Muse

You were born in Brooklyn? Yeah, I was born in Brooklyn. So you lived in poverty? My mother used to cash in milk bottles to help me go to the movies.

That's good old-fashioned poverty. Those are the kind of people that I don't tend to want to even mingle with because I'm afraid they're not bathing as much as you'd like. Did you bathe?

Yeah, well, we did in the kitchen sink.

We had a little kind of kitchen sink tub. You're often included on the list of all-time great comedians. How did that happen?

And what have you done? Are you saying that you, for one, don't agree with that? Oh, no, no, no, no. What are you saying? I mean, you're putting it in a way so that all those people who thought I was funny are silly and wrong. And you've got a better take on it. No, no, do you know what that's called?

That's called paranoia. And it's coming, and you know what it's caused from? It's being not that clean and poor as a child.

This has been absolutely so much fun. This is the craziest f***ing interview I've ever done in my life.

That's why they call me multidimensional. TBTL!

Well, well, here we are. I want to congratulate you for being on time. Well, it's really kind of simple, see. I speak into this, and my voice is instantaneously transmitted out where it's heard by well over a hundred people.

Hey, you sound like you might be a little bit jealous, babe. No, and I know a little something about being jealous, because people have been jealous of me my entire life.

This is the place to get something so different, so beautiful. The quality is unbelievable.

My headphones on, and here we go. I'm so excited. Well, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheets?

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Oh, my God. He unmuted.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where we are back to real life on the program. We are back to regularly scheduled TBTL programming.

Is this real life?

After a truly memorable and thankfully truly profitable week of TBTL-a-thoning. Last week it was TBTL-a-thon 15. Thank you for being a 10. And thank you very much to everyone who stepped up and helped support the show, keep this whole thing going for another year. It is a little lonely here in the Madrona Hill studio, minus my pals Andrew and John. We had quite the little thing going. I do have another visitor, though, this week. And that is the black standard poodle named Gigi, who is...

I'll say, what's up, dog?

Standing in the far corner of the studio, just kind of taking this all in. she is uh becca's mom's poodle becca's mom is doing this really cool art project in portland and so i am dog sitting gigi for the moment and maybe i'll tell you more about it once the show gets going i will tell you as i often do with these things i turned it into something about me and i'm feeling very good about me based on gigi being here so more on that in a moment we have so much to talk about though on this monday it's episode 4249 in a collector's series fun begin Richard Simmons has passed away.

If I told you once, I've told you a thousand times, I love you.

I met Richard Simmons. I also dressed as Richard Simmons once for Halloween, so we'll get into that. And lots of other things that have been going on in the world. Maybe not that one big thing, though. We're leaving that alone. We'll leave that for the other people. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ship. Oh, he's hilarious, dog. Who is? He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

I know you don't want to talk about the big thing, but I need to address... The big thing being my missing garbage can, right? Yes.

Okay, because I cannot... That's the elephant in the room that has been dominating the news coverage all weekend, and I just feel like enough ink has been spilled about your garbage can.

I didn't even know. I'll be honest with you. I didn't even know that that news had broken, because I just discovered it during your intro. Have you looked at CNN?

It's a crawl. This soaked my life. Garbage can. Still unaccounted for.

I don't. This is interesting. Well, no. How many times have I started this sentence by saying this is interesting and then halfway. Good thing interesting is a long word because about halfway through it, I always realize that that is not the word I'm looking for and I can bail on it. But, you know, I had to reset up.

my studio after the fawn, which was a, you know, kind of a decently sized project over the course of the weekend. And I was pretty happy that I got everything pretty locked in a couple. You and I stumbled on a couple of small little details. We had to. I was having issues here, actually.

And I have the much less complicated situation than you.

But the thing is, and don't worry, by the way, I should have said this up top. I'm not talking about my garbage bins outside. I trust me, that would be on CNN. Oh, those, okay. I'm just talking about, as you were doing your intro, I don't know if you, I don't think your screen was up, so you probably couldn't see, but I, like, left my room here. I left my position, my captain's chair, to see if I'd left my little waste paper basket outside my office somewhere. I have no, after, I remember moving it out of the way so I could plug in a bunch of cables and stuff. I remember emptying it, taking it outside and emptying it so I'd have a nice, fresh, you know, waste paper bin. Is that what you call it? Yes. And now it's just gone. Waste, Ben. And now it's gone. And as you know, I like to throw things. One of my favorite things to do during the show is throw things away. And so I had to go out and grab Genevieve's working from the office today. So thank goodness I grabbed hers because I don't think I can do a show without a little garbage can by me.

She was my prime suspect.

Yeah. Seems like something she would do.

I mean, honestly, you've got two people WFH-ing there. and if one person's little garbage can goes missing the natural suspect would be the other person who is working from home

well I'm thinking about how much do you know about fingerprint technology with the little brushes a lot do you really that's good did you do a story on that at some point

no but I just watched so much true crime we want to talk luminol we want to talk fingerprints we want to talk about trilobal carpet remnants I mean these are all topics that I will happily get into with you

it's definitely a strange thing I've also been I told you when we were doing the TBTelethon last week, I was in my hotel room. I don't remember if I said this on the air or not, but as you've often said, we are different people when we are in hotel rooms, especially regarding what we watch on television. And somehow I found myself watching The X-Files a lot from the Comfort Inn. Were lights on and why are you asking?

I hope the Smoky Man's in this one. Like Harrison Ford, were you feeling frantic? Like Sting, were you tantric? How much of this inane song am I going to have to quote to you before you arrive at the name of this song?

I'm guessing I do not know this song because I had no idea what was going on there.

That is from Bare Naked Ladies.

Oh, God, no. I stay away from that side of the street. No offense. If you like it on that side of the street, enjoy it. Bask it up. But I don't spend a lot of time over there.

You have heard that song, though. That is like their most famous song. I don't know what the name of it is.

A really fast patter one? Yes, exactly.

I was just slowing the patter down so that you could take it in in all of its majesty.

Wasn't that a whole thing in Dick Tracy? Did you like the movie Dick Tracy in the 90s?

The live action movie starring Madonna? Yes, indeed. And what's his name?

Her bow at the time, yes. Yeah, Warren Beatty, I believe. I think the reason I said bow is because I was thinking of his last name. There are E's and A's and maybe there's an errant hue in there, although I doubt it. I remember liking that movie I remember liking Batman a great deal and I feel like in my memory and I'm sure some cinephiles could talk me off of this ledge but I feel like I feel like Dick Tracy was the real was the first movie that really wanted to capture whatever magic Batman 89 Batman captured you know like kind of taking a kind of the over the top the sort of the way that the makeup was done.

of the of the other characters kind of trying to take yeah something that was a cartoon or rather a comic and and make it real life but still leave in some of the sort of ridiculous and especially

dick tracy which was like batman yes some of the you know you had the frank miller stuff for the comic book nerds out there but batman in pop culture i think people often thought like before 1989 i think people thought of batman they thought of that really corny tv show maybe some of the cornier comics that went along with it and then uh 89 batman was pretty dark for its time i mean And by today's standards, not so much, but, you know, it was dark for its time. But I think that Dick Tracy was like, what if we take even a more like kind of a less dark comic, you know, like a comic strip from the newspaper and apply that same sort of Burton esque, like kind of cartoonish darkness to it. And so I remember really, really wanting to like it and and sort of talking myself into liking it, although I don't think and I could be wrong about this, just like I may be wrong about the Barenaked Ladies. I don't think it was a very good movie, but I remember there was a character called Mumbles who was played famously by, can you bail me out here, Luke? Who played Mumbles? Absolutely not. The Graduate. He played The Graduate in the movie The Graduate. Dustin Hoffman. Dustin Hoffman. Dustin Hoffman played a character named Mumbles, and his whole thing mumbled all the time. But it's...

some groundbreaking moment in the movie or maybe plot-turning moment in the movie, they realized Mumbles was just talking very, very, very quickly. And if you recorded him and slowed him down, all of your mysteries were solved.

