Muse

And Old Gus is the biggest catfish in the pond. Legend has it, the only bait that'll catch Old Gus is a piece of Old Gus himself. So every time they catch him, they cut off a little piece of him so they can catch him. Now, how did the very first person catch Old Gus? Well, that's a story for another time, right now. TBTL!

I saw a woman psychiatrist, and she said I was OCD, one cool dude. and she understands the way i think right now and everything's cool everything's cool pathetic everybody's happy and i'm happy too i don't even know what that means no one knows what it means

but it's provocative uh they said you know what we need to have a third interview with you because

the notes from the social workers that you seem anxious high-strung and eccentric yeah that's what i do

that's the cornerstone

it's the business plan and we've become great friends i mean close we'll just sit in the front room and we'll sit there he'll walk he'll go to the front door kind of knock on the door and then sit down then i'll sit then he stands and he's out in the front then he'll come in we just sit there and he'll stand and i'll sit and then then i stand and you sit and then we're both We're looking at each other and we're just nodding, like a couple of nodders, right? Let's get to the jokes.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Very demure. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Very mindful. Coming to you once again from Nashville, Tennessee, the music capital of the United States. Your voice is like a combination of Fergie and Jesus. I mean, I guess if you're talking about a certain kind of country music. But this is a fun place. There is a lot going on. There was not a lot going on from my end of the recording for yesterday's show. And I just want to apologize for being so, so low energy. I had, of course, taken a red-eye flight. I hadn't gotten very much sleep. Sleepiness is the most common side effect. But I am so awake and enthusiastic and rested. I think I slept maybe 11 hours last night. And I am so ready to do today's episode of the show. Let the fun begin. Buckle up, friends. It's episode 4,000. Two hundred and seventy two in a collector series. My many hours of sleep allowed me to do the ultimate flex in a party town this morning. Just about as you know, you know, as listeners of this show, I know a little something about being smug. I've been smug almost my whole life, babe. But I feel especially smug when I do this one thing in a party town. And we'll talk about that. Speaking of party towns or at least dive bars.

Am I drunk? No. Am I a taxi? Maybe.

Andrew has some thoughts on what's going on with the dive bar culture in Seattle, Washington, and we will find out about that. And we'll find out whose birthday, a.k.a. Blur's Day, it is.

It's my birthday today.

When we do the Blur's Day messages. This is, by the way, the time when I introduce the longest-running co-bro of the show. I do this each and every episode. He is best known for his depictions of the tall ships. and because we do video tape or video record or whatever we call it these days, thank God I'm not helping out with a high-tech cloud-based conference today. Because we film these things, he has started to really work on his look on camera and I actually think it's working, seriously.

See how I come to work? I flat iron my hair, I do chi-chi's out, I do viral vanilla.

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

That is an apt, I would say. I almost said ironic, but no. It's an apt drop for you to introduce me because literally, literally, I have my chichis out. And also, let's see here, 1127, and it's 1128 right now. I just got a, I'm sorry, 1228. Don't fact check me on that. I just got an email. Uh, guest, question mark, beauty entrepreneur and influencer starting her own business and lessons learned.

Dude, if it's Jules LeBron. It's Jules LeBron. The person, the woman behind these. Very demure. Iconic statements. Very mindful. We have to book her. She's probably the hottest get in America.

No, you know what? I'm not going to, uh, there's no need for me to, it's just one of those kind of cheesy press releases, but I'm not going to roast the person who, uh, but it is. This is somebody with 15,000 plus Insta followers, but no, it is not.

That's a little bit too low of a number. That's dangerously, I mean, it's not close to the number that I have, but it's not a stratosphere away from the number I have, and that's what you need if you're going to get on TBTL. You need to have Instagram followers that's stratospherically higher than the number that Andrew and I have.

You know, there was one other thing on my mind as we start the show, and then we'll hand the mic back to you where you're doing actual things.

Then I'll pass the mic to Andrew. No, I don't want it.

I don't want the mic. Give it to him.

I don't want the mic.

What would Jay-Z do? He'd rap about it. Rapping, rapping. It's amazing how old Workaholics is now. I was watching 30 Rock, which is why we heard some 30 Rock tape at the beginning of the show. I was watching 30 Rock last night, and it was hard for me not to try to— I wish there was a politician who talked about, like, kind of context and everything that came before and everything that comes after. Because it's hard for me to, like— It tied into— I'm trying to think of a way of making this interesting without just making it sound like a cliche thing I'm just like wow time passes and that's basically all of my observations these days time really passes doesn't it Luke now let me talk to you about my doctor's bills I really am trying desperately not to make the podcast that but 30 Rock I guess I still think of it as a new show which is obviously ridiculous I think of like what is an old show Cheers is an old show Seinfeld is an old show but 30 Rock is a contemporary show right no of course not it's been off the air um let's see here seasons when was it off the air

uh that's information that we could never know and andrew that we should never know we should i don't want to hear i don't want to hear what you're about to say because i think i'm and i don't mean to um no go ahead to steal i don't mean to steal the mic from you and then i passed the mic to luke but i feel like it it has to do with what age you were when you really locked in on something. And I was in high school, well, maybe when I locked in on Seinfeld. So that seems like very long ago, but I was like an adult who went to a nine to five job when I locked in on 30 rock. And I feel like I'm still an adult who goes to a nine to five job. Only one of those things is true, by the way. Um, I am an adult. I don't really have a nine to five job, but anything that I got into in my adulthood feels like it must, I don't know, two, three years ago. If you told me 30 Rock debuted six years ago, I would say that sounds about right.

