towards Joy's camp. But, you know, she was like Chris. Joy was not sugarcoating. And, you know, Chris was very much like what you just said, like, you know, debating and running for president is a very different job than being president. And I acknowledge that. And I know that. But but I also looked at, you know, and again, I'm not saying that I am. He had a cold. It was an off night, like all every excuse you want to throw his way as I as the member of this show who represents incoherence and says accolades instead of accolades. let me just say as the incoherent representative of the show i am concerned i mean i you know and

again maybe the representative from incoherent stand will now address the body so anyway that's

where i'll leave things it's just like if i'm in i i'm very emotional right now and i don't want this as much on the record as it probably is going to be i will probably calm down with time but i'm telling you that if i'm having those feelings rational or not during this debate i I mean, I can just imagine what the people who were kind of like, I don't know, they both seem kind of old and cranky to me are thinking.

Can I just real quick say, I think I'm kind of somewhere between both where you guys are feeling, where maybe not quite that.

Classic peacemaker. John's here to make everybody feel okay.

That's definitely not what's going to happen. I think you're right, Luke, and Bowie is right, where the debates don't really play into much as much. I'm just tired. of the the horse race coverage and like it's all for ratings i mean honestly that's what it is all the cnn and everyone that's what they all care about because i am of the truly of the belief that if it's four months before three months before wherever it is before a major election people know who they're running for i don't really believe in the undecided voter i don't believe in the person on the fence especially in 2024 where there's no escaping like with social media with the internet with the speed of of of data and information everyone knows the things and they've made up their minds and so like the people that say they're uh undecided i think a probably they just want to get attention they want attention reporters or or b they know they're doing the wrong thing but they won't admit it to it and whatever that wrong thing is whatever it is i think that's that's what it is so i believe like in 2024 after trump already served four years after and like talking about what biden's gonna be at the end of a second presidency trump's also

77 years old so trump is manifestly already i think unfit for the job like i'm not saying anything

i mean just like mentally unfit anytime anytime biden's age and what will you look like in his second term means nothing to me because of how old trump is and and unstable he is right so it's like that's that i don't want to like entertain that as a conversation so my my feeling is like gang worked up over something like last night i didn't watch it and i had this conversation with my mom you didn't watch it no because i had this conversation my mom like what were you here trump's trump's trump's gonna yell and lie and biden's gonna stutter like that's we knew like you knew exactly what it was gonna be and um so like i didn't even entertain it and it's like people have made up their minds and and and it is what it is and i the thing that i said before when i started talking is why you used to call me peacemakers i for months i don't feel good about how november is going to be regardless of last night and so um i don't know well see i see i feel

good here's the thing i think from a policy standpoint i think biden has been a very strong president and i think he's passed i think the inflation you know reduction act whatever they had to call that thing i think that's really sound policy and it's already making differences around green energy and a lot of important things like i think i don't think i think people that say it doesn't matter i don't think that's what you're saying john but people who say that biden being elected versus Trump being elected makes no difference is definitely incorrect because I think it makes a big difference. And I think as a president, I think Biden, I think even if Biden, if he gets reelected, well, let me put it this way, Andrew, I'm with you that I had last night some real anger at Joe Biden for his hubris, for his, his decision after his first term to say, and I think a lot about this piece, Evan Osnos from the New Yorker wrote this. He wrote a profile of biden when biden was running in 2020 and then he went back in to the oval office and interviewed him like this was maybe six eight months ago and it was kind of a big story because it was sort of like a four year later check in with biden and also like hey dude why exactly are you trying to do this again and i thought it was very interesting because i was evan osno said basically like a couple things one biden is slowing down two biden is still very much there mentally his just physical body is slowing down like you do when you're 80 and also he there was no effing way he was going to entertain the idea of passing the baton to somebody else and his feeling was I earned this I spent a lifetime in politics trying to get to this position and I've achieved it and I'm not going to like hand this over to somebody else basically I deserve this which really upset me when I read that and last night really upset me because it feels like buddy you're toying with this you're toying with the the future of this country because you want another four years so I I see I hear your anger and I honor your anger and I feel your anger I guess the part that I don't know what to do with this we we are dealing with the situation that we're dealing with right which is this guy is very likely to be the person on the ballot november 5th standing between us and donald trump so what do we what do we do with that information what do we do about that and i don't know the answer to that but that's kind of that's why i listened and this will come up in the music for your weekend that's why i spent the entire morning listening to an instrumental music record based on archival audio tape from the space race. That's literally how I spent my morning. Somebody who found audio of Apollo 8 connecting with Houston and then put cool music under it. That was my morning because I don't know what to do with the feelings I have or what's going on in

the world right now. Luke, can I just real quick say, just because I do want this on record, I think it's very important to not allow Donald Trump to be president. I have a lot of issues, a lot of things joe biden has done as president uh but also realistically look at policy enacted and and people he's put in place and things he's done he's probably the most progressive president of my lifetime um because he surrounded himself with really good and smart people and so i think he's doing a good job overall in spite of disagreement so i'll be voting for him and encouraging everyone I know to vote for him.

I just, why do you say it doesn't matter? I mean paying attention, getting yourself worked up for four months before that date because I think people have made up their minds. That's where I'm at.

I think for me that feel, the reason that I'm obsessed with it is because it feels like if I know a lot about it, then I can in some way control it, which is unrealistic, and also lower my anxiety. So I listen to Pod Save America because I feel like I can uncover, I listen to Chris Hayes' show, I watch his show, I consume all this information all the time because my mind says if I can understand what a what a what a voter in Michigan really cares about what a quote-unquote undecided voter in Michigan really cares about if I can understand them then I'm not planning on flying to Michigan and trying to convince them to vote for Joe Biden but there's something where when I feel anxious and like I have no control of the world when I over inform myself about it then I feel like well at least I know what's going on which again is a coping mechanism for me that I don't think is making my life any better but if you want to talk about somebody who's a hundred percent bought into the horse race aspect it's me because i feel like if i know what horse is supposed to win this race i can somehow have some impact on it should we with

with with proceeds from the upcoming thon go to michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania and just

try to i think that's the campaign finance people i believe that might be a campaign finance issue i don't know what we have to be what we have to be um sort of organized as if we can do that as a S-Corp or not, but anyway, so yeah, sorry that I brought this up because I know it's a very loaded topic and also we're all processing our feelings on it, but again we're all processing our feelings on it and I think it would feel weird for me to talk about lit fad sending me the wrong color sconce on a morning, and then you throw in and I'll just add this because why not just, let's just let's just spiral here. Could the sconce

run? I'm just asking

like what our options are.

Any, yeah,

Any sane sconce 2024 The other thing is We're not going to get into this But the thing for me I wake up in the morning I think like most of us now And I look at my phone It's kind of like the first thing that I do Which by the way also not healthy You should be going outside like mega producer Rick Rubin And grounding ourselves We should be going out with bare feet Stepping out of our beautiful designy home in Malibu And standing on the beach That's what we should all be doing But I wasn't doing that this morning I was looking at my phone And literally the first three push notifications of the Times are Supreme Court weakens government agencies that would stand up to the executive. And then it's like, boom, next one. Supreme Court basically makes being homeless a crime. I'm just like, this is too much. Too much for one anxious dude to handle on Friday morning is the feeling that I had.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And I might have pushed you there, too. I just I I'm obviously dealing with my feelings too here's how I do this is the opposite of mental health or health or taking care of yourself after I was finally like okay I'm done with I'm just like done following the coverage of this now and I don't know what time it was I put I put on a random episode of the show that I've been sort of revisiting casually which is Breaking Bad and so I watch a little bit of Breaking Bad and maybe I like watch one episode and then I'm kind of getting tired. So I was telling you guys off air that Genevieve isn't home. So I'm just sort of like kind of get the house to myself. So I just like kind of, you know, do that move where you're sitting up watching TV and then I slowly slide over to my side and I'm like making myself comfortable. I'm like, maybe I'll just like fall asleep watching this episode. Let's say it's like 1130 at night or something at this point. And I sort of doze off and then I just sort of wake up again, maybe a half hour later. And then I realize about two hours later that i've just been sort of tossing and turning to the sound of breaking bad going on