How interesting. Okay, so that's basically what was going to happen if I did the Barenaked Lady song at its normal speed. But I didn't want it to be confusing. But now I actually have the lyrics in front of me. And again, I feel like the song is called One Week. It's been one week since whatever happened. Watching X-Files with no lights on were Dan's La Maison. I hope the smoking man's in this one. Was the smoking man in any of the ones that you watched in the hotel room? Yes.

Well, now I'm back home, and I've started from the beginning. The smoking man appears in the very first scene. No, not the very first scene, but the very first episode near the beginning.

Ah, okay. So you were watching the X-Files. And again, we're still unclear on the status of the lights. but okay you're watching x files in your in your hotel room where were you going with that before

i interjected the work of the bare naked ladies i feel like i just keep on saying words because i don't remember how to do the show when we're not live uh so just interrupt at any time and take over with dog talk but all i was going to say was okay when i was in the hotel room i found myself watching the x files because it was just on and you watch different things when you're in hotel rooms you're kind of i think you said you're a different person when you stay in a hotel room

maybe well it just doesn't count the television viewing is not a commentary on your on your who you are as a person whereas at home if you're watching something it says something about you it's a choice you've made when you're in the hotel anything goes well now now I am choosing

and that's what so I came home and I was in the mood to watch television I've been trying to stay off my feet I've been having some some foot and uh and leg issues and so I uh so I'm like well I'm just going to lean into this and I'm just going to sit down and put my feet up and watch something and the only thing I could think of was like well maybe I should go back to the beginning of the X-Files. Do you have any idea how many X-Files episodes there are? It was during the era when there were like 22 episodes per season and there were many, many seasons but I am now I guess three or four episodes in from episode one. I'll let you know how this journey goes. I don't

think I've ever watched an episode of the X-Files at all. I mean, maybe a minute or two if I walked through a room and it was on, but it's one of those shows that it was, at least in my generation in my age cohort, it was such a big deal that i i know that they're named molder and scully um i know that there was a smoking man in some of them i know that people would occasionally watch them with the lights on um but i do know more about the x-files than than most shows that i have absolutely seen

zero minutes of yeah that's a pretty i mean those are the basics there you know that it involves extraterrestrial exploration and belief probably you know that oh yes right because

isn't that isn't we're here to believe you or something isn't that it was that like yeah yeah

that's I got a tattoo that says we're here to believe you let's see is that there are don't they say something like that two things he's got I just love that so much I want I much like Mulder I want to believe that that is the tagline there is there is oh it's I want to believe right he says I want to believe and then there and oh he has a poster behind him that says I want to believe and it's got a little a spaceship but then as the show begins the last thing you see at the end of the credits uh at the opening credits is the truth is out there so there's sort of two oh the truth that's what it is out there then also i want to believe is sort of a sub of that but what did you say i what i i've already forgotten what you said i'm here to believe you i'm here to believe you

that might be the first uh hello we are with the x-files agency sir and uh uh tell me about these

crop circles because we are here to believe you to believe you sir uh anyway tell me about this

dog luke i've sent you a couple of photos now andrew and what it illustrates is the typical experience of listening to tbtl which is initial intrigue followed by a deep sense of boredom and that's exactly what gigi the standard poodle has just gone she's gone through the entire cycle the entire experience of listening to the show in just a few moments a few moments ago she was sitting right next to me listening to me and now she's just staring out the front door into the middle distance completely bored by this whole well she couldn't hear my scintillating side of that conversation that is yeah this is actually really an indictment of my co-hosting more than yours because she cannot hear you i have headphones on but what happened was so we wrapped the thon up last friday and then i had kind of i was really looking forward to you know the the weekend after the THON because of course the THON itself, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves and we really want it to go well. We want to, you know, raise the money to keep the show going, which I believe we did. And so thank you so much to everybody who helped out with that. Oh, a quick little bit of, you know, I don't know what you'd call it, news you can use related to fixing our bead problem, our bracelet problem. You know, we were going to make these friendship bracelets and we were going to hand make all of them for everyone who donated.

And then we realized, as the listeners had been telling us, just how hard it is to make thousands of friendship break. Beads.

Beads? Beads. Beads.

And so we announced, I think, on Friday that we're going to be getting together at the Eagles in Seattle. And we're going to have a bunch of beads and a bunch of string. And we're going to hopefully knock out the last, I don't know, 1,200 or 1,400 of these. over the weekend so many people signed up that we are now closing the sign up because it was going to be we're going to have more people than the place could hold for this bead making party so if you are signed up you will be hearing from us about the details but it's actually already taken down from tbtl.net because I pulled it the incredible helpful nature of our listeners knows almost no bounds and so thank you we are well covered in terms of people coming out to help us make these bracelets

Do you think it's because we said we're going to be serving free pizza?

I think that was a big part of the appeal.

I'm going to give pizza more credit than me in this case.

But we will see all of you who signed up on the 28th. Let's see.

That's Sunday, the 28th of July. So that's just in a couple of weeks here. And it is $100 per person. We said that before people signed up, right?

Yes, it's free pizza, but there is a $100 cover charge at the door.

Don't even get me started on that. Well, you literally were not getting me started on that. I really wasn't. I want to be clear.

I want the record to reflect I was not getting him started on whatever it is he's starting on.

Alaska Airlines has, and again, one of the brands I am most loyal to, I like Alaska Airlines, but they have a couple of commercials running right now that irritate me for reasons that probably have left less to do with the commercials and more to do with the state of the airline industry and how they charge you for everything. But they're trying to upsell some sort of little package to make your flight a little bit nicer. It's not first class, but it's Coach Plus or something. Trust me, they do not call it Coach Plus. But if you buy into this plan, they say that you get a complimentary drink. I'm like, it's not a complimentary drink. It's something that you're paying for. It's literally, you're taking more money for us so that we get more amenities. That is not a free drink. It's not complimentary.

They run those ads during the baseball games a lot, which is, I bet, when you're hearing them.

Okay, yeah, yeah, and there's also just, like, Alaska, cross your legs. It sounds like a birth control. Right.

Alaska, cross your legs and think of Mother England.

Right? Like, what in the world? Okay, so I told you, don't get me started, Luke, and you're out here getting me started. but um no uh so we're going to be opening the doors of the of my local eagles club on lake city way um at 4 p.m on sunday we're going to get give out more details soon if for specifics for the address and i'll have a better link where people can go and read about the details um kids are uh welcome if they stay upstairs out of the bar area so if you have a little uh alcoholic kid that's going to be hanging out like um bukowski at the bar i'm afraid you're gonna have to leave them at home. Otherwise, kids are welcome to help us make these beads. So thank you to everyone who's

supported the THON and who is going to be coming out to support it in an extremely tangible way, i.e. making the thank you gifts that are going to be sent out for the money that you also probably sent in. So we are very, very grateful for all of that. So I had this, you know, the THON week circled on my calendar, and I've been obviously working on the house a bunch, and I thought It would be really nice to have a little, a small get together on that Saturday of Becca and, um, and some of her family, including her, her brother and sister-in-law who actually stayed here at this house. Um, kind of shortly thereafter I bought it, they had sold their house. They were looking to buy their next place and they ended up out here. I was excited for them to see the place because it, you know, if anybody could really relate to like the change, uh, in, in terms of how this place looks and kind of feels it was them. So I had this this thing scheduled for Saturday. But of course, what that also meant was I was when the thon was over and you and John headed back to your respective lives, I still had a lot of getting ready to do for the thing the next day, which I was on Friday. I was like, was that the greatest idea to like schedule an event here basically on Saturday that involved, you know, some some getting ready? But anyway, everybody came out and their family is very big on the dog, the standard poodle. And it's actually kind of an interesting story. they were not a standard poodle family and then their mom um basically got a book that that said what is the best kind of dog for you and your family based on what it is that your family likes to do maybe the kind of house you're living in like it it promised to identify the perfect dog for you based on your lifestyle as a family and she filled out the form or did whatever and this book this is years ago we're talking i don't know 30 years ago told her standard poodle is the dog for you. And boy, have they taken to it in this family. They have, everybody has a standard poodle. There have been many standard poodles in the history. Are they hypoallergenic? They are. They

They don't shed, so there's that. And, hey, Gigi, are you hypoallergenic? I think she is. She's actually, oh. Andrew, she literally nodded when I said that, but that was just because the male lady was also standing at the door, so she was nodding at the male lady. Oh, that's great. You showed me. I thought for, I seriously had a moment of thinking, can this dog understand English? Like, has she understood me this whole time, and she's been playing dumb?