Yes. And I'm not trying to hurt you with this information because I can't keep it to myself. But 30 Rock aired from 2006 to essentially the end of 2012. I guess they had a couple of episodes in January of 2013. But for all intents and purposes, let's say it's 2012, which is like, you know, what, 12 years ago? It's been off the air for 12 years, you know. And in my brain last night, as I was listening to Kenneth talk about old Gus, the catfish, I was thinking about how I think it was lost on me when I was at the height of what TV creators, especially in that, the sort of, I guess, maybe the very tail end of the network, of the traditional kind of network era. which by 2012 I mean we had the streamers we had obviously a million channels on cable but you

still like NBC still meant something yes original content was not nearly as as sort of um I don't want to say consolidated because really it's not consolidation it's more like frag fragmented like the streamers were not making as much original content as they do now I mean it was I don't even know what did Netflix even have original programming in 2012 yeah I think they did by

that point but and i guess like so part of my part of my um kind of uh struggles with contextualizing my aging is also the the life that i've lived as an adult you know i'm 47 now you know it's closer to 50 than 40 you know just in case anybody is not like super good at math the way i am and as i think about that more and more it i didn't age in a in as graceful a manner as a more traditional like somebody who takes a more traditional sort of family route you know

what i mean like i think that people who have kids and both lived in arrested development and

can't deal with how long ago arrested development right that's another one as well you know i've been dipping into that lately maybe just feeling like i just want some you know just comfort television watching that i don't have to think about too much so going back to some old faves and these were hitting right when i was like kind of at the peak of what like advertisers wanted to reach what you know like the you know like kind of young adults like in 30s and maybe even early you were a dink for some of this i was a dink dual income no kids and um and you know i do think i think i told you this a long time ago when i was living in wallingford which has been quite some time now genevieve and i went to that wallingford is it a bratwurst fest it's something it's like literally don't miss the sauce the wallingford worst exactly And it's a little sausage festival, which seems right up my alley. We only visited for like, I don't know, like one evening or whatever. It happened to be going on. So we swung through and it takes place in this area that is actually, at least when I was there, kind of took place in the outside area, kind of the courtyard of a school, of an elementary school. And it was an old school type of school, if you will, like kind of brick building. I don't know when it was built, but it felt like it had some like kind of nice age to

Minimal ADA compliance.

All the good stuff. People were suffering all around us. And I just couldn't, couldn't, there was no mobility.

Distintary. No mobility. Rocketing through the drinking fountains.

But anyway, I walked into the building because they had like a little bake sale, like kind of in one of the rooms right inside. And I realized how long it had been. And keep in mind, this is a while back now. But it was like the smell of an old school building, like really hit me and made me so nostalgic for like my own time it really felt like a time machine right and it occurred to me that I let's say I was 40 at the time like oh this is hitting me especially hard because number one as Genevieve says nostalgia is my favorite drug um and that's saying something but also that um that I think people who have kids kind of you know sometimes you know I don't want to put too specific a time on it but sometime in your 20s or 30s or whatever you have kids by the very nature of caring for young people and then putting them through the school system themselves give you kind of contact to that world and it kind of might ease you in so that maybe one day you kind of look around and you're like, hey, the kids are now, you know, they're 14 years old and that went by quick and I know that that has its own powerful feelings of time passage and nostalgia, but mine was just a little bit different because like I kind of didn't ease into the kind of connective tissue of having kids.

Yeah. If you have kids and you're, let's say in your twenties, or even if you're me and you're in your 17s, um, you're right. You then have a connection to a lot of things like, you know, my case was extreme, but like I then was going to kindergarten classrooms and I was going to soccer fields and I was doing all this stuff, you know, now, not even vicariously, but by association with this child. And so then you just had, like, basically, let's say, I don't know, 30, 32 years. You had 32 years in between being in, like, an elementary school classroom. Right, yes. Because you didn't have any reason.

You had no, in fact, you were legally prohibited in many states from visiting elementary school classrooms. That was a mistake that had to do with something I posted online, but that was a, we've cleaned it up. You were hacked.

No, but no, I actually hear what you're saying. I think it's actually a very interesting theory is that for you, because you didn't have a connection to these things about childhood through your own child. You had a long gap or you had no association with it. So then when you go back into it, it's just like really intense.

I think about that with toys sometimes, too. I've seen like people kind of joke around about this, like, oh, yeah, the best part of having kids is you get to play with their toys, right? Like, no, no, no, no, I'm helping my kid.

No, the best part about not having kids is you can't afford toys.

That's well, that's kind of the thing. It's like, you know, and again, I don't want to obviously tons of adults who tons of adults are into like Legos without having to have kids involved. But let's just use that as an example. Like, you know, you can kind of say, no, no, no, no. I'm not buying Legos for myself. I'm buying Legos for the kiddo. But then, you know, what are the parents doing? But like, you know, like geeking out and spending a whole evening making a millennium millennium falcon. Millennial falcon? I wanted to say, I think it's Millennium. I can't ever remember if it's Millennium or Millennial.

I'm pretty sure it's Millennium. Wait, it's Willennium Falcon.

It's Alpha Gen Falcon, I believe. Wait, no, that's a Marvel superhero. But anyway, yeah, I kind of, so if I want toys, then I just got to like buy the toys and then just like, you know, be judged appropriately.

Bum, speaking of 30 Rock, I was on the airplane the other day and I was scrolling TikTok, as I want to do, and certain shows will just start, maybe it has to do with my algorithm or the things that i allow to play a little bit longer but there will just start being a bunch of clips of some show that somebody somewhere and i don't even know if it's a bot or not i don't know who the human is who would do this but they'll just start pulling pretty sizable clips from some show and it'll it'll end up being a lot of the same show if that makes sense for no reason and then it just goes away and then it's just never happening again but it seems to be a 30 rock thing right now and the scene that came up and i'm almost tempted to ask you to just by the way if we ever hit a day where like we get pulled down from YouTube because we play NBC clips yeah we're out of the game shut it down I mean we just we got we've got absolutely nothing at that point but it was the scene where Dennis Duffy is essentially he's not really breaking up with liz but he's recognizing that they're breaking up like he comes to 30 rock and reads like a prepared statement do you have any memory of this does

he i can sort of remember him bursting into the writer's room but that's kind of a he's in the

writer's room yeah and he's basically like again it's i think that i think the deal is that liz has been trying to break up with him you know for like ever and somehow they all kind of they always keep coming back together but he kind of shows up to i guess you could say break up with her but really it's more to just like acknowledge that she doesn't want to be with him anymore i have

weirdly when i type in dennis duffy breakup i just have the transcript of it that somebody posted in the 30 rock subreddit just read it which i could read it except i don't know if i i feel like this is a delight for you and listeners who want to remix things i don't know if i want to put my voice to these words as i as i scan ahead oh right because it is it's it's the kind of thing

that is funny because it's coming from the character of dennis and it's a joke about the

person who would say that stuff are you worried no no i will i will do it but i i will do it if i can't find um if i can't find it i just think it'll be funnier coming talk feed i just think it'll be funnier coming from what's his do you remember his name jennifer his name is mayhem Or his name is, or his, have we talked about this on the show, how hard Genevieve came down on me for saying, referring to that character as mayhem and I hear sort of mayhem. It's mayhem. I realize that. But I mean, Genevieve was brutal on the podcast. Like this was years ago and I have heard radio commercials for, uh, what is the insurance company? It's not, it's all state. Yeah. There are radio commercials that aired, I believe, I don't know, this winter on sports radio where the voiceover person is say both a man and a woman say mayhem like yeah i think you played it on tbtl oh did i so i already yeah i already litigated this in the public sphere and

you won by the way it was a unanimous decision by me that you were in the right i when i was a kid i call i thought it was mayhem for some reason in that place unless there's a worth after it i don't want to talk about it. It's a hunky Aussie brother who's named Hemsworth.