in the background not even watching it you do not need that going into your subconscious no i do not

and then i think around like two o'clock in the morning i finally just got up and i just like went upstairs to the to my actual bed where i tossed and turned some more but not you put that's where you put saw on your phone right and then i just i played my movie alphabet game until i could finally fall asleep so i'm dealing with maybe some sleep deprivation as well as just residual sort of anger over what i saw last night so my apologies if i'm the one who kind of pushed this agenda but i do think a lot of listeners right now are having some sort of feelings that are some sort of a cosmic stew of the three of us so i don't know we're making the wrong programmatic

decision here i think that i think when we are feeling stuff like this as intensely as we are i think that there's a good chance like you said andrew that the listeners are are also feeling it And I think us reflecting that back to them is is is good because this is a community and we're all in it together. I will just say that I don't have any I have no evidence to support this. But the one place that my mind kept going to last night was thinking about. And this is a weirdly negative way to put it, but I guess it's in the. larger, it's in the service of the larger point that you just do not know how shit is going to shake out. I remember being at a wedding in Napa Valley somewhere in 2016 leading up to that election and the news broke about the Access Hollywood tape and I remember I was sitting in the hotel bar and I was drinking a Corona and I looked up and it was like this TV was muted but it was just one of those CNN where the scrawls just going Access Hollywood tape released and I thought, well, I know exactly how this election is going to go. I was like, are they even going to leave this guy up? I'm talking about Trump, obviously. And that election did not end the way that I expected it to at all, clearly. My point is, and I know that's a weird thing to take hope from, but what I mean is there is no, I don't think that there's any knowing exactly how things are going to look, whatever we're talking four months from now, three months from now and i i guess what i'm trying to do is calm myself by saying i don't know i do not know officially what is going to happen on november 5th yet and i have to keep telling myself that and it's not kind of what you're saying john which i need to i need to personally step back from the horse race and trying to analyze this by way of what i'm reading and listening to because when i do that it does not call me the way that i'm hoping it will but i am trying to tell myself that this has not been written yet the future is not written and we do not know what will happen That's pretty much all I have right now to fall back on personally is that the future is not written, and a lot of things can happen between now and then, and I'm hoping that they happen in such a way that we still have a democracy going forward as a country.

You know what? We should wrap it up there, but instead I'll complicate things because I'm just noticing what a big difference is between our feelings today, like the two of you and me, is that, and this is such a terrible thing to say, and this is where I think I need to be especially careful, but this, I'm not focusing on the results so much as how much I don't want to vote for Joe Biden right now. I will. I absolutely will. And I want to make that clear. Everybody should like the stakes are too high. You don't sit this out. But this will be the first time in my life if my feelings don't change. Now, it is June 28th right now, 12 hours after that Mishigas. My feelings are going to change. My feelings are going to evolve. The edge is going to soften a bit. But where I was last night watching it and waking up this morning is this will be the first time if things continue to go the way they're going where I will be furious about casting my vote because I feel like and your guys's points about policy and even ability to maintain an administration like a presidency is an administration. And so all of those those those progressive policies that you guys bring up, I'm on board with you and I need to I need to really focus on that. Like when I think about last night, what I need to do is like replace Joe Biden's face with like a poster of like top policy decisions, you know, like I need to somehow abstract this.

I can find you one with nail polish by two o'clock if you want.

You know, I follow a lot of very angry progressives on Instagram who I often am not in line with, who I feel like the anger is amped way up more than mine usually is because I do think that these past four years have been four years of a good presidency. And again, I'm reminding myself of that. But the emotional journey I'm on is a little bit different, whereas I'm not focusing on what the results are. I'm focusing on how I'm feeling about the person that, as of right now, I'm going to be voting for. And if I'm sort of all worked up and like thinking like, well, what is a situation? Is there any situation where it's an open convention or something or or somebody is anointed because of for whatever reason, Biden can't fulfill this promise to run all the way. then like like i can't imagine how people who were even more angry at him to begin with feel or people you know who were more on the fence or whatever so this will just be the first time that i am as of right now really mad about who i have to vote for and it's not so much a policy thing it's about like i i wish there was somebody with those same policy and ideals and there are those

people who would be a better candidate sure is this why is this the moment where you're officially announcing that you are supporting Jill Stein? I've got a lot of hands and a lot of pies.

Sure, that's right. Miriam Williamson? Oh, my God.

She's still running?

Is she running for governor of California?

I don't even know. I mean, look, again, I don't have any sort of great wisdom to offer, which is clear based on my previous comments, or anything that will wrap this up in a neat bow other than to say we're all in this together and we're all feeling the way we're feeling and we're kind of representing different kind of spots on the journey here, the three of us and wherever the listeners are at. But like, you know, we're all here together. And I think the most important thing to remember is that there is good news this morning, which is... the lit fad corporation of china recently reimbursed me 103 dollars and 80 cents for my

sconce because of your because you got your bank involved because i brought down the hammer baby

called chase manhattan which brought the hammer down on paypal which paypal's in a tizzy over this but what i can tell you is i started getting these emails from paypal this along with the new york times telling me the democracy as we know it is over i was also getting some good emails from paypal going we have received money uh your paypal payment has been returned to your bank and it says transaction details and it says recipient's name and then it's just chinese characters which i believe is litfab's government name and then it says recipient's email support at litfab.com And then it gives me a transaction ID, and then it shows me the amount that was returned to me. So Chase reached out to PayPal and said, hey, this company that you've been processing a payment with, they're not on the up and up. This guy wants his money back. So they sent it back. LitFad, by the way, LitFad immediately realized they don't want any part of this fight. They sent the money right back to PayPal, who sent the money right back to Chase.

Okay, so I thought PayPal was somehow stuck in the middle here. Like they were, are they?

They do think that my account has been hacked in a way because the next email from PayPal is potential unusual activity on your account. We saw some activity on your account that didn't match your usual activity. Yeah, me getting my money back, PayPal. Look into it. You know what the move is now. Savor the flavor.

And now you don't even have to return that thing, right? Sell it on eBay for $103.13.

My sister Hannah's already lining up for it. She's big on Southwestern earth tone sconces.

You sent that photo to John for Instagram of the actual side-by-side. Yeah. And, like, I got to say, I was starting to question, because you showed me the sconce, and I was like, yeah, no, that's not orange. Yeah, no, I heard the suspicion in your voice. No, no, no. I was like, no, that's earth tone. Like, I believe I'm the one who said, like, that's Adobe. That is not orange. But then some people I saw online were like, I don't know. It's a kind of orange. I'm like, I guess it's a kind of magic.

what is a satin dress what was that dress that was like yeah yeah and uh but no like you look

at that side by side that is you were saying purple i don't see purple but i do it's brown if anything it is in the family of browns my friends and i i feel more steadfast than ever on that point so i'm glad you got your money back and you get to keep the sconce or give it to your

sister as a i'm putting the sconce in the bathroom here you and john will both be able to admire it while you're washing your hands, and we do have a strict hand-washing policy here at the Madrona Hill studio, when you both, when we muster the entire squad, the entire TBTB business universe, which is the three of us, on Monday, the 8th of July for TBTL-a-thon 15. Thank you for being a 10. But anyway, yeah, I have to say, it was swift justice. Like, it went from LitFad sending me these, like, very kind of boilerplate, like uh well we have looked at the records and we sent you the right thing sorry not even sorry just like that's what we're doing to me being like i'm going to tell on you and then i told chase bank and then chase bank i'm i got to give them credit like i thought they were they were going to give me the money back and never follow it up but they gave me the money back chase bank did and then they reached out to paypal and were like hey what's going on with this and then paypal reached out to lift that lift i was like ah uh we're sorry here's the money back immediately

Please do not create any kind of regulatory hazard.

Please ask no follow-up questions about who made this sconce under what conditions, please. We will just be giving this guy his money back, and this never happened.