Standard poodles do not understand English. The Poodle XE does understand English, though, but not the standard model. Before the show started, you said, hey, look, I have a little co-host. Did you say co-host? You said, I have somebody joining me for the show today. Look over my shoulder. And I thought you were talking about the jar of beads behind you. I'm sorry.

Well, that, too. That's also there. What's the dog's name again? People can see on the video. The dog is named Gigi.

Gigi was out of frame, and then you showed me Gigi, and I immediately fell in love from, what, 100 miles away.

she is a absolute sweetheart um she's a little um she's a little shy and also apparently and this is where this is ultimately i think a very good character reference on me she is apparently someone or she is a dog that is very tuned into the vibrations of other people and particularly strange men and is usually kind of like nervous if people were to come over to becca's mom's house to you know like do landscaping or work on things or whatever Gigi is very can kind of run and hide and like she's just not a super duper initially trusting dog and when I tell you on Saturday night that she had her head in my lap as we were playing this little name that tune kind of game she just would not leave me alone and Andrew at first when she first came over to me she was shaking I don't know if you ever encountered a dog that's doing this just kind of nerves and by the time we were done with our session where I was kind of petting her and you know cuddling her she was not shaking anymore and when I tell you that I fell in love with this dog mostly because it means I am a good person yeah right and so because because Becca's mom is doing this art project in Portland so she's staying up in Portland right now um Gigi has been has been crashing with some of Becca with Becca's other brother and and his wife and so it was decided on Saturday night that maybe Gigi should just hang out with me here because obviously she loves me and I can communicate with her in a way that almost no other humans on planet Earth can.

Right. That's the takeaway. I mean, honestly, the idea of an animal trusting you is one of the most kind of heart melting things. I have never had a dog of my own, as you know, Luke, but I do like dogs. I love the opportunity to pet and play with other people's dogs. And I mean, literally, if a dog just stands so close to me, like kind of a bigger dog and accidentally stands on my foot and then doesn't move his paw. That alone, I'm just like, we're in love and I'm taking this dog home now and we're going to spend the rest of our days together. Even a dog accidentally standing on my foot and not moving it, but especially a dog, if it comes over and rests his or her head on your knee or something, the idea of the dog kind of giving its weight over to you. Picking you out of the group.

Like saying, okay, of all these humans in here, this is the one that emotionally regulates me. it's a real kind of reverse Turner and hooching going on here because the premise of Turner and Hooch is that Tom Hanks is a human who's presumably fairly fastidious. And then you've got Hooch, this dog that's just getting slobber everywhere and just as a total mess. But Gigi is a very elegant lady. You know, she's a standard poodle. She gets her hair done. She's currently wearing a little mermaid bandana that I think she got when she was getting groomed. I am the slob. I am the hooch in this situation, but I still think we have a buddy comedy in us, me and Gigi.

The logline being, I'm here to bark at you, I believe.

I sent you a photo, though. Yeah, I got it.

I've got it cropped. I got it ready to post on the website for today's show pic. Can it beat Friday's show pic of you, me, and John Sklaroff, the business boys?

Not according to the internet.

Have you had a reaction to that? I have not seen it.

I mean, I just noticed on the Facebook page that somebody took it from the Stens page. Somebody took it from the show pic and then reposted it on the Stens page, and it was very popular. Oh, that's good. It was really trending. I'm glad to hear that.

Yes, people – There are very – I don't usually go for like kind of like – not staged, but like – and I don't pose for photos that often. You know, every now and then at a TBTL event with listeners or whatever, but we wanted – we were wearing our TBTL Junior Sluggers style – what are the T-shirts called again? Raglan? Raglan. Sorry. I knew that. I just wanted to give you the opportunity. And so for the show pick on Friday, if people haven't seen it, you, me, and John Sklaroff, the business boys, posed outside the Madrona Hill studio for a little photo. And I actually thought it was kind of cute, you and the three of us in our little jerseys.

Yeah, I thought it was a fitting cap to the TBTL-a-thon week. And, yeah, it seemed to be popular with people. But the reason I sent you these photos of Gigi was because it really does tell a story of a dog.

that is interested in what I'm doing and then a dog that becomes very, very bored with what I'm doing.

Yeah, because you sent one of the dog looking at you and then one.

Then she's just staring out the front door like, get me out of here.

Very cute, though. Very adorable dog. I am like legit jealous. And I know something about jealousy because people have been jealous of me my whole life. Yeah, babe. There's something about the babe in that drop that like that.

Is that from Transparent?

It's definitely from Transparent and I can't remember the actor's name who is talking. I only watch like the first season of that. but there's just something about a well-placed

babe. Is that the woman who plays Michael Scott's girlfriend on The Office, the American version of The Office? Possibly.

It sounds like that in my head and when you say that, that makes sense but honestly, I watched Transparent when it was a new show and that would have been, I was in LA, it was like 24, I can't go back and confirm something from 10 years ago regarding somebody who played somebody in a TV show. That would be wildly irresponsible of me given my track record but

Is it possible it's Melora Harden?

It's certainly possible. That name does not ring a bell to me. While you look this up, I will say I am jealous.

I'm curiously Googling if she was in Melora Harden as Tammy Cashman in Transparent. I think we did it, Andrew.

Is that person also in the office? Yes. Oh, nice. Okay, then that is her. That makes total sense.

Another day, another victory for the OG.

For the OG, that's right.

Taking down the sweats, the haters among us.

The reason I was going on and on about the photo from Friday is because that will now be usurped with today's show pic. If anybody wants to go to tbtl.net or look at your little podcatcher, you will see this very adorable picture of Gigi. And you will be as jealous as I am because I saw that dog come up to you for some pets you were saying before the show. Well, she's a little shy. She's very big on that. But as you were saying she's a little shy, she came up to you not like a shy dog at all and kind of stuck her cute little head right under your hand so that you could give her some scritches. And I'm deeply jealous.

Yes, it's going to be a fun week with me and Jeej here. I think so. I don't know. We're going to see how it goes.

She'll be living with Becca by Wednesday. Well, think about it.

The irony is my cat lives at Becca's right now, but somehow I'm watching Becca's mom's dog lives here. It's a real topsy-turvy sort of world. But, yeah, we're going to see how it goes and see how Jeej likes it. I think, yeah, yesterday was a little, she seemed, when everybody left and it was just me and her, she seemed a little bit like, hmm, I don't know about this. But I think she's been kind of, she's been adjusting and I think we're in okay shape now.

What is that meme? It's so funny. You live online so much more than me, but whenever I describe what I think is like a very popular meme that I've seen a million times, you're unfamiliar with it. But do you know a meme that is usually, it's a picture of a square. You got a square in your head and it's cut into two frames, top and bottom, right? And in the top one, I believe you see the profile of some sort of stuffed animal. I believe it's like a stuffed bear or stuffed dog, and it's looking forward. And then in the second one, it's giving you the side eye. Can you picture this at all? And then you can fill in two different ideas or concepts or visual concepts. And then like in the first one, it's like, oh, OK. But it's like clearly like the idea is whatever is going on here is causing someone to give you side eye. You have no idea what I'm talking about.

you know i am terminally online more so than you but you are in a different you play in a different online space than i do i don't know if it's because you post a lot of photos or because you go to reddit and i don't go to reddit but somehow the memes that come into your life are often memes i've never seen even though i am online way okay can you instead of me trying

to download this and send it to you can you just type in side eye meme and it does look like it's

a stuffed bear of some sort the first oh yeah okay i've seen you've seen it okay thank you i I think I thought that was a puppet, by the way.

