Muse

Thank you for being a 10. Traveled down the road and back again. Your heart is true. You're a pal and a confidant. Hey, if you threw a party, invited everyone you knew, you would see the biggest gift would be from me, and the card attached would say, thank you for being a 10.

Hi, guys. This is Maggie from outside of Philadelphia. you. I just want to thank you for stopping having ads. I listen to a lot of Phillies baseball podcasts these days, and they all have horrible ads, and that's okay because, you know, whatever, but the latest is an ad for cream for eyelids because of eyelid mites and nothing. I'm so grossed out, and I can't get to the skip button fast enough safely while I'm driving, and it has this stick in your head earworm of a jingle and it's just the worst thing ever and so i just wanted to thank you for not having ads bye tbtl we're waiting for our first membership pledge paul hartman is with me this morning uh have we taken a pledge yet yes we have one on the line

cynthia and uh a number of children are using the telephone this morning moms and dads we have to ask you please to help us help our volunteers save their sanity over here the children should not be calling it does cost us a little something for you to use that telephone so moms and dads please help us keep those lines available for real pledges coming through what podcast are you

talking about? The TBTL. How does this song go? TBTL. I was skeptical. It seemed too good to be

true. I'm so glad I tried it. Are you on the internet? Isn't that for techno geeks with

spreadsheets? The most rewarding part was when he gave me my money. Well, all right. Hello, Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Apparently, you're spinning around, and apparently every time you get dizzy.

My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. We are living in the midst of a podcast boom. Coming to you once again from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where we have arrived at day three of TBTL-a-thon 15. Thank you for being a 10.

Do you seriously believe that having money automatically brings you happiness? Oh, no, but it doesn't automatically depress me either.

Here we are raising a little money for the show, keeping this thing going. It's been a great week so far, and I think this is going to be an especially memorable show. It's episode 4,246 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Of course, we're going to be taking phone calls today. I really should say phone call singular because so far we've managed to take, we've done two shows this week, and we've taken, I believe, two phone calls. but they've been no three we did we did two yesterday so uh i guess we've taken three phone calls in total but the phone number if you want to be on that very very special list of people who've actually gotten through uh is 206-414-TBTL 206-414-8285 give us a ring we also need to update you of course on operation friendship bracelet we've been beating up a storm in the last 24 hours

Beads. Beads? Beads. Beads.

I have been upstaged by this bead cam, the 24-hour live stream of the jar where we're throwing the bracelets as we finish them. It's got its own feed at tbtl.net. It's also vaguely visible over my shoulder here on the YouTube stream. And I was looking at the comments as the show was getting ready, and I think that the bead jar has definitely eclipsed me in terms of the interest from the tens of listeners, but that's fine. Speaking of beads, when I went to Joanne Fabric last night to get another beading needle, I witnessed a moment of drama there at the Joanne. If you don't like drama, you might want to put your phone away for this one. Which we can talk about as well. And, of course, we're going to have to talk to this guy. He's the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships, also known as Mr. Unlimited. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Behind the jar of bees. Sorry, that wasn't even...

Beads. Beads? Beads. Andrew's not on board.

Behind the jar of...

bracelets which are made of beads there is a piece of paper that says bees yeah beads with an exclamation point and there was a moment last night when i was at in my hotel room at the comfort inn i'm just gonna say wow i'm just gonna say it and i i went to tbtl.net and i checked out the bead cam i just wanted to see what it looked like and uh the lights were low in the studio but there was a single light on the jar of bracelets and beads and there was a moment where a soft breeze came through your studio and the little piece of paper behind the jar just blew a little bit it was the highlight of my night you texted john and i that that you were really enjoying watching

the light move across the the the universe that is that little section of the madrona hill studio so calming it is it's um well how do i put it we worked we all worked very hard yesterday and yet the jar the jar still is not full not quite and it's not that big of a jar if people are pointing out well that's the thing john by the way right over there is tbtl employee numero uno our friend john sklarov who did have tacos for dinner last night i might have tacos when i go home i'm not quite sure yet from taco time i saw this posting on the internet and i assume like the first time around that he did this wrong i made a huge mistake and he's joining me right now hello john hey hermano um so uh okay much to talk about uh somebody regarding taco time regarding the the bead jar the bracelet jar but john were you saying somebody had said to you that we should continue using this jar because it doesn't actually have a very large capacity but you can't tell that from the shot so we could basically trick people into thinking we've made thousands of bracelets because the jar will overfloweth yeah i think their concern was more that people might

think we've hit our goals already because it fills up like a like a thermometer during like a traditional fund that's yeah and we're definitely not we're we're not trending towards hitting our

goal right now but that's okay uh i think we can really put the pedal to the metal i have set up my little workstation for beading that's actually where i normally do the show on a typical day and it is so perfect for the task of bracelet making and and beading i being being on beading with krista tippet boy that's a deep cut that is a deep deep cut um i a possible show title on beating anyway uh i last night i actually couldn't really it was so warm here yesterday uh in the afternoon and evening like i i think it supposedly got up to about 98 here and uh we do not have proper uh hvac yet and so i was uh it was really really kind of uncomfortable and i got out here at about i don't know nine last night or something and i went to town but but uh yeah my workspace it's the perfect i have this kind of felt that's i put on the desk for sound absorption but it's it keeps the beads in place but you can still kind of work with them they're not stuck in place it's it i basically last night sitting there listening to the ezra klein show i was a beating and listening to the ezra klein show and kind of watching the river and i just thought oh i get it this is why people get into these kinds of hobbies and these kinds oh speaking of crafting tonight don't forget uh 5 p.m west coast time right that's right tbtl i just crafted my pants uh zoom night we had such a fun time on monday we're gonna do that again tonight but anyway i had this moment last night of of of just feeling such peace and an enjoyment of this repetitive task of of making these bracelets that i really finally understood why it is that people

do stuff like this now i know it's not a contest and and you know yesterday we came in here and we all showed off like you know how many bracelets we each made you're i mean if it were a contest you'd be winning uh luke you have made now about 50 bracelets both nights is that right is that

about what you're up to yeah yeah okay but i want to point out i'm not dealing with neuropathy like you are or large handesy like john is and i am also on this is a home this is a home game for me i have my like i have the ideal setup for doing this i've got the you know special equipment like i this is an easier lift for me than both of you well again and and so not not putting it in light

of who's you know doing the heavy lifting or whatever because again i just want to point out also that john is going back to his hotel room and doing all kinds of work on the thon and writing emails and all this stuff that i am so so glad i don't have to do thank you john um but i wanted to just kind of get an overall count of how many beads we our bracelets we think we have

Now, I mean, if you did about 50 the last two nights, that's a hundo right there. I came in with 11 yesterday, 21 today. Nice, nice. I don't know why I'm always ending in like a weird total. Right. So we're at 132. 132. John, you've come in with?

We're at 162 total by my calculation.

162 given everything. 162 by my calculations.

Okay. All right.

How many donations have we received so far, John? More than that. More than that. Well, that's good. I mean, that's good news.

That's positive. Luke, I thought you might be a little bit disappointed in me because, and by the way, after saying a nice, nice thing to John, I have to now throw John under the bus because John did something that totally derailed this bracelet making situation, which is he just planted a little seed of an idea in my head yesterday when he innocently asked me while we were driving somewhere in the Jeep. so have you thought at all about the colors that you're using when you make these bracelets and i was like no i'm just like doing them random colors it's like you know colors of the rainbow the only thing i was looking for the first night was trying to make it that there were never two

of the same colors next to each other i've been kind of doing that instinctively like i don't want a black bead next to a black bead or a green bead next to a green bead yeah and then last night i

just got back into my routine and i'm just making these kind of random colors and again i'm still working on bracelets that say friendo on them and I just I need almost like uh like Marge Simpson's voice echoing in Homer's head I just heard John I saw John's head floating around just saying are you thinking about the colors are you thinking about the colors I'm like I can't get into that but I was like I'll just make one I'll make one special bracelet one special bracelet where it's like all like black beads next to the letters and then red beads behind and I made it and I was like oh that's a that's a handsome bracelet and then i started like trying to then i and once i started thinking about like the design of the bracelets i think my productivity went down a little bit but

i really enjoyed making them you turned into daniel day lewis and phantom thread yes you just

started obsessing over the bespoke nature of these bracelets which is why i will not eat the oatmeal that john is trying to serve me do i remember that plot point i've never seen that movie i saw

I assume he gets very obsessed with, you know, with with tailoring and things like that. So I guess so here's the takeaway from that. If you get one of the Frendo bracelets and it's the beading on it, the beads seem very kind of intentional. That's you've gotten one of the special one of Andrew's special projects.

