Muse

Hello, this is Gather in Chicago regarding pet songs. We have a black and white tuxedo cat named Marion. And I'm also a tremendous fan of the musical The Music Man. So she is often Marion, Madam Catarian, from the Marion the Librarian song. Power out. TVTL.

well hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl this is the show that just might be too beautiful to live day three of pet sounds the tbtl pet song tournament my name is luke burbank right over there my good friend mr andrew walsh longest running cobra of the show

Good morning. I loved the Marion Madam Librarian song so much, and I believe I brought, I mean, I was a very, very young person when I saw the Music Man, but I believe I maybe caught some

feelings for Marion. How could you not? Although, and listen, I say this with peace and love to Listener Gather, who brought that to us, that was, that Marion song was part of a large body of pop culture work that i consumed as a kid that made me think being a librarian is one of the worst things that could befall a woman and we have so many listeners who work in the library sciences it's actually a big demo for us and i just think it's so funny that like what what important work i'm not saying listen my point is not that when gather sings this song to the tuxedo cat mary and that's what gather is saying i know that's not what gather is saying but it's just so interesting that you would have this job working in a library or working in the library sciences that's so vital like so important to getting information to people and also such a cool job and that for some reason for like a hundred years it was decided that that was really oh god that's one of the worst things that could happen to somebody was that they were of course It's a Wonderful Life, marry Bailey, because she doesn't marry George Bailey because he was never born. She becomes a librarian, which is this horrible outcome for her. It's a weird, it must have just been, there was so much misogyny that a, I don't know, I wonder why a librarian got isolated as this thing that we don't want to be.

It seems like a very, I'm just going to say it, you're dancing around it, it's a very J.D. Vance-ian outlook. on society and culture, I believe.

Well, also, I feel like, and again, I don't want to displace any of the human librarians, but if you did have a cat Arian, I mean, there's a line to get into that library. Like a library where the person helping you with the Dewey Decimal System and checking things out is a cat, is a cat Arian?

Oh, that would be great. I love, obviously, I love a bookstore cat, and I've been to various bookstores where there are bookstore cats. There's one, though, and I'm not going to say the name of this place. I've been there a bunch, and I only remember this being offensive one time. But there was one place on Capitol Hill, and I was like, oh, yeah, let's go in. I love bookstores. It was kind of like a little claustrophobic in there, too tight, you know, like it's a warren of books or whatever. And they had a cap, but they did not, at least on this particular summer day, keep the litter box clean. And it was, like, so bad that the place, like, it made my eyes water while I was in there. It was so rough. So rough. So I'm scared of nose blindness. I don't believe that anybody who works there on the reg would be cool with that smell if they realized it. I think they all just got used to it, which makes me worry. Like, maybe my house is making people's eyes water. Maybe it's making the neighbor's eyes water. I just don't know.

No, no, no. You would know because our eyes would be watering when we're in the house. It's true. And our eyes are tears of joy that we're getting to enjoy you and Genevieve's very beautiful home. Do you know that I did a story? I didn't do a story, but I gathered tape for the Osgood files back in the day. Do you remember that famous, is it a Scott Carrier piece about the happy man? The first thing I thought of was the happy man, yeah. By the way, bringing you the cutting edge of late 90s public radio storytelling by way of early...

No, finish up. I have a Sean Cole story I want to tell you in a second. And you and I are just like, we just represent a very specific era of public radio geekdom.

And you and I both just like had our, like fully became obsessed with this at the exact same time. But, you know, Scott Carrier, who's a great reporter and writer, I think maybe out of Utah, but he's been all over, wrote this, did this piece for this. American Life many years ago that was kind of part of the sort of foundational, you know, sort of canon, if you will, or whatever, of like great This American Life pieces. And it was how he had been hired to go out and basically get audio tape that would be sent back to New York and it would end up being part of the Osgood Files. That was, you know, this thing, which if you're as old as me, you remember. But he, I don't think he's allowed to call it the Osgood Files. He calls him the happy man.

Yeah, he never names it. And it's a very depressing story of like feeling pressure to bring back tape because the happy man was not very happy.

Right. It was like a high pressure situation, which is funny because when I ended up working literally for the happy man on CBS Sunday morning and I went to his going away party. He's now deceased. So I feel like I can say this. I bumped into him at craft services and I wasn't aware that this was one of those things where the network was sort of moving in a different direction. You know what I mean? And I said something like, must feel great to be getting that gold watch. Let's just say he was not psyched.