Sure, maybe a puppet. It looks like a stuffed bear or a stuffed puppet, I guess. But okay, at least you've seen it. Like, that was going to drive me a little bit bananas, because there's another one with...

Yeah, awkward-looking monkey puppet.

That's what it says, it's a puppet.

Yeah, I don't want to be... I don't want to start the week off on a bad note, but that's... I think that if you... Well, I don't know. I was going to say, if you would have said awkward-looking monkey puppet, would I have gotten... That's also a line, by the way, from Bare Naked Ladies.

Yes.

In that song, he does say awkward-looking monkey puppet really fast.

I thought that was a Mountain Dew Cheetos commercial from the Super Bowl several years ago. But, I mean, honestly, okay, wait a second. Okay, side-eye meme. Let me just say, though, like, how can you, I mean, I agree that could possibly be a puppet, but, like, in my defense for people who haven't seen this, the top half of a puppet when you can't see a hand going in there is basically a plushie, right?

Well, it doesn't look like a bear to me is where I got a little confused. But I don't want to get bogged down in that.

I see monkey, not a bear. Yeah, no, that does make a lot of sense. Yeah, I think the monkey, I will definitely take the L on me calling a bear a monkey. I definitely should lose my zoology degree for that one. That's for damn sure.

I mean, the fact that you got it from an online...

university i think was the first red flag as far as your whole thing tunes you that wasn't uh that was yes they yeah they have had all of their uh accreditation stripped away all right uh quickly uh before we mention richard simmons here talk about richard simmons um you're uh trying to live right this morning you told me before we started recording because you are going to have blood drawn today and so you're what you're trying to do to make sure that is successful is drink a lot

of water is that a thing i mean well i guess so so if you'll recall the i don't even know for sure that i'll get blood drawn today and i don't mind telling folks i kind of what's going on with me i i had mentioned on the show that i had was having some like swelling in my wrists and definitely carpal tunnel but i had a feeling that there was something underlying that was causing the carpal tunnel and in the past week or so it's become very clear that i have some sort of major joint issue i can today i almost had to butt walk down yeah i did like scooch down the stairs to my

studio i saw you a couple of times when you were here last week andrew and this was fairly this was a ways into the day when everything had probably warmed up a little bit for you and i could still just see you wincing involuntarily when you would just be like putting a jacket on or something the

mornings are ridiculous like i do not know what's going on the mornings are ridiculous i wake up and my you know my ankles are so stiff and and my knees and basically everything is so stiff that i have to stand up and like kind of grab the wall like it is it is bananas i've never been like this as the day goes on like you say things kind of warm up a little bit and then by the end of the day it's a different feeling it just i just feel incredibly kind of fatigued i think i described it to you as like off air is like you at the end of a long day when you've done something productive or even gone on a really long hike you know um i'm not a runner so i don't know if it's the same type of thing but if i go on like a really long hike or something at the end of the day your dogs are really barking as my stepmom would say you know they feel heavy or whatever but in your head it's like a good feeling because it's your body is supposed to be a little bit of a little bit sore after an adventure like that right that's everything absolutely i i i have a sort of a

perverse enjoyment of waking up and feeling some soreness in my legs and feet that remind me that i did a thing the day before that was kind of you know pushing them to their yeah and it's a it's a

good kind of pain as i think people say um but it was kind of funny as as whatever's happening to me started spreading down into my ankles and knees and stuff i would get that feeling at the end of the day and i would take me a moment to sort of like disassociate the idea of like wait a second i didn't do anything today or you know what i mean nothing out of the ordinary you know um and you're just like wait a second why why are my dogs barking so anyway so i'm going back to the doctor again today and i'm just being honest like i'm pretty frustrated about this whole scenario i believe that i went in the first time and the doc just basically saw carpal tunnel and ignored probably a bunch of other signs that there was something underlying that and i went back a second time and kind of explained some more symptoms and still wasn't really uh given any uh treatment other than to go check out the carpal tunnel further um and now i can barely walk and it kind of in the mornings and then during the days i can get around but it's not super comfortable and i'm pretty pretty frustrated by this whole damn thing to be honest with you it's it's kind of it's kind of debilitating and so i am going in today and the doctor is out i don't know what the doctor's schedule is but they wanted to see me as soon as possible so i'm supposed to see a physician's assistant so it'll be somebody on the same care team but it'll be a different person which i'm kind of looking forward to because i'm going to be pretty blunt and and kind of say like something is going on i mean luke i watch tv you watch tv there are a million commercials for people who have like some sort of autoimmune thing going on right i could list them like there i'm sure one of those commercials is for me right like i have it's probably some autoimmune thing and there's probably a a way of taking care of it but i'm going in today i have no idea what to expect from um this this appointment it won't be my regular doctor there's a chance that they will send me back down to the lab to get some blood taken again because the last time i went to do that they couldn't find a needle and i came very very close to passing out and um did i say they couldn't find a needle they couldn't find a vein they found the needles they were in their little toolkit they couldn't find a vein uh and i almost passed out and they said you know have you had enough to you know have you had enough to drink today i'm like yeah i had like a whole bottle of scotch in the car they're like no are you dehydrated and i'm like oh that's a good point on that particular day i had eaten zero i'd eaten nothing and i had drinking probably a half a pot of coffee or more and that was about it and so they said next time you come in here you know make sure you're really well hydrated let's talk to my friend hannah who has to give blood a lot and she's like yeah also maybe some gatorade get your electrolytes up like whatever so i went to the store yesterday i love gatorade telling me to drink gatorade is like a treat for me maybe if a kid really likes jello and they have to stay home and they're sick and they get jello that's me

and Gatorade so I bought like four of the big things of Gatorade any excuse I love Gatorade so much Luke and now I'm kind of like I usually I'm like well that's my reward drink some Gatorade after working out or something I'm like but now I'm sick I have to drink the sugary Gatorade

and so it's like when you're a kid and you get you know the chicken noodle soup and ginger ale

or whatever saltine crackers and ginger ale or whatever yeah so anyway I drank one big thing of gatorade this morning i'm drinking a lot of water and i and i'm trying to eat because i don't want to go there on an empty stomach so i had a i had a bowl of cheerios this morning in almond milk and i'm just like man i can't remember the last time i just kind of sat down to a to a um what do they used to say in a a balanced a balanced breakfast i sat down to a balanced breakfast did

you do the full thing off of the tv commercial which was like an orange eggs yeah right bacon yeah hash browns a cup of milk a cup of orange juice i the bowl of cereal man i was listening

this was a while back now this is like a month ago or something i was listening to one of my um you know old-timey radio shows i think i was listening on the satellite radio channel that plays old-timey radio shows and i like that because they have even more old-timey commercials that they insert between the episodes and i heard one that was just basically for breakfast meats i'm trying to think if it was for for for bacon specifically or i think it was just more like breakfast meats like bacon and sausage and just like saying like you cannot get through your day unless you just eat a metric ton of bacon and sausage sir how much bacon have you had today

you're starving two pieces you're literally starving your body is crying out for bacon sir

Your body is eating itself. Exactly. And just in that old-timey man's voice telling you about all of the protein you must eat for a properly balanced breakfast.

Brought to you by the swine council. Yes. Whoa, we were calling it that. Okay.