So as your official scribe, I will once again help you pen your next letter to them, LitFab. It should say, thanks for the money back, muchachos. Have a good time. Exactly

Hello and welcome to Top Story By the way, sorry, we did it We achieved escape velocity from the bummer news of the day And now I'm dipping our toe back in it But I swear, the thing that really put me over the top this morning That was just like, I can't anymore with the news As the kids are saying was after all of that, after all the real-world turmoil and tumult with the court and the debate and the this and the that, the Seattle Times then throws in Mariners open tough nine-game homestand.

I was like, come on! Oh, shoot. It's not Cleveland today, is it? Who's in town?

No, it's Minnesota. Oh, Minnesota, of course. It's John's team. Right.

I wish. He's more of a Yankees.

He's more of a Yankees fan.

I would like John more.

If that were his team

I actually love I love the Twins And I wish the Twins well Anytime they're not playing The Mariners But I was like Come on Seattle Times Like do you have to Do you have to Does the like Cherry on top of this Sunday of anxiety That I'm dipping into That I'm tucking into Right now Does it have to be Mariners open Tough nine game homestand Against three teams That beat them On the road Like come on

Right right right Well that's something

To look forward to But that's enough About that Let's talk about More TBTL related stuff, which is these friendship bracelets. Should we start with the friendship bracelets, or should we start with the Zooms I Just Crafted Myself sessions? Where do you want to start?

I Just Crafted My Pants. Let's start with that. That's just a quick announcement that we can let everybody know, because I think we mentioned on the show last week when John was on that we are going to, during the TV Telethon, which starts Monday the 8th, we're going to have a couple of Zoom parties as we're wont to do during these thons where the tens can all gather with us via zoom on two nights that'll be monday the 8th and wednesday the 10th in the evening and um we can all gather together on zoom and show off various crafting things whether it's a craft you're working on or some sort of project that you've already finished or if you're not so crafty but somebody in your life is and you have an object you'd like to show off or just hang out and not show anything off whatever if you want to show us

The craft single and then eat it live on cam. Yes. Totally okay.

I won't watch. I won't watch. But yes, absolutely. Very, very broad definition. But it'll be a lot of fun. And we're going to have TBTL craft nights. And that's on Monday and Wednesday of that week. And the announcement today is that you can now sign up for your Zoom invitations. That's how you can join us. If you go to tbtl.net, there's a button near the top of the page that says TBTL Presents. I just crafted my pants. Click on that and sign up for one or both if you're into it. We're looking forward to seeing you guys.

All right. Yeah, please do join us for that. It's one of the fun things about the Thon that sort of popped up in the last, I don't know, did we start it when we were at that undisclosed location? Was that the first time that we did that? Yep. That was a crazy year for so many reasons. But a kind of a pleasant surprise about the fact that we were locked down and we were all in a single location was that we figured out this way really connect with all of you and it's been super fun over the years so looking forward to um talking to you all via that internet connection in the meantime the other thing we're going to be doing that week along with raising money for tbtl which by the way now more than ever tbtl is your trusted source for political news and hand-wringing and i will be making that case that that use case that argument a lot during the tbtlathon 15 which is coming up but um the other other thing we're gonna be doing is making these friendship bracelets which i feel like i may have already said a version of this but we have a lot of meetings we do as a staff the three of us and we came up with this idea and then it was dismissed because it seemed like it was a bad idea because it was too much too many bracelets for three people to try to make and then we kind of revisited it then we realized it would be pretty funny and a challenge and it would create a sort of sense of the unknown for the listeners are they going to be able to do it but somehow in all of this i've never processed that we primarily you and i john are literally going to try to make thousands of

these things somebody's allegedly got finger issues somehow it's fine this is as we sit here

on maybe just because i'm in an emotionally and medically fragile state right now it's it's just sinking in how ambitious this project is going to be and that we're really going to be trying to do this amidst all the other stuff we're just going to be constantly sitting there futzing with these things i think is going to be the plan um but one of the things that we didn't expect was that there is a nationwide shortage of the letter h right like you were ordering you i have all of the other beads here at the studio john you've had them shipped here i have all of the materials for making friendship bracelets but we couldn't find the letter h what was did you get an explanation

on that i i haven't gotten an explanation uh you know i think as we've talked about in the past when we were when we were talking about doing these bracelets it's each bracelet will have a little expression or phrase i won't give away too much related to the show and so we have a very specific number of each letter b that we need to accomplish this yeah and i ordered all of them and from the same supplier and i'm sent to you luke and for whatever reason um the h should be there by the end of july is basically what i got and there's no reason rationale i could dig up so

it's on back order we ordered the h's but they're not going to show up so you sent me to a local bead shop to pick up a bunch of H's so that we can get them in advance but now I'm just realizing after this is all said and done we're going to have a surplus of H's because I am now in possession of H's that I bought at the store and I'll tell you about that

in a moment. Is that a David Foster Wallace novel? A surplus of H's? Well I was wondering

I don't know much about wrestling but I know there's a wrestler called Triple H should we make a bunch of Triple H what are we going to do with these extra H's in August

I should really and I can do this get our money back and just cancel that part of the order I think that's probably well due

but unless you want a bunch of extra H's I want to be obviously we're a small operation and we are trying to run things as leanly as possible because we don't bring in that much money. What if we need to make friendship bracelets down the line that involve the word psychobiography or ophthalmoplegic or photochemically? These are all words that have two H's in them. We may need a lot of H's.

I didn't even hear the H's in the first word you said.

Psychobiography. Psycho. So the co and fee.

Oh, fee. What about psychochemicals?

What about phytochemically? what if we were to philanthropizes what if someone who really does a lot of philanthropy boy he really philanthropizes his little pants off

but then we need the other letters still well okay I'm just saying

you never know when you're going to need an H what if one of the things we put on a future bracelet is the word thirst quenching which also involves

two H's or we get some A's and we just make we go like a full joker we make a whole bunch of ha ha ha or and this one might be fit me better we just buy let's say we're gonna have an extra 400 eight h's maybe we just buy like 50 s's and we make a bunch of bracelets let's say and then every time like when we start talking about politics yeah you just hold up your wrist hold up their bracelet exactly go back to sleep

what what happened andrew when you went to the is it is it a bead store or a craft store that

features h's like what was the place you went would you call it an emporium please say it's

an emporium and was it shipwreck beads located in the nisqually area of i-5 which i always see signs for shipwreck beads when i'm sitting in traffic and i think wow they got a whole store

for that okay it is not shipwrecked or even shipwrecked beads um it is an emporium in a certain way it's on roosevelt way northeast which is a road i used to live on but it's actually a bit uh further north than i was expecting that's not interesting i'm just throwing that out there You can save that little dazzling detail for later. But I show up, and it is a place called Bead World. And I walk in, and it is a pretty big store. Like, it is a surprisingly big store that is nothing but beads. I mean, beads and bead-related crafting items. Nothing more than that. They might have had a little cooler in the corner that sold Mountain Dew. I'm not even sure about that. But aside from that, it's nothing but beads. And I am immediately enamored. Now, I'm not into the bead arts yet. I will be very soon. But, like, I love the fact that even in this day and age when, you know, so many stores, like these very specific niche stores have gone away because it's easier to buy stuff online, that I can, in 2024, just walk into a store called Bead World and say, holy crap, this is really a world of beads. This is amazing. And like vibrant, my boys, not like, I mean, I went, I believe it was Tuesday afternoon around two o'clock and at least three people working there, if not more, and a bunch of customers. I had to wait in line. I love it, too. Brick and mortar beads. Brick and mortar beads. Oh, I'm sorry. They also sold brick and mortar. And so anyway, I love stuff like that. So I'm immediately enamored. There's somebody.

I love the idea of you going into the bead store, and then there's an area in the back where there's a beaded curtain where you go through that, and it's just adult beads. It's just beads for grownups.