Oh, wow. That's really awkward.

Which shows you how good I am at reading rooms. But this is a story about cat litter, Andrew. But wait, wait.

Yeah, so you were gathering tape for the happy man?

I was gathering tape. I got, there was some, you know, I was just hanging around. In the words of Counting Crows, I'd been hanging around, K-U-O-W. Next year, by the way, a whole list of songs that I've made up about public radio stations based on Counting Crows songs. It's going to be the whole week. But I was hanging around KUOW looking for any kind of—if there was a tape sync that nobody wanted, anything that I could make $25 or $50 on, I was there because I was so broke. And a call came in from the happy man that somehow nobody wanted to do, and it was an interesting story. It was going down and getting tape. There was kind of a group home in the U District where you had people living who I think—I can't remember exactly how it was, what the organizing principle of this group home is, but it was people who'd been through some stuff. And I think maybe people that were in sobriety but had had some pretty serious addiction issues, and some of the people were HIV positive. and changing the kitty litter because they had the cats that lived in the house was apparently dangerous for them because of some kind of, you know, what's that, toxoplasmoid toxo something or other. There's basically people living in this house who were immunocompromised in such a way that changing the cat litter was not safe for them. So there was these people that would come in and change the cat litter, would clean the cat box so that these folks living in this house could have a cat or cats and would not be in danger from the cleaning of the cat box. And I went and I interviewed everyone. I don't know if they ever used the tape. I don't know what became of it, but that was my one foray into getting tape for the happy man.

The story was about the entire kind of environment.

I think it was the cat litter box cleaner.

It literally was just that focus because I would assume that those people do other things as well. Like they don't just empty litter boxes. They must be like a house creeping.

I can't remember, but I think that was the angle. I think it was like, because also I think those little hits, if you will, on that show or during that, I don't know how long that segment was, but I get a feeling that those hits were like 30 seconds, you know, like, and in Seattle where, you know, where not everyone, where everyone loves cats, but not everyone can safely scoop a litter box. This from the university district where the so-and-so has been coming to this group home to scoop the kitty litter and then you hear like five seconds of the person saying something and then I think you might be on to the next thing I don't know I never heard how it turned out

I'm actually furiously googling right now not quickly I'm just very

angry I've never even looked this up I would be so many ways in which I doubt this has been documented I wonder if

it ever airs before everything was online even if it did air it would have been before yeah it was

very early internet days it was one if it even got on the air i might have sent back lousy tape like it might have gotten to new york i'm i i'm fairly sure i might have been rolling on cassette and oh i'm sure you were yeah those days where i probably probably went back and then like fed it into some system you know i don't know like not even an isdn but some other kind of a weird early version of dropbox that was all manual but i would i it would be amazing if i think i've even brought this up on the show before and we've gone down this very

rabbit hole. Yeah, I can't find anything. For what it's worth, I didn't remember this story. Well, that's kind of

I want to take more credit than that gives me. I know, that's going to forget

a lot of things. It's really a backhanded compliment. Like, either you didn't tell it well the first time. Right, there's that too. I don't know, but yeah, nothing, I'm not getting any very clear, obvious hits on that, but boy, that would have been amazing if we could have found that. Damn. Well, listeners, if you if you

looking for something to do this summer and you got too much time on your hands see if anyone can locate the charles osgood piece something about kitty litter in seattle or changing litter boxes in seattle you won't even hear me because again that was the whole thing about getting this tape for the happy man you weren't on the tape you were just a field i guess you could say a field producer getting stuff and sending it back to the home office so that it could then be prepared for you know another thing interesting about osgood was i guess he really did not like flying and so in a kind of high-class John Madden type of approach because he had an estate in France that he liked to spend a lot of time in. He would take a boat there, like a steamer of some kind. It was the 1950s, and he was crossing the Atlantic or whatever pre-Atlantic flights,

which I always thought was kind of a boss move. I got so excited here for a second. I saw something called Litter Detail, and it says the Osgood file. I was like, maybe they called it the Litter Detail. I was so excited until I realized I'm on a... And I guess relevant enough for our mission here today, I'm on some like dog website, like championship dog website. And it's the sire is Marbin's The Osgood File was the sire of a dog. And so all of the references to litter are which litter this puppy came from.

The puppies that have been had by. But again, it is relevant. So to today's episode and frankly, all this week as we are going through the songs that our listeners sing to their pets. We handled the West Division and the East Division. Today is the South Division. And I ended yesterday's show, Andrew, saying that I was going to explain why I ordered these the way that I did. And it was because I feel like the South kind of gets short shrift in certain ways. There's some ways in which we've tolerated far too much bullshit from the South.