Yeah. Do we want to assign more value or specialness to each? Well, that's actually a problem. Andrew, you should restart and do all of them.

wonder should i bust those open and destroy them and then remix them because i did think about that too because most of these are going to be randomized i don't want to make a i mean does that is that you know bad news for people now they know there are some that were like kind of

specially designed and does that i'm trying to um set up the dynamic where if people get like a slab jacking bracelet where the b is backwards that's like that just means you're a toys r us kid yeah that's just that's like that's a cool thing because i'm trying to really manage expectations because a lot of the ones i've made i'm making them fast but i'm not making them good it's like an errol morris film cheap fast and out of control that's my bracelet making approach is that one of his documentaries i believe so right what is it about um bracelet making oh that's so interesting i think it's about i think it is about i i do actually think i might have watched this and if i remember right it has to do with like robotics or something oh okay that is one

that i have not seen i've seen the the the thin bead line terence malick that whole movie is just a hand the thin blue line oh thin blue line okay it's a different film yeah yeah it's about it's a documentary about police i believe oh okay sure hey um i do want to tell you that when i went to

join fabric yesterday to get uh another beading needle because andrew genevieve who i meant to text yesterday and just say thank you so much for um you know kind of worrying about us on this project because she unprompted went out and got these special kind of needles that you can use for this whole thing and you had one and you gave me one and then on night number one i was so delirious by the end of my bracelet making that i just like left the needle somewhere outside and i don't know if you've heard about haystacks and needles it's easy right famously easy thing to find but that thing that we're never getting that one back so i had to go down to the joanne fabric and get a replacement and the first thing was i felt a little judged by the guy at the front of the store who worked there because i was trying to explain i didn't want to tell him that i was trying to make friendship bracelets because i don't know why i cared but it just it just felt like so i said we're making friendship bracelets and what i hoped he would assume i guess was that

Like I was taking my daughters to a Taylor Swift concert or something, you know, like that there was some, I was part of a group activity, potentially with maybe younger people that were doing this.

Thank you.

So I said, we're making friendship braces. And he goes, okay. And I also, with the rise of the Swifty and the resurgence of the friendship bracelet, I would think that this would be a whole end cap at a Joanne fabric or a Michaels. like doesn't doesn't this seem like this would be kind of like really where the industry is going

well is it maybe are we a summer late on that maybe a summer late and also famously brick and

mortar stores like michael's and joanne's are thriving so clearly they have the pulse on

yeah finger on the pole where excuse me where are you going to get your halloween decorations right now john right if not joanne and michael on july 10th yeah though they've got a whole section my guy but um so uh he looked at me somewhat perplexed and he goes like uh like a kid's art project and I said okay sure so he took me over to like a like a kid's section which didn't seem to have what I needed but I just was like I don't want to bother this guy anymore so I was like I'll just look through here okay and then he goes or if you need jewelry there's a whole jewelry section and he goes you can't miss it I go okay so I the needle was not in the kid's section and I went back to the jewelry section later which was also not what i needed it was a whole other like pre-made necklaces and pre-beaded things i don't understand what the crafting aspect of that would be it seemed like it just had jewelry that someone had already made for you like maybe you're dressing up a doll yeah maybe so that's your craft um so i am like i'm i'm lost i'm i'm again the irony that i was looking for a needle in this haystack that was the joanne um but uh i so there was then i go down to this other aisle and there's two joanne employees and they're putting like pillows away they're like restocking pillows and i i address one of them and i said hey i'm looking for a needle that i can use for beading uh and she looks at me and she goes um okay uh well and i go not like a crocheting needle i go it's like smaller and i'm trying to describe it because i've already had one employee Not really know what I was talking about

And you used the word friendship bracelets

Yes I did

How do these folks not know what You said beads too sorry

I said beads I said friendship I used all of the safe words

I don't understand

I said cacao So I know I was really surprised That they weren't like let me just take you to the dedicated Section for this right But so the First person that I was talking to Seemed a little confused And I said she goes well we have a section for needles and i go yeah but not like a crocheting needle i go i'm trying to describe this very specific thing that like again genevieve got for us which is the perfect for me the perfect tool for the job because what it has is it has a very large eye on it that you can easily thread

the cord through but it snags it yeah it's crimped you told me this yesterday off air i believe i'm

sorry that we wasted most of our off air conversations are now bracelet yeah but uh

you you pointed out to me that yeah the the needles when working right they sort of like they they grab on to the the you know the rubbery string that we're using to make the the bracelets

yeah which which is very very handy like i have to say there's a lot of design and the needle is very flexible so you can feed it through the beads but it doesn't poke you because i was worried about that you know just getting like poked a million times so anyway i'm trying to describe it to this one woman and she goes i don't know she looks at it she goes she goes huh and then she turns the other one and we'll just say that the other one is named mary because mary is kind of nodding along and she goes mary do you know where it is and mary goes yeah yeah so then she's carrying a pillow which you know it says like i love you a bushel and a peck or something yeah sure she's like putting this pillow away and then she goes come with me and we go walking and as soon as we get out of that aisle she goes she knows where everything is but she's quitting so she's no no sorry sorry sorry i have this backwards mary has put in her notice mary who's taking me to the needles goes she's the manager she knows where everything is but i put in my notice so she's just punishing me wow punishing you she's pretending that she doesn't know where things are because she's mad at mary for quitting the joanne in longview washington so she's not helped so the manager is the manager is playing dumb to make the the manager is riding mary hard because mary is a short timer oh wow that's so messed up right that is pretty weird michael

Barbaro voice. Can I? Oh, wow. Wow. Can I tell you, this is unrelated to that, but the story of Mary, which in this case is a made-up name, reminded me of something real that happened to me yesterday in the hall. Now that I've just said the comfort inn, I'm going to lean into it, because there's something specific about the comfort inn that really sort of helps

paint this picture. Located steps from the sportsman's warehouse. If you need to get some, like a duck blind or a yen.

Eddie cooler if I open up my blinds I'm looking at the AMC theater in the parking or the Regal cinema and I almost went to the movies last night I was very close I could have used that it was

broiling yes I would have I would have been nice to be watching a film that was the plan I was

going to do a few few bracelets then head over there but then I kind of got into braceleting and also the I forgot that the Mariners game was going to be on um but at one point uh in my puttering around the hotel it was kind of like afternoon the hotel you know usually in the afternoons is not very busy because people are staying at this place so they can go I don't know hiking around here or whatever but like it's it's not a nice hotel it's not a spa where people are hanging out it almost seemed weird that I'm like I was arriving back at the hotel what around four o'clock yesterday and I was like okay I guess we're just spending the rest of the afternoon

and the budget yeah it's like you said it's not it's not a place you want to spend any extra time

exactly exactly but the heat wave I think had a lot of people whatever they're doing in this part of the state, kind of retreating back to their room. So it was a little bit busier in the hallways. There's also a pool there, too. There is, but it's a small indoor pool. Yeah, it's a small indoor, but maybe pool or a pond. Yeah. It's for, you know, I saw a few kids in there, like, playing with their parents or whatever, but that's not for us. Right. Having said all that. So I was making a couple of different trips down to the ice machine, as some other people were, too. I saw a young couple. They were both filling up two ice buckets. I wagged my finger at them, and I said, hey, don't take it all. They laughed. I was very glad. I was like, I didn't have to engage them.