Oh, yeah.

Mayhem. It's very like, it's very grown up. And when you're a kid, if you were a kid and you didn't think it was mayhem. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, also, Genevieve might have been that one kid. Genevieve was probably very precocious. I'm sure she was.

She was probably correcting other kids. Alright, so I can't find... How else do you get

into Wellesley? That's right.

So I can't find the... Okay, well then, here's what I'm going to do.

Why don't we make an intro tape down the road? Here we go.

I had the music set up. I got to do this now. Okay, you ready? I'm doing this. I'm doing this, but I wanted music.

I'm going to be Lemon, and that just means I just stand looking at you apoplectically in the writer's room, and I think probably, I'm trying to think of what Frank Russitano's hat. Oh, yeah, Frank. No, it probably says, like, you know, kung fu on it. It says VCR.

Dear Liz Lemon, while other women have bigger boobs than you, no other woman has as big of a heart. When I saw you getting ready to go out and get nailed by a bunch of guys. Is this the one? Yes, it's 100% the one. I'm sorry, I need to keep my composure. When I saw you getting ready to go out and get nailed by a bunch of guys last night, I knew for sure it was over between us. And for the first time since the 86th World Series, I cried. And if it was up to me, we'd be together forever. But there's a new thing called Women's Liberation, which gives you women the right to choose, and you have chosen to abort me. And that I must live with. So tonight, when you arrive home, I'll be gone. I officially renounce my squatter's rights. For all of us whose exes have chosen to abort them, on this New Year's Eve, say yes. Yes to love. Yes to life. Yes to staying in more.

Oh, that's a pretty good Dennis Duffy.

I wasn't even doing... You'll know when I do the voice.

Isn't it interesting that that guy, I might have brought this up before, is, I mean, the Dennis Duffy character is so iconic in our mind. In our minds, because we love that show. And then also those Mayhem commercials are just ubiquitous. And I couldn't tell you the guy's name. Does he have the highest face recognition for the lowest name recognition of anybody?

Well, it's driving me bananas that I can't think of his name because Genevieve says his name. And Genevieve has such a crush on him. Who plays?

The second question I was going to ask, is there a guy who's more conventionally attractive who's probably the subject of?

fewer kind of romantic thoughts because he was such a numbskull in the Dennis Duffy character and he's such a numbskull as mayhem that it's like it sort of overrides the fact that he is a very conventionally handsome man

can I blow your mind right now?

Chris is walking out

so his name is Dean Winters

okay I should have known that

and have you seen the commercial where he as mayhem is playing basketball with his brother.

Yes, I have.

It's like the least sort of allegorical one because it's not like I'm representing a bee or I'm representing a bird in Larry Bird's attic or what have you. He's representing your brother who's playing basketball with you and dunking on you.

I've seen the commercial, but I can't tell you the specifics, which maybe means it's not a very effective commercial. Yeah, it's kind of the... Remind me.

It's the least creative. They're just playing basketball in the driveway. It's him and his brother. And I think he may be I don't know if he smashes the backboard or a car window or or how mayhem is created through this, you know, pick up basketball game. But the part that may or may not be interesting is he's playing his real life brother, who is also an actor who I'm looking up now, I believe, is Bradford Winters, who is also an actor in, I believe, a procedural of some sort.

that's clever because they will have that they will look alike i wonder if in mayhem's family if it's one of those families where everyone gets a name that's similar like his brother's named

mayhaps what if oh i want to make a whole bunch of commercials with a whole family of

kids that's all may something yes mayflowers mayhaps yeah exactly um i actually this is not totally on topic but it is something that i'd like to tell you about which is my new favorite word, Andrew, that I've learned here as part of this corporate event that I've been helping out with. I told you that it's a cloud software company that's based, or at least has a huge part of its business in Australia and New Zealand, and I've been meeting a lot of really wonderful people. As the audio drop says, Australians are wonderful people, and also Kiwis are wonderful people, and I've taken it just going, are you Aussie or Kiwi? And I've found that if at least I know the kind of slang for both, then whatever the person answers, they don't seem that offended. What probably they wouldn't like would be me assuming they were Australian if they're from New Zealand or vice versa. So that's how you solve that problem. If you're ever talking to someone and you're unsure, just ask, hey, are you Aussie or Kiwi? I feel like that's a sign of respect.

Can I ask a question that might get me out of even more jams? And it's not even really a jam. It's more of a preference. But like Aussie is it is a slang, but you can also say, hey, are you Australian or do you know somebody who's Australian or my friend who's Australian? But is is there can you say like what is the New Zealand equivalent of that? That isn't the slang word Kiwi is Kiwi seems like too slangy for me.

Like you can use I'm saying I think the slangy for me throwing down the slang. it kind of it sort of signals subconsciously that we're all cool and no one should be offended by me

not knowing which place you're from yeah that's fine you don't want to do that well new zealand i think you just say are you from new zealand but yeah so but there's no like adjective for it in other words you can say are you from are you from you know are you from australia are you do you fancy all black are you an australian which would be the same as saying are you a new zealander but are you Australian not are you you say are you a friend of

Peter or are you a friend of Paul Peter being Jackson Paul being Hogan

oh I thought for some reason I just assumed we were doing the bible

stuff there and you know if Paul Hogan was shooting Crocodile Dundee 4 and he had to go and poach some of the film professionals that live in New Zealand you would basically be robbing Peter to pay

Paul that is a really good point That's even more, that's even more tortured than what I was going to say. What? I was going to say, are you a Peter? I'm going to write an album called The Tortured Podcasters Club, and it's going to be a number one hit. Are you a Bjorn? That's what I was, are you a Peter? Are you a Bjorn? Or are you a John? Yes, exactly.