I think it'll rise again. I wouldn't worry, Lou.

But from the standpoint of how we – let's just think about our lovely listeners who happen to live south of the Mason-Dixon, some of our very favorite people in the world. And have you ever heard about an ordering of the sort of – like a regional ordering in the U.S. where you start with the south? Have you ever heard that? It's always – I feel like it's always the last quadrant of the country.

College football. The SEC. I mean, that's –

Well, it might be the most power conference, but I feel like if you were looking at a bracket, would you ever— No, I don't know. Because I think we think—here's how I imagine the brackets. If we're breaking the country up into brackets, I'm imagining them geographically spread out like it's the country, if that makes sense. Oh, interesting. So the west is like northwest, right? And then the east is like northeast, and then the south is like southeast, and then I guess southwest. Yeah, okay. I imagine it to be geographic.

See, I don't really look at sports brackets, so that was lost on me.

I just feel like the South—I didn't want to go—I couldn't not go with West first because, again, that's my bias. That's how I orient myself. I didn't really think I was a West Coast person until I lived in New York, and then I realized I am kind of a West Coast person.

About kind of needing your space?

needing a little bit of space not having a high tolerance for waiting around on very very hot or very cold subway platforms just like driving I love driving something that you don't do a lot there just my way I am as I relate to people kind of the stuff that hurts my feelings a little bit versus like I went I've told this story a million times but I went to a fantasy football draft in Manhattan in person yeah in person this was the team that mike and i had mike peska and i had and mike was in new orleans covering the aftermath of hurricane katrina and he was like at some school meeting and he was trying to call in and tell me who to draft but like the line kept going down and he was also working and i was like had just at the newsstand had bought a couple of those magazines that are like here's what you should pick but it's just this room full of like new york football fans are just so much more hardcore they just know new york sports fans it's just a different level of sports fandom in my experience sure like i was a guy who really liked sports for being from seattle but compared to a bunch of just like hard-boiled possibly single men in their mid-20s in new york city who'd all grown up in the tri-state area it was next level what they were doing and i just felt like and then there was a razzing component you would not like i was gonna say like i'm sure

well i definitely would not i mean the idea of of doing any kind of a draft in person especially pre-internet just like it makes my blood go cold you know i'm still part of this in fact i don't know if you saw me just race to open up my fantasy baseball app here because i realized i hadn't set up my lineup today are taking a look.

look at it uh as we're recording this but um you know sometimes the fellas and none of whom i've met in person the other people who are part of this fantasy baseball team i've never met any any of them in person and i think a contingent of them maybe even a majority of them do get together to gather in person even though all the drafting still happens online and i'm always just like i don't you know i barely leave my house for people i know i couldn't hand i these folks already know i don't know anything about baseball i don't need them to look me in the eyes while

they realize that well that was exactly what i walked into i was underprepared i didn't know anyone there i but i'm also i have this deep need to be included in things once i am there so i feel like my memory is that i you know i could only and probably i was also probably drinking you know i was probably trying to uh sort of i don't know what the word is make myself feel more comfortable by way of alcohol consumption or something so there's probably a point at which that like So inebriation and hubris intersected, and I probably tried to bust a ball or two on somebody I'd never met, which I'm sure their thought was, who is this person who knows Pesca but is here trying to hang? So anyway, that's what happened when I tried to do that.

When you tried to be an East Coaster.

And that was when I realized I am not. I'm a West Coaster. And so I started with West Coast for the brackets, and then it feels like the natural answer to the West Coast is the East Coast. But then you could theoretically go South or North or North or South, and I wanted to flip the script. I wanted to be fun and flirty and just go South before North, except after Jorth. What? Oh, no, that's what they always say.

So let's see, you went West, East. So we're not even going clockwise. South, face, North. Yeah, okay.

Is that Manzoukas? No, that's something else. I always think that's Manzoukas, and it's not.

No, it's from my friend's comedy troupe, which I'm blanking on right now, which is really embarrassing. So how dare you put me on the spot like that? I apologize.