So anyway, that's my plan. But here's my biggest thing, and I don't know if you have any input on this, but I think, so when I go in there, I'm going to assume they're going to, I never got that blood drawn that they failed at two weeks ago. And so now I'm guessing if nothing else, they're going to probably need to draw for that. And so I'm drinking a lot of liquid. I've already had my one Gatorade, a huge thing of water. I'm going to drink more water now. I had my Cheerios. I might have a little piece of protein before I head out the door. Having said all that, I think one of the biggest issues, Luke, is they always say make a fist. And I literally can't make fists. And so I'm wondering, I don't have a tennis ball, but is it weird for me to take my own something in there to squeeze that might help it a little bit? or should they have tennis balls for me? Like a monkey puppet or something? Well, I would say a bear. Emotional support bear puppet? Like a bear plushie, I would say, not a monkey puppet. I don't know. Is it weird if I take a thing of bald-ups?

I'm trying to give you the side eye right now.

Oh, he is. Oh, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. I'm so glad you knew that meme. Hold on one second. What about this? What if I take my Ryan Court baseball in? One of these is, or wait, you know what? One of these baseballs I have on my shelf is one of those safety baseballs, Luke. So it's a little bit squishy. I'm going to take this in. Do you think I can take that in to squeeze since I can't make a fist?

Yes, I think that they'll be just fine with that. And I'm hoping that you get a nice person trying to do the blood draw because last time you had a grumpy person, and I feel like that was half of the problem for you.

Dude, the reason I went into some – I'm sorry. I don't think I should take the official safety ball. I think I should, for the legacy of the ball, I think I should take the Ryan Court foul ball. Should this Ryan Court foul ball be the thing that gets me through my medical journey here?

And also basically like Wilson on Castaway. Or more to the point, like all of the little balls that he's using on The Last Man on Earth. That's a pretty funny gag from that show, which I had forgotten about. Beck and I started re-watching that a while ago. You know, Will Forte is, he thinks the last person on Earth. and he's like watching castaway and he is saying that it's totally ridiculous the idea that tom hanks's character would would be you know anthropomorphizing a volleyball named wilson and then cut to he will forte has surrounded himself with every kind of ball known to man and they've all got different names and pretend mustaches and he goes out drinking with them and he has arguments with them it's like his entire social life are different balls that

he's gotten from the sporting goods store that's pretty good just see you in the doctor's office

It's just like talking to the Ryan Court ball like it's a completely sentient human.

Let's see. Ryan Court had 24 total at-bats in his short MLB career. So anyway, I'm going to maybe take in one of these balls. But honestly, and I'm not – I guess I'm not seeking advice here. I'm just being honest about the kind of conversations I've been having lately because this is taking up more and more of my life. And, you know, I'm not trying to worry people. I'm sure I'll be fine. Um, but I don't know what to do if.

i leave the doctor's appointment without without something i don't in other words i don't want them just being like an answer or like a strategy or a strat an answer a strategy or i don't even want another appointment like i want a prescription i know that just sort of sounds like i'm really buying into big pharma but like i feel like i mean without getting into too much detail i feel like there was some uh blood tests that came back that to me seemed out of the ordinary but the doctor said oh don't worry about it and i want i want this person who's looking at me today to go back and look at those test results because they seemed out of the ordinary i want them to maybe say okay well we're going to maybe recommend this prescription for you i don't want them just to say well wear these braces um on your ankles and let us know if it's better later like i can't you know i can't keep on waking up and not being able to walk for like the first hour of my day like it's not this is not tenable and you know i tell these stories to genevieve and and i'm sure like a lot of listeners i'm probably putting them in the position too so again i apologize if i'm being too frank with my shit here but um that's how you get that explicit label um it's just like genevieve wants to go in there and knock heads together she's like i want to go with you know and it's kind of like i i promise you i'm going in there i'm really trying to advocate for myself i'm not being a wallflower in these situations but there's only so much you can do and i'm just

are you being a walsh flower the walsh flowers how about the perks of being a walsh flower

possible show title i was part of a band called the walsh flowers we had a song called two

headlights it was very standard it was was terry dylan in that band with you bob dylan's less talented son really is that are you making up the wallflowers was jacob i know but is terry a real

person or is terry just no no maybe you actually knew bob dylan i mean bob dylan i think did have a lot of children there might be a terry dylan walking around out there like you'd name somebody terry but maybe anyway yeah so i mean i'm laying this all out there i guess i'll have an update for you tomorrow on Tuesday I go in to meet with an actual surgeon who's going to look at my potentially you know giving me some carpal tunnel surgery and I guess both of my hands because that I think definitely needs to be done no matter what happens with what's going on with the rest of my body but it's just going to be kind of a week of this and a week of that and honestly I don't know what the rest of my summer is going to look like but I mean I just sort of have this fantasy of them going in and writing me a script and saying okay well this is looks like you know what we might have missed something here why don't you try taking this and maybe i'll start feeling better but if i walk out of there and they're just kind of like i don't know keep an eye on it or go to this other doctor or whatever i'm gonna be i'm gonna be pretty frustrated by this and i and i'm maybe gonna start i also want to start looking at new doctors but then i'm like well i don't want to start this will that start me back from square one again unfortunately i think

you're having an experience that a lot of people have when they start to have medical issues which is is so weird to me because i don't understand what the motivation would be for doctors and medical professionals to just kind of like ignore something but you hear so many stories and granted they're anecdotal but you hear so many stories from people whether it's online or other places where they're like i kept going in and i kept saying this is happening and i kept being told that's normal or there's nothing we can do about it or it's not what you think it is and then you know upon the like 20th doctor that i finally saw or i finally got somebody who took me seriously I don't understand I mean I'm not a doctor obviously and I've never worked in that field and we do have plenty of people who are in the medical profession

I'm really really sorry to interrupt you but somebody needs pets I'm seeing this in the camera to your other side there Gigi was wandering around and then came up

do you want me to bring Gigi up as an emotional support poodle for you this week to get you through to get you through what's going on

genuinely excited about this dog in your studio and so if that dog needs pets I'm just going to make sure that dog is getting the pets that she needs.

Yeah, can I pet that dog? I was so focused on my message of, I wouldn't say it's a message of hope as much as it's a message of feeling really frustrated for you and for the other people who go through this. Because I don't understand why it is that it seems like a lot of the time doctors and other people that work in the medical field, maybe just because the old saying is familiarity breeds contempt. Like maybe because you're dealing with people who are medically not doing well all day long, it starts to just kind of all blend together. I just don't get why someone would come in and say, look, all my joints are swelling. And also I'm having this carpal tunnel thing and I'm getting these little spots that I used to think were eczema. But now I'm reading that they may be related to an autoimmune thing and why the doctor would say, yeah, it's probably not that. Like, I just don't understand why that would be so summarily dismissed as an idea. It seems like a very, to use another, you know, to use Occam's razor, it's like if you hear hoof beats, don't assume it's a zebra. It seems like this is a pretty clear cut case of something autoimmune going on for you. And I don't understand why it's so hard to just get someone to take it serious.

Yeah. And that's what's frustrating is like I went.

in and kind of said you know i did have some eczema outbreaks before this i know that there's some autoimmune things that can cause this but i feel like the doctor was just like really just like married to the idea of like hey look this is classic carpal tunnel that you have here you got these fingers that are going tingly and then eventually numb it's these three not the other like and it is true like everything that you read about with carpal tunnel i do have carpal tunnel and then i went you know i told you a couple of weeks ago and had those elect the electrical pulses put through me and everything and it's like yeah you have you have carpal tunnel and one of my hands is pretty advanced but like i don't understand why when i said but it might be something underlying that was totally dismissed when one of the blood results came back and it was kind of spiked up and of course i don't read blood results but i googled what does this blood result mean and i looked and it said oh this is usually associated with rheumatoid arthritis of sausage yeah high levels levels of sausage and like rheumatoid arthritis which is uh you know which is exactly what i thought might be given my experience with autoimmune issues so anyway i'm And now, of course, it's easier for me to put that all together now. At first, when I went in there, I had some vague notions, but I also just generally trust my doctor. I generally like my doctor, by the way. I like his bedside manner. I'm comfortable being in a room with him, which I can't say that is true for all doctors. I'm very nervous in medical settings or whatever. But kind of looking back to say, oh, yeah, ignore that one blood test that was highly spiked because he just kept saying, well you know we work behind desks all day and i'm just kind of like yeah but the one morning i wake up and both of my hands are in pain and tingly like that just one morning i wake up and it's like that and you just kind of keep coming back to your spiel about like well this is what it's like to work behind a desk all day and i'm just like yeah so anyway all of that is to say kind of in hindsight as i get more and more of these clues um and as it sort of kind of expands this is where I am emotionally so I'm going in there today kind of anxious about so let's recap I'm anxious about them not doing enough today I'm anxious about maybe potentially having too big of a life change when I leave there today and I'm nervous about going down to give blood or to have a blood drawn which I assume is going to be part of this again and them not being able to find a vein again so anyway I'm eating baseballs and I'm squeezing Cheerios