You said, this proves there is a God.

I did call back to bad, weird jokes that I make, and people don't understand what I'm saying, and I don't know what I'm saying. So anyway, I'm coming back from the ice machine, and it's a pretty small hotel, and I pass a pretty elderly couple. The man has some trouble walking. Again, so do I. but he's kind of he's walking in front of the woman I presume to be his wife and you know they're both walking pretty slowly and then as I pass them I say give them you know kind of a hearty hello I'm like hey how you guys doing they're like good good and I'm like good glad to hear it and then like as soon as I've passed them I hear the woman say he reminds me of Gary and he goes huh and she says he reminds me of Gary and there's a small pause in which I assume the guy stopped and looked over his shoulders like oh yeah and i gotta say i can't believe those people knew gary cooper i gotta say i was i felt like really complimented yeah and i don't know why i don't know who gary is he could be a really bad person i doubt it though i doubt it i

just said hello was it the people we saw when we drove in that elderly couple oh it might have been

i don't know i'm not sure but moving very slowly yeah but i was just kind of like it really sent me on a little journey of imagining who gary is yes it's a good thing that i processed this a little bit late you know my my go-to dad joke when somebody says oh you you remind me of my cousin greg i'll be like oh he sounds really handsome that's what i always say to people and so they would have loved that oh that's what gary would have said

the question is if you if you bump into them again today at the hotel will you consider reviving the conversation so you can make the the joke like hey do you remember yesterday when you thought i look like gary my thought at that time was he sounds very handsome yeah no i think i've

i ruined enough conversations in the moment the fact that i got out of there ahead means i'm just

gonna let that i'm gonna let that ride andrew should i sit in the lobby and just wait for this couple and say hey remember my friend he looks like gary tell me more about gary yeah right

can we get a picture can we get eyes on gary or you and i walk down the hallway and you're just like gary that was a great joke and just like blows their mind anyway so yeah somewhere out there uh there's a guy named gary who's a lot like me and uh that makes me happy that i reminded

this couple of him i was um buying a little bit of half and half this morning down at the weird store oh yeah that's down the hill uh the um it's called carol's market it's also a post office which is wild to me like there's a little cool there's just like a little window that an actual united states postal employee goes to and sits all day but it feels like shining time station or something you know what i mean like it's like a or uh you know some kind of like yeah just like a a tiny room that's a train you know station somewhere in the middle of nowhere i guess yeah it sounds very a little house in the prairie ish right yeah so i i um i don't listen i don't want to look a gift half and half in the mouth but i did ask you guys to grab half and half yesterday you guys did grab the fat-free kind which a different luke a luke of many years ago would have been like i'm definitely going to only drink fat-free half and half i've just decided at this age that this is just life is too short to drink fat-free half and half so i decided to grab a little fat full half and half on my way back but after my jog which first of all was i try to really time things if i go down to town to do my little jog if i'm because i live far away enough from town that if i go down there like once a day so if i'm going to go down in the morning and do a jog before tbtl i will it's this will be literally on my to-do list it'll be go to home depot and get x y and z go to safeway i'll bring a cooler so i can go to safeway get my groceries and keep them in the car it all has to happen before the jogging because after the jogging it ain't pretty and it it ain't smelling pretty either right so uh this was one of those things where i just there was no way around it because that's the closest i was just i looked like doc brown my hair was like standing straight up but i don't really have a particular power out for this story other than to say

i was standing in line to remind us that we got the wrong it's okay you can say john got the wrong

one i mean that's the only point of the story uh they look exactly the same i'm just joking i wasn't even in the store but um i just wanted to mostly i wanted you guys to know that i'm not secretly drinking the half and half at night john brought a full thing of half and half i want you to i'm not shotgunning it like a milk werewolf or something um i was buying a different a different product but uh or version of that product but i guess my point in all this because you're talking about like the gary and the conversation and the kind of weird little conversations we have with people in life i was just standing behind this guy so this is a little family-run store like i think i honestly think it was started like four or five generations ago like it dates from the very early time of this neighborhood and the people who run it now i think are almost doing it as like a

like a community benefit are there things in this store that you need to sort of just like filter out of your brain a little bit because i know this stretch of road now because i pass a lot and there's like you know oh like a dale earnhardt lamp oh dale earnhardt and i mean senior by the way i mean number three but um like like there's like trumpy stuff around there there's something like not far away that is like somebody in their yard has like an american flag but the flag is made of words that say something about like words we can't say anymore or something like literally like that's kind of the stuff i'm seeing around here and caroline caroline's carolins carolins carols market carols is the place that i look at it i'm like oh i want to go in there but i also think i'm going to see a bunch of bumper stickers it's not overtly okay it's not overtly political

unless you consider Dale Earnhardt Sr. a religion. And many do.

Okay, yeah, no, that's fine. The t-shirt I saw at the Safeway yesterday... On a person, not for sale. On an overweight white guy with a t-shirt that said, I am comfortable with violence was not exactly the mood I was looking for in the produce section.

Really? I love that. That puts me completely at ease when I'm just trying to enjoy my life. All that is to say, i'm standing behind the guy who's having a conversation with the the the gentleman who kind of works there who owns it or you know is one of the members of the family that run it and they're just having a conversation that is like a conversation they'd have on king of the hill it's just like well we'll see if they've still got that over there and like nothing was being said and everything was being said and i'm standing there with my half and half and i'm just like pouring sweat and my hair is you know it's more steve brule than doc brown imagine imagine brule in this situation and by the way i very milk i forgot how i looked until i got in the car which is part of the weird thing because i was having i ended up having a whole conversation with the guy which i can tell you in a minute um but uh but as i was standing behind the the guy who was in front of me who by the way was younger than me probably pushing 30 the guy who was buying And here's what he was buying No judgment He was buying a Coors Light Tallboy And a Red Bull And he had a shirt on that said So-and-so's tree trimming And stump removal And I thought Is the Coors Light Just to kind of cool you off As you're stump removing

One's for before, one's for after

I mean, maybe so And which is which

Yeah, backwards No, no, you need the Red Bull Red Bull gives you stump removing

power and again i'm not like this also i don't know this guy's schedule the t-shirt makes me think he's starting work you know sometimes if you work third shift you get you know you're getting off work at 9 a.m and again i don't like i'm not here to judge what people are doing in their life but i i was wondering about the future of that coors light tall boy yeah sure but but he also this he didn't whatever the appearance of someone who's in the throes of addiction are it didn't appear to be this guy he just was like a guy chatting him up but but what i realized was the certain way of relating is not an age thing necessarily it's a sort of a cultural thing they were just kind of like well yeah and if i see one i'll pick you up one and like they had i was like are these guys related have they been friends for years is the guy selling the dude a coors light concerned that this guy's buying a coors light at this time in the morning like what is exactly the dynamic here and um can they go faster because because I really need to get this half and half and get back to my podcasting. You should have said that.

Oh, guys, can we speed it up here a little bit? I have to get back to my podcasting.

I mean, the thought occurred. The thought occurred. Because I was like, they were just, again, as my dad might say, they were just there solving all the problems of the world at 9 a.m. Or actually, this was like 8 a.m. Just kind of, like I said, saying nothing and saying everything. And I just thought, I will never be able to relate to people in that way. I will never have that kind of chill.

Oh, what do you mean? Like the idea of not being worried about the people in line behind you? That. Or just being able to just.

The silence. Oh. The pacing of the conversation. Oh, okay. The rhythm. The amount of negative space. Uh-huh. That was in the conversation. Yep. Well, we'll see about that. Guess we will. You've been over to Rogers lately?

Not in a hot day like this. I don't know why you can't go to Rogers when it's hot. Sorry. Roger lives. You still want to do that improv show?

The answer is always Rogers.

I still think that's a good idea. No, you don't, Oprah.