Do you know that, and you know, I love her. You know, she's one of my favorite people. You know, I have a very high opinion of my girlfriend, but do you know, she does not like the song Young Folks by Peter Bjorn and John? and i don't i don't understand how a person with two ears that are tuned to the listening station could not how about this you don't have to love the song but she finds it actively annoying yeah

it is interesting it seems like it is made in a elaborate i almost find that refreshing like there really are just all kinds of people out there because i'm i'm with you like even if you don't like it, it feels like, yeah, well, it's pretty.

inoffensive right again this is going to be showing very much my own sort of preferences but there's certainly music that that you know hits my ear as a little on the aggressive side or loud or or fast driving and for the people that like that that's what they like about it but it is more polarizing i feel like the song young folks by peter bjorn and john is just so not polarizing it like it almost and i love the song but it almost like was just written for like a TV commercial or something. It's so relentlessly catchy.

I wonder if it, and now this is really unfair, because I honestly do not have a good read as to whether or not Becca listens to this, and it might be uncomfortable to hear people try to analyze her taste, but I do wonder if there is a connection, whether or not it's even a conscious connection. I wonder if there's something about like that sort of era or the people who listen or were obsessed with that music in that era, which was you and me. So I don't know if that speaks of your relationship that her standards have dropped over the decades that for some reason there's just, you know, maybe it just subconsciously reminds her of something or a type of thing or person that maybe.

But she's refreshingly kind of a blank slate on that kind of stuff. Yeah, that's not how she navigates the world. Like she just, yeah, she like, she, you know, went to college and had a kind of a fun college experience and like, and, and, and seem to like pretty much most kinds of people. Like she spends so much less time telling me about the people she doesn't like than I tell her about the people I don't like. Yeah, right, yeah. My ears are burning. Not how she navigates the world, which is, which is lovely actually, and I'm impressed by it. But maybe that's just what happens when you're raised in a loving, supportive home where you're not being told the world could end at any moment. I don't know if that's the result, but I just think that's so funny because of all the songs, it just seems like it's so relentlessly poppy. It's like it's made to make your feet tap. So at worst, it's like I don't feel like tapping my feet right now, but it isn't, you know, guar or something that I think of.

I was literally going to say guar. I was literally looking up Gwar's song so I could say this joke to you when you were done. Weirdly, she loves the song Let Us Slay by Gwar.

That is not to yuck any yums on Gwar. I mean, I get that that's a high, I don't know if it's a high concept, but it is a conceptual thing, which I give them credit for. Okay, so I have been working with a lot of folks from both Australia and New Zealand, both Peter's and Paul's. No Mary's yet, but soon, I hope. And I, you know, there was this script that was, that was written up for me that we've been working on and tweaking and changing. And there was a word in there that I just, I left this part alone because it just felt like I saw it in two places and I assumed it was a, some kind of a term of art in the cloud software space that I just didn't know. and it was like spruik s-p-r-u-i-k it was like spruik the performers and i was like we have a band called spruik or what like is this and i would just i just left it over like 10 revisions of the script i never touched the word spruik until i finally got up the nerve to ask somebody who was australian and they said oh that's hype it up to like to hype something up is to spruik it up isn't that a cool word yeah yeah i like that it's so much more fun than hype like oh man i gotta hey listen do me a favor before you bring me out could you really kind of spruik up the fact that like you know we're doing tbtl live in philadelphia on september 28th and we now have very cool new art for the whole thing which i just saw going out on instagram today oh yeah

Yeah, thank you to Max. That's awesome. Yes, what can't Max do in the artistic space? You know, if we think about that too much, I'll start to resent him. So he can sing, he can dance, he can act, and he can make awesome live podcast posts.

You know, I'm going to be honest with you.

You don't think he's that good of an actor?

Wow, Luke. That is impressive because I feel, maybe, is that all left brain stuff?

No, I thought the right brain was the kind of stuff. Is that right brain stuff? jeez i haven't i don't have either so i can't answer the question is it smooth brain we're

smooth brain we're smooth brain he's i guess i sort of figured that the the ability to our so our friend max uh designed the poster for us uh and it's really good um but max is also an actor and i i guess i would have kind of figured that the the folks that were good at that stuff would not necessarily be good at the drawing part i i assumed those those sort of connected to the two different sides of the brain but maybe not maybe it's all the art side that connects to me

i think yeah i think it's all the creative side i don't know which side of the brain it is but i'm By the way, I'm not saying, Luke, you're wrong to think that, and I don't know if I'm right, but I'm just saying that it's...

Please, use my new name, Sprook Burbank.

Sprook.

Just a living hype man.

The Sprook Luke. So it's spelled... The Luke is Sprook. Sprook. Actually, that's the show title right there. The Luke is Sprook. Boy, that's not on the bell either. That's just on me and my fat fingers. Not a very good bell ring there. Okay, first of all, it does make sense to me that all those creative endeavors would sort of be, not that everybody can do all of them, but I see a connection there. But in all seriousness, Max is amazing, and thanks, Max, in Brooklyn, for making that poster for us. But also, Spruik is, and did you say it's S-P-R-U-I-K? That's what I thought. Am I wrong on that? No, I don't know. I like it. I didn't look it up.

Type it in, see what you get. I think it means to tell a, to really like tell a story very kind of excitedly or to embellish or whatever it's, it's, um, I'll also mention that I said, I told this story to a different, like Aussie and I said, I didn't know what spruik was. And they were like, I don't know what spruik is. So apparently spruik is like very, it's niche even in Australia, but I love it.

Okay, well, as I look at the definition here, it does sort of seem like it is a little bit more specific than I was interpreting your definition. So you can't just, like, go into a party and just, like, the DJs are hot, the dancers are hot, and you're just like, this party is spruik. Or if a party is, like, sort of not all of that, and then you're like, well, maybe if we put on some Peter, Bjorn, and John, then we're really going to spruik this up. I guess it really is specific to giving a speech. It says here, I don't want to use the AI. Come on. I'm trying desperately to not use Google's AI. So here's the Collins Dictionary. Hey, Collins got a dictionary now. To make or give a speech especially extensive or elaborately. So it is about oration very specifically as I sort of scroll through these definitions. To give a speech elaborately, to orate. So it's specific to your job there this week.