South, Earth, Face, West. Yeah. I think it's pretty good, whatever it is. All right. So we've heard Gether's song. That's a Marion the Catarian, the tuxedo cat. I have a whole, by the way, because Holly Golightly, Becca's cat, is a tuxedo cat. I've got a love of tuxedo cats that I probably didn't have previously. I don't know if they're all as chill as Holly is Or if that's just specific to her But I'm into the breed, I dig the cat

I mean, Theo was a tuxedo cat Sort of, right? I mean, is any black and white cat A tuxedo cat, or do you have to have a special A specific pattern? I don't see, yeah

I don't know the ruling on that Does it have to be white on your chest So it's like you're wearing a tuxedo? You have to have a cummerbund Could you be a cat? You know, I've totally eliminated I wear tuxes probably four or five times a year Guess what? I've eliminated the cummerbund oh yeah I don't and I don't even and I make no apologies like what were we doing with that bull bull crap it's a hassle I know it's supposed to catch your crumbs was the idea which also no chance that's gonna work like you're supposed to wear with the kind of fan going up if you will the folds going up so I mean that's what I had heard the story was it was so it would if you were eating and you had a spillage it would catch the crumbs that's what I had heard at one point you ever

hear that explanation maybe from you i think i i've probably worn a tuxedo i'm gonna say if you go back to like kind of a formal dance in high school maybe five times in my life tops um and maybe if i did indeed wear one for prom i might have wore a cummerbund for that but is it cummerbund it's not cummerbund i know that it's cummerbund cummerbund it's cummerbund there is a d on the end of it i thought we on the end of it i thought we dispelled that because i always want to say cummerbund but there's no d oh there is a oh oh no it's it's a word if people want to put a b in them it's cummerbund yeah i think i was saying i think i was calling it a cumberbatch okay that's way off it's cummerbund that's what it is that i knew that there's some misnomer but anyway point is as an adult anytime that i'm going to wear a tuxedo you're going to opt for the vest underneath if you're going to wear something underneath the vest underneath is the move right well i want to

I mean, that is a good move, but also, if you just want to freeball it, if you just want to go rogue and drop the Kummer Bund, you can do that, too. I've been doing that for years. No repercussions. Yeah, nice. Zero negative repercussions in my life. Well, as far as you know. From just showing up at formal events where I'm hosting, and I'm like, yeah, I don't want to deal with that weird thing that I've got to strap on. It's like I'm a WWE wrestler, and I just got the belt.

They're just not flattering.

Well, actually, I would say that there might be a slight argument that they a little bit are, because they do kind of cover the belly.

Yeah, I guess flattering is the wrong word. I just don't, you're right, they don't, like, accentuate, they don't accentuate, you know, I guess they do some hiding or whatever, but, like, I just don't think as a piece of apparel that it's a good-looking piece of apparel.

you know what i mean like a pocket kerchief sure i can definitely um understand where a little bit of flair there comes in a a nice bow tie sure are these things practical not necessarily but a um as is properly pronounced um i just don't see it as being a good looking thing it's like my

tuxedo catalog my tuxedo catalog.com if we can believe them has some dazzling deets on this whole thing. First of all, the correct spelling is cummerbund, cummerbund. Not cummerbund, but Merriam Webster lists cummerbund as an alternate spelling because of how often it's misspelled. I know we don't... A lot of times we don't go in for that kind of thing here. I don't know, yeah. According to this website, it began in India around 1850, not as formal wear, but as a dining wear for British military personnel stationed there. The folks from India often wore sashes around their waist called karma bands and karma meaning waste for formal dinners the British army customarily wore waistcoats vests under their jackets but in no small part due to the heat in India the British were very keen to find a cooler dining uniform and quickly adopted the sash for their dining wear waist covering and by the way this borrowing of the local Indian culture was the worst thing the British would do in India

is that you adding that last part that was me

that was me opining on the last part there Sure. I forgot about that. I didn't know that. Once you said that, though, I don't know if it's from this show or another show. I did. I was from another show because that felt like totally new information to me. And and and if I we read that before and I my brain whiffed it that far out of my brain, I'm I'm I'm worried. There's probably another podcast. I'm worried we're not going to get to all of these songs, so let's please get to our second song of the day. Right, absolutely.

Yes, thank you, Gather, for the song about Mary and the Tuxedo Cat. Now, let us turn our attention. Oh, by the way, my friend's sketch comedy group was called Hush Money, I think. Oh, Hush Money. Great name.

Don't you know your directions? It's real easy. West, right, backwards, yonder. You didn't even see east. That's because the earth face east, dumbass.

Okay, so that's from Hush Money Sketch. Now, let us turn our attention to Caitlin and her cat, Hal.