hello and welcome to top story i saw somebody online i think this morning say if you told me that there would be a weekend where dr ruth richard simmons and shannon doherty all passed away and that wouldn't even be the weirdest news of the weekend i wouldn't have believed you the trash that was of course the missing trash the weekend Right If you told me there was a weekend where someone was going to move Andrew's waist basket And three of these fairly well-known people were going to pass away And that wasn't even going to be the top news headline I wouldn't have believed you I will say that I have been And I don't want to get into the stuff about the attempted assassination of the former president Because it's an awful thing And the whole thing makes me feel awful for a whole variety of reasons and it's made me really not even want to look at the news or listen to the news for the last two days because there's just it's just a very dark thing that's been going on and the repercussions of it seem very dark to me the whole thing is just giving me a really bad feeling the whole thing so um but uh some of that news that did come out this weekend was that richard simmons has passed away which i was i don't want to get into speculating about his kind of medical situation but the thing about richard simmons was he went like kind of stepped away from the limelight in a way that people don't often do particularly people who have their whole thing has been being a public person and you know there was that famously that whole podcast searching for richard simmons which uh i found very intriguing and i listened to but then it was kind of like looking back and it was like is that totally okay that if richard simmons just wants to be left alone is it okay that we did a whole podcast trying to not leave him alone you know can i

ask you a question about that because i started that podcast and then like when it was new and then or as it was coming out or something and i stopped like it gave me an uncomfortable feeling because of everything that you just said there and um i don't know how it wrapped up like after all of that you know sort of let's just call it from some people's perspective sort of an invasion of richard simmons privacy did we end up learning anything not really i mean the end of it was

that podcast was like richard simmons is apparently fine and he just doesn't want to be you know out in public all the time and is just enjoying his privacy, so leave him alone. That's my memory of what basically the end of it was. There wasn't a big sort of aha moment. I guess he had, in March, I'm reading from the New York Times Obit, by the way, which was written by Alex Traub. In March, Mr. Simmons said he had been treated for basal cell carcinoma, which he said first appeared as a strength. looking bump under his eye so um but they also uh said that uh the the fire department determined that he had passed away of natural causes at age 76 because what i was kind of wondering was did his passing did that explain was that in some way related to or that explained him stepping away from the kind of the public eye like was he somebody who was dealing with some medical stuff for a long time and didn't want to be doing it in public and that would explain the whole disappearance of richard simmons but just based on what i've been reading i don't know if there's any evidence of that but um but yeah they're saying he passed away of natural causes but he had at some point been dealing with some sort of a skin cancer situation oh interesting yeah but i met richard simmons once and it was the strangest thing because i was working as a producer for kvi the talk radio conservative talk radio show which if if you could think of a place that would make less sense for richard simmons to show up to promote whatever it was he was what it actually happened was he was down the hall at star 101.5 but the guy that i was working for kirby wilbur was very kind of starstruck just generally about people like he really liked in my my memory of things he really liked getting to talk to or rub elbows with famous people now in our world at that time that was mostly people like sean hannity right they were like concert g gordon liddy like they were people that were famous in the conservative world every once in while though we got near someone who was legitimately kind of famous and when he heard that richard simmons was down the hall doing kenton allen in the morning he was like go get me richard simmons so i had to like walk down the hall and when richard simmons was done with doing the like light-hearted you know morning zoo show i had to say what is your what is what are your thoughts on tax policy and also does the name grover norquist sir did you did you really try to talk to him about things of no no it was a completely apolitical conversation but i was dispatched to try to trick richard simmons into coming on the conservative talk radio morning show which he did with aplomb and i mean that show could have been based on any kind of content and richard simmons was going to be richard simmons he was singing in the hallways he was dancing he was hugging he hugged me he smelled very good i five percent thought he might have been hitting on me which i took as a huge compliment not since gg the poodle singled me out andrew i felt more special than when i thought low-key richard simmons might be trying to get the

digits well not to um not not to diminish your experience with them but i think that's how richard simmons probably made everybody feel i think that's part of his magic right like i mean i've noticed no it was just me i've noticed more than any was the only person he cared more than any other celebrity that i can think of in recent history my instagram feed was filled with photos of people posing with Richard Simmons, you know, from throughout the past, I don't know, 20 or 30 years. And what that's what that said to me is Richard Simmons always made time for his fans or the people who wanted to who and probably made everybody feel very, very special. And also, like, and just think about like you, Luke, like you will go on some morning show like, you know, and I don't want to be I don't want to be dismissive of it. But you were talking about it for like Live Wire going on some local morning thing. and we know your life well enough you're probably like zinging out of there to go then do tbtl or something else or like just imagine you and then you know at at a level of fame that i'm going to put just under richard simmons like somebody some producer from some other show tries to snag you for a quick interview like there's a really good possibility that you don't even want to do that you know what i mean and you're richard simmons you can't walk down the street without somebody wanting a little bit of your time whether it's for a photo or for a conversation whatever and again I have not done a lot of um reading about him I just know him as the cultural icon I grew up with and it just sort of seems like that was his through line he just made time for people

and made people feel special yes and it also as I think back on just that brief moment of being kind of in the building with him and watching him operate it actually makes the whole thing where he wanted to step away from the limelight make a lot more sense because the level at which he was interacting with everyone was frankly exhausting to witness i don't mean like he was exhausting i mean i i looked at that and i was like 22 years old and i thought dear god how does he do this like how does he how how is he giving this much of his energy and personality and whatever to every single person who's coming up to him here like i would need to go get into some sort of like hyperbaric chamber of of of kind of like energy replenishment you know what i mean after this and i'm wondering if just like after a lifetime of being richard simmons you know a few years ago he was like i'm done i can't i'm i'm done being richard simmons because it's so unbelievably taxing to be out in the world and to give people this kind of energy that they want from me um you know i could see just being like i can't do that anymore i'm you know because it was

very it was really something to kind of witness and i'm getting deeper and deeper into speculation here with Mike.

own just sort of impressions of him as a person and as a celebrity but I will say if there's truth to what we are saying I also sort of understand why somebody like Richard Simmons can't sort of go in for half measures sort of that he would be the type of person who is either one or the other if I'm out there and if I'm out there I'm out there and I'm being a hundred percent you know for everybody but when that gets to be too much I can't just be casually famous you know like I

need to I need to shut it down nobody wants to see a kind of nobody wants to see Richard Simmons kind of looking at his phone in line at Starbucks right you know you don't want like Richard Simmons being like the way a normal person is in the world like that's not the Richard Simmons that any of us signed up for yeah this was I thought a kind of interesting line from the obit from Alex Traub's obit in the New York Times a TV fitness act would seem to demand a balance between masculinity and theatrics. Mr. Simmons showed otherwise. He transformed exercise and healthy eating into a realm of cross-dressing skits, squealing exhortations, sequined tank tops, teeny-weeny short shorts, and saucy repartee. He preached not muscle-bound pride, but the joie de vivre of self-love, which I thought was actually really kind of a sweet thing. And I think that's why, like, I remember being a kid and seeing Richard Simmons on TV and thinking, what is going on with this dude and why in the world is like why is this popular like i remember like just like sweating to the oldies infomercials and i thought he just looked ridiculous i i was like this is not the fitness plan that i would embrace but then as an adult i realized well what he was giving to everyone was a tremendous amount of self-love like the people that really got into richard simmons and saw real results in their personal health journeys because of him i think he was just he made people feel loved and seen and for and all before all of his kookiness like they're just I think he really gave people a certain feeling that they were really looking for particularly people who maybe were in bigger bodies or whatever like he just really he was a really special person to a really a lot of people even though he was basically a nutcase and I feel like

