Muse

We got a bug, bug, bug, bug, baby, do the chillin' ball.

It's what it's in the air, you can't even cut it.

BOWL! Bat meets owl, it's BOWL!

My bow's so pretty.

Go ahead, paint your BOWL lips. BOWL!

We love you, BOWL!

And now, BOWL's for boys, too. But wait, there's more. BOWL also makes a perfect gift for your dad. Ha, ha, banana, love BOWL. It's great for teenagers, too. Ordinary people put up with BOWL every day. Your pets will look at Bowel. Anyone can tolerate Bowel for a few minutes. Put Bowel in the trunk of your car and forget it. Build a special room for your Bowel so no one can see it. And now, Bowel's perfect for throwing away. TBTL. Guess what day it is. Guess what day it is.

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

I'm slimy, I'm grimy, I need a shower, and I have a garbage situation.

I don't use foul language, and I don't like to hear anyone else use it either.

We're just a bunch of savages, right? We're not like your fancy California friends, your George Clooney and your California raisins.

This is ludicrous. Call me when you're good.

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a friday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live tastes like soot and hot water i'm hooked my name is

luke burbank i'm your host another day another victory for the og taking down the sweats

the impostors among us coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, another gorgeous day here in southern Washington. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. I don't know if you can tell just listening to this, but I am operating my audio system with my left hand, which is not my dominant hand. I don't usually do that, but it's because I need my right hand for petting Gigi, the standard black poodle who is still staying with me. That dog is barking and it's not my dog. She walked right over to me as the intro to the show was playing and was looking at me with a look that said, we need some serious head pets. And she was on my right side. So I'm doing that. I am going to see if I can be ambidextrous bringing you episode 4,253 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Diapers in the news. When did you find time to eat a diaper that you found on the beach and we're gonna talk about it uh the story of a mom-and-pop business selling um it's actually a diaper covers in the news but you get the idea and what happened when amazon really did them dirty in the most literal sense of the word also speaking of doing people dirty or maybe not i got a text from my neighbor yesterday i Just look to see if the sliding door is open, which it is. He's pretty far away. I don't think you can hear this, but I have been shadow boxing with this text message for the last, I don't know, 17 or 18 hours. I feel like he might need to calm down a little bit. Simmer down, Stu. So we'll talk about that as well. Oh, and we're going to talk to this guy, the longest running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He took a very circuitous journey to get here today, but he made it.

I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.

He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I hope this is a peaceful enough recording today. You heard some loud noises outside my window as we were sound checking. I thought it was the Blue Angels. It wasn't the Blue Angels.

But in fact, it was your house being painted blue.

That's right. I said, it actually is kind of being painted as sort of a grayish color. Did Genevieve, did she update you? I always forget that you have this inside track on the home improvements because you guys have your secret little text chain where she tells you everything that's going on in our land of fix-em-ups. But, yeah, we're getting our house painted.

And relationships.

Oh, do you guys go into relationship stuff?

Yeah, and it's not good.

Oh, I didn't.

I did not intend to become a shoulder to cry in, but I have. That's interesting. I didn't mean to have some offline conversations.

We are painting the house as sort of a grayish blue color that I'm excited about. In fact, I think that this is going to be a huge, I think this is, of all of the things we've done to our house since we've been living here, good and some bad and some deeply darkly secret, I think this is going to be the one that is going to have the biggest impact on just like how we feel about our house. Yeah, the curb appeal as it were. Exactly, yeah, which right now I'm a little bit bummed about because we're already in that tough time of month.

with the lawn where it's turned brown, but also it's long and scraggly. And because of various swellings and various joints, I haven't been out there mowing the lawn as much as I would like to. But it's already like the house. I love our little house, but this is the time of year where it sort of can easily look the roughest, right? Like the hedges are out of control. The lawn is giving me... It's mostly dandelion. It's just like dead and dandelion. And the house itself, I mean, the outside of this house is kind of an unattractive, I guess, like putty color. I mean, you've seen it. I don't know what you would call it. Just like, it's almost like a non-color. And also like people who had owned the place or taken care of the place before us had like spray painted a deck and not protected the house. Like the siding of the house has just been rough. And I'm very excited to get it professionally painted, a nice kind of darkish gray blue color with white trim. I think it's going to be, I think coming home is going to feel different. It's really going to pop, man. Yes, I'm very excited about this. But in the meantime, they are power washing the side of the house. I think they're past my little corner of the world here. But if you do hear some blue angels, no, it's much less exciting than that.

So they're power washing it today. And then I'm guessing they're going to come back tomorrow or Monday and then start actually doing the painting.

I think that I think the painting is supposed to begin today because it shouldn't take long to dry. And like they they got here like what, an hour ago, maybe an hour. like three quarters of the way around the house so i'm thinking that they're just gonna probably finish up the power washing the next 15 minutes or so and then maybe start painting and i don't know what their process is but i'm really hoping it's like a smashing pumpkins video

is the is there a smashing pumpkins video that involves house painting there is a smashing

pumpkins video where people are frolicking and painting a like a white ice cream truck a bunch of different colors but they're painting each other today is the greatest day i've ever known

are you familiar with that song i am is that song called okay but that's not the one that's called like 1979 no that one's called today okay okay yeah i'm hoping a 1990s era music video breaks out of your house but when it's all said and done they haven't gone completely crazy and like tie dyed your house yes because you're very specific about color for somebody who uh you know sort of describes himself as having a certain amount of face blindness and there are certain kind of visual things that don't register for you very much um i think color registers for you very strongly you

have you have real opinions about stuff like i do have real opinions about color exactly which is was that a was that a negosh between you and genevieve she wanted to paint it hot pink because she wants to have a um a ken and barbie themed why would i put ken first there the reason i put ken first there is because wow patriarchy much yeah do you know why though do you know what i'm thinking of right now so i wasn't sure if you had caught wind of this but canless you know oh i saw a

headline and honestly i couldn't even i know it's like seattle time it's like uh stop taking i don't i don't why did i get up early to be mad at canless today but it was like why is canless painted pink and i was like probably so it'll be in the seattle times the reason i said ken first

i'm just trying desperately to dig myself out of the patriarchy here is because i think it's called Like, they're calling it Kenless, maybe, instead of Canless, and it's a big Barbie-themed ball that they're having. Maybe it's even this weekend. I'm not sure. Tickets are $270 a person, which honestly is not that bad when you consider, like, you know, it's like I think it's all-inclusive. When you consider your usual bill there, that doesn't seem super over the top.