Hi, Luke and Andrew. This is listener Caitlin from New Hampshire. And these songs are about my cat, Hal, who is four and who I adopted three years ago and who is at once the most affectionate and the most aggressive cat that I've ever had. So I'm going to start with my original. Okay. It goes like this. Little howl pal, little doobie doob, little schmoobie schmoob, little howly pally, little bum head, little chum head, little howl pal, howly pal. and then my like dbtl one which is everybody how cat how cat every time you guys play everybody razzle dazzle of course and then um for after these messages every time the intro plays On top of it, I say, after these howly cats will be howl cats, I can't believe I ate that whole cat.

There it is. It's so good. All right. So good, yeah.

I want, is it Caitlin? I want Caitlin to know that I say this, and this is a very high compliment. that's the first just deeply humiliating song i think we've heard this week and i mean that in the best way we've heard you know sort of melodically complex reworkings of various musicals and flapper songs and you know like there's been a lot of let's be honest like kind of highfalutin pet songing going on and that one i love because this is exactly the kind of bullshit that I get up to when I'm singing to my pets. I'm going to try fast

forwarding. I don't have this isolated, but I just want to hear the original, because as far as judging is concerned, I think maybe we go with the original song, not the working the refs appealing to our TBTL slash after these message production. Oh, okay. So here, I'm going to skip ahead a little bit more, because I need a reminder of what the original one is. Okay.

Then we can go.

Nope, that's the wrong voicemail. Pretend you didn't hear that everybody that was never happened that was a spoiler and i am embarrassed i am embarrassed at what i did there let's go back to caitlin's voicemail

here. Okay. It goes like this. Okay. That's the one we've got to keep in our heads for

this. I think so. In fact, this was a pretty long voicemail. I think Caitlin, mentioned that she was not allowed to swear as a kid and so her and her siblings came up with words they could say and I think Chumhead might have been one of them which then lasted. That's great. And now Hal is the recipient of that moniker. Little Chumhead. I do love that. That's pretty sweet. Little Hal.

And you're right. Is she ever called Hal a doggam feather mucker? Ooh. What? Or a bun of a sitch. These were the swears that we would say at Jesus

Creek sometimes. Oh, swapping the letters so

that you're not actually saying anything bad but it sounds like you're saying something bad.

Zuck the Phipps, as we used to sing at Kent State. Precisely.

I like that a lot. I like it for the reasons that I've already stated, including the fact that you can hear Caitlin almost backing out of the song at multiple points because she's like, am I really going to sing this onto a voicemail where literally thousands of people will hear it? And she did. And for that, I salute you, Caitlin. I love that. This show is built on vulnerability. It's built on transparency. Intimacy.

There's something very intimate about these songs as well, I would say.

And intimacy. All the people have asked to hear less about my intimate life.

So a little bit less of that now. People have asked to hear less about your feet, I believe, not your intimate life. It's just that particular. That's not the feedback I'm receiving.

That does remind me. That's the feedback I'm getting.

You're in a feedback loop. I've gotten the feedback loop here. We'll call the show that. I wanted to say that.

I thought we were calling this one snake songs. Oh, by the way, I had that one, too, in case we ever— Snake songs? Just in case someone had a snake, like, someone sings to their pet snake. But is there a play on words there that I'm missing, or— No, just alliteration. I was, Andrew, I was just trying desperately to come up with any possible title for—

No, that's fine, yeah, for any kind of eventuality of animals.

I was like, what's a word that is related to music, and then what's an animal that has the same first letter?

Sure, okay. That was basically the strategy. And I'm trying to riff on Snake here, and I can't come up with anything better. But speaking of me not performing well under pressure, I'd mentioned, I think, on Monday's show when we got this thing rolling that, like, I feel like I sing to my cats all the time. But then in the moment, like, I could not think of a song that I sing to my cats, which is ridiculous. There must be hundreds. I remember one that I used to sing to Theo when I'd feed him, oh, I know you're hungry, to the tune of You Can Go Your Own Way. Oh, yeah. I don't do a very good singing. That's why you didn't recognize that. That's on me, not you. But I do sing this song. Speaking of really stupid and then also just petering out, because I don't think I have an out to this, but I'll often start singing to Professor Bananas. My Bananas has a first name. It's B-A-N-A-S. My Bananas has a first name. That's not even how you spell bananas. And then my Bananas.

Somehow that's how I would spell it in the song. Yeah, exactly. I'm not kidding.