he gave like and I could be wrong here I keep on just sort of walking out further and further on limbs that I shouldn't be walking out on but when I think of him and i think of his appearances on like talk shows or whatever he like gave he gave like straight men a sort of rush because he was so flirty you know what i mean yes like

i felt that rush on a personal level when he hugged me i'm not kidding yes i remember what his cologne smelled yeah yeah and that was not probably a path i was going to go down but it was like oh i get it i you know think about his appearance it's like i'm just picturing like

generically on letterman or something like that you know what i mean like he was so flirty and maybe and again i i don't i don't know um kirby wilbur that that was the fellow you worked with you know like i don't know how how he went through life or how he carried himself or anything so i don't want to make assumptions there but like you you would guess that a conservative talk show host might not be into a lifestyle not not not not about diet lifestyle but a lifestyle generally speaking you know very very flamboyant and and loud and and and i mean richard simmons like was he out as a gay man or is it just an assumption i always made i don't know that's a really good

question i i have this hunch that he was not actually out that it was just one of those winks yeah wink and a nod like everyone kind of knows it but he's never addressed it because of course you got to remember you know when richard simmons was really emerging as a public figure uh was a much less inclusive world we were living in i mean we still have a long way to go but the 1980s were a real different time to where probably there was a professional liability to him being an out gay man as opposed to a very clearly gay man in the world but one who had never actually like put

those words to it and then and he would be very bawdy though you know like i remember like you know double entendre hell triple quadruple entendre with with some of these guys you know And it kind of it was a it was a way that he was able to, I don't know, interact with people who wouldn't interact with with with that kind of energy otherwise.

Right. Yeah. I mean, he was very big in middle America where presumably there was a lot of kind of very retrograde thoughts around being gay. And he probably was like one of the, you know, first sort of, you know, whatever being sort of like obviously a gay man in the world, whatever that's supposed to mean. Probably he was the first version of that that some people had seen. And it probably I hope anyway, it was a good thing for those people to feel not threatened by Richard Simmons. and then to kind of do, I mean, this is the journey that I did in my mind around the idea of someone being gay, which was, I was a kid. I grew up in the church. I was told that it was very wrong. I thought it was very wrong. And then I realized that my uncle Chuck was gay and I loved my uncle Chuck so much. And I literally, my brain did this thing where it went, well, wait a minute. If your uncle Chuck, who you love is gay, that means that there are gay people who are very lovable and it completely changed my mind on the topic so does it affect you that uncle chuck was a little bit of a grumpus when he visited your family recently is that the is that the uncle that your mom was that is the

uncle in question yes bus last andrew gay people can be grumpy they exist i thought this was pretty funny too in his tv show this is again from this obit his tv show the richards simmons show was in national syndication in 1980 he developed a series of gags and characters including reverend pounds Who was a man of the cloth The tablecloth Who intoned Though I waddle through the valley of linguine and clams I shall fear no evil He also dressed as Scarlett O'Hara Gorging herself during a picnic Before war rations might go into effect Oh my goodness I just love the idea of Richard Simmons running Essentially an unsanctioned drag show On national television

Yeah, yeah

Like again, with middle America not really understanding What exactly they were being subjected to

I feel stupid a lot in in this world but one of the times most recently that i felt really really stupid was on after these messages the podcast i do with vives about um commercials and we were talking about richard simmons this is a couple of months ago and i don't remember what the impetus for this was maybe somebody just sent in a commercial wanted us to talk about it but it was related in some way to richard simmons deal a meal do you remember deal a meal was another one of his big diet things do i have that right deal right dial a meal no i feel like it was deal a meal and in this commercial we were i knew so it's funny like i yeah deal a meal cookbook you're absolutely i remember growing up with something called deal a meal i remember seeing it on tv but not really paying a lot of attention to it as a kid i wasn't the demo for it and then i remember um uh and then when i was watching this commercial with genevieve a couple of months ago i noticed that it was like packaged up like it was a board game or something like that i'm like oh i guess this is just a pro i think i literally said on the show i guess as a bit for this commercial they're trying to make it seem like deal a meal is like a game and they're selling it as a board game uh maybe not unlike uh the progressive commercials a long time ago that introduced flow as selling insurance in physical boxes and uh some listeners wrote in to say no no that was the whole point of deal a meal it was like a board game are you looking this up like how how accurate am I now in my retelling of this that it was actually deal a meal was a sort of diet plan that was sort of gamified and sold as a traditional looking board game I have been uh I've got

obsessed with the deal a meal cookbook which I just sent you a photo of I'm really ready for those fonts to be back the deal a meal cookbook is a real graphic design is my passion kind of a situation let's see deal a meal game I mean that would make the deal part of it yeah deal your way to health colon richard simmons uh deal yeah it looks like well there's this is a vhs tape that you can buy on amazon for 16.95 but the sense that i'm getting and i'm sure our listeners uh who are familiar know much more about this than we do but yeah it looks like it is a gamified version uh deal meals come a long way since the days of hand cut cards from construction paper this andrew is the deal meal of the 90s and what that means is it's now on a vhs tape so it's like this is not your grandmother's deal a meal this is the this is this is the the absolute most high-tech version now available on vhs tape one of my favorite things to uncover every now

and then when we're looking at old commercials or if i'm if i'm digitizing old vhs tapes that i find is um commercials that from a very specific era that we thought was futuristic at the time for CD-ROMs were they CD-ROMs is that what they were it was like kind of before everybody had the internet but reading a book was too old fashioned so I remember there was one for like Clint Eastwood you would get the immersive Clint Eastwood experience and it didn't include movies because it was just a CD-ROM does this ring a bell to you at all like you could like kind of have an interactive experience with content that you wanted but it was pre-internet and it lived on discs that you would put in

and it would be but i'm still trying to understand what the content was it was like it was like a it

was like a very early version of a web it would be like oh clips of i'm actually looking for because i had like a half of a two-minute commercial and then the vhs tape actually stopped but i had a vhs commercial or maybe it was a soft news featurette about it from like 1995 of the release of this, I keep wanting to say DVD, but it must have been CD-ROM, Clint Eastwood, like clips of his movies, clips of interviews with him, click here for a full bio. Like, I'm talking like the most basic GeoCities website, but it was before everybody had internet in their home. Huh, I did that, that missed me.

Also, another thing that missed me, boy, the diet books of the nine, I mean, Lord knows we're still doing crazy stuff around diet, but curing with cayenne.

this is selling for $337 on ebay because it's apparently a rare copy of the book curing with cayenne pepper by sam beezer with dr richard schultz who this i mean god the the optimism being displayed by i'm trying to figure out who this seller is on ebay who thinks that they're going to get $337 for curing with cayenne because it's a because it's a rare copy of this book Good luck with that.

Sorry that I can't find. You know, I realize I didn't digitize it because I'm such a, like, I only had half of this featurette. You didn't have the complete thing. And so I didn't want to put it online and just have it cut off midway, which actually now seems really charming. But I'm going to just look up online Clint Eastwood CD-ROM. It looks like, okay, you can buy it on eBay. Clint Eastwood CD-ROM collects it.

The same person who's selling Curing with Cayenne?

It looks like it. Yeah, they have zero stars. Starwave might have been the production company behind it. Okay, yes.

And again, this looks like it's a game. Eastwood PC game slash documentary, but that's not what we're talking about.

Somebody might have just categorized it as a game in the modern world because we don't know how to talk about these things. Let me see if I can.