They were just, it was just a whole vibe that I, I guess I, my, my, sort of my point is i think of that vibe as being very much about an age thing like there's a certain kind of older guy maybe still older than me who that's how they relate and this was not that this was just it was not age dependent it was just this guy who was about to go do some stump removal with discourse light and this other guy and again i wonder what their backstory was do they hang out outside of the store what's going on but anyway maybe he's a regular but so that guy left and then i was buying the half and half and i um looked over and propped up against the post office window because it wasn't open yet was a powell peralta skateboard from like my era of skateboarding and for a moment i thought is that a free skateboard like are we just because they sell weird shit at this store i would be and some of it's like used some of it might be um consigned you know what i mean Someone might be like, somebody has like a precious moments cookie jar that they want to move for $11.99 and they'll just bring it in. This is also the place, I think I mentioned this on the show months ago, where they had a hot dog roller that wasn't active because it had been shut down by the health department.

Oh, I don't know if you told me that. I thought you were going to say that they were selling the hot dog roller.

Well, it's in the area where random stuff is for sale. I thought are you I might I don't know if I asked if they were selling it but I said why isn't this on and they said the health department pulled it and I thought you know I mean no offense to the health department I mean we should live in a society with rules but like how bad could a hot dog roller be like you know what I mean bad and I've eaten those hot dogs yeah right like I mean

I am sort of I think the word is impressed with the health department checking out Carol Carol's

market and you know you want to know the crate you want to talk about you were wondering if you were going to go in and see a bunch of like objectionable bumper stickers when i asked the guy what was going on with that and he said the health department were waiting for the health department to approve it oh okay but i think it had been shut it had been tagged they'd red tagged it and now they were going to turn it back on he didn't say it with a lot of resentment in his voice uh-huh he didn't go like damn health department right right right right he was just like it was

matter of fact which i found kind of just waiting for the paperwork to come through yeah but anyway

they have such a weird assortment of stuff in this store that i thought maybe i had happened upon the ultimate thrift find the ultimate barn find if you will of this perfectly preserved powell

peralta skateboard and i was like can i ask you a question is that a is that a brand like nash or

is that a skater who had a line of skateboard it's a brand okay um although i'm guessing that powell and peralta it's i think two people's last names they probably were also at some point skateboarders sure sure sure but okay so but that was like and they did like thing bones brigade and whatever so okay i was like thinking oh my god is this because i was also thinking this is going to be cheap they just do not know what they have on their hands and i was like whose skateboard is that and the guy was like oh that's my that's my boys and i also thought interesting because the guy was older than me so i was like either he has a very young kid or he's got a kid my age that he's calling my boy who skateboards grandson maybe well boys i feel like boy you don't say

my boy if it's your grandson do you different people do different things well sure i mean

people can be wrong i don't think i call anybody my boy so i was trying to think is he like me is he a 40 something year old and i go does he ride the i go can i take a look at he goes sure and we walk over and I'm like admiring the skateboard and it's like in

pristine condition it's got these great like trucks on it which is like the thing that holds the wheels it's got these like ojs on it the wheels and i was like this is i'm so impressed and i go does he ride this thing goes oh yeah yeah he rides it i was like this so takes me back i was like i can't believe it's like this i didn't have this particular skateboard but it was exactly from the era when i used to ride a lot of skateboards and i was like this is so cool he's like oh yeah and i could tell that he was enjoying how impressed how excited i was about it and then i put the skateboard back down i said all right well you have a great day and he said you too and we had like this really nice interaction and that was when and i got back to my car and i saw my reflection in the window of my car and i realized how ridiculous i looked during this whole

conversation well like i'm sure a lot of people i mean a lot of people come in probably at various stages of their work day after work after jogs like i don't i understand that like after jogs not this neighborhood maybe not so although i did see i understand why you don't want to jog around here because there is not a lot of shoulder on the roads and they tend to see that lady with the purple hair walking no i didn't i don't think i saw purple hair but i have seen some people like walking and trying to run around here and i understand why that would be very difficult and scary um to do so i did want to ask should we take a phone call here i just uh please let's

try to take three phone calls today hi there you're on tbtl ahoy hoy guys this is nick from

Connecticut hey Nick that's not what it says on my screen it says Nick in Florida perfect 10

your story's falling apart Nick I uh I moved sorry I I left a couple voicemails I'm sure

Andrew got got some of those uh giving you a giving you guys some updates what are you up to about two voicemails per show now about that it depends on the weekends I just make up for it

what are you doing today um right well right now i'm actually building a rock wall um what and don't be it does it sounds a lot more intense than it actually is i'm literally just going in the back of our property getting rocks and then just kind of building a little rock garden

wall around uh uh some flowers what's the temperature like in connecticut god it's hot

it's the feels like it's right now it's 87 and it's probably it's probably closer somewhere in the 90s perfect day for this project yeah at least where the rocks are it's it's kind of uh shaded so that's okay but as soon as i get to where the flowers are i have to uh um you know

get a little hot but that's okay it's uh are you finding so you're transporting these rocks hold on nick i have more questions about this rock wall yeah are you are you stacking the rocks on each other and therefore having to kind of like maybe not jenga it but like fit it together using the natural shape of the rock so you have a kind of a stable wall i guess wall wall makes

it sound i'm literally just stacking them side by side so i'm making a rock border wall makes it sound a lot more cooler and i guess i said that prematurely to keep out invading but it's really just a border right okay yeah i know yeah i'm uh i'm putting my my namesake to uh uh to fruition

nice well nick as luke always says build that wall i am i thought of that joke and then and

then i put it into i i put it in the garbage of my brain and then deleted the garbage of my brain you still want to do that improv show uh what did you uh what did you want to talk about today nick on your break from building your uh border i just wanted to i just always like to call and just say

hi and just tell you how much i i appreciate the show and what i what i was gonna mention is that you uh i think it was on your eagle soaring your uh you had a you were running a 730 pace and even on a um on a treadmill that's not uh that's you're you're you're moving that's well be proud of that

that thanks that that the treadmill helps a lot and what i do for people that care about this stuff is um i run a shorter distance but like kind of as fast as i can on the treadmill and then if i'm out in the real world i run a longer distance generally and much much slower so um uh that's kind of my i guess speed work if you will but not really i am yeah absolutely um but yeah you know i uh i i have to say i have this treadmill that's here in the madrona hill studio which is by the way very unsightly and i'm sorry that it's looming in the background probably but um i was a little concerned that when i bought it it was going to become as often home uh workout equipment does just a coat like a yeah right dry your sweaters clothing rack there's always the danger of that And if it were anything else other than a treadmill, it probably would have become that because I just that's the only thing that I tend to naturally kind of gravitate towards. Because, you know, what else I bought were these fancy weights that used to be in that corner where we have some ring lights and things. Guess what's not there anymore? The fancy weights, because, you know, you know, the last time I used them.

Carrying them to the basement. They're very heavy.

I was hoping that those tripods there turned into a solo flex.

I guess I'm wrong about that. How about a Bowflex? Or a Bowflex? Rest in power Bowflex from Vancouver, Washington. Oh, I didn't know that. Just down the road. And they just went out of business in the last six to eight months.

I wonder if like solo flex after like 30 years is like finally vanquished.

We've been playing the long game.

Nick, have you been checking out the bead camp? Or the bead cam, I should say? Bees camp.

when uh job's not on board when i can yes um it's again i i've you know i've been running around everything because what i what i was going to also say and i left a oddly enough i left a voicemail about it um i uh reason i'm building a set rock wall is because i'm i'm currently i was when i was talking to john that one time i was working for chick-fil-a unfortunately that didn't work out but i uh just yesterday um and i re-upped my donation to dazzling donors wait wait hold on

you you broke up there for a second so you were working for chick-fil-a that did not work out and then yes but and then the next story is you started donating more money to tbtl

well yeah i technically started donating before i signed the job but i oh you got a new job so yes indeed yeah congratulations august thank you yeah i'm excited about what are you doing

Are you in hospitality?