Do you know why I think they're on my list? And I don't think I've actually told you about this. because they low-key accused me of stealing a salt vessel when we went there for addy's birthday and i was very mad about it but i didn't want to get into it on the show because i don't want to i don't know why i just didn't want to create more i thought there was a chance they might hear it and i don't know they have they bring the salt out in these little like a black kind of very heavy black like vessel like it's it's small the size of what is it the size of um it's a kind of a maybe a two inch by two inch square and somehow when the table was getting cleared at one point because it's such a fancy place the table gets cleared like a million times and this

is a shaker right this is not a not a shaker it's not a shaker okay it's not a shaker it's like an

open thing you take a pinch okay okay it had somehow been knocked off the table i think by somebody who was clearing the table or maybe by me it's also very carpeted and plush there so somehow this thing had been knocked off the table totally unbeknownst to me or addy and then towards the end of the meal the server comes over and goes um we're gonna need that black salt vessel back and i was like great you should have it back it was like no we cleared the table and and we don't have it. And I was like,

well okay i don't know and then we just looked down on the ground and it was just right there at the foot of the table like it was just on the ground and i was so mad at them about that like i was considering like complaining or calling them but then i just didn't i don't know i didn't want to turn into a whole deal it was at his 30th birthday it was a special night but i think they have officially gone on my list over oh yeah so when i hear they're painting the place ken yeah exactly it was like i thought that escalated quickly like how about hey uh there used to be a salt thing here and now we can't seem to find it i'm just wondering is it maybe on the floor the most likely place it could have ended up as opposed to sir you're paying 700 or whatever for this dinner maybe don't start with you stole our salt vessel yeah that does seem like they

sort of like their tone was not like hey you know we seem to be missing a salt vessel it wasn't it

It was a hundred, and our server was lousy, too. He was just like, he wasn't good at his job.

Is he the one who came to you and broke this news, or was it a manager or something?

It was our server, who had been, I also just thought, not great the entire night. Like, that place is, I think, probably the most expensive restaurant in Seattle. And in my mind, it's like, okay, if you have the honor of being a server at the most expensive restaurant in Seattle, you need to then be the best server in seattle like where you're presumably getting the most money of anyone who does this job in seattle you need to be next level and this guy was not only next level he would have not been surviving in my mind he wouldn't have been thriving in a much less fancy place so that was just the undercurrent and then to start with we're gonna need that back was i mean yeah it was it was shocking to me i was really really

angry about it so who needs a movie sorry i just started slipping into um a drop there but um so how long did this occurrence happen in which the so this person comes over and says we're going to need that back and then there's a moment of confusion and then do you all look down at the same time does the server discover it under there do you who does addy say oh it's right here under

the table it was on my side of the table and i think it might have been the server or me it was just like literally i scooted my chair back and we looked and it was just sitting right there on

the ground did he apologize how then so this all takes maybe like a couple of sec maybe like less than a minute or whatever this whole interaction way less yeah less than a minute and then and it

was he doesn't say oh my my apologies no and that was the thing that really ticked me off was like like i felt very accusatory to me and then when we when we uh uncovered it in the most obvious place there was no like oh there it is great thank you it was just kind of like they i don't even know if he picked up i think i think maybe he came back with one of the people that job it is to clear the table like it was a good team effort and that person picked it up and then they and then it was like never mentioned again and also it's one of those places where the the tip is i think built in so which you know i'm not really a fan of trying to use the tip as a cudgel against the people that are working hard because also that also gets tipped down so there's probably somebody doing the dishes who if i had chosen to not tip somebody in the dish room also gets like you know kind of uh not paid what they should get paid and you were trying to save that person work by trying to steal this thing you're like one less salt vessel to to wash you're a hero of the people so i don't know i think i i didn't even realize it until this moment and this is what's so great about this program and why so many people love it it's a voyage of discovery even for us even for you and I like I didn't realize how mad I was at Canlis until I saw that headline why is Canlis pink and I was just like not today Canlis family and I think it was because of this salt shaker incident

what does John always call us the anti-capitalist or bad capitalist bad capitalist we're also like anti-promotionalists like we have fewer hey the only podcast that brags about having fewer listeners today than they did yesterday

and even fewer

tomorrow and even fewer tomorrow that's our commitment to you that listener was a was a 10 or i'm sorry that waiter was a 10 um but uh yeah so i mean you and i are like we we shy away from anything that sort of smacks of too much self-promotion i sort of feel like at least as far as the show is concerned and so you know i knew when i said you know i passed the building too and it was i think by the time on the e-line fully fully pink actually this time in an actual actual private motorized vehicle called a 2017 volkswagen by the way veves and i this is a totally change of topic um vives and i bought our volkswagen near the end of 2017 it was the only new car we've ever bought before off from like from a dealership it is now 2024 would you like to guess how many miles we have in our car the car that we also drove to the grand canyon and back

wow so take off like 2 000 miles for that trip if not more yeah

don't know yeah or just consider that there's maybe yeah okay i don't know how many miles maybe

uh so you've had you already told me this but you've had 2017 so wow so seven years

yeah about seven years um 20 000 miles shoot i should have set it up differently 30 so we are up to we're up to a nice handsome 30 000 miles that's still pretty low for a seven-year-old car

though is it not i guess you're right because my i just took my car into the dealership yesterday so I've actually been thinking about this. I'm at 45,000, but also my car's a 2021. Yeah, 2021. So I've done 45,000 miles on that thing in three years.

Yeah, and you don't drive all the... Well, actually, yes, you do. You have gigs and stuff. I do, because I kind of live in the middle of nowhere now. Back and forth to the airports and everything. Yeah, that's true. But yeah, Genevieve mentioned that to me.

So you saw Canlis was pink.