That's where all the H's went. So I walk in, and I have to wait for the person ahead of me to finish sort of checking out or whatever at the register. And I don't know exactly how this happened. I'm seriously confused about this. and I've been replaying it in my brain. But I say to the person, kind of a younger person who's working there, I say, hi, my name's Andrew. I don't even know if I said my name. They somehow immediately know you're here for the H's. It was an amazing moment in my life. Oh, you called ahead. Yeah, John placed the order and asked them to hold these for us. And so I'm immediately on my back foot. I'm like, yes, I am one of the people here for the H's. Like, yes, I don't know. I just came in, like, with an H vibe, apparently. And this person was immediately like, you're here for the Hs. I'm like, I am here for the Hs. And so, like, okay, I just need to count them out. They hold up, like, on a...

a little Ziploc bag full of H's. They put it on a scale. Luke, they put it on a scale. Luke, yes, exactly. So I'm thinking, oh, they've already counted them out or whatever, but they're like, oh, no, I do have to count these out. And I'm like, how are you going to count up 400 beats? They're like, well, we have a little scale here. We weigh a couple of them, and then we know how much they weigh, and I'm just like, I'm watching it. It is seriously like somebody is sort of cutting up drugs on a scale in front of me i am just so impressed by this situation here i'll show you the h's but while this person and this is this is where things get really wacky here are the h's by the way this will all be in they look good this week's um hey dummies video by the way so all these visuals you can see in this week's newsletter if you're interested that is a bag of h's that i bought but here's what also blew my mind maybe even more than anything i've told you so far while this person is cutting up my h's they say to me also here somebody left this for you and they hand me an envelope what and i said yeah that's what i said i said i'm i'm sorry what they're like yeah somebody somebody left this for you and they hand me this white envelope here and it has if you can see it has my name it's a plain white envelope like a card would come in i'm actually nervous very small to andrew off in the top left hand corner of this thing and i'm like what do you mean somebody left something and this person is just like busy counting the h's and they're like i i don't know i don't know just like they left it for you i'm like okay like this

happens all the time do you have people coming in for one random letter 400 of it and also someone has left an envelope for them is that a common thing at bead world and i can tell what's in

this envelope is something sort of substantial potentially beads and a little card so i open up this card and it says andrew best of luck on your bracelet making endeavor a couple of tips as you embark on this adventure one pre-stretch your string two exclamation points two a dab of clear nail polish on the knot does wonders for making these last take a note boys uh number three john is so wrong there is no way my children's tiny hands could make these knots and then it says no mountain too tall danielle walsh who is a listener of ours in seattle no relation to me by the way um and i am now realizing danielle we must have said the last time you were on the show john that we did we must have said bead world i don't remember talking about me going to bead world but we must have let that state secret slip i don't remember it either but i mean she also

might have just sort of deducted andrew's going to get some beads at a store i mean it's a fairly

short list, right? There are envelopes waiting for me at bead stores all across Western Washington right now.

That's Crazy Jim's bead outlet and also at

BeadX. What was the one you mentioned before? Busted Beads or something like that? Shipwreck

Beads down in, I'm learning it's Lacey, Washington.

I don't know if Danielle left me something there. So that was the card and it contained that bit of information and it also contained three bracelets that I'm holding up here that say Business Boys

I don't know how well you can see that. Wait just a quick moment here. So are we believing that listener Danielle figured out somehow that you were likely going to be going to Bead World, Andrew, and went there ahead of your visit and talked to the folks at the counter and said, there is going to be a man. He is going to come in. He's going to look vaguely like Wilford Brimley. He is going to be buying H's. Please give him this card. Or does Danielle work there? Ooh, I love that, Andrew. That is actually pretty cool. Business boys.

It matches your shirt. So we each have a bracelet. This is business boys that I encourage us to wear while we're making these during the con. I will bring them. If I can claim the blue, it does go with my eyes well, which are not blue, weirdly.

So how did the envelope get there in advance of you? Does Danielle work at this place? Or did she just go in and say, hey, hear me out? Somebody is going to come in here to buy some beads, but I want them to get this envelope when they come in to buy the beads.

The person behind the counter said somebody left this for you. So I'm guessing that we must have, and I just think we don't remember, we must have said bead world at some point. Or maybe I mentioned that it's in Roosevelt or something. And I think that if Danielle worked there, the person behind the counter would have said something like, oh, yeah, my colleague wanted to give this to you or something. I don't know if people in the bead industry call themselves colleagues or co-workers. But so my guess is collaborators. This has happened to me at times at Teddy's, my old bar in my old neighborhood, where I'd come in and somebody would say like, hey, some people were in here from out of town and they pre-bought you a drink or they left something for you. So this was kind of like that only at Bead World, which was very exciting and made me feel very, very special. However,

Whatever, I got to say, the story sort of ends there, but my feelings don't. Because the longer I'm in the store, the more I kind of realize I really don't know. I really just don't know what we're doing. Like, I remember being a kid and making friendship bracelets, but I feel like we made them on pieces of string. They weren't, like, stretchy like these are. I've just been thinking, like, well, John has made these before, and John's going to buy all the supplies, and he'll show us how to make these things. But I said to the folks, I'm like, hey, listen, I understand there's something called bead spinners. And I'm supposed to inquire about the bead spinners. Oh, you got one. Yeah. So I've been talking with this person behind the counter who's counting out my H's and cutting them up. But then this bead spinner conversation catches the attention of a woman who's behind the counter who I believe to be the owner, potentially a manager. And she's like, we don't have those bead spinners. And the person who's counting out the H's says, yes, we do. There are a couple over there. And they leave the counter for, like, briefly – like, they are so – they're, like, in five places at once. They stop counting the H's, they go, and they come back with a couple of boxes. And these things are called Spin and String and Spin and String – oh, I'm sorry. One is Spin and String Mini, and one is Spin and String Micro. These things are these little – they look like little bowls, sort of, that you would – maybe, like, some sort of, you know, crafting bowl thing that are about the size of – you know, like, you can hold them in your hand. but immediately so the person who's the manager or owner is like i didn't even know we had those but she starts down selling them she's like they're not very good that tiny one you're not going to be able to do anything with that and you need special needles so then the person and we don't have the needles and then the person who's counting out the h's goes running back to the store says yes we do we have special needles managing up yeah it was very it was such a bizarre experience and then they start telling me like no you need special needles for these for these bead devices and then the woman keeps saying this small one isn't gonna do any good And she's like, I'll just give it to you. I'm just giving you that one. So apparently the small one, which doesn't have any needle, I think I might need to go back and buy the – it got so confusing in there so quickly that I think I now have this mini bead, this micro bead spinner that from the mouths of the professionals is going to do us no good. But if we want to at least try it, I need to at least go and buy some needles for it. Which, by the way, she said she wasn't going to charge me for it, but I think I ended up seeing it on the receipt at the end of the day. I think she forgot about that promise. Then I got the bigger bead spinner and some needles to go along with that. But then I'm like, well, needles, I didn't know we needed needles for this at all. What about the ones we do by hand? So then the person went running back to another part of the store again and then came back with these needles for when we make these by hand. John, did you – so my point is these people are trying to explain stuff to me. I am getting more and more confused about how to make a bracelet, what the point of the needles are. they did throw in some sort of instruction manual here about how to tie knots i'll show you guys

this later the woman who wanted to give me the free bead spinner by the way blanched at the person putting three of these in a bag and said he can just have one and share it with his friends i'm like you're giving away bead spinners but i can't have three pieces of paper thank you for that but they were very very delightful there but john i feel more in over my head than ever do you

have any of these needles on order no no do we so i i when i've made these and when the people in my what in my life who are better at this have made these you just cut the string to the length you want and then you just you tie off um one end kind of like so it's a stop into the microphone yeah get on that sorry i'm like i backed away to show you how to do it uh yeah so you you cut the length of the string you tie kind of one end so it's like a stopper so the beads can't like fall fall past it kind of thing and then you just start stacking beads just feeding them through the string and then you tie the two ends together and you have your bracelet so needles i think i'm