Also, by the way, Clint Eastwood apparently was a country singer. I'm now deep in the Clint Eastwood CD world complete Clint Eastwood singles and more 1961 to 62 And I would love to play some of this music, but I'm sure that we're gonna get pulled down Clint Eastwood was definitely the Don Henley of his time and is not messing around with the copywritten material

You don't think he has a lax attitude towards what what he owns

You don't see Clint Eastwood just being like, you know I just want the whole world to be able to experience this That's an absolutely terrible Clint Eastwood impression. Also, Clint Eastwood's still alive. Now, that's remarkable. Yes. He is not a young guy at all.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man, it's not from a female.

All right, email or V-mail before we get out of here. I mean, last week we didn't really do emails or V-mails because people were calling in. That was the listener interaction piece. But now we're back to the regular thing. Are there any emails or V-mails that you want to jump into?

There is. There's something I've been wanting to play for you. Now, this is going back a ways in our voicemail line. I've been hanging out of this for quite some time. I believe, I mean, this is weeks ago, you and I were talking about cringey celeb interactions we've had where the cringe is on us. I mentioned, like, meeting the guitarist for Fugazi in college and like trying to be too cool for school around him. I can't remember exactly what your example of this was, but I think listener Jack will mention it. But this story from Jack about not necessarily knowing how to act around celebrities and being too nonchalant about it is, this has been living in my head since I heard it.

Hey Luke, hey Andrew, this is listener Jack in Honolulu. Listening to your discussion about celebrity encounters and not wanting to let on that you think they're very cool and they're excited to be talking to them. My wife and I used to live in Boise, Idaho. And at the time, I was working very, very long hours. And I almost never made it home for dinner and pre-dinner television. But one night, made it home in time to watch Jeopardy, about which I was very excited. So we were watching Jeopardy. And then there's a knock on our front door. My wife goes to answer it because I'm watching Jeopardy. And she says, hey, I think it's Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad fame, which was still on television at the time and was my favorite show. And I was like, what? And so we go to the door, and it's Aaron Paul and his wife and his cousin, who he says used to live in our house in Boise. And I was a little bit shell-shocked. I was a little bit annoyed to not be watching Jeopardy. And I was a little bit just didn't know what else to do. So I kind of said, oh, cool. And then we just kind of looked at each other, and it was so clear that they wanted to be invited in to take a look around his cousin's old house. But I just kind of stood there, and the flex just kind of stood there because, you know, I was a huge racing band and Aaron Paul fan and wasn't sure what I was doing, but I think was trying to back a weird play I was making maybe. But anyway, we just stood there for a while, and then he said, okay, I guess we're going to go then. And as the door was closing through the crack, I just said, hey, I'm a big fan, as I closed the door in Aaron Paul's face. So that is one story about my best friend, Aaron Paul, and that reminds me of what you guys were talking about there. with Jeff Tweedy and Bugatti. All right, power out. Bye.

Wow. That would live in my head, too.

I mean, the idea, the fact that this listener

was both a fan of breaking bad you know what i mean actively at the time it isn't like this was 10 years before breaking bad came out and aaron paul was you know doing commercials or something in la like the idea that you it'd be like if we were watching you know i'm watching the wire and idris elba shows right randomly at my house it'd be like i would think i was in having like either a dream or a seizure right like if i'm watching if i'm into breaking bad and then aaron paul if jesse what's his last name on the show pinkman anyway if jesse pinkman was that great poll andrew i think i'm right about that if jesse pinkman was like standing outside my door i just i wouldn't know how to process it like of all of the houses in boise yeah but i'm also surprised i'm i you know look we all just do weird things when we're overwhelmed i'm a little bit surprised that jack did not invite them in because that's the standard thing when someone shows up and says oh my you know this was my grandparents house or whatever i think it's fairly typical to say oh well do you want to come take a look yeah i mean i'm not trying to pile on i'm not trying to make

jack feel worse about i think a lot of it does have to do with i mean first of all the disorienting nature of wait what's going on and also you're in and i think jack you really set it up it sounds like it was a really busy time in his life and i think you know like he had jeopardy to watch jeopardy to watch but like it reminds me a little bit and he didn't go into so much detail because nobody goes into as much detail as I do. But when I was really, really busy in Los Angeles working the job at the radio station there and then doing TBTL with you, I described the sensation I had with people that maybe you can associate with, Luke. I would be driving home and knowing I had X number of hours before I could fall asleep and just cherishing those hours and thinking, okay, well, I got to get home And then I got about three hours to sleep that I can be awake before I have to go to bed to start all this shit over again in the morning. And it just sort of felt like I was on a never ending treadmill. And so those moments, those little moments where I could do nothing were very important to me. And so, you know, it sounds like Jack might have been in a little bit of that sort of mindset of just kind of like he was grumpy because he was being pulled away from his me time of watching Jeopardy, which felt special to him in the moment. also i think it's just very probably confusing and and and and sort of uh there must be a mental schism there as you're looking because jesse pinkman and aaron paul i sort of feel like there's a lot of crossover there in presentation yes you know yeah they they seem yeah it's

definitely like that seems like the same person you know on or off camera i wonder if if it would have been a non-famous person here's my theory if it would have been a non-famous person listener Jack would have let them in because it would have been less overwhelming it would have just been like if it was just complete randos and they're like hey this used to be like my grandparents place or whatever you go oh well come on in but like your brain is so confused by the Jesse Pinkman-ness of it the Aaron Paul-ness of it that you just go into a weird mode yeah I could see

that I could also see like you mentioned Idris Elba which is like you know just to grab an example but there is also something very different about how those two carry themselves I feel like like I feel like if you're around Idris Elba you're like like you're worried that Aaron Paul might actually steal something from your house or just want to just hang you know what i mean whereas he just sort of it has a regal sort of like um yes sort of standing or stature yeah no i mean

it just was a weird example to pick i guess because yeah he he seems i mean it's the accent and all of that but like yeah aaron paul does seem like he would probably be like what do you have in the fridge yeah right he would just be but then i mean again everything i'm saying probably makes listener jack feel worse which uh i don't want to do but like you could if you would have let him in then you could have then it would have been okay to ask him for some selfies then you just like could get some really great pictures of aaron paul just like in your bathroom or in your kitchen or just doing aaron paul things in your house sure i mean that's a that's a that's a tough ask could aaron could we get you out of those clothes and into that you don't start there you don't start there there's some photos you get some pretty epic pictures of Jesse Pinkman in your actual house that would be kind of pretty funny to have but anyway

well somewhere on here and I'm sorry I'm a little distracted and I think you can tell I'm a little distracted Luke it's driving me a little bit bananas somewhere in this drawer that I'm rattling through I have a little thumb drive that I'm quite convinced has that CD-ROM tape on it so I will see if I can find it I will tack it find that for tomorrow okay I was going to tack it to the end of the show but you're right if I can you'll want to hear it so I'll play it for you on tomorrow's show

if I can find it I'd like to hear it, too. And I know you've got to get out of here because you've got Gatorade to pound and blood to be separated from and diagnoses to receive.

And then get angry at and then stamp out of.

And then go to Bad Alberts and then just make it all go away. Unfortunately, I can't.

I have something after this. I would love to do. I keep on thinking of that. But, no, we will be dropping a new episode of Spotless this evening. So I'll be recording with Hannah this afternoon if you're into that kind of thing.

So, all right. Well, thank you, Luke. Thanks for putting up with all my rambling today.

No, not at all. I'll be thinking of you and hoping that you get some kind of good news out of this whole thing. Thank you. I'll give you an update. But if you need me, I'll just be here petting Gigi, which is not a euphemism. If you join the show late, that's a dog that I'm taking care of this week. All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. Again, thank you so much for last week and for supporting TBTL and for keeping this thing going. And we, we are absolutely so grateful for all of that. So we'll, you've got us to deal with for another year. That's right.

That's right.

Uh, have a great Monday, everyone. Take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall.

Good luck to all. Power out.