That's how I spell the song. And then I think it just peters out. I think I just start mumbling to myself until Genevieve.

asks me to close the door first of all i want to say that i don't think these songs have to have a power out i would almost be limited by those kinds of rules and expectations because i think that i think you know i mean again we're hearing some really good songs this week and and in fact in a way that makes me feel less than because none of the songs and you know if i was going to try to do the song if you just put me in the room with bubbles or rudy it would just come back to me it's Like, I would need to have the animal right here so that then it will spur my brain on in the direction that it needs to go. Yeah, I'm trying to.

Like, if I'm holding bingo right now, I'm probably singing, bingo cat, bingo cat, bingo cat, bingo cat. That might come up from time to time.

Oh, like lollipop.

Lollipop, lollipop, ooh, la la lollipop. Yeah, I think that might. That seems natural. I don't think I'm making that up right now.

I think that, no, that seems like that's pulled from the headlines of your actual life. I'm trying to think of, I'm also a little, sorry, I'm a little distracted because the FedEx guy was dropping something off, but I thought he was talking to me, but he just had his AirPods in and he was just having a running conversation, and I was reminded of when I went to the UPS store recently down in town, and there was, so it's the UPS store, and yet I think there's some kind of, which one is, what can Brown do for you? Was that UPS?

That's UPS for some reason.

Rollo Tony Brown Town. So there was a UPS driver who was, it was one of those real hot days that we've been having in this summer.

because the climate is doing amazingly. And this UPS worker, that's a famously hard job, I think. You know, those folks that deliver stuff for UPS, they keep long hours and they do a lot of real tough physical labor and they're very sexy in the office. I feel like when they come in, everyone has a crush on them because they're in that cute outfit with the short shorts and they're lifting heavy things. Anyway, this particular driver was involved. He was also wearing like, you know, AirPods and he was just having the most involved personal conversation as he was schlepping huge numbers of packages in and out. So what happened is people go to the UPS store. I might have called the FedEx store accidentally. I think this is a UPS store, but they have this mountain of stuff in the back. This is about five o'clock. I'm there. And that's the mountain of everything that everyone has brought back by way like they bought it on Amazon. Probably they don't want it any longer. they're bringing it in to return it because this is the world we live in now because this is how the commerce goes there was just this mountain of stuff so this is a bunch of trips for this guy and he's filling up this dolly this rolling dolly in a very ingenious way actually where he's just getting I don't know how he's doing it but he's getting so much stuff on this dolly and then he's wheeling it out to his truck and he's putting it in his truck and then he's coming back in and the whole time he is just having the most unguarded real conversation about somebody in his life who's letting him down and he's talking to this other person about them and it's like we're in a kind of quiet ups store where everyone's just kind of like in line it's not a loud environment and i just this is what i always say about these kinds of things i will never have the self-confidence to have that kind of conversation in public i don't i i cannot relate to that mindset and i'm not even saying it to be critical like it's his choice but i am so embarrassed about everything i might say into a cell phone that somebody would overhear he was just in it he was just in whatever this life moment was but then like also just like heaving heavy boxes and just like pulling it in there and then just talking and talking and talking and i just thought this is the perfect job for him because this is how he processes and he's got probably 10 hours a day if he doesn't care who hears that's like if you're somebody who loves chopping it up on the phone with someone become friends with a ups driver with poor boundaries because you guys will it's very specific advice you two will just just honestly wear each other out every day i want to make that a pull quote for today's show it's very it's not bad advice it's just very what a perfect combo somebody who's got nothing but time to talk and somebody who's got nothing but ears to listen like what a team you're right

about the vulnerability and the putting it all out there and the shyness that's out there for me as well i also as you know officially a cranky old man i also do judge people who are having loud conversations on their phone um sometimes it is confusing i mean some of the some of the most embarrassing moments of my life is when i think somebody is talking to me but they just have like an earbud in and then when i say they're like oh yeah that's or you know good morning and i'm like oh hey good morning and they look at me like i'm crazy because i didn't realize i had earbuds and i'm just like dude you're the one who's like saying good morning loudly next to me um and also like in a lot of situations i do just find it to be rude and i also like and this is again like just let's just crank up the old manniness on this like i also don't love it if i'm on the phone with somebody and they're just doing the grocery shopping or delivering their packages because you can hear the door slam shut on the like i don't know all of that extraneous noise sometimes it's like am i talking to you can you hear me i can barely hear you sometimes it's louder. This is where you