definitely going to use the needles to kind of have because my guess is that will fish through the beads easier because it's a small little thing i want you to know that and you both know this about me i use i i never miss a chance to have technology make my life better and when you show up for this beading project i'm gonna have like a jeweler's eye on i'm gonna have a special elbow pads i'm gonna have like i'm gonna be i'm gonna have four different sizes of bead spinners i'm gonna have every needle i'm gonna have whatever the new york times wire cutter column recommends for best bead spinners like i'm gonna probably i i'm guessing that dyson makes a bead spinner and i will have one eight hundred dollars and it'll last you one year okay can i real quick yes i'm

going to use every piece of technology that makes this more doable you can use the big bead spinner

if you want i'm happy to relinquish that yes you were talking about the receipt and what she charged you for and didn't charge you for so when so because we're business boys and i manage you've

the bracelet to prove it yeah um anytime you guys spend money you send me the receipt so i can keep track of all that stuff so andrew sent me the receipt and it shows on there two items but they're just listed as retail t1 so there's like nothing i'm guessing this is not a modern um uh cash register cash register and so like there's the retail so when you sent it to me i saw the retail 400 times which i knew that first item was the beads and then the second one's just a

different charge and for some reason this is this is a weird like business licensing thing but bead

world is licensed under the name deja vu uh-huh interesting that's interesting let's see that's

only when you said adult emporium that's doing business under the name deja vu adult emporium

this is really funny they charge us for three i'm looking at this receipt everything went wrong in there and i this is on me if i have to go back and buy more needles i will but they charged us it looks like for three of these needles and i only got two only two were in the bag i don't know what happened there um but they might have given us the bead spinner for free so we come out ahead on that but then we don't want it so we don't come in what is the point of the small bead spinner is

it if you're dealing with smaller beads like why would you ever want it to be a micro bead spinner I have no idea. I don't even know how they work.

I don't even know how they work. You're asking the wrong. Here's the one takeaway that I did want to share with you guys. This came from the woman who had very, like, Catherine O'Hara vibes to her, by the way. She said,

Bert, her flinger, wine in the lee of the bead world. Which era of Catherine O'Hara are we talking about? Are we talking Sheila Albertson from Waiting for Guffman? Yes.

Katheryn O'Hara, Beetlejuice era, Home Alone, Katheryn O'Hara.

This woman is probably the, she's either, she's probably a little bit older than Katheryn O'Hara is even right now, or maybe the age of Katheryn O'Hara right now. Very nice person. There was something about her, I don't know, her face, her smile that reminded me of Katheryn O'Hara. But she said, you know what you do? Here's what you, you said you guys got to do a bunch of these? I'm like, yeah. She's like, what you do is you get yourself like a baking sheet, like a cookie sheet. and you take a dish towel and you lay the dish towel down on the baking sheet and then you get all your beads and you and you put them on that and you sit down and you turn on the television and you just sit there with the beads and the towel on your lap and you just crank through these things so she and I was like with the towel just so that things don't like go skittering about all over the place on the on the baking sheet she said yes exactly this sort of just keeps everything in place and you just like that's that's your little lap desk and that's how you do it so that is something to consider luke what is your like how many cookie sheets do you have at your place

i actually have a lot because i just went cookie sheet shopping okay great i went to cookie sheet world yeah and some listeners had left stuff for me there so whatever you're not the only popular member of the show anyway unfortunately it was a paternity suit um so it was a less fun

day for me than it was for you and wait this this raises more questions though do we have like a cookie sheet for each letter or like how does that work i think it's just like your tray where

you can sort it's just like your little workstation your little workstation and you can divide up all the little beads on your workstation as you see fit but i think this was her way of saying like you make yourself comfortable you make yourself sort of like mobile you don't have to sit at a desk and do this but the cookie sheet with the uh with the towel was sort of a way of sort of like maintaining you know your the integrity of the bead piles i believe well just to keep yeah because

otherwise they're going to be rolling around everywhere so we have cookie sheets here uh we have towels um i was imagining that what we would do is set up our little stations probably near our microphones because we're going to be working off of this kind of kitchen island thing that's here in the studio that is actually a slab a live slab was slab of wood from my friend toby's property on vashon island he should one day he just went well i was at his house and he had a really cool table his house in portland i was like that's a cool table he goes yeah that's from a tree on my property i cut it down and made it into a tabletop i was like whoa and then one day he called me goes hey i'm in your neighborhood do you want one of those and he rolled up with this giant piece of wood that he had like written a really lovely note on the underside of of just kind of like a note of friendship and that's what we're going to be using for the broadcast and also i think for our bead making is the plan is it is the current plan i mean that may we're going to the plan may get adjusted once we're all in here and figuring it out but i kind of i pictured it as the three of us at our respective stations now andrew you've also got your soundboard that's kind of it's that's the primary thing which again it sounds like for for good reason john and i are going to be doing the kind of the majority of this bead stuff but my thought was we'll be talking we'll be doing the phone we'll be taking calls We'll be right back.

and we'll be making, you know, bracelets. And then as soon as the show's over, that's when you and John usually kind of shift into post-production mode where, like, John is working on stuff around the donations and taking care of the tens who are donating and making sure their needs are met. You're usually posting the show, Andrew. You guys really... And in years past, I've had less to do. I can kind of kick back usually, but this time I will not be kicking back. I will be kicking forward right into my workstation and getting cray with my bead making. is my plan.

Can I ask a question to John?

Bracelet making, I should say.

To John. Yeah, I've been doing that too, Luke. I've been saying bead making. We're not making the beads. But OK, here. I'm looking at Danielle's bracelet that she made us. And I have now found the knot there. John, the string that you got is stretchy like this, right? They're all stretchy.

Yeah, it should be stretchy.

But it's not pre-cut. I'm just trying to figure out, we need to cut lengths of this ourselves. and then we i'm wondering what you guys think is going to be the hardest part of this and i'm guessing as i hold this in my hand it's the knot at the end it's the knot it's the knot okay yeah

yeah yeah um especially because none of us have like decks like i got big meaty fingers here like

i'm you know it's like it's something that i have beautiful delicate fingers you can do all the

knotting is like the dexter like it becomes like a little bit of a fidgeting with it yeah i have a

feeling that there is honestly like a technological solution for all of this and i am not above getting a like a vice kind of like a vice grip that maybe is at my work you know is at my workstation so that i can like i've i've compared this to tying a fly you know people that like to make fly for fly fishing that's a real art form i'm imagining that i'm going to have a whole workstation going that is going to allow me to really efficiently make a lot of these and to tie them, and I'm going to spare no expense. This is going to be a huge money loser for us. By the way, I said this at the top of the show. I never even thought about this. If somebody is nice enough to donate $1, which, by the way, donating $1 is appreciated. It means a lot. If a million people donate $1, they get a bracelet. We're going to send a bracelet for a $1 donation? I don't think you can

do $1. Yeah, the way

the donation forms are set because of the fees that come out from the payment process. There is like... It's got to be at least $100.

We only accept $100 $1,000 is the minimum.

So when we say we'll mail a bracelet to anyone who donates at any level, we mean at the $1,000 level.

Yes. I think it's like $3 or $5.

So we're not going to get in a situation where we're paying to send someone a bracelet. We have a way to avoid that, right?

Well, when you count shipping and stuff like that. If somebody makes a one-time $5 donation. We lose on that. But we're hoping people don't do it. We'd make a few cents or something. Oh, okay.

Well, you know, a penny here, a penny there.

I picked up some change on the street the other day. I was walking down towards Aurora. Oh, so your hands do work. For things that you want them to work for. I'm not trying to get out of this. But I was walking down the street, and I saw a nickel on the ground. And, you know, it's kind of like you can picture my neighborhood here, Luke. So it's not like it was like a pristine little sidewalk find.

It had seen things.

It had seen things. It was a nickel who had really lived a life. And I really did think about that. And I was like, at first, I think I saw it glint in the sun. And I think maybe for a split second, I thought it was a quarter. And I just had to make this decision as I'd already stopped my gate, right? I had to, like, stop and think, like, am I going to bend over to pick that up? And I was like, oh, yeah. And then I'm like, okay, it's a nickel, not a quarter, but I'm already doing this. And then about, I don't know, a block later, I found a dime and I picked that up, too. And I'm like, okay, so I just stopped. But first of all, I'm now a 15 centenaire. And I'm just wondering, like, where are you guys on? You're not stopping to pick up nickels and dimes, right?