Yeah, and I just kind of like, I don't know. I was like, yeah, well, it's because they want that reaction from us, sort of. I also sort of thought it's sort of a shame. It's a beautiful building, and I don't think pink really suits it. well i know they'll just paint it back but um i don't know and then of course a couple of days later the seattle times was like this is why canless is pink and i'm like there you go

yeah yeah i mean i feel like they have done it they have a very um savvy i don't know if it's the ownership or some they have someone that does their pr that i feel like they've got the seattle times really wrapped around their finger when like during the pandemic they were doing like hot dogs or something and then you know it was the whole thing of we're closed on saturdays and like i just feel like anytime they do something it immediately maybe just because they're the fanciest restaurant in seattle so that's the privilege you get with that title but it just feels like there's always something going on with them and everyone's acting just like completely their minds are always totally blown by it and i'm like it feels like we're playing into their hands but again i only started feeling this way as of last february when i was there with my daughter for her birthday and then

And I get into this whole thing of the Seattle Times, too. Like, I have a lot of bias against the Seattle Times because they have a lot of, I consider bias in their reporting. Like, the Seattle Times, like, big news story on, like, Monday or, like, kind of big, maybe it was actually a weekend feature looking at, like, 10 years ago, the Seattle City Council passed a minimum wage law that affects restaurants that basically says, like, you can't take servers, tips into account when paying them their actual minimum wage. if i don't know if i explained that right but i think you know the story you used to be able to

pay servers less because you could factor in the fact that they get tips and that was no longer

the case yeah which is a good thing and also like we have a really i mean we have a this sort of snake eating his tail systemic problem in the city where the people who are serving guests in the city can't live in the city you know what i mean because it's so expensive to live here but if you work here you can't earn enough to live here unless you have like 15 roommates or something in belltown so anyway they have this whole piece about it and all they do like the head from the headline to the focus of the article to everything is just like how this is going to be terrible for the restaurant industry and i can't remember if there was any represent like they only had one quote from somebody who is like a server who says yeah i can barely afford to live in the city and i work my ass off for 12 hours a day you know like it's all like everything the seattle times writes about is from the perspective of how it affects businesses they will do i joke around with my friends they will do like a whole story about like the impact of homelessness and all they do is talk to people who own homes and own businesses and it's like wait isn't this story about the people who don't have homes like how about the next time you have a business story you interview a bunch of homeless people about that because that's basically the same way you're approaching this story i think the times has gotten a little bit better on that aspect because they actually have a team dedicated to that important story now but like it is just amazing the the pro business especially kind of pro restaurant business bias that newspaper has

i'll tell you one server who's getting paid too much the guy who accused me of stealing that

salt shaker whatever he's making it's too much in my opinion wrong time for me to bring up a

pro labor argument thank you anyway i'm composing a rant and rave as we speak that would have been a great one rant would they would the seattle times publish my rant against canless for accusing

me of stealing a salt vessel no norm no more would they do that than they would post my rant about their coverage of the homeless crisis in seattle or their pro-business allegiances well okay speaking of weird dumb friday can we start over i don't like anything i've said so

far today i i i think you bring up some really valid points all right i mean i'm you know and and if we got into a conversation about what people are getting paid in seattle i was the one that took us there yeah and all right i also am i'm i've been thinking about this conversation we're about to have because i i it's one of those classics where i don't think the listeners are really going to side with me but i'm going to just go ahead and step into the breach of my own very sensitive nature so if you remember

When I had bought this house, but I wasn't living here very much. I was down in Portland The the yard and I kind of live on this hill and and I I guess own You know an acre or so of this hill which is kind of unusable to steep and kind of grassy and some of its wooded and We actually got a call. I don't think we ever played it We got a call from one of my neighbors saying hey You've got this hill that has got all this long dry grass on it it's a fire hazard and you've got this stuff called tansy growing on the hill and did you

i wasn't sure if you made it clear they called our tbtl listener line because they didn't know

how to get a hold of you told me about it you were like i think we got a voicemail from your neighbor of yours out at that house yep and i was um well first of all my thought was oh this is going to be rough because i've got a neighbor who is you know kind of one of these neighbors who's who's pretty vocal about their displeasure about what i'm doing on my private property but i chose to kill him with kindness and i like called him back and left a message and said i'm so sorry about that i will get right up there and take care of it and i did i came up i picked this tansy stuff which is this yellowish like i think it's a rag wart or something and it is technically prohibited because it is in some cases um it could be bad for livestock so if i was also raising a herd of cattle i guess it would be bad to have it here but you know i i came up and i i took care of that and then i found my my guy jerry to mow down the whole hill and got it all taken care of and and and mended mended things with my neighbor you kind of became friends with that neighbor am correct about that and i think i consider us to be friendly yeah um but i i feel like i may have though how do i put this i have become very very sort of almost borderline obsequious to him in a weird way like so but by that i mean i've started like texting like for some reason i really want to stay on his good side and i don't know why that is because nothing has really happened but like sometimes you know um because i've got all this debris and all this wood that we've torn out of the walls and stuff sometimes we would burn that wood um to get rid of it um and there's an area that's safe and you know kind of out in the open where you can do that and people do that stuff all the time out here so i uh have done that but then i've been like texting and being like hey i'm gonna burn some wood just to let you know you know like that's what's going on and And he'll be like, okay, thanks. And then I basically had this big pile of debris that I wanted to burn, but I thought, I'll just check in with him to see if this is gonna stress him out.

How long ago was this a burning story?

I'm gonna say two months ago or something.

Okay, this season, okay.

Yeah, and so instead of just going out there and just burning this stuff, I texted him, I said, like, hey, I was going to go ahead and burn this stuff, but here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to have a hose with me that will be ready to go. I'm going to do a small amount. I'm going to be really monitoring the situation. And I said something like, oh, and also just so you know, I'm getting my hill mode. It's just I'm waiting for the guy or something. And he was like, or no, I think I said, I go, unless you don't want me to do the burning, in which case I could probably have it hauled. But, of course, hauling it cost me $800, right? So burning it free, hauling it, and also fun, by the way. Burning it, or rather hauling it $800, and a question as to if I'm in the Illuminati from Lonnie.

And this burning thing, he's never talked to you about burning before. This is you just being a neighbor, just saying. Overly neighborly, I think. And there's no, you said this is about two months ago, we remember, I remember.