Right. But even that definition isn't really what they needed me to do. It was being used to say, basically, like, hype up the musical act. Because it's Nashville, Andrew. I don't know if I've mentioned that. And so there's been a lot of music and stuff. And so I think the thing, basically, what the person who had written the script was trying to say was host, a.k.a. yours truly, was supposed to, at that point, kind of be like, hey, how great was that band? Like kind of spruik them, like hype them up or remind everyone, which is a little bit to the side of the definition you're reading, which makes me think it's that's part of why it's so niche. It's like it's a slang that someone was using. Maybe where they're from in Australia, the person who wrote the script, that's how they use the term. But that's not even really the official definition.

Well, I mean, I am seeing like kind of to give a speech in the style of kind of a carnival barker or a barker spiel. So that's what I'm saying. I'm not disagreeing with you. But I when you first said it, I thought it meant like we can use hype, generally speaking. You know what I mean? Music can hype up a crowd or whatever. It seems like this is specific to kind of like going out there and being the MC and spruiking in that manner.

Yeah. I guess the person who translated for me literally used the word hype, but I think they would probably agree now, and I'll get him over here. He's a very tall, muscular man named Hayden, that he was slightly off.

Well, or, I mean, just didn't feel he had to give the context because you were doing it as an orator. You are a carnival barker, and that's what I always say.

I am. They call me Travis Barker. um in that i'm uh covered in tattoos and i play drums and i'm married to a kardashian oh i thought

for some reason that sounded very much like a barstool reference to me um is there like one

of the like guys in but like it's like it does like pardon pardon my take or something i thought

isn't isn't what it wasn't who founded maybe a first time reason travis no that's dave portnoy oh that's portnoy he's bad news i have a complaint about him i bet you do

hello and welcome to top story okay super quick my my the thing that happened this morning was that i woke up so rested because i went to bed at like eight o'clock last night i we wrapped up some recording you and i and then i was like you know this is nashville man there's just stuff going on everywhere like from my little hotel room here i can just see so many cool outdoor spaces where people are just sitting and eating and i thought like maybe i can rally and because i've never really been out in nashville i've been through here a couple times going to other places in tennessee for like cbs stories but i never spent any time here but instead i just watched all in with chris hayes um and ordered a chipotle door dash and ate that chipotle and watched that chris hayes and then absolutely passed out the second that was over which meant i slept like let's do to carry the one i think i slept like 10 hours or something because you slept through you didn't wake up in the middle of the night and have like chipotle sweats or anything no no i'm this this is one of the only is it a superpower i am not one of those people that if i go to bed too early i will then wake up in the middle of the night and be like well my body's done sleeping it doesn't matter when i go to bed i will be able to sleep until well in this case it was like six no it was 5 45 i think i got up at 5 45, which is pretty early, but I had gone to sleep so early that I was rested and refreshed and decided I would get out in Nashville and go on a little jog. And the reason that this was the ultimate flex was I was jogging while people were still coming out of the bars. And that, as a person who has many times been the people coming out of the bars, when I tell you, Andrew, that I felt like everything in my life was going more okay. Like there was something, the sun was rising over the Cumberland River. It was actually just beautiful. And there was something about me being up, getting ready to take on the day. And I don't do this a lot. This is not supposed to be a humble brag at all. It's just, there's something about, it's like, same thing happens in Vegas. If you are out doing something that's probably good for you and kind of healthy at an hour when a lot of other people are coming down off of doing something that is probably not great for them god it felt good and boy did i ever feel smug jogging around nashville yeah you got to give them the bad feeling for a change i know it's so often gone the other way in my life i'll tell you that i've had many an experience of stumbling out of somewhere as the birds were chirping and just being so disappointed in myself um also they have gnats in the morning here which seems like what do we say flying a kite at night like have you ever have you ever heard of morning gnats i

thought that was strictly a dusk activity you know i'm not sure well i mean gnats are mosquitoes by the way are they biting you all right wait gnats are mosquitoes these were not these no i

said gnats or mosquitoes oh gnats okay so they're just flying around beat so they're flying around but they're not biting you they're just kind of like you know they're just that cloud you know

that kind of cloud that you don't see until you're in it yeah i think it's probably just the moisture in the air right it's the humidity i guess so yeah i just my you know maybe also when i was like in living in seattle my my memory of my most vivid memory of gnats was being a kid growing up in seattle and riding my bike around green lake on the outside path so that kind of like little gravel path that's on the far outside and they're just being clouds of gnats that you'd be dodging and you'd be hoping that you didn't get hit in the face with and that was always at like seven o'clock at night and i was probably supposed to be home for dinner and it was a warm summery night it's like a it's very rooted in a very specific hour of the night for me or hour of the you know early evening that's what i associate with clouds of gnats and this morning at 6 a.m jogging around nashville i was hitting so many clouds of gnats and it just felt it felt

weird to me yeah you know i don't know if you would realize this i think you would maybe from your time living in new york although i'm not sure what mosquitoes are like in the city but you know growing up in the country in ohio and then you know grow and then spending uh my early adult life in uh new hampshire where you know like you have kind of um you kind of warmer I would say more humid climates during the summer like we had way more mosquitoes and one of the things Vives and I were mesmerized by when we moved to Seattle was the relative lack of mosquitoes, we would see gnats all over the place and Genevieve is very susceptible to getting bitten by mosquitoes I am not by the way so I don't know if that, I read recently that if you're somebody who gets bitten a lot by mosquitoes it means you talk a lot because you're exhaling a lot of like the the the gas from inside is that what they track yeah i told that to genevieve she had other theories um as to what i could do with my theory in fact but yeah so that was that was something like we came here we're like there were like practically no mosquitoes i'm sure like you've probably been bitten by a mosquito at some point in your life in the seattle area so i'm not saying there are no mosquitoes nothing compared to the northeast literally nothing compared like we just

thought this was a magic land yeah and it is and i love that and in fact what i love about the madrona hill studio and my house is the downside is it's kind of perpetually a