Silver money I will pick up. You will? Silver, always, always. Okay. For luck, if nothing else. Pennies, at this point, no thanks. But I, till the day I die, will think that they're, oh, it's silver. That's some value there. You know what I mean? Sure. As a kid, it was like if you were going through, like, if your parents had some kind of dish of change, you know, sitting somewhere, and you'd be, like, pawing through it to get Charleston chew money it'd be like the hierarchy of the value of money uh you know would be like oh is it silver okay then it's a dime 10 dimes you got a dollar that's really that's real money yeah yeah

john are you gonna pick up change no no what about a quarter what about generational

quarter i don't think like maybe a quarter maybe maybe a quarter that's good money

We need a new business manager.

Must be nice to not have to pick up quarters.

With inflation in 2024, what is a quarter doing for you?

You can play Asteroids. Can you? I don't know. Because there's a pizza shop. I think of what I would use a quarter for in the day. There's a pizza shop. near me that I love that has like an old school Mario game and I think it takes four quarters I'm pretty sure it's a dollar. A quarter was a lot when

we were kids because well A it was just worth more but B it was the highest level of gumball machine at the grocery store all those machines that had various candies and random things in them the high dollar one was a quarter or maybe two quarters but like a quarter was if you had a quarter you had an afternoon of fun in front of you whether it was video game playing whether it was getting a super ball out of one of those machines like you you like that was a day

changer getting a quarter when i was a kid 10 year old john in 1995 would absolutely grab a quarter 38 year old john in 2024 has no use for a quarter on the ground i would fight someone that's grimy

and god knows what's going on if i if there was a quarter if i saw i would almost do the move where if i saw a quarter and i was in a crowded place i might stand on it for a minute just to make sure nobody else gets it, and analyze my options. Which, by the way, is the move if there's ever paper money on the ground. The move is you stand on it.

I'm just going to bring a pocket full of change with me to your house, Luke. And then if we go out for dinner, wherever we end up doing work. There are all kinds of lovely places.

We're going to Poker Peeps. We're going to the Chinese restaurant. I got the whole week planned out.

I'm just going to leave nickels and dimes and quarters in random places to see if you guys notice and react. This is going to be my new game.

I've got to pay for this remodel somehow. Honestly, one dime at a time, I'm into it. So, okay, all right, so here's the good news, just to kind of restate things before we do Music for Your Weekend. The good news is we now have all the letters we need to make these TVTL friendship bracelets. And I'm guessing, will we be revealing during the week of the Thon what the actual messages are on the bracelets? I don't know. What's more fun? I don't know. Oh, what do we decide on that? I feel like we went back and forth between, I think we decided we were going to talk about it because it was going to come up and we could reference it. how many of this one have we made versus you know what i mean like i just made 10 of these because i know that one time the idea was have it be a surprise when they arrive in the mail but then i thought we had eventually gotten around to it's going to be too hard to not say what we're

working on especially because we'll want to show them off on camera like we're gonna be yeah no it's true you know we'll be live broadcasting the show we'll be doing the zoom nights it'll be fun

to show what we're doing right i don't know 100 how this is going to work but one thing that we're trying to do and i think it's okay to say this luke um what i want to try to do if possible is set up a 24-hour cam on a pile i want to try to do that yeah i mean and so but we had by that i mean have you do it yeah we haven't mentioned this to the audience yet that's what i mean i wasn't sure if it was okay do no work on this project myself see i don't know i i do know that youtube will let you do a 24-hour stream i need to figure out the technology and how we then break into that stream to do our other broadcasting and whatever during the shows i i think it'll all work out but ideally for the listener you should be able to like let's say you wake up you know at three o'clock in the morning with some old episode of breaking bad blaring in the background and you can go and you can go like clear your mind by going to tbtl.net and checking out the live stream of the of a jar of bracelets as it fills up more and more so that that's the plan so that people

can kind of watch our progress but i don't think it's gonna be filling up at three in the morning like unless maybe plans on waking up in the middle of the night well you want to know another you

want to know another wild card to this whole thing that i think we're going to do is there is going to be uh there are probably going to be two live animals here in the madrona hill studio as we're doing the shows that week and that's a weird way to talk about me and andrew bubbles and holly go Lately, I think, we'll be here hanging out.

Oh, nice.

Because, well, because, A, I miss Bubbles and Holly, and, B, we just thought it'd be fun for them. They'd need to get acclimated to being up here sometimes anyway. Also, I thought it would be good content. I could imagine a world in which, 3 in the morning, you go to the live stream, and there is a jar that's got however many TBTL friendship races in it, and then you just see Bubbles just walk by in the background. that will be that's going to I think be the visually entertaining thing is just what is Bubbles up to in this little area

and I love the fact that like you know the only thing that could make this bead project a little bit easier would be to have a couple of playful cats around tons and tons of beads

well one playful cat and one very very shy tuxedo cat named Holly Golightly so yeah no it's going to be a royal nightmare and I for one look forward to it

really just making this easy for ourselves i think you know what i think that upping the

degree of difficulty will up the degree of entertainment is my is my theory going good all right let's do a little music for your weekend uh before we get out of here um andrew you have a song ready to go but john you have a message for some of

yeah who've been kind of reaching out to you involving modi yeah yeah for folks who don't

know and we i'm not really gonna get too much into it right now but um earlier this week my wife and i lost our dog modi um he had been sick for a couple years but doing doing well and then took a turn for the worst very suddenly and it's um people have been through it no it's the absolute freaking worst yeah and uh and some tens followed me on like instagram and stuff and saw a post about it and have been just reaching out sharing kind words and um so i just want to say thank you for folks that have done that it's really not you know um it's the worst but i it's one of those things where i it's every little bit of help or kindness is appreciated so um yeah i just want to say take a moment say thanks for folks who have done that and it's it's i saw what you said and

i appreciate it and thank you i'm really sorry you had to go through this john and it's part of life and so many people have gone through it as a lot of our listeners have and we will again someday anybody who has a pet or any anybody they love in their life it's really really tough but um you know i haven't been asking you a lot about it because i know that i was so heartbroken when we lost a pet that it was really hard for me to talk about but i've been thinking about you a lot and i will just say this i i hope that the the dogs in in your home right now are giving you some

extra extra cuddles yeah yeah thor who's the oldest he he's just kind of does his own thing But you can tell he notices something different Benny the younger pup He actually has been a little more cuddly But he's kind of a maniac in general

Oh I forgot to tell you Benny's going to be here too

With the beads right by his tail

That would be a real Dr. Doolittle Sitch out here That week

That would knock over well Well John I also just want to say

From me and I'll speak for Andrew We've been thinking about you a lot this week You and Jess and your family Because I know that Modi was a really big part of it Our hearts are going out to you right now And also Andrew There's a lot of pressure on your musical selection this week It's basically in honor of This is in honor of Modi So it better not be some weird B-52 shit That no one's ever heard of

I actually think it's kind of fitting It's a song called American Nightmare By Robert zombie are you familiar with robert zombie okay please please please robert zombie was my father call me bob zombie no this is not um this is not a weird b52s track it's not by rob zombie um and i don't know too much about it this um this song came oh i know one thing i did want to say though music for your weekend luke you were not here when we played the song last week but You did pick the song, which I believe was suggested by a listener, Rolled, by a rapper named Wynn, who if you had told me about Wynn before, I had totally forgotten about her. But I loved that song. And that is now on my summer playlist. It's very catchy. It is so good. Yeah. So I want to say, I've been listening to that, Rolled. Great suggestion. That's the one thing about music for your weekend, the listener suggestion. Sometimes we can't react to them because it's the last time we play. So I wanted to give a shout out. That's a banger. And what I was going to play for you here is a song by, and I'm not even 100% sure I'm saying the name of the artist properly It's Rui Gabriel, somebody who was born in Central America, but then kind of came of age in New Orleans and now lives in Indiana, I think Uh-huh, sure Interesting Natural progression Yeah, exactly I think I think born in Nicaragua, Nicaragua, lived in Venezuela, then New Orleans, now Indiana, like that, that, that old saw of a story and just kind of making sort of like very, very chill indie pop. And the name of this song is Change Your Mind by Rui Gabriel.