and I as Autophile Nightmares I think are very aligned. Although actually maybe the thing I'm about to say and then we need to get to the last two songs. What the heck? They're good. But I don't know, maybe you do avail yourself of this more. I am terrified of and never ever use the microphone built into my vehicle for making cell phone calls. Because I'll go a year just on speakerphone, like my speakerphone of my iPhone talking while driving but being safe but but talking into the speakerphone instead of the thing and then everyone's all think well the technology is probably pretty good and i will do a test with someone i will say hey i'm talking to you through the microphone how's this sound like it sounds okay and then i'll put them on speakerphone go how does it sound like oh my god it's so much better you did that test with me and

john one time on a call and it was a lot better and i was surprised because honestly for as much as i was just crab ass in there about other people's sound quality um i stop playing crab ass i uh the the speed or i'm sorry the microphone on my phone which i've had for like well over six years now or something so it's getting kind of old i believe that the microphone sounds like garbage people cannot often hear me on my phone phone so i'd gotten used to if i'm going to make a phone call sometimes going out into the car and having it like via my via the speaker phone in the car and I've always assumed

it's better. And people can hear me and people don't complain about it. But now I'm scared to know what I sound like when I'm driving around talking to somebody. It probably does sound like

a wind tunnel. Well, I think we tolerate, as the listeners, I think we tolerate a lot now because we're used to it. But I don't think it's the best fidelity. And I think, like, it honestly stresses me out. Let me just say, there's a person that I'm dating. And when we are in the car, Can you narrow it down? Starts, their name starts with the second letter of the alphabet. Okay. I'll figure it out. Barry, Broadcast Barry and I have made a life together. But like she will have these phone conversations and it's on the car thing. And she has a kind of a soft voice as it is. And I don't, if I'm going to talk to you, Andrew, like imagine that I'm trying to talk to you on the built-in microphone in my car. I'm trying to figure out where it is and I'm yelling into it, Andrew. I'm like this, hey there, I'm talking to you. I'm sorry, I'm on the freeway, but I'm trying to be safe. I'm using the microphone. It's all I can think about is, am I speaking into the microphonic device? And that is not what happens on these other calls. It's kind of like just we're driving and it's like, okay, well, I don't know. Yeah, it's going to probably be like seven or eight before we can get there. And the amount of anxiety that it creates for me to hear this person talk in a casual voice into the void of this Toyota, it keeps me up at night, Andrew.

You know, I feel like it's very fortuitous that you brought this up because this brings us right back to our project here. It just occurred to me that we've been talking about how people are being vulnerable, sharing these songs, and they're so sweet and lovely. It's a way of getting to know not just our listeners, but their pets and their relationships with them. These are I've really, really been enjoying this week, and I appreciate everybody who called in to sing these songs. It did occur to me. That ends now. The rest of them. I thought that's where you were going. No, it did occur to me that because of that, some people might have called in and they're not hearing their song. And that might be really hurtful on a week where we're celebrating the listeners in this way. And I want to say that I really did my darndest to check the voicemail line over and over again. I don't think anything slipped through the cracks, but this has been we've been collecting these calls for a really long time. And there are some unread voicemails, generally speaking, in the voicemail line. there's a chance that we might have accidentally skipped a call or two if if you don't hear yourself on here it wasn't because we didn't think your song was good um and i know that there were at least two where the sound quality was so bad i just couldn't kind of make it work and i'm not trying to you know neg anybody for talking to the phone the best way for them but there's just sometimes when i know i can't remember their name but i remember there was one call from bellingham that i was just like it's i don't know if it was speaker or bluetooth i don't know what it was and it's not the person's fault but the the sound quality was really rough and i couldn't make it out so we had to skip that one and a couple of others so while that might not be the best news uh if you didn't hear your song or not going to hear your song this week i just want to let folks know it wasn't because i was judging harshly the songs you were submitting it was

purely an audio um or and if you would like to honestly i'm having so much fun with this that i would be personally not against this being something that pops up in the emails female segment right like going forward if you've if you just like to share a song with us i just

think it brightens everyone's day yeah like somebody called in just randomly and shared a song and then i said hey more people should do this and we had such an outpouring that that's

led us to today so so if for any reason your song didn't make it in call us back and leave it on the voicemail line i mean you only know this by the by the end of friday's show but like if or i guess by the end of thursday's show probably but like yeah uh call it back in and maybe we'll get a better recording of it or whatever, but I'm loving these songs. I don't want anyone to feel left out or like their little pet song didn't make the cut, like you said.