I don't think I was in a burn ban. I don't think I could do it now.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. If it was a couple of months ago, you weren't in a burn ban. Because we remember, we, the TBTL audience and co-host Faithful, remembered Lonnie, yeah, that was about a month ago, that it actually was getting hauled away. So this would probably be a couple of weeks before that.

Yeah, and I had scheduled it in advance of that. So I'm pretty sure it was during a time where there wasn't anything legally prohibiting me from doing this. I was just, again, for some weird reason, really wanting to make sure that I didn't stress my neighbor out. And so he comes back with, and I'm kind of setting it up like, hey, I'm going to go ahead and burn this and be really careful. Unless, like, you want me to have it hauled away. He knows, he must know that it's not free to have stuff hauled away. And he's like, thanks for the mowing, and also hauling it away would be appreciated. I'm like, all right. Now, I'm the one that offered. This is, by the way, very much how I operate. I will offer to do something, and then I'll be mad if somebody takes me up on the offer to do it. Because it was probably not a real offer. But I was like, okay. So, you know, I go ahead and have the stuff hauled away. I get the hill mowed. and i feel like i'm just neighbor of the year here i'm staying ahead of all of this i'm not waiting until he

complains to me. And then I get a text yesterday, neighbor, it would be good if you removed your tansy before it goes to seed. There is at the bottom of the hill, Andrew, some blackberry bushes that Jerry, like the brush hogger couldn't get all the way down to the bottom of the hill. So like 90% of the hill is mowed. There's a little area by the forest that's just got some blackberry growing there's like I don't know 20 of these yellow sprouted tansy things and I'm like really dude like you I mean I mowed this whole thing because I don't legally have to mow my hill I like it longer actually I think it looks better it also costs me everything is why is everything $800 it also costs me $800 to mow the hill like why did I do it because I don't want him to be annoyed and then he's noticing like when's the last time a herd of cattle moved through this area like i see this stuff growing everywhere right now like it is proliferating in the area that i live in and it's i just felt like i am working so hard to be a good neighbor and like he's just like what are you sitting on your deck looking over at the 15 yellow sprouted things that are no danger to anyone that now i have to go down to the bottom of the hill and rip out by hand like I just was

and there's something about the idea of him watching you rip it out you're going to feel like a little like you're getting bossed around

that too probably there also is a very weird like this guy's a very he's a good dude but he's a kind of a sort of a reserved guy who's a bit older than me so there's some kind of bizarre paternal dynamic as well but I just was like man I am like I just feel like he could and by the way for the record I could have also gotten way less lucky in the neighbor department too Like, here's where I went yesterday. I tried to think of all the things he does that annoy me, and there's, other than this text, nothing. I was trying to get my ammo ready for, like, well, yeah, but you also do this. And I was like, no.

You could be like, well, it would be nice if you didn't be receptive.

Yeah, didn't carefully manicure your gravel all the time. I mean, this guy's at number one occupation in life. i believe he's a retiree is making sure the gravel in his driveway is level and plentiful every time i look over he's got his like skid loader out and he's like dumping gravel or flattening gravel it's a big it's a big part of the lifestyle out here but the truth of the matter is he's an ideal neighbor like he does not ever do anything at all that is annoying to me um but i was trying to find something yesterday so that i could in my own mind feel superior but as it uh As it works out or as it works itself out, I will just be, after the show today, down at the bottom of the hill, ripping out this yellow stuff so that it does not go to seed and then pollute his yard, I guess.

I am a little surprised about the fire text that you sent him. When I say fire text, I don't mean like, that was a fire text, bro. So, I mean, you are traditionally and on the record as an ask forgiveness instead of permission kind of person. I am. And so had he ever approached you about burning before? Is this even a conversation you guys have ever had? You were just like just thinking, you know what, is it kind of near his property? Is that what prompted you to kind of say in advance that you were planning on doing this?

It's, I mean, it's not near a part of his property that is particularly fire-prone, I guess. I mean, it's by a big, like, road or something. I don't know why. That's, I think, why I'm so butthurt about this, because I am a ask forgiveness, not permission guy. I just kind of do what I want, but for some reason, my relationship with this guy is very much one of wanting to be an ideal neighbor to him. Also, you know what I think part of it is? i noticed that they have a opb member sticker on their car like and i was like they probably listen to live wire or at least are aware that it exists so i feel like i'm i'm not just a neighbor but i'm an idea to them this is all in my own head by the way they might not even i mean i guess he knows that i do tbtl because he called the voicemail line once but like i think maybe i'm also in my own head about what their perception of me is more than i am about my other neighbor who i don't think would know a oregon public broadcasting from a oregon state beaver you know like so i think that that's part of it i don't know i am for some reason i can't exactly figure out why overly concerned with this guy's opinion of me as a neighbor and having worked really hard to have a good image with him including asking questions like hey do you mind if i do this and him being like i'd rather you didn't and then me going okay like after all that it's like bro you're really clocking these like 10 weeds like this is really this is this is really ruining

your life right back you wouldn't say that to jess hazel would you

whoa i had to look that up is jess hazel that is still the morning edition host just became the

newly minted okay gotcha norcross went to afternoons everybody knows that andrew i just

googled that i was really hoping i i really should have pulled a crystal ligori or a jen chavez that's the real heads know well i mean that gets us into something that might be more interesting uh content for today and i don't know if we still have time we've chewed up a lot of time with me alienating fans of the Seattle Times and Canlis but I did send you the video that I brought up earlier this week it's like half of a news story from 1995 about a special cd-rom retrospective of Clint Eastwood's life yeah that cuts off midway through it was like locally produced it was one of those like probably probably nationally managed but locally produced little feature about this I I believe, Microsoft CD-ROMs celebrating Clint Eastwood. And again, this was in 1995. Who knew that that would be the halfway mark of his career? And you said, I came up and you were like, you were unfamiliar with the idea of CD-ROMs in this manner being sold in the 90s. So I sent it to you. By the way, I have edited it. You pointed out last night that I accidentally had this marked as Como television. Oh, that was you. Oh, sorry.

I thought, I didn't, I didn't realize, I wouldn't have been so kind of harsh about it. I thought that somebody else had mistitled it as Como, and you were just sending it along.