little breezy up there just because of i don't know the river and the vagaries of uh geology or something but one of the things is i have a never literally never seen a mosquito at my house and i would trade almost anything for that because maybe because i didn't grow up with a lot of mosquitoes in my life except we would go camping so we go camping at like a church camp out at lake wenatchee and we'd set up our tents and we'd be in the woods and it would just be the whole night would be trying to battle back the mosquitoes it's why i've never been at least since i became aware of the connection i've never been a big like let's hang out in the woods kind of guy in the summertime like being camping amidst a bunch of trees in the woods where there's like a bunch of cedar pine needles on the ground and it's like the the sun is kind of obscured because you know you're in the you're in the shade and it seems like there are a lot of mosquitoes that is not i don't find that very pleasant at all i am very very um easily put off by the by the presence of even a few

mosquitoes yeah well there are a lot of things about um the woods that i don't i mean as far as spending extended periods of time i like a nice like i like a nice walk or like mini day hike through like a nice rich verdant um forest area much more than i enjoyed going on those type of little day hikes in a place like los angeles where everything seemed very dusty and dry like i didn't enjoy being in that style of nature whereas i really like there and again i people know me i'm not trying to make it sound like i go on a lot of like day hikes or something but like there's a place around here that you might know called wallace falls that i just find to be incredibly beautiful because again it's so green and there's rivers everywhere and literally there are our waterfalls and so um like i love that but no i mean to spend any time other than maybe a hike and a picnic on a rock there get me the hell out of there i need a shower i need a toilet i need i

need all kinds of things you're what is the drop we what do we play there's a i'm i'm greasy i'm

sleazy and i need a shower yeah yeah yeah i think um i'm hairy i'm scary and yep i'm grimy i'm gross and I need a shower.

Yeah, I'm grimy, I'm slimy, and I need a shower or something. That's how you're feeling out there.

Yep, yep, yep.

Okay. You had said yesterday on the show, Andrew, towards the end, oh, let me tell you tomorrow about something going on with dive bars. I think you might have been referring to old teddies or something. And you said, I'm going to tell you about it on tomorrow's show. Well, my friend, it's tomorrow's show. So what was going on with you and the dive bars?

I have no idea. No, just joking. I just wanted to scare you there for a little bit. I almost hesitate to talk about this because I was going to maybe, well, first of all, because I think there's already some judgment about this. There's some history here that some people might be bummed to hear about. And also maybe I needed to keep this place more of a secret. But I learned recently that the place right here in my neighborhood that used to be the Mandarin Gate is reopening. And it's reopening as something different than what I'd heard it was going to reopen. So for a little bit of context, of course. The Mandarin Fence. It's going to be the Mandarin Fence. It's basically the same, only there's no egress. It's interesting. I assume it's an egress. You have to hop over it. But so obviously, I don't think I need to explain this to everybody. The Mandarin Gate, though, I mean, that was your old haunt. I mean, you clocked so many hours drinking and karaokeing and head-butting people there over the years.

In equal measure.

Yes, exactly. As people say about New York, it was almost like another character on TBTL for a long time. mostly before my time on tbtl but but not exclusively and then when i started hanging out with you and camaro kev of course i spent time with you and your crew there as well and uh it you know in in fact you and i did remember we did like uh speaking of slimy and grimy remember we did like the tbtl origin tour de terrible yeah tour de terrible exactly where

we went to various that was the most fun night ever that netted us the least amount of money everybody paid like it was a it was not cheap for the people who came on it but all of the money went back into various things about the tour de terrible like that was a really really fun time for the people that went on i've been told but it was the fact the math didn't really math on it do you know

i totally forget that was before we were with american public media or anything so i had no sense of the business side i was not dealing with me i was making intros and ruining the show that was all my roles were at that time so i i didn't even remember that that was supposed to be it was that connected to an actual like fundraising it was kind of a fundraiser of sorts it was like

we're going to go to all these places you know we're going to go to goldie's and we're going to go to the mandarin gate and the mummy is going to take us on a a walk uh where he's going to show us how to like get opium or something which was funny because one of the people on the walk was a medical doctor. who was kind of giving me a look like, I don't think this makes any sense. He was like scoring a poppy with a boy knife.

He was scoring poppies that he found along Lake City Way.

And by scoring, I mean poking them with a knife, not like buying them from a guy who wouldn't make eye contact. No, no, no, no. It was such a fun night, actually. It was really great, but I think it was included in the price of admission was a party bus ride, drinks at the Mandarin Gate, gambling money at Goldie's. it was like a really it was but it was so fun all that is to say yes mandarin gate big part of the lore of this show for a lot of years up until i moved out of seattle and then it kind of

then it kind of stopped being such a recurring topic and what else what else happened was the pandemic hit because like even like occasionally um you know genevieve and camaro kev or and sometimes i would tag along like it was still sometimes a location to go at the very end of the night if you still wanted to do some karaoke and um but then the pandemic hit obviously it closed for a long time obviously karaoke was out of the question for a long time and then when it reopened they decided they weren't going to mess around like the bar was very very divey anyway but the thing is we always went there by it was like already like midnight and we were so like so well into our cups by that point that like you just i just didn't consider it in that manner it was just It's like, you know, a dark, comfortable womb where people could do karaoke and I could dream.

Where you actually could return to, unlike a regular womb.

Right, exactly. One of my favorite things about that womb. So anyway, after the pandemic. A womb with a view. Of the IHOP. Weird Al Yankovic. That's a line from his song, I Think I'm a Clone Now. It's one of my favorite Weird Al jokes. In a womb with a view. I think I'm a clone now. a clone now there's always two of me just hanging around uh anyway so it was still it was it was a special place for a while pandemic hits it closes down it gets rid of karaoke they never bring back karaoke and then i moved to this neighborhood which is like very clear like in this neighborhood where i live right now there is nowhere that is kind of a convenient watering hole and my standards are very low on this you know what i mean as far as like diving there there is a there's a there's one next to a chinese restaurant right near the kind of walking bridge that crosses over aurora that would be very close to me but like that is the only dive bar i've ever been in that is so close to my house but i went and had one beer and said i'm never walking back in that place like i literally think the bar i was literally made of um of press board where no no i mean a lot of them are made of press board but of uh plywood i think that a piece of plywood still i mean it was it It almost seemed like a front or a place where people just stab each other like it was bananas. Well, right.