Yeah. So maybe our listeners with younger kids would probably know this. It's called Goldfish Swim Academy. What? And they're based in Michigan. Yeah. So it's a school. I mean, they actually start swim lessons from like, I swear, like six months up until 12 years old. Hi, Goldfish, darling. And I'll be the general manager. I'll be the general manager of a location in Connecticut. it so i'm actually really really excited for the opportunity that's so cool that seems perfect for

you just because of like your personality i feel like you're so gregarious but also you can relate to people of different ages and stuff now is this one of those things where they throw the babies in

the pool and they got to sort it out they yeah so i yes and okay you know what it's official

Well, Nick, you and I are starting our improv troupe together. Forget Andrew.

Yeah, all right. Yeah, they learned swimming through the science of fun. So I don't know if potential drowning is fun.

No, no, but you know this, right? That there's like this whole school of immersing young kids in water because they instinctively, as babies, they kind of know how to do it a little bit. I mean, it's in a controlled environment, right?

but i guess i'll give you guys an update then so uh once i started thankfully i um i i'm pretty sure no one not from the school listens if if not that'll be uh that'll be fun to uh to walk in on but i start in august so i actually have some time to get some things done in the yard and it's funny luke ever since you moved to your new place yeah very similar to where to where i am because um we're currently live on five acres and we have a big old garden and everything so it's been hearing your your talk about becoming farmer burbs i've been coming farmer arms have you have

you um that's how you say your last name i think it's armies i've always wondered um what what have

you been growing in your garden oh we have corn zucchini squash um pumpkins tomatoes we have we have a lot of stuff in our our even though it is july our corn is probably chest high um so we're we're kissing the tassels to make sure everything pollinates right now um i shouldn't say that with young young younger listeners listening but i i apologize you're what that sounds amazing and

i'm impressed i have not had as much success in my garden i do have tomatoes that are doing okay and you know what's weirdly thriving is mustard greens and i'm really i'm going to grab some of these for the boys in here later and make you each eat a little bit of a mustard green it's so spicy it's so mustardy can't wait so that's but you like just add a little bit of that to a salad i don't even know what you do it came on that weird instagram thing i bought oh you bought a bunch of seeds yeah which is a terrible idea would not recommend it looked cool but like many things from instagram it was it was it was all all form but no fun does it come in orange uh i'm sorry it was brownish but when you shine a light on it it's it turns orange but well nick i just want to say thank you as always for your support of the show and for being such a pal and i want to let you know that uh we have an announcement tomorrow uh that i think you and everyone else want to tune in for so just like in case you were planning on not listening to tomorrow's show i would say

listen to tomorrow's show yesterday tomorrow was actually the one day since like in the past 15 years i just was not going to listen uh-huh that's why i wanted to tell you

You'll probably listen tomorrow. I want to get ahead of that. You got ahead of it. Yeah. That's why when we start our improv class, we'll work well together. That's right. I'll help save you from yourself. So, all right. So tune in tomorrow. Okay. Sounds good. Hey, thanks guys. Thank you. And congrats on the new gig. Yeah. I appreciate it. All right. Hey, speaking of supporting TBTL, which is something that we're all here to do. This is, of course, TBTL-a-thon 15.

Thank you for being a 10

Thank you for being a 10 edition And this is When we remind you that this thing can only exist Because of your donations Thank you to everyone who's been donating Thanks to folks that started out during the last thaw And have just continued things on We've got some first time donors too Which is very exciting John, you have The list of thank you gifts That we're offering to people Can you tell us about that a little bit?

yeah so of course uh beads beads beads yes for everyone who donates bracelets we're gonna

string them together into bracelets are we still guaranteeing that is that's why listen they are going to be bracelets when they ship i don't know what they're going to be when they arrive

so we got the bracelets for everyone who gives in addition to whatever else you're going to get as a thank you gift uh for ten dollars a month and we say a month this also if you want to give one time if you want to do monthly you can give the equivalent over the 12 month period all at once so for $10 a month or a one time gift of $120 you can do the math for the rest of them you can get the TBTL pennant which is designed by Andrew Walsh so that's

beautiful and each one will be kissed by me as well are we also guaranteeing that I'm putting on a lot of lipstick and I'm going to kiss each one in the corner what was Nick talking about kissing the tassels I don't know but I just felt like we needed to move on as quickly as

possible but the corn sounds great uh at the 15 a month club club you can get the tbtl junior sluggers hat navy blue with the yellow coloring uh the script the font looks really sharp and it's kind of got that mesh back

hat we wanted to really keep it kind of beer leaguey yeah yeah yeah and you can of course

see all these things at tbtl.net uh dot not dot net um at 25 a month you can get the junior sluggers shirt tbtl on the front junior sluggers number 10 on the back and then from there 50 a month you become a dazzling donor you get all the gifts plus you get to uh share your customized message on air luke and andrew will read that for folks we'll read almost anything if we ever

rejected a dazzling donor message because it was too close to some line or anything no and what i

think really um comes in handy for the people that send these messages is we don't pre-read them well yeah you don't you don't so they so they they get right on the air yeah because because

of almost no pre-reading by me anyway right and then for folks if you've come into a sudden influx of cash maybe uh you know an inheritance and you want to give a hundred dollars a month maybe you want to remember maybe you want a beauty contest maybe you judged maybe you want a baby judging contest yeah what are some of those things on monopoly yeah yeah so if you if that happens to you and you want to throw some of that cash our way a hundred dollars a month you're a dazzling don't worry so you get all of that stuff plus you get the special recorded video message from luke and or andrew we're still working out those details but yeah i mean i'm happy we haven't really

talked about this i mean are you okay if people request one or the other of us or both of us or does that as far as receiving a video message from us or does that like bring in a level of competition that we're not comfortable with i think competition breeds excellence andrew i do

as well i think there's too many governmental regulations on these cameo videos we're making

and also like honestly this is one where if you're more popular that's less work for me

like that's i i here's what i think i think that um you know it's a very very a generous amount of money that someone would be donating in order to get to this level and i think we have it in us yes to come together and be in the same room and to record maybe a number of these videos so they can, I think we should both be in them. You want us to be, that's okay. I think it's more fun that way, and I think it's worth prioritizing because if somebody's donating at that level, it's a significant outlay of money every year. So that's my vote.

So if somebody says, I really just don't want Andrew in this video, are we overriding that?

We're going to record the video together, but then we're going to use AI software that will actually take you out.

Transform me into Hugh Grant for some reason.

That's exactly right.

If I know the Tenzel Andrew, sweetheart Hugh Grant, that's jolly good. If I know the Tenzel Andrew, I'm pretty sure you're saying you don't want to be in videos, that you will be the only one requested, right?

Absolutely. Okay, yeah. But that'll be fun. We haven't done anything like that before. It's something that a lot of people have said for a long time, especially when Cameo was really big.

You guys should just be on Cameo. And I think I may be repeating something you said earlier in the week, Luke. We never thought it was right for us to go on to Cameo and start a whole presence and a profile there. Also, because everything we do is supported by you, the tens of listeners, during this, the TBTL-a-thon.

Yeah, I would feel terrible if we were, in essence, asking someone who likes the show to then pay us on the side to do a video. we'd rather you pay tbtl for us to do exactly yeah donate to the show let's eliminate the

middleman cameo doesn't need to get their taste exactly and your money is going to support this operation which honestly you know you can say it's two guys talking to each other in this case three guys talking to each other but i mean if you look around this room there's a lot of equipment that is involved in in doing this show every day and we have expenses and these are these are the things that the money goes towards it's not it's not just luke's treadmill no it's not that

was purchased out of uh my personal funds that was all live that was all live wire money that was all built under live wire travel you aren't technically traveling when you're on a treadmill exactly you're putting miles down i had an experience last night andrew that really kind of crystallized uh why i feel very fortunate that this business model for tbtl is working out I was working on the bracelets As I am wont to do And I was listening to Some content Some audio content that I very much like And I'm just going to play this for you This is an actual ad Now don't go buy this product Because I don't think it sounds like a great product But this is I heard an ad During a show that I like And I was just struck by like How glad I am that this is not The sort of way that TBTL operates Okay I'm just going to play this

the future of clean performance is here you work hard to stay fit and you demand results now there's a cleaner way to get the fittest healthiest body nb pure's new performance line nb pure has an advanced whey protein a more complete hydration and recovery formula patented glutamine for improved performance proven leucine for muscle growth and more with science-backed Raw materials, premium clean ingredients, and nothing artificial ever. From NB Pure, the nation's leading purity-tested supplement company. Visit nbpure.com to order and learn more.