No, no, this was literally something that I found on an old VHS tape. It was like after the 1995 ALCS, like, Mariners. Now I'm already forgetting what that would have been the Mariners, I think, Cleveland series. Anyway, I have tapes that I found at a garage sale that have, like, complete coverage of that era. And then after the games, they just kept on recording and, like, let the, like, I guess, 11 o'clock news or whatever it is roll. And most of it was Mariners related But the end of this one news broadcast Was half of a story about this Clint Eastwood DVD Or I'm sorry CD-ROM Can you now Does that remind you of the CD-ROMs Of our past? Or is this all new to you? This idea of entertainment CD-ROMs

I think that this sort of missed me at the time I do love the story Is brought to you by John Procaccino though Who loomed very large in my mind He was the entertainment reporter? Yes, but he also was an actor in Seattle, and I just thought, wow, that is the coolest thing.

What the hell? What the hell just happened? Did a light fixture fall? My clock just fell from my wall.

Now, the house is being power washed, but I would like to tell you that this clock does not hang on one of the walls that are part of the outside of the house. This was hanging internally in my studio. It must be that I don't feel my house vibrating right now, but my my house must be vibrating from the power washing. And my goddamn round, like analog wall clock just came tumbling down. It's probably broken.

I was going to say it's the ghost of John Procaccino, but he's very much still alive. Well, then it's the real John Procaccino, which is the real John Procaccino getting into a role.

Oh, my goodness. Okay, I'll let you take over. Sorry, that shocked the living hell out of me.

Back to your Clint Eastwood CD-ROM situation. I didn't know that this was a thing, but everything about this video that you sent me is, I mean, this is just 1995. This is just ripped directly from my teenage years. Although, interestingly enough, I do believe that when this thing aired, I had a one-year-old child, which is truly wild to think about. But it's like this particular newscast, I love Steve Rabel. I love Margaret Larson. I love John Procaccino. Like, this is very, very kind of a strong sense of memory for me, this video that you sent.

Should we just take a listen to it? It's only like a couple of minutes long here. So this, again, this was literally something that I found on a VHS tape that I got at a local garage sale a couple of years ago. This is at the very end of the tape.

Superstar Clint Eastwood was planning to write an autobiography when Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen approached the actor-director and suggested a different kind of storytelling.

He says, why not put your life and career on a CD-ROM disc? That was the suggestion, and it worked. Cowboys Entertainment Specialist John Procaccino now with more on that.

Autobiographies of the stars are a thing of the past. Why when you've got CD-ROMs?

And he was right. There is never an autobiography of a star written again. Again. Since this time.

That's what has helped put together a comprehensive, interactive look at his life and career that begins on May 30, 1930, the day he was born, to the present. It includes all 53 of his films, old TV appearances, old commercials, and for both film and computer buffs, it's a blast. It's a party. The cyber-viewing party for the media. Is that a reference? It's a party? Is that a reference to a Clint Eastwood line or story?

Not that he says it. He does famously say, go ahead, make my day. It's a party.

It sounds like he's singing, it's a party. And I don't know what that's a reference to.

It's a party. The cyber-viewing party for the media and the computer industry to get a first look at Eastwood.

They're showing a big ballroom where people are milling about,

but then there's these huge Microsoft desktop computers sprinkled around, and people are kind of scrolling through the CD-ROM.

Active CD-ROM program that has clips from all 53 of the actor-director's films. Go ahead. Make my day. A party, because it's a party. According to Kelly Curtis, the CD-ROM's producer, Eastwood, explores more than just the movies he's made.

It's a two CD-ROM product full of hundreds of audio and video clips it goes throughout his professional career but also his personal life but the most important thing about it is it has in-depth interview about clint talking about his life his co-stars and the

movies he's made we're seeing like a timeline in the cd realm that's kind of a timeline of his

work and it's interactive you can click on it and watch his appearances on rawhide apparently mr ed as well. Please get in the wagon, ma'am.

Take your dirty cowherding hands off

of me. Over the past five years, there have been literally dozens of CD-ROM programs on the market that cover the entire film industry. But Eastwood, the interactive CD-ROM, is the first program dedicated...

And we'll never know what it's dedicated to. Did another clock just fall off the wall? We'll never know what it's dedicated to because then it cuts to a clip of Norm charlton walking the sheriff walking off the field after a mariner's victory in the playoff run

god that is great tape so yeah i thought it might i i love that's why i go through these vhs tapes and i feel like you would enjoy the clips more than i would because for me it's me like filling in gaps of my of my seattle history knowledge whereas this must be just like this must live in your bones majorly so when you brought up this Clint Eastwood thing the other day was it because

you had been inputting this tape and it reminded you or did you know about this Clint Eastwood thing independent of this and then happened to find it on this VHS tape no no I don't know why

this came up on the show but this was something that I just found on the end of a VHS tape like a random VHS tape that I got at a garage sale that had a bunch of Mariners coverage on it and news reports on it and this was on the end of one of those and I was probably digitizing this Like, I'm going to say last summer I stumbled on this and I showed it to Veeves and we thought it was funny. But the news report kind of cut off midway through. So I had not uploaded it to YouTube or anything. But then you said something on the show the other day that reminded me of CD-ROMs. I don't know why we got on that topic. And I started blabbing about this. So I went back to my little like kind of thumb drive here and I found the piece of tape and I uploaded it to YouTube just for you last night.

Thank you. That was very thoughtful and it absolutely paid off. I love everything about that tape.

Yeah, it's pretty good. And now you know about CD-ROMs.

I do. All of that technology is so funny because if I would have watched that at the time, I would have thought, we're never topping this. Like, this is it. We've achieved the highest possible accomplishment when it comes to entertainment. And there will never be anything better than this. And now I look at it and I think, like, what a bad idea.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's funny because at the time we didn't have the like, this is literally proto Internet. Like this teaches us how to use the Internet. Right. Exactly. Like, oh, my gosh, there's like clips from every one of his movies. Like, I mean, now you can like get access to every one of his movies. But then it was just like you get a clip of every movie he ever appeared in. It just seemed like an endless font. But it literally was endless. It was literally finite on this disc. Right. And now but it kind of taught us about clicking and pointing and stuff like that. Somebody wrote this already garnered a comment on YouTube from somebody who wrote, I saw that a 30 year old career retrospective CD-ROM of a man who is still working to this day is wild. They never even saw the mule back then or Gran Torino or I would add him talking to an empty chair.