Even lines I took back on a quiet street Even you're feeling the way your body moves around Try your best to complete the need of attracting airs when you're trying to smell Hear yourself from the self-esteem of a couple of boys trying to fuck around Tell your feet how to dance at the beat Cause you're at your best when you're running wild there you go brand new music it's called change your mind that was awesome the song that i would like to suggest popped up on some sort of algorithm for me and i was like oh shit krongbin has a new song okay i'm here for this because i i love you know i'm part of a certain sort of demographic that when krongbin releases a new album i'm legally required to listen to it and then sit somewhere um probably on a kind of like in this room industrial cement floor possibly wearing a wide-brimmed hat uh possibly drinking um whatever the in-style drink is at the time and then listen to the listen to the album. That's just the way with Krongbin these days but it turns out it wasn't Krongbin, it was a guy who plays under the name of Arc de Soleil, which if I can, flex my French Arc of the Sun Arc the Sun the Sun's Arc Arc de Soleil the song is called Thief of Marrakesh and it turns out this guy Arc de Soleil is actually named Daniel katawatha and he's swedish artist multi-instrumentalist this is the description on youtube of who arc de soleil is so um it's it is ain't pitchfork okay daniel katawatha uh was born a creator he is a diverse and talented songwriter and musician who handles all aspects of music creation himself everything from composing writing through playing all instruments singing producing and mixing his tracks um they left out and sounding just like a krong bin banger because this song is so good i love it so much so can you play a little bit of this andrew it's thief of marrakesh by the uh artist who performed by the name arc de soleil

Thank you.

All right, so you get the vibe, you get the idea. What is it about getting older that I like more and more music that is instrumental? whole is that part of the aging process john you're young do you like instrumentals when you're over there not not even picking up quarters as a young i was into that i mean i was into that yeah i don't know i did what i mean is like i heard a i heard an interview um yesterday on all things considered well it was actually the the person in question had passed away but there was he was a japanese composer and as a piano composer and he had put together these really beautiful pieces some of which were on movie soundtracks and he played a sort of final concert he was getting towards the end of his life and he was in pretty bad health but he sort of with taking certain breaks he was able to play this final concert just not for a crowd but in his own presumably like piano studio or something and I was like this is the only music I ever want to listen to for the rest of my life and it's just piano music like there's something about me at the age that i'm at where i'm i'm less and less interested in lyrics i don't know why maybe it's just because everything is on my last nerve these days but it's like i like things that don't have lyrics now more than i used to if that makes it like i liked things where i couldn't really understand the lyrics for a long time like time cop 1983 and air and and now i'm just fully i'm ready to fully dispense with lyrics i guess is the weird thing about me what are your feelings on the andre uh 3000 flute you know what i have heard about that record but have not listened to it and i really should because i've heard it's great yeah it seemed like a stunt to me i to be totally honest with you but i mean i love andre uh 2000 three three okay well i love i love andre 3000 so much that I know which thousand he's on, but, um,

I really, of course, I love him in OutKast and stuff, and I think he just seems like a cool, interesting dude. But when I heard Flute Album, my mind was like, okay, he's just kind of seeing what will we put up with as listeners. But then I've also heard that musically it's actually really good. Have either of you listened to it?

I've heard clips like stuff here and there, but I've not sat down with it myself now.

I feel like when it was brand new, I might have sampled a little bit of it, but I don't recall well enough. I just think it's amazing that we live in, like, the golden era of the hip-hop flautist. We have, like, two great preeminent hip-hoppers who also play flute prominently. You mean Lizzo? Yeah, Lizzo is who I'm going to have. That's it. It's really two people. But still, though, we went from zero to two rather quickly, I would say. No, that is a 200% increase. I don't think that's how math works, but okay. Sure.

Yeah, no, you know what? Now as the self-appointed instrumental music fan of the show, I'll listen to the Andre 3000 flute record and tell you guys what I think about it. Yeah, it'd be interesting. Maybe that'll be something to look forward to during the thon one.

Because I hope it's not too noodley. That's the one thing. I like instrumentals. I like a good groove. But then a flute can get a little bit noodley if you let it. So that would be sort of the decider for me as to whether or not that sort of fits my taste. That song that you just played, Luke, reminded me, like, I was like, oh, yeah, if I was in a coffee shop, like, this is the vibe that I want in the coffee shop, you know, it's like, perfect, it's interesting, it's not background music, it's interesting, but it's not too, like, distracting either.

I feel like it's sort of, like, kind of a smooth jazz-like now is starting to speak to me in a way, like, or at least, you know, that was my idea of the worst kind of music that could ever exist. But now if I hear it, it really unironically, like I don't mind it, a certain kind of smooth jazz, which, of course, is also making a comeback because it's been long enough. It was sort of in the wilderness long enough that now cool people are bringing it back and making their version of it and stuff. But like that guy, Gucci Pineapple, who we really like, Andrew, on like TikTok and other places, he does kind of a lot of jazzy stuff with his friends. He's a Berklee College of Music guy who puts together really funny, weird content.

Have you been checking in with, like, Roy Donk? Uh-huh. Of that kind of...

I've got some...

Was it... Are you talking about... The King of the Tuk-Tuk Sound. Are we talking about Mookie Kramer and the Eight Balls? Are we talking about... Are we talking about Marcus the Worm Hicks? Oh, nice. I've seen those online. But he featured Tiny Boop, Squig, Shorterly. Let's see. Who else? Oh, I'm sorry, John. You meant Roy Donk. Yeah. That's who you were thinking of.

Can I play for you guys before we get into the music for your weekend? Only because we happen to be here, and I don't know when I'll have the opportunity to play this again. But when I worked at New Hampshire Public Radio, it was my very first job out of college. I was very excited to be an associate producer for a talk show called The Exchange, which is just like the quintessential 90s, early 2000s, post-morning edition roundtable-style talk show. and it started, of course, with sort of like smooth jazz by none other than Grover Washington Jr. And for the long, we, every day of my life, as I heard this music, I was stressed out about whether or not the ISDN line was truly connected or whatever, like I would hear this for the billboard and intro every day.

Were you guys using the Telos, Zephyr? What were you guys working with?

Yeah, that was the Zephyr II, right? Oh, sure. And G.722, baby. Oh, really? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, sorry, only when we're slumming it. El Tumano 128, my god, sorry Thank you, thank you

G.722, what are you, conservative talk radio?

We did have a Zephyr one that only did G.722 And it sounded like you're broadcasting from under the That was always the court of last resort Yeah, I was like underwater It's like, what are you interviewing, Squidward? Anyway, the other day I was like, I'm going to find that song Because I've done this before I'm like, what was We literally played it from the original CD Grover Washington Jr. It wasn't burned It was like we had, I think, two of these CDs bopping around the station that was so important to the flagship show that we produced every day. And if you don't mind, I'm going to play it for you guys. It'll mean nothing to you. So this was the theme song? This was. I found it. This was the theme song. So you would play the theme song from a CD every day? From a CD. Yeah, I think even when we recorded the billboard, we'd cue up the CD. And this is, I now know, this is track four off of the album Time Out of Mind, which came out in 1989. This is Grover Washington Jr. The name of the song is Brand New Age But this was the song I might even duck it underneath me And I'll do my best Laura Kanoi Although that's a lot of pressure Pew! I was always told, when you hear that pew, that's where you fade it down. Hey, everybody, I'm Laura Kanoi. Welcome to the exchange. When you hear that pew, that's where you bring it down. I love it. I'm pretty sure I heard this in one of the Beverly Hills Cops movies. Yes, yes. Who's the guy who did all that music? He did it for Fletch as well. He has a funny name. Yeah.