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life.

Okay, so we're going to get here into the park. I really thought this was going to be one of Maggie's sports podcasts. No. Oh, wow. Yep.

I'm not shading our friends Over at TAL because I love that show And this just has to do with this sort of Economics of podcasting In a lot of ways you know The TAL universe has been sort of Folded into the New York Times Operation and that's this whole big thing And they've got you know whatever their kind of Financial model is but There was something in me died a little bit When I heard that ad Setting up this American Life would you rather that ad for this American life or a Carvana ad for this 100% a Carvana ad It's not even close this ad is like weird It's probably medically questionable It's body shamey

It's everything that we

Don't like in TBTL world and I'm happy To say we don't have to play ads like this Because my guess would be that Or Carvana or yeah any of them So I just want to say thank you To the folks who have donated and thank You to the folks who are going to donate For keeping us over on this side of things and not having to play weird supplement ads yes you know um to support the

thing you donating is why we don't have to do that do you know what area code 858 is 858 does not ring a bell let's find out we have somebody calling in for the 858 god if it's ira glass i'm

gonna be so embarrassed hi welcome to tbtl hi am i color 10 you are you win that's it you win

You win the Lollapalooza tickets, right?

Yes, exactly. You win two tickets to Lilith Fair. Where's the 858?

Well, the 858 is the Oceanside area. It used to be, but now I'm in Illinois. Oh, my gosh. It's Lisa.

How you doing? Hi. Nice to hear from you. How's Chicago treating you, or how's Illinois treating you?

It's been a minute. Yeah, I just wanted to call and catch up and say hi. It's good. It's good. It's different, that's for sure, in Southern California.

Are you still having ready access to thousands of concerts a year?

I do, yeah. I don't do the thousands, but I go to plenty. Did I just see on Instagram? like yesterday that you did were you just at like a festival or something

I was at Summerfest in Milwaukee okay

oh man Summerfest is the best right

it's good it's good yeah I just went for the first time last year they do it now I guess it used to be 11 consecutive days and now it's three weekends in a row so they do it a little different but yeah we had a good time we saw Living Color and

they'll be at EQC next week by the way oh really they're playing with Extreme

okay

Prejudice

Extreme was there Saw Extreme

So Extreme and Living Color Are touring together That's incredible Because yeah They're coming to the local casino here And I love how they're framing it Because they're like I forget how they're describing Living Color's music Like hard-edged rock Which by the way I don't think describes Living Color And power ballads Because Extreme is singing There's a hole in my heart That can only be filled by you Did Extreme sing that song At Summerfest?

I didn't see the whole set And I had never seen either band before. I got to say, I would endorse Living Color. Not so much.

Not so much extreme. Did they play More Than Words? Did everybody leave after they played More Than Words?

Sure. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. But I also just saw Counting Crows, which made me think of Loops. Yeah! How was that? Too much riffing? that is that is not the first time i've seen them they used to have tour with john mayer for years but um they were still that god he sounds great i thought he sounded great he does but

don't you feel lisa hold on hold on lisa i i want to i want to i want to talk duritz with you for a moment don't you don't you feel like we need to start some kind of a petition and submit it to adam duritz to ask him to please sing the songs in the live shows like they sound on the cd on the compact disc we want to sing along we want to sing along but you i mean it's the most sing alongable music other than the fact that he's jazz scatting every single song and it's like i i just want to sing rain king gosh darn it yep yep i agree okay good well then we're in

agreement on that they were good but why did why are they opening for santana i find that

coming okay they're coming to the northwest uh with santana and you know peace and love we probably have some big santana fans in the audience but and yeah he's amazing but i i yeah i honestly would rather just go see counting crows by themselves then i don't want to split the like i only you can only hear like you know oye como va and smooth minus rob thomas so many times i don't know how much santana i don't want i don't want an hour of santana i want to i want

two hours of the counting crows well the upside was no traffic getting out of the parking lot

wow birds right sorry damning with faint praise i believe is the term i learned from andrew on that right well are you making it back to the west coast at all i was i was there at the end

of may that was the first time i've been back since i moved and it was great i got to see my kids got to see sarin my kids have been out here but that's the first time i've been there

uh-huh got my hair done nice excellent do you have oh because did farron do your hair

of course yeah nice nice it was great now you have a friend in the hair business

um so but you're let me but let me let me ask you this too at least you're a if i remember right you're a green bay packers fan right and but you're in chicago is that is that creating a lot of um are you finding yourself behind enemy lines on sundays i yeah because i have the flag outside

my home but you're flying it upside down which is weird my uh my boyfriend's a bear's man so yeah it's a little tucky yeah yep yep but it's going well

for me i mean is your young quarterback it'd be harder is your young quarterback problematic yet When does that start to kick in?

No, no, no. Jordan Love, right? He's very promising, I think. He's awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is my quarterback. I don't know who you're talking about. He still has like 15 minutes. He's the only quarterback, I claim.

14 years from now, he'll be popping up in QAnon corners. I guarantee it. But for now, enjoy the play. He'll be a New York Jets quarterback and saying very questionable things on podcasts. Exactly.

Gosh, I hope not.

Well, Lisa, what's the next? I know you said you're not hitting the concert circuit with as much sort of force as you were back in the day when you were trying to, what was it, 500 concerts by the time you were 50 or something?

Yeah, yeah, you got that right.

What's next on the list for you, though? Do you have something on the horizon you're looking forward to?

I do. I have several. I'm going to see.

Vampire Weekend. I'm going to see a country artist named Charlie Crockett. A country artist named Charlie Crockett? I know

him. Yes.

Fabulous. He's great. I've seen him since I moved here. I've seen him already, but yeah. I do have a few coming up.

Fun. Alright. Well, I'm glad you're enjoying Chicago, or at least the greater Chicagoland area, wherever you exactly landed, and I'm glad you're still listening to the show.

Absolutely. And, you know, with the move, and I didn't know anybody before I moved here, and, you know, I changed jobs. So it's so great to have you guys kind of hanging out with me five days a week. And my donations, I'm letting it ride. Oh, thanks, Lisa.

Hey, by the way, Lisa, this is, and this goes out to other Chicago listeners. If I'm coming to town to do Wait, Wait, and I mentioned on the show, hit me up, and I'll try to put you and your boyfriend on the guest list. because I have no friends in Chicago and they give me a guest list and I feel like it's a waste. So tens of listeners, if you hear that I'm coming to Chicago, hit me up and I'll try to get you on the list for Wait, Wait.

Thank you so much, Luke. That's great. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Bye, Lisa. Good to hear from you. Bye, guys.

Have a great Thawne. All right. Thanks. Bye, guys.

Have a great Thawne. What you do is so important.

I'm trying to do that. I kind of faded out on Lisa at the end there. That's a whole thing of like just trying to say goodbye without cutting the collar off. Wasn't that a Kevin and Bean thing? It was. Kevin was always like, they ended every interview with the guest saying, okay, goodbye.

But that was an inside joke, right?

I don't know how much of it was, as I like to say, kayfabe. I think it started out, my guess is it started off organically. And then I don't know how much they were actually spoofing about it, but it came off as real. I will say that.