Yes, there was still so much of Clint Eastwood story to be ROM.

Exactly. Which he's done working now, right? I mean, does he cast his Skeletor in some sort of He-Man reboot? Hey, now. Some offense. I literally have zero qualms about making fun of Clint Eastwood.

Was that at the RNC when he did that chair thing?

That is my recollection of it. Even that's going back a ways now.

Yeah, that was Truman was running, right? Yeah, that's my understanding of it. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. There's that old sound effect.

I was wondering what we were doing there. I wasn't sure if we were going into music for your weekend.

You know, I just don't want to end the week without our usual amount of diaper coverage. No, that's true. Also, I don't feel like we need to belabor this too much, but I did think this was an interesting story that I saw. saw it by way of pocket your and my favorite little compendium of things but i think it was in bloomberg business originally and written by somebody named spencer soper and it's a story of a family a husband and wife paul baron and a rachel baron and they had started this little company making washable swim diapers because they had which is basically i guess a diaper that you can swim in as opposed to a typical, you know, pamper or a disposable diaper, which if it gets wet, it's ruined.

But also because for, like, don't you ever, I mean, I don't think you spend a lot of time in public pools, Luke, but, you know, like, you'll see signs that say, you know, you cannot come into this pool with diapers. It's not just for, like, not getting the diaper wet, but also any kind of leakages or anything. So I'm assuming that you can, like, let your kids swim in a swimming pool with these.

Right, and they had bought one to use on their kid, and it didn't work very well. It was, like, uncomfortable for the kid, didn't fit right. So they thought, well, let's just make one that's a little better, and they did. And I guess they used their credit card to, you know, get the prototype made in, like, a company in China, some production facility. And they launched this little company, and it went really well. They were profiled in various places. they were trying to triple their sales by 2020 to get to three million dollars in these little swim diapers and they were like I said they were there were news articles written about them everything was going pretty well for them until there was a review that popped up on their Amazon account that said basically I ordered a swim diaper from these people and one showed up encrusted in poop and uh it was really gross and i would not recommend this product now what had happened was amazon somebody had purchased this swim diaper used it or put it on a child somehow this diaper this swim diaper was was put into use somebody actually crapped in it and then decided to return it to amazon but when it got returned it was never really checked out it just was put back on the shelf and put back into circulation. Like it came back in, it was probably somehow in the original packaging and somebody at an Amazon fulfillment facility just thought, okay, well we can put this back on the shelf and then it got sent to this new person and it was really gross. Now, this family had nothing to do with this. That's not how it works with Amazon. And they were mortified but they could not get Amazon to take the review down and it really torpedoed their business and now they say that they're basically having a hard time even being profitable because of the fallout from this bad review of someone saying they sent me a shitty diaper.

And, I mean, I don't want to take the fun out of the story. I don't think that it was actually encrusted. I think it was stains, right? Like, it had been, somebody had tried to clean it, but, like, whoever, like, returned it, I think, ran it through the washer.

There was a different one with stains. I think this one, I don't, I may have made up the word encrusted, but I do remember somewhere in this fairly long article the it they were they kind of upon second like reference to it made it sound like it was more than just stained to me but i can't actually grab that example right i see gotcha well okay well i

didn't mean to i didn't mean to um pump the brakes on the story you know this also appeared in the it was like reprinted in the seattle times earlier this week i think because of the like amazon slash seattle connection you know um and i don't i don't know for sure that i read the entire thing so i was just thinking in that first reference of it being like you know somebody was like this diaper had been soiled and like whatever um but what really yeah here's the word okay uh erin elizabeth

herbert a teacher from redlands california confirmed to bloomberg that she had left the review to spare other shoppers a similar experience the diaper arrived encrusted with feces okay and all right hadn't hadn't been washed she said my i apologize to you for questioning your And to the word encrusted, it really makes an impression on me. The term encrusted with feces doesn't slip out of the mind.

I was going to say things are not usually, like you never want anything to be encrusted with anything. But I guess things can be, are things encrusted with diamonds? That's the only positive use of the word encrusted that I could ever think of. Like if you say encrusted, if the next word isn't diamonds, I don't want to hear the next word.

word. I am out. The thing about this article that really interested me was just this whole idea of all of the stuff. I was going to say the shit, but in this case, literally, I guess the shit that we send back to Amazon. What happens to that? I assumed, and this is terrible, that it just went into a landfill. I didn't think that there was, because I feel like this is exactly what could happen, which is the people at Amazon, and I don't really fault the employees, the people at the fulfillment place or the return place or whatever most of the stuff they're seeing it's the first and last time they'll ever see that product there's not a swim diaper specialist there who knows exactly what to look like when i was trying to look for like when i was trying to bring that vacuum back to costco and i got the vacuum queen who immediately sized up that i was missing some of the attachments it's impossible for somebody at amazon to have a working knowledge of all of the products that get returned because they sell a billion different things so every time something comes in they're just looking at it and making their best guess as to if it is in okay shape to be sent back out and also it's so much stuff like the like a box could come in and it looks like it hasn't been open and they're like okay it's going back on the shelf and going back out i didn't think that there was any profitability in that i figured that everything just got through like the people selling stuff by way of amazon are just taking a risk that you're not going to try to return it because if you do try to return it it's like the whole thing loses all of its value