Andrew, were you working on the conversation when we were using that song Eminence Front by The Who?

I forgot. I would have never remembered the name, but yeah, that was all

I had never heard of this song. Let me see. Wait, is this the... I don't know if this is even... Does it take a minute to get going? I think so.

Yes! I forgot about this.

The Seattle City Council voted recently to add more capacity to the Aurora Avenue Viaduct, even though it's slated for demolition in three years. Is that a good decision or one that we will come to regret? We have seven guests. You each have one minute. and robert horton is here to talk about the latest film festival at the grand illusion theater

god i forgot about this song i remember being kind of a vibe though right it is and i i was shocked to learn that it was the who i think i didn't know it was the who for a really long time because by the time i was on that show you know we weren't playing things off a cd anymore it was

all in the system and do you remember uh i think for a while dave ross's show do you remember what he was using this was i think before i was working with him i don't know that i would

know because i think i started when it was both of you guys together okay so i forget

the exact era but there was a period of time where i believe this was the it also might take a minute to get going to get to the part that was the theme give it a second

I like this Oh, I know this song Yeah, why is this song?

This was the intro theme to the Dave Ross show

But what was it? Is it Huey Lewis?

No, it'll reveal itself when you hear the guy start singing At least to Andrew, probably I make my living off the evening news Yeah

Oh This is This is I Want My MTV band, right? Nope Don Henley

Oh, okay Dirty Laundry Coming at you, WNBC That's completely what Howard Stern says, by the way That's just to make Phyllis laugh

It felt a little At first I was getting and I don't know if I'm right about this, but I was wondering if the beginning of that has a little bit of coast-to-coast vibes to it.

Well, that's, of course, I mean, because I've been listening to a lot of Dreamland radio of late, I've been really re-entering that whole world. He really loved a lot of, like, pan flute music. We would use that Enigma song, you know, the... I forget what that... I can't think of the name of it, yeah. We had this conversation, like, two months ago, so I won't do it again for the listeners. But he loves that Enigma song. He loves Dust in the Wind by Kansas. I'm trying to think of some of the other great ones. Just like the most weird, random music that just Art Bell just loved for some reason. He thought it just put a certain air of mystery around the show.

And, of course, everybody remembers this one. Speaking of flutes. Boy, this goes on forever. is this vibrant thing it's somebody called the Peter Project this is good though by the way this is how I started my show I wasn't sure if you'd even remember that very flute forward though very flute forward

it's so much better than Catch My Disease honestly do you think Andre 3000 was in Seattle

and heard that possibly

we can't rule it out

You can't rule it out. Wow, I made him. All right, I'm sorry. I had to throw in that last one. Only when we were talking about this, I'm like, can I find that song? I would have never remembered.

I think it'll be interesting to see how many countries we are now banned in. Oh, my God. That might be the most copywritten music that we've ever played in probably since we started getting pulled down from places. Maybe that's good. And it may, you know, we still have one more song to play, although I don't really exactly know what the...

What the rights issues are around this band, but I alluded to this earlier in the show I said I was listening because of the list the suggestion of listener Chad Bates aka Chaps Bates, I believe in in a in a in an email maybe or maybe a dazzling donor message Chad at some point said that somebody was calling him Chaps Bates It was like a nickname or a misunderstanding of his name, but Chaps says I actually sent this a music-free weekend in last year but it probably got it plunged into the great inbox changeover, and it's called Public Service Broadcasting And the song is called Go. Now PSB is a British band that plays the instrumentals along with old audio tracks Go is the recording of the Apollo Mission Control Center during the moon landing. The album is All on a space. It is a great use of keyboards loops and really old audio tracks to make something very modern and interesting interesting, can confirm. I listened to this whole album this morning. Again, I was intentionally trying to avoid the news of the world, but this song is really catchy, this song Go, but the whole album is incredible. It's a real journey because it starts off with news reports about basically like the Russian cosmonaut in space with music under it, and then it goes into, there's some kind of sort of more plaintive or or you know thoughtful moments where you had like three astronauts died during a you know on the on the launch pad when they were testing something you know those and then and then i'll tell you what the part that really just like made me feel like maybe life is going to be okay was i don't know what the name of the song is from this album but it's apollo 8 is the mission and it is when the apollo 8 astronauts i think it has to do with With the launch process, there's a period of time where they're out of radio contact. It's not the dark side of the moon, but it's a point where NASA knows, mission control knows, that they're not going to be able to communicate with them. But the question is, will they come back online with the radio after this period of silence? And you can hear the tension in the voice of the mission control guy saying, we are now out of contact with Apollo 8. We will be eagerly awaiting recontact. and then at some point the Apollo 8 guy comes back on and says everything is go we are here and you hear people cheering in the background of Mission Control you know they all have flat tops it's not even a question you just hear dudes with flat tops genuinely feeling relief because these people these guys are alive and this thing is working you know it's so and then the music swells in this certain way I was like holy shit this is good so Chad I'm trying to say good recommendation thank you for uh resurfacing this it was lost in the great email purge of 2023 and um but the song that we're going to play here is called go and it's just a really interesting concept i mean what they do i've already said this is they just go out and they find they have a few albums i've only listened to the space one but i'm gonna listen to the other

ones now too it's sort of like you know andrew that um william s burroughs stuff that i was obsessed with we've tried to find it on the fly many times without success but when i was a young buck just starting to listen to like college radio they would play this certain i don't know if it was nirvana i forget who it was it was some somebody mixed music mixed under the poetry of william s burroughs and i thought it was just so fucking cool we can use the f word we're over an hour into the show um and i don't even really like the poetry of william s burroughs that much it's just the spoken word put over music that it wasn't designed to be over but that works in a certain way i just love that there's something about my brain that that just really sounds good yeah but this is better than that to me because this is interesting content it's not some junkie william s burroughs just talking nonsense this is the space race this is the types of you know

when i was in college it made me really wish i was a musician because i loved you know messing around with like mixing things and knobs and i remember one time like borrowing my friend's four track recorder which was still using like regular cassette tapes but it took the stereo tracks of left and right so you could layer four tracks over top of each other and like being in my you know tiny studio apartment with like my electric guitar and a bunch of like um you know like kind of like various sound enhancement pedals or whatever distortion pedals or whatever

i don't think i even knew this part of your life that you actually played electric guitar with i

mean i had some guitars but i that's the thing i didn't really know how to play i was terrible i I had and have zero musical talent, but that always felt like that's what I wanted to do. Because I would sit in my room and I would create some sort of terrible soundscapes and then layer stuff on top of it. But all I wanted to do was the layering. I didn't want to really learn the things like notes and how to make music. I just wish that I had the ability to do that because that was sort of a key missing piece of my musical life.

You wanted to be thirsted more from Sonic Youth

I did, yeah, I loved mixing

like old vintage stuff or even vintage stuff from my life or whatever mixing sounds and music well I think you're going to like this then Andrew this is from Public Service Broadcasting the song is called Go and it's off of this album this space album that I don't actually have the name of The Race for Space is the name of the name The Race for Space thank you that's what the album is called and this is going to bring us to the end of our broadcast week thank you everyone for spending the time with us thanks John for being here appreciate you thinking about you as well and we'll be back here on Monday with more Imaginary Radio for you in the meantime have a great weekend take care of yourselves and I really mean that I say that every show but I mean that take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

a few moments ago flight director Gene Kranz requested that everyone sit down get prepared for events that are coming and he closed with very much good luck to all of you 12 minutes now until ignition for power descent. Everything's still looking very good at this point.

Okay, I'll play controllers. Go, now, go for power descent. RECO, go. FIDO, go. GUIDAN, go. CONTROL, go. TALCON, go. GNC, go. ECON, go. Surgeon. Go. Capcom, we're go for power descent.

We're off to a good start. Play it cool.

What is space? Like, what is that about? I don't actually think that that space is real. I think people just keep saying that it's real and saying that like that there's stuff out there But it's like we're never gonna know for real. You can't go there power out