Hey, I wanted to play a little something for all of you if i can find it i think i have it here that i just think might kind of um be a nice way to you know this it's wednesday right so it's i don't want to say it's the sort of day of the week where maybe we could we have all this energy on monday and then tuesday and then we're going to pick up again a lot of energy as the week kind of we're getting close to the end of the week but wednesday is kind of that midpoint can be a little we can all be a little low gee we can all be feeling maybe a little bit of that middle of the week kind of energy drain. But I think this might be something that helps pump us up and maybe our listeners up. It was a story that I saw in the Washington Post about a voicemail that somebody left for somebody else that really, really changed their life. The story is a young woman named Helena Epstein was about to take the GRE, which is like a you know grad school exam and she at her older sister amelia had also taken the gre at some point so she like called up her older sister and said hey um uh like do you have any advice for me on taking the gre and her older sister said well here's what i do have for you when i was taking the gre i had the like scheduling service that like you know calls to confirm that you're going to come to the appointment the person from the scheduling service left me a voicemail And it really kind of Motivated me And I saved it on my phone And so she sent it to her sister And her sister put it on TikTok And it became very popular Is how I heard about it But this is the voicemail That the person from the test service Left on this woman's answering machine This is just supposed to be Here's where the thing is Here's what you need to bring Etc Bring an ID It's just supposed to be standard information about it.

This is Prometrics giving you a courtesy call for your GRE that's tomorrow at 12. Know that you can arrive 45 minutes early. If you come early, we start you early. Make sure you have valid driver's license, ID, or passport. Make sure that you come with a sweater or a fleece just in case the Texas Center is chilly and just come confident and well prepared.

Now you can hear where something's happening. This is where normally you just bring the sweater and

Well, even the sweater thing is pretty nice. It's pretty personal. Yeah, thoughtful, right?

You can hear, though, some gears turning in this woman's head who's leaving the message where she's like, I've got to say one more thing to this person.

This is what you studied for. This is what you work hard for. Bring your best girl confidence. Bring your best girl magic. It's called girl power. Girl power is the best power. Ain't nothing better than that. So it's put in your head that this is what you want. don't come nervous because when you have to do something for work, you're not nervous. But when you study for something, I just feel like people are more nervous when they study to get prepared. Then you walk into work and work is unpredictable. And y'all are ready for work. You know what I'm saying? so just come the same way as if you was coming for work just come confident come prepared and just tell yourself i worked hard for this other than that honey i will see you tomorrow in the afternoon and come with a smile because i'll have one already oh i mean come on i'd heard

the beginning of that when you were cutting tape the other day but i did not hear the whole thing

i'm a little bit choked up it is an emotional thing the woman is named tamika rooks and she still works for this company um and the internet of course was able to find her she had moved to a different part of the company so uh the the sisters in question actually didn't know how to get a hold of her they played this message on the internet and then people found tamika rooks she uh said that like basically you know there's no script for leaving these messages that it's just like tell the people you know basically like where they need to be and when and maybe tell them not to be nervous or something, but that's the extent of the advice that they're given. And she's just been doing this because she just wants people to have a good time. By the way, the woman who took the GRE, I think that was Helena, she had taken it before. She scored much higher on this GRE. And she said that when she showed up, Tamika was there and was smiling. Nice. As promised.

Is Tamika still there, do we know?

She is. She's at a different location, but she still works for this company.

And the understanding is that she's leaving something like this for most people or in this particular moment she just started riffing?

I don't know if this is standard for her, if this was an extra long message, if she gave this one some extra zhuzh or not, but she said that she was flattered. She's getting all kinds of love, right? She said she was flattered, but she wants people to know, quote, it's just a voicemail. If you need to hold on to it, hold on to it, but don't think that you need somebody else to tell you that you're great. That's within you. oh man how are we not how is she not on shark tank right yeah well i was gonna say something

why tony move over tony robbins well i actually love her reaction here to like this internet fame that she's getting but you could see a world where she could actually just start her own like dial a confidence boost i mean kind of situation you know i've listened to that voicemail probably

five times now yeah i get literally choked up yeah every time i hear it i think because you know the messaging is is nice but i think it's because it's from a total stranger to somebody else that's really the i mean because if you you know if you called your your mom for advice or something she might tell you something similar don't be nervous you've done this before you've prepared for it you're going to do okay but it's something about just putting more out into the world than you than you have to to make somebody else's experience better yeah yeah just feels like Such a kind of Such a special thing To do and something that we all could Probably do more of and to the degree that When this show is kind of like actually Operating at its peak That's I guess hopefully what we're doing a little bit You know what I mean like so I would just say where's our Washington Post article can I propose

Something can we take some of the proceeds From the thon and hire Tamika to join Us weekly for our

I need that for treadmills buddy I'm getting a special zero-gravity elliptical.

All right, then. How about this? Can I talk you into taking one more phone call? Yeah, I said we want to do three phone calls today. Yeah, so here we go. It looks like the area code I'm thinking is Oregon.

Hello, you're on TBTL.

Hey, guys, it's Lynn. Lynn! Hey! How you doing? Hey. How you doing?

Lynn, I have a bird-related question for you. i saw a picture of your bird on instagram the other day is adorable and i think you wrote wet chicken is wet is that the nickname for the is the bird called chicken or wet chicken

no um so cockatiels are typically called chickens because they even though they're relatively large compared to a parakeet they are a little bit um more skittish so um a lot of cockatiels

tend to be called chickens oh as in like a kind of them being a bit scared not that they like look like a chicken okay right and did were you cooling your bird down were you washing the bird

why was the bird wet um they like to take bath sometimes so we have a little dish for them um and you know if um ace in this case um feels like taking a bath she'll jump in and start getting wet and she could spend up to five maybe seven minutes having fun in the bath watching a bird take a bath

uh well now i'm starting to sound like a perv but watching a bird take a bath is actually a very pleasant thing i mentioned on the show boy probably more than people need um recently that we have a new

birdbath in our front yard kind of in our garden area and it's a nice big one and uh yes sometimes the crows come and use it just to soften their their stale bread and Genevieve doesn't love that as much as when a bunch of these small I don't know if they're chick I think they might be chickadees I'm not sure what they are but sometimes there'll be like four or five of them in there and it looks like a bunch of kids at a water park or at a beach somewhere they're flapping around

like somebody opened a fire hydrant in New York City it is so they have totally have that energy

and it is so fun to watch yeah yeah um ace isn't quite as frenzied but just yeah it can be mesmerizing watching her and there are times when we if we had a vacuum on and she's just standing in a cage on top of the cage she'll act like she's taking a bath when you have the vacuum wow yeah it's just certain noises kind of um act like a trigger for some reason how old is she um ish i think she was hatched in 2018 oh so she's pretty young because birds live a long long time as we learned from andrew's mom's bird yeah i think cockatiels can generally live 20 years

25 if you're really lucky yeah um does she know uh words um i mean by doves does she know the song that we end tv chilling

um she she may know the words oh she's probably heard it enough she's probably heard it more than any cockatiel on planet earth probably probably yeah um no she's she's definitely more of a of a snuggler than um kind of a chirper or or singer um or a whistler um but there are times where if we encroach in her territory or one or a parakeet encourages in her territory she'll kind of do her signature sound um just to ward off like this is my property go away

do you feel um lynn you've been such an amazing friend of the show and have put so much work into marsupial gurgle and other tbtl related things and we really appreciate you um but did you feel like the whole oops the dirty monster thing was a direct assault on your pet ownership

nope not at all i mean to be honest they are they are kind of you know dirty birds i picture you like that's great self-awareness looking over your shoulder so that ace wasn't

listening like they are kind of i i moved into my room because there's a lot of fan noise down

the living room oh no appreciate that do y'all have ac yeah we got two portables um we can't

run both of them at the same time so oh that's like the madrona hill studio will you short out the place yeah yeah um we actually blew a breaker um you know i think it was monday night um but Yeah, when one of them kicked on and the other one was like, yeah, they were kicking on based on temperature. Yeah, it's like I was laying in bed, and next thing I know, all the lights went out.