And I do wonder, having not read apparently the back half of this, if there's a difference between whether or not— You're encrusted with mistakes today on the show. I'm encrusted with disinformation. Lack of knowledge. I'm still—I mean, my clock just fell from the wall, Luke. Yeah, no, you're dealing with a lot today. You're not giving me the— No, that's—you've been through some trauma. The caution that I need. Um, but the, there may be different processes, whether you're buying something that is kind of Amazon brand or like, you know, kind of whether you're buying from a third party reseller that is using Amazon. And that's where the story kind of gets interesting and very frustrating. So Amazon has created this world where it's hard to compete online unless you use them as a marketplace. If you are somebody who's starting your own online retail business, right? like these folks are and in so many ways when it's going right it sounds like it's a great deal you're a small company you pair up with amazon they probably just ease so many various processes and probably make it so much more affordable for you to ship things out and for people to return things and just take a lot of that stuff off your plate it seems great but then when something goes sideways you are just stuck in the machine i mean i know you and i bring up the the the movie brazil a lot as an example of just like this dystopic idea of like you can't you can't do this until you fill out this form but we don't have those forms because you haven't done this just like the impossibility of just being sucked up into an ai either you're dealing with just like ai or people who are worse than ai just in this like negative feedback loop of just like well there's nothing we can do about that i'm sorry there's nothing we can do about that and even the quotes Like, finally, you know, a story like this, I mean, you throw a poopy diaper in there, it's going to kind of, like, gain more headlines than if this was, like, some sort of a small industrial part, you know, that sank some company. But, like, even the spokesperson from Amazon who gives quotes sounds as infuriating. Like, we have a process for our customers and small business owners to reach us and let us know if there is any issue with it. It's like, yeah, these people have been trying to reach you. It's like it's just they're in this like loop of it's like trying to call Comcast for help. And it's like you just get exactly just an unhelpful robot after an unhelpful robot. And we are giving more and more like we're handing more and more of our lives and power over this one company that if anything goes sideways, we have zero recourse.

Right. And that's exactly what happened to this family. apparently they spent literally months trying to get a human being at Amazon to recognize that this review was not fair to them because it had nothing to do with their product. It was how Amazon's return policy works. This though, Andrew, is the part of the story that really blew my mind. So the Bloomberg gets in touch with this woman, Erin Elizabeth Herbert, a teacher from Redlands, the one who received the diaper encrusted with feces. The Barons, this is the family that was selling the product, the Barons, quote, reached out to me and they said they were mortified and they offered to send me a new product, she said. They explained to me that Amazon handles all the returns and shipping. I always meant to go back and revise my review to reflect that, and life just got busy and I never did. You ruined their business because you couldn't take five minutes I also probably wouldn't have You couldn't take five five minutes to go fix the review or clarify or say this problem is with amazon like the idea of really i think the reason this struck me is because this is how life works right one person just kind of not remembering to do something can totally undermine an entire family's existence this person is blithely going through her life just thinking oh i got to go back and clarify that review thing and meanwhile these other folks over there are dying because of this review i don't think it was wrong for her to leave the review in the first place but there's just something about the casualness of like oh yeah i meant to go do that and then life got busy and i never did like that is just crazy to me if i were this couple i would have figured out where this woman lives and i would have driven to her house knocked on her door politely and said please

can with a laptop facing that's what i was gonna say i've brought this laptop it's already logged

in to like amazon could you please take five minutes and clarify this because it is killing

us larry although this system shouldn't hang on one comment like that i mean that's the thing you're right like hopefully this person should and you know if these people were if these um business owners were in direct contact with this customer and gave them all this uh extra customer service because of this mistake i'm sure that they tried this but they really need to say and emphasize this comment is destroying our business please remove it or update and explain what happened this is killing us um but it just shouldn't be this way it just shouldn't be that i mean if it is if this story is to be believed in the way that it is told one comment that is you know quite shocking to somebody i mean getting a dirty diaper in the mail is awful no i mean you understand why it would cause me to probably purchase a different brand of swim diaper i would probably sell my child i would just you know what and for that i am out um but i don't

want to risk it i don't want this person in my life who might create a scenario in which i get

a feces encrusted swim so anyway i i understand why that would be a very um powerful comment to leave and why it would float to the top as it were and why it would um impact the business but having said that this kind of gets into something that you and i were talking about a couple of weeks ago and i think you're even more maybe um in tune to or anxious about the idea of of comments really kind of sinking a business without the context for it because who are the people who usually leave like customer review comments it's people who are more often than not super angry

yes the loudest voices are typically the people who are the most disappointed and also the most prone to i can't think of the last i mean not since i left that review on canless's website have I left a bad review for a place, which by the way does raise the question, should I go to their website and say okay, it's all cool that they painted it pink but you know, they will accuse you of stealing the salt vessel. Yeah, don't get anywhere

near the vessel. And

my stake was encrusted with judgment

from the server. I was really hoping you were going to say diamonds.

Alright, let's do, Andrew, what is possibly

our last music for your weekend i don't know i don't even know what yeah i mean um i was thinking like maybe after the thon we just because music for your weekend is getting us not i wouldn't say in trouble but it's causing some issues with us not being on all platforms but um watch we'll get so many more listeners now because they're like oh no it's going away but the problem here luke is the song that i want to play for you i only heard once i'm looking it up now i turned on the radio the other day and they were talking about something i didn't care about on the sports station if you can believe it and by the way we still haven't had our tay oscar talk you and i at some point we need to have the tay oscar talk but now is not the time to do it there is a point in every boy's life

where he needs somebody needs to give him the tay oscar hernandez talk i i so i was like you know

what i'm sick of listening to this i'm like such a um i'm just such a i get stuck in my habits in this way it's just like oh i'm listening to this interview on 710 espn i'm actively thinking like i don't care about this person i don't care about anything anybody's saying right now but i don't change how dare you say that about el hombre say what you want about el hombre like that's a good example of branding branding and and programming that i don't necessarily like but i understand why it's sticky like i don't turn that off like i might think sometimes like this guy is playing this character of this jabroni that i totally don't like but he does bring a certain energy and i do listen to it it's like they were interviewing some like former star athlete who i was unfamiliar with and i'm sure he was on the show because like these athletes now will like get some sort of deal with like a razor blade company or maybe some charity and then they do a bunch of interviews and and um it's part of their spawn con i don't know it's very confusing and very boring.

And then I realized, wait a second, I am now a proud paying member of the SiriusXM community. Why don't I see what's going on over there? So I bop on over to SiriusXM and I find myself on a station here.

Kixi was playing a CD-ROM of Clint Eastwood. Kixi was right. Let me go to Sirius.

But weirdly, this one came out in 2023 and it actually did include Gran Torino. Yes. But I am, I'm sorry, I'm stalling here because what I did, Luke, was I heard a song that I like on a radio station called Attitude Franco, which sounds like something that you would be very into.

Is that an Ani DeFranco reference?