I mean, there's a lot of people that are on the economic margins around there. And, of course, they're equally deserving of relaxing or enjoying themselves or whatever. But there can be a level of dive bar where the diviness is so intense that you just kind of feel like you're in someone else's space. And the someone else's that are in that space are often people that are, you know, kind of living a life, a certain kind of life. and it's not like hey aren't we all just from different backgrounds but we're all enjoying you know this uh how far is heaven that's playing on the jukebox from los lonely boys that would be a thing that would literally happen at the uh tattletale in la there's a point of which you're just kind of like i'm in a bar where i don't i just don't feel like i can really connect with folks on the level they're at right now kind of a thing i mean this one that i'm talking about i

can't even think of the name of it and it doesn't really matter but it's kind of across the street from the shopping center where the mandarin gate is or was um and it was so burned out i mean i can't even explain to you it's not even like i can't associate with these folks it's just kind of like i don't know there's a a crate full of cables there like a just i mean yeah it really

did not seem like a drinking it's like you could be home drinking if this was really i mean it was

a more comfortable environment it was just awful awful awful all around and i don't know exactly if they have a customer base it i don't i don't really know what was going on with that place but it's and so my point is since i've moved here um i've missed having the experience that i had in my old neighborhood which was having a place like teddy's which was you know some people would describe it as a dive bar i think of it as just like a humble neighborhood bar that was you know four blocks from my house and i would go there and i would know the folks and you know that that was the ultimate for me as far as what I'm looking for in that kind of experience I lowered my expectations when I moved here but like there was just like literally nowhere to go the Mandarin Gate was the only place that was sort of like in that sort of proximity like I don't have to take a bus or like there are places that are in walking distance but it's like well you walk three quarters of a mile or a mile which is like it's just a little up a hill and you know in a not wonderful sidewalk to walk along like 105th or so something like that so anyway it's the rickshaw we know what you're talking about actually it's i haven't spent as much time as the rickshaw it's the one across uh greenwood from the rickshaw the pub at pipers creek which i've been to a bunch and i like that place but again it's a little bit more effort to get there and and whatever um but so the mandarin gate we learned a few months ago and talked about on the show that it was closing and we kind of said farewell to it but we also said on the show or at least i did i think it was barney's movie in that episode of the simpsons don't cry for me for i'm already dead like the mandarin gate for all purposes was our we'd

already said goodbye it was a shell of whatever whatever had been charming and fun about it had stopped being the case so long ago that it wasn't we were not we're not saying goodbye to the mandarin we'd said goodbye to the mandarin gate long long before it had went it closed at

10 p.m i think they only i think they were just making their money from you know take out chinese food which was like you know mediocre american style chinese food that you could take out this

is the only time you can say this at the mandarin gate nothing good happens before 10 p.m right

exactly and so no karaoke they close at 10 like just like everything that used to be had a i took a photo one time and sent it to you and a whole bunch of friends it was like a they still have this blackboard that used to list all these fun things like karaoke and various things and like one by one they were all like crossed out it was like it was like the most symbolic i'll see if i could god if i could find that and use it as a show pick today but that was years ago so anyway the the mandarin gate for our purposes was gone a long long time ago a long long time ago and then what i heard was it was closing down and somebody was going to open a restaurant there like maybe like an indian restaurant or something that has you know cuisine that i'd be interested in getting takeout from but not filling that neighborhood bar hole in my heart um and uh is that that extreme song did i say hole in my heart because of the gd commercial that's still airing during mariners games cult of personality that's the one i was thinking of and uh anyway so that leads me to i think where you know where i'm going with this is um there's some news about that space and it's not going to be a restaurant it is going to be a bar now exciting I learned of this from a saddened 10 who posted it on social media somewhere because they took a photo of the outside of it and at the time it just had this very temporary looking sign and you're going to hate the name of this place and it says like the vibe bar and grill coming soon and it really was a sad picture and the person who posted it said wow this is really we expect more from the place that used to be the mandarin gator like what a sad outcome and like i saw it i'm like i understand that but also what's gonna go on at the vibe like let's let's take a peek inside here and it has baby are you

coming for the ride what is that is that extreme that's willow smith uh who i believe records under the name willow that song is great by the way that'll be my music for your weekend um although it's was so so popular three years ago i'm not telling anyone anything they don't know I know that song

There's a vibe in my heart Fishbone, the music of Fishbone

May I just offer My agreement, Andrew That You never know what the vibe might be At the vibe, and also It can't be worse than the Mandarin Gate was And it is better than nothing happening I'm not trying to invalidate The feelings of the person who posted I think I can understand the spirit of that post Which would basically be 10 years ago this place was called the mandarin gate and a lot of fun went on there um you know we took i believe both davy rothbart and at a different time television's chris hayes to the mandarin gate so the people that have darkened the door of that place just by our recommendation is really something and it wasn't it was a really fun special place for us that was kind of gross and weird but we loved and now it's something called the vibe bar and grill and if you went would be a real bummer but right your point andrew it's not what the transition was yeah

and the fact that it was just going to be a restaurant which you know no no shade on restaurants like i uh hey i'm on the record luke i like restaurants pro restaurant but the fact that i can like without having to make a plan to like go watch a mariners game like i can have that notion and be somewhere in like probably 10 minutes like a few blocks and and cross a parking lot like and like and again i'm not saying that i'm going to be like the vibe is going to be like teddies where everybody knows your name i just came up with that um and everybody yells norm when i walk through the bar walking to the bar for some reason that i don't understand my name because of your famous norm core aesthetic yeah exactly they're like someone quietly says core i was saying core i was about to say that are you doing a month so i thought it was already open it has not opened yet

Thank you.

But but it's still but it looks like now they've they've replaced that temporary sign with like a permanent sign that is very much like the Mandarin gate just but like and again I don't love the name it's called the vibe I mean that's gonna that's not gonna like grow old gracefully obviously it already hasn't but like you know it looks like a sign that used to say the Mandarin gate individual letters like a legit operation that seems like they're investing in it. And they've already posted some photos online on Yelp of what it's going to look like. And it's going to look like a – again, I'm not saying this is a bar that, like, is going to change my life. Or you're going to walk in and you're going to be like, this is why you come to Seattle. And you're going to write to your friends back home about, I went to this place called The Vibe in Seattle. And it really captures the spirit and essence of the city. No, of course not. It's going to be a generic sports bar, but it's got pool tables in there. It looks like it's got dartboards in there. It looks like they're – this is the important part. It looks like they're going to sell alcohol in there, and they have a bunch of TVs in there. And the idea that I'll be able to just sort of mosey on over there and take in a Mariners game really appeals to me.