Oh, no. Yeah, it has been very, very, very hot around. I mean, I know that happens all over the country, but the thing in the Northwest is it's only been in the last few years that it consistently gets this hot, and we're not really prepared for it. And of course, this is not a fun place to take it, but preparing for it just means putting in more air conditioning, which just makes the ultimate problem worse. So, you know, what are you going to do?

Lynn, I'm going to ask you a question. I'm on the fence as to whether or not to ask this because I'm concerned it could open up a whole cup of worms, a jar of worms. But you did post something on Instagram recently that I found really fascinating, and it seemed to be Nintendo related. There were some, like, really beautiful, minimalistic shots of some sort of Mario Brothers scape. What was I seeing?

I think there's two recent posts. One is, I think, Mario on a Yoshi falling, and there's, like, a green orb. The other one was me basically glitching out the game.

Oh, okay. So those beautiful scenes I saw, I was not supposed to see.

that was you pushing the game to the to the max yeah so there's um there's one known bug in super mario world where um if you hop off to yoshi or find a way to get up onto an upper ledge the screen doesn't scroll up vertically correctly so you'll finish the stage and then it'll iris out but it bugs out because you're not where it thinks the iris is so it will flicker and then it'll turn into some really weird color scheme so yeah that was the one

Is it like going to Minus World in old school Mario? That's my only reference for doing something the game is maybe not totally designed to do. Are you old enough for Minus World, Lin?

Oh, absolutely. I was born in the 80s. I played a bunch of Mario. So, fun fact, there's different versions of the Minus World depending on if you're playing the U.S. version or the Japanese version. Whoa. Because it was a slightly different coding. Or Japan, instead of just cartridges, they also had floppy disks.

Oh, wow.

Didn't they just – I saw a headline, something about they just stopped making floppy disks in Japan or making things that use floppy disks. Did you happen to catch that, Lin?

Yeah, I think the Japanese government has started to basically phase out or stop using floppy disks. um a lot yeah i mean it's just you know you can there's enough what about power gloves stock out there um they're still doing that i i'm not sure what kind of stock uh zip drives

zip drives still definitely hard yes on zip drives yeah hard yes on zip drives yeah good good um well lynn thanks for calling in is there anything else specific that you wanted to run by

before we we wrap this up today um i just wanted to thank y'all and you know hope that um you know everything is great with the thon and you know i'm definitely gonna continue my donation level and i'll just have to wonder what do i ask for that video

all right well you've got you've got some time to to think about it and uh and you know your

wish is our command within reason that's right lynn thank you for everything yeah hey thanks

lynn we really appreciate you all right take care bud shout out to ace all right bye now

shout out to the wet chicken all right what do you think boys we took three calls So we have to do four calls tomorrow We have to increase the number of calls each day Exactly and nobody was on hold for more than I think 10 minutes or so We're really dialing this in

We're getting much more efficient with this I like people staying on hold for a long time It makes me feel like the lines are jammed Really in this case it's the line is jammed We only have one line

It gives the listener time to get in their head

Did you ever have Andrew when you were hosting The Andrew Walsh show that experience of did you took calls sometimes very rarely not as much as i wanted to but i did it from time to time yeah in my before i got to cairo but more when i was like at that other station kvi which was talk radio i mean it was it was based on callers and it was the weirdest experience because i would i never had my well i never i had like a weekend show i never really had my own like day of the week show but like sometimes i would be setting up a topic and i I would put it out there I'd give the numbers And it would just be like Nothing

Contract with America

Just I mean literally it was Like here's what's wrong With Hillary Care

Yes exactly What was the show called That's Right No that was my

Public access show Oh sorry This was called The Luke Burbank show Which I wish I could find I wish to God I think I've told you About this before But the intro The imaging for this show Was so funny It was Like it started off Real snooty Like Oh yay And then it just went like You recreated that from me

When I was in LA working on my fancy Public radio show

You won't hear this on Andrew's Fancy

Then I think right into ACDC back in black maybe

Did you find it? I found it Wow

Oh, okay

This is the one you recreated Yeah, this is the one This is, but like

Now imagine though that the imaging was like Um, this is This is The Luke This is the Luke Oh my god I had nothing to do with any of the decision making Around this And they just, like, the imaging guy, Carl Palmer, and my boss, Casey Keating, just collabed on this. And they thought, like, oh, this will be fun for Luke. And I was like, okay, whatever. I didn't really care. But, oh, by the way, we're getting strafed right now. We've got probably a couple of Apaches flying over us right now or a couple of Hueys. But, anyway, all I was going to say is there would also be these weird times when I would just be talking about something and not even trying to get calls. And then I would look down and all the phone lines would be lit up just because I had accidentally probably made a mistake.

Like maybe you turned the phone lines on before they were supposed to be.

No, I mean, I had said something that was incorrect.

You know what I mean? Like it was the weirdest.

Direct feedback thing because it would feel like No one's listening and when I was trying to get calls I could never Get calls and then when I wasn't trying I just looked down I'd be like why are the lines Jammed right now it's like because you mispronounce Puyallup or because you're like You know what I mean yeah squim I do love Phone calls though yeah me too I miss that Me too I love it all right well Okay so to Recap This is TBTL-a-thon week Thank you again for being a part of TBTL Thank you for supporting us John how is it going by the way It's Wednesday. Are we broke?

We're in severe. This cash gig has out of the future. Oh, God.

We need some cash to get us out of the gym.

I mean, honestly, though, are we on pace? Yes. Are we on pace? Are things going okay?

Yeah, we're kind of tracking. We're midweek. We're about midway through where we should be from a financial standpoint.

And, you know, maybe we can revisit this tomorrow during the show, but it's been nice to hear from people who've never donated before. We got a bunch of people who have been listening for a long time. Because we have folks who, you know, we just heard from Lynn and Lisa. And, like, we hear from people who have been supporting this show, like, extremely generously for a long, long time. And we appreciate that so much. And please continue to do so. But also, the way that we can continue to move forward is from hearing from new people who enjoy the show and realize, hey, for whatever reason, my life is better with TBTL in it. And I want to keep this thing going strong in the future. And so maybe I can join that a little bit. And it doesn't have to be a dazzling donor amount of money. Whatever you can give really does help a little bit. And so John was sharing with us some folks who've been giving for the very first time. And it really means a lot. Thank you so much. And maybe if you're on the fence, you want to join your brethren.

And I want to reiterate that, what Andrew just said, which is if you haven't ever donated to the show and you're thinking about it, it could be a very relatively small amount. Just if we can get you kind of involved in the process so you can see that it's relatively pain-free, that's great. You don't have to come in at some exorbitant level that makes you feel anxious. We don't want anyone to feel anxious about the financial piece of donating to the show. But if you, $5 a month, $10 a month, whatever feels right, it'd just be a big deal to convert you over from being a person who's been listening and not donating to a person who is listening and donating. That would be a huge boon for the show, and it would really ensure that we can keep doing this for a long time. And we don't have to start running creatine ads before the show. Things that will shred your bod overnight as you sleep. What were you going to say, John?

Literally the same thing you're saying. Whether you're a first-time donor or you've given in the past, whatever is right for your budget, please. Obviously, all the support is important, but we don't want you to, like you said, Luke, feel stressed or anxious.

We are bad capitalists. We are capitalists. We don't need to own the means of production. We just want to be able to rent the means of production. So rent to own the means of production. help us out please go to tbtl.net and check out bead cam check out yes the the live cam sensation

that's sweeping the nation every now and then a soft breeze will come through that's right that paper a little bit exactly it's really something all right we'll see hopefully we'll

see a lot of you tonight for the tbtl crafting zoom that's again at 5 p.m west coast i'm guessing if you go to tbtl.net you can also get info on that you certainly can and you can sign up so that we can send you a zoom link for free all right we'll see you then in the meantime have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. Please remember no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Power out.