No, I believe it is a French-Canadian, I think it's a station that focuses on French-Canadian music.

You can, but it's called Attitude Franco?

It's called Attitude Franco, I believe.

That's so close to Ani DeFranco. It is. I just moved some of the syllables around.

Attitude Franco. Okay. I can give you more attention now because I was like, what I did was, I don't know if you see this. When I hear something on satellite radio that I want to look up later, I take a photo of my dashboard with my phone. And so I have never gone back and listened to this. I just heard it in the moment. I'm like, ooh, this is a bop. I should go back and listen to it on Spotify and see if it's worth playing for music for a weekend. So I'm going to play it here now. I know nothing about this person. I told you my journey into hearing it. It looks like this is off of a 2016 record, and it's all in French. I'm really setting myself up for failure here. Love it. I know. I'm really kind of stepping on your toes. It looks like the artist is Arian Zita, Z-I-T-A, Arian Zita. And I'm going to absolutely butcher the pronunciation. Soyons Savages is the best I will do on that and maybe look it up phonetically. Anyway, I heard this in the car the other day. I heard like the middle and the end of it. I liked it. I hope the beginning's good because I'm going to be hearing it with you now for the very first time. This is why Music for Your Weekend is ending. Not because of copyright, but because of everything that I've done in the past three and a half minutes. My apologies. This isn't the beginning I was expecting.

Thank you. It looks like you might be Googling over there.

I'm trying to Google to find out more background of this performer, but everything I can find on her is in French. I don't know. Were you Googling around too?

I'm Googling the guy that I'm going to tell you about in a minute just to give you a little more information. Anyway, I do like that. I do like that song, yeah. I'm just a sucker for anything that's in French. But the funny part is when she switches to English, I'm like, all right, we get it. Let's go back to the French. Because there's a mystery around the French. I don't know what is being said, so it seems exotic and cool and meaningful. And then that actually happened when Francois Hardy passed away. And she had this one particular song That was like her kind of trademark song And I think I may have Played it On Music for Your Weekend, I can't remember But I went and found the English version And the lyrics are incredibly banal

I would expect it from that era especially

And it's so beautiful, it's such a great song And I'd only heard it in French And I had no idea what she was singing about And then the English version is like Why does everyone else have a boyfriend but not me? Basically the song And I was like, let's go back to the French version I like the not knowing.

I do like that song. When that guitar kicked in, I told you I had not heard the beginning of the song. This was like four or five days ago that I'd heard it, and I didn't even remember it. I was like, oh, no, what am I playing here? But as soon as the melody sort of kicked in, I do like it. And I do think I'm right that she is from, I think, Quebec or the Quebec area. So there you go.

the song that I would like to play is does have some swears in it so just everybody prepare for that has the f-word in it it's from a band or a guy playing under the band this is Lorelei I'm wondering if that Lorelei is a reference to Gilmore Girls because I think that was the name one of the characters on Gilmore

girls um or maybe not but it's a guy named nate amos and uh he's in a bunch of different things um but this is one of his projects and of course i found out about it from my daughter uh she describes it i think accurately maybe we should have her take over music for your weekend on her podcast she says this is like the magnetic fields meets elliot smith meets the postal service meets mj lenderman meets youth lagoon so pretty happy yeah right so those and those are all bands that i'm listening to a lot lately because of the recommendation of my daughter i think you're gonna like this song again it does have a swear in it but can we play i'm all bleeped up by this is lorelei

you little sick thing you had your fun you had your dad like you always said you would Baby, you can hear the bass and the pounding of the drum Yeah, you're gonna bang it out cause you're sick, so good Like, you hit the gas, yeah, your heart's all playing You cut the line, baby, there's no more tears You know some people wanna go, yeah, they wanna run away But you're all fucked up and you wanna stay here with me You have a sick thing, you had a good fun You cut the line, baby, there's no more tears You know some people wanna go, yeah, they wanna run away I only wish this song was in French.

That'd be the only way it could be better for me.

Then we wouldn't have to bleep it.

Yes, exactly. I don't even know how to say the F word in French. I don't know how to say shit. Mared. I could say there was a diaper encrusted in Mared.

Is that diamonds?

Yes, that is.

Great, fantastic.

Our listener recommendation, it's good, right? Our listener recommendation comes from listener Chris, who says, Hey, my dudes, Kim Deal has a new song out. This is very relevant to your interest, Andrew, I think. Kim Deal has a new song out, and it fixes one of the great problems in modern music, which is not enough trombone. The song is called Coast. So I thought we'd play this on behalf of listener Chris. Coast from Kim Deal.

I'm looking forward to hearing this.

Yeah, it's a really good song.

I saw the email come in, I think, yesterday or the day before, and I'm like, oh, yeah, I've got to check that out. And I never did. So this will be my introduction to it. Great.

And I'm not even a Kim Deal head the way you are, but I really like this song. Nice. All right, that is going to be how we wrap up the show today and bring us to the end of the broadcast week. And I just want to say thanks again for spending all this time with us. We'll be back here on Monday with more imaginary radio for you. In the meantime, have a great weekend. Have a great Friday. Oh, by the way, Andrew, I don't know if I mentioned this, but the Mariners are, quote, fired up for the second half of the season.

Oh, have they been working on their swings?

They've been retooling their swing and they're fired up. Wow, that was what a quote. How did you get a Mariner to go on the record as being fired up for the second half of the season?

I don't think that you – these next three days are going to be very hard for Mariners fans, I believe.

I am going into it with extremely low expectations. But the good news is my mom will be here screaming at the television. So I'll know what's going on wherever I am on the property pulling Tansy.

She's going to be excited just to see it televised. Doesn't she watch the little play-by-play?

They are the only people who somehow got a better, like Root Sports showed up in their cable package. Lord knows they wouldn't pay extra for it.

Oh, I thought she was watching the At-Bat thing. Okay, great. She was last year. Great.

Alright, here's the last five seconds of a Kim Deal song for your weekend Please remember, no mountain too tall And good luck to you all

Kids on the coast Clearly, all my life I've been foolish Tried to hit hard, but I blew it But it don't even matter It's just human to want a way out It's human to want to win All that's known is they were gone Staggering throughout the land power out