I think that's very promising. And again, I don't say that to invalidate the nostalgia anyone else is feeling for the old version of it. But if I lived at your house and was wanting to have somewhere to go and have a drink and watch the Mariners, I would feel similarly encouraged because, again, it doesn't need to be the greatest experience of your life. It just needs to be a place where the bar is not made out of duct tape. They have not recently crossed out every fun thing they used to offer. Like, you just need a standard place where you can sit at the bar, order a drink. The Mariners will be on, maybe throw a dart or two. That's it. It's a low bar, so to speak, and this place may clear it, and that's encouraging.

Yeah. There's a right way to rock And a wrong way to roll You can just listen to your song Just remember that life is number one You can be having so much fun Just remember that life is much fun You can be number one

All right, we've got a few Blursdays to do today. I want to mention that we're recording a little bit earlier than usual, so there are some people who might be sending in Blursdays at the last minute. If you did that and you didn't get in today's, my apologies, but we will get to you.

My apologies. This is happening because of my scheduling, so don't be mad at Andrew. Please be mad at me.

But don't be mad for long, and also don't be disheartened. We will read any Blursday messages that come in.

Babe, don't go away, Matt. Just go away.

That's right.

But don't go away. But actually, please stay here because we need you desperately.

Spook. I wanted to mention that there probably won't be Blur's Days next week, but the following week there will be. So we will have a big batch of Blur's Days next week. There in a couple of Thursdays. Pipe and hot. Pipe and hot. Actually, no.

Nice and cold like a gazpacho because it's still going to be summertime. We don't want a big pipe and hot batch. But don't serve room temperature soup if you think it's going to be a gazpacho because that's a whole other thing. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

burn my mouth we have some blurs days here by the way if you want to submit a blurs day you do it via email you email me andrew at tbtl.net and you put blurs day in the subject line and that's what matt in broomfield colorado did matt says i'd like to give a blurs day shout out to my amazing wife rachel we mostly work at home together and i couldn't be more happy in my work life slash personal life balance you bring joy to my daily life and you love me for who i am I love you for who you are. Happy birthday, my great love, and my best friend. Very mindful.

I've had a lot of people love me for who I could be someday if I would just get my shit together. It's called aspirational love.

Ebony would like to wish her five, Adrienne, an amazing 10th Blur's Day. I feel like we've been very demure. We've been wishing Adrian a Blur's Day wish for quite some time now. Ten years old this year. His only request was to party with his friends at a trampoline park, but he doesn't know that we have other surprises for him, too. Tickets to see his favorite co-bros in Philly next month. Oh, hell yeah. Spook. We're also doing a show in Philly next month. Happy Blur's Day to the best kid in the world. Your mom and dad love you to the moon and back.

Oh, that's fun. One thing I'd like to mention, it's all ages. So if your kids have been holding you back, if your kids have been ruining your chances of coming to TBTL Live in Philadelphia, you know what? You can come. You can bring them. It's going to be a fun family environment. I promise you, the Quakers will not allow any shenanigans to go down.

Trust me. They're going to have Luke on the walk. Afterwards, maybe. Yeah.

Before, probably.

During, never.

I am looking forward to seeing you guys there. Thank you, Ebony, and happy Blur's Day, Adrian. Louisa says, happy birthday to my 10. Marshall, whose thoughtful, soft, and caring nature makes my heart melt and my days brighter. By the way, I want to say we have possibly the most romantic, poetic group of Blur's Days ever today, I think. I thought Matt's was very sweet before. It was. It was lovely. And Louisa goes on to say, your grumpy, this is to Marshall again, your grumpy dislike of Mondays, your enthusiastic support of my consumption of rosé wine, and overall thirst for life are just the icing on the cake, really. I'm so enormously glad that we found each other in the middle of it all. And here's a traveling far and wide together. May this new lap around the sun be the best one yet.

Cute. Very demure. I thought that it was going to say, you're just like if Monday's in your love of lasagna means you are Garfield. I was geared up for it.

Flash says, happy Blur's Day to Juliet. She remains my guiding star, my sweet English rose, and my perfect combination of smarts, charm, and beauty. She is equally delighted by sunny days out, long conversations with friends, and new stationery. She has the knowing of many things and considered options. No, wait, hold on. Let me say this again. She has the knowing. Very mindful. Not mindful reading here. She has the knowing of many things and considered opinions on the rest, and I believe she reads to breathe. Happy Blur's Day from that Grizzly Tech Squatch lifelong project you took on a few decades ago. Aw. Happy Blur's Day, Juliet. Very sweet. And. Isn't it Grizzly Tech Squatch? Yeah, Grizzly Tech Squatch lifelong project.

Isn't that for Techno Squatch with Spread Grizz?

Genevieve referred to me as her project for a long time. Probably the first 10 years of our relationship.

My project is complete. Can I just mention, speaking of the techno geeks with Spreadsheet, this conference I'm helping out with sort of has a financial aspect to it, including accounting. And I just saw somebody this morning wearing a T-shirt that said Freakin' the Sheets. And it was a spreadsheet.

A spreadsheet, that's pretty good.

And I just knew I was going to have a fun time. It just delighted me that that was the vibe. I love it.

And finally, Justice says, a very happy belated Blur's Day to Biagio in Duluth. Who loves you, baby? From his very bad, no good, forgetful, and neglectful brother-in-law Justice in Thunder Bay. P.S. See you at the Tens Meetup at Ursa Minor Brewing in Duluth on Saturday, August 24th, 2 p.m. Going up. That's right. That's not just for Biagio. but that's for everybody if you're in that area you want to meet up with Justice and the Gang that's Ursa Minor Brewing Saturday August 24th 2pm absolutely happy blurs day everybody indeedly do happy blurs day everybody

alright we are nearly at the end of the week but of course it would not be complete without a TBTL Friday which we will bring you tomorrow so please do tune in for that in the meantime have a great Thursday take care of yourselves do badly Mariners I'm trying to reverse psychology

Go on, we never loved you Get out of here You're dragging us down Very demure

No, go Mariners, and please remember No mountain too tall And good luck to all Power out