So here's this next song. I don't have a person's name associated with it. I have it listed as anonymous, so I don't know if this person left a name. We actually heard a little preview of this a second ago when I hit the wrong button, but this is a song about a doggo.

This is a song I used to sing to my dog, who we had a quinceanera for, and you all posted a photo of her. Anyway, it was a music career weekend. I used to sing with the Pants while I was feeding her.

So it sounds like the dog's name was Pants. Did you hear that?

Pants and Pants had a quinceanera.

Yes, which that does ring a bell. And I think we did use the photo maybe as the show pick that day. So here it is.

I'll feed you now. Then we can go play, I'll feed you now We can play all day, I'll feed you now Before you lose your mind, I'll feed you now Wow.

That's pretty much it. I forget who sings that song, but it's from the 80s.

Yeah.

Power out.

I need you now. I need you now.

I'm looking that up, and I'm seeing, like, I was looking up songs. By the way, beautiful. Pipes. Beautiful singing. Yeah. I mean, my goodness gracious. I'm seeing a Lady Antebellum song called Need You Now, but that's, I don't know, that's from 2009. The caller was saying this is from the 80s. Could it be Firehouse from the 80s? I Need You Now More Than Words Can Say.

I need you now. More than words can say, I need you now. Is it that song?

That could be Firehouse. Is that Firehouse? You're not spoofing, right?

No, I'm singing a song that sounded like what she was singing that I think might be that song, but I don't know if that was. Firehouse is where I go for my subs. That's pretty much it.

Oh, man, I did go to there. I went to that's one of those restaurants that is so popular in some parts of the world that they have their whole routine or whatever. And I didn't know that I was on a road trip with Genevieve somewhere, maybe heading down to Bend, Oregon last summer or something.

OK, that would make sense. That's in the firehouse district.

Is it OK? Yeah. And I just remember pulling over. It's like off the highway or whatever. I'm like, I'm just going to go in there. And it's one of those things where they kind of rat. They were very nice, by the way, but they sort of rat tatted tatted a couple of questions at me. And all of a sudden I realized, oh, there's a there's like a sandwich cultural divide here. Like, I don't know these words and terms that you're using, like bread and meat. No. You know what I mean? Like, it was kind of like, do you want that smoke shopped or whatever? I was like, I don't know what smoke shopped means. Isn't that smokehouse? Yeah, right. Exactly.

You want that sexy calendar? Hey, by the way, the song, I think, is Love of a Lifetime by Firehouse. And I think why it's confusing is because I think, well, let's just listen a little bit. I don't know if there is. I think that's a different part of the song where he sings, I need you now. I will tell you this, we're definitely getting pulled down in Romania. Because if there's a U.S. song that's still topping the charts in Romania, I'm guessing it's Firehouse, Love of a Lifetime.

I don't think that's the song, though. because I was just looking at the lyrics of it and there doesn't seem to be like a bridge or a chorus of I Need You Now. Having said that, what is... This does not seem right.

I'm thinking about you All I know This is... Yeah, isn't this? Is this the same song?

I need you now

I don't think it's the same song, though, is it? So this is Firehouse, but this is listing it as I Need You Now.

Okay. That was not the name of the song I just played. Oh, Love of a Lifetime I just played. They sound so similar. Maybe, yeah. Nice. Good catch, though. I think that's exactly what the anonymous listener was singing to her dog.

Okay. Anyway, that was weird. And also, nobody will ever hear that. No, that's not true. We're fine. Okay. Okay, so that was anonymous.

R.I.P. C.J. Snare, lead singer of Firehouse.

Oh, really?

Yeah. This was as of, let's see, 2024. Fairly recently, we lost C.J. Snare. God, hell of a name if you're going to be in a rock band, though. Well, you should be the drummer, though, shouldn't you? Well, I mean, he had a talent in the vocals department that was not going to be kept under a bushel.

Yeah, that is true. Not to be confused with Firehose. C.C. DeVille. C.C. DeVille or Firehose. You ever have that whole thing, like Firehouse and Firehose, very, very different bands. I didn't even know Firehose was a band. That was like that Mike Watt project, kind of a punky, kind of noisy thing. Oh, yeah, that's why that missed me. Yeah, you weren't bopping to that. You weren't swing dancing to that. All right, let's get to our final submission for-

Finally got to the fourth song.

Oh, you know what, Luke? There is, this is a special one. It's short. It's a shorty, and I don't even, I don't think it's introduced. But it is our first duet, and I believe maybe our only duet that was submitted. Take a listen to this.

Hello, Jim. You are my kitty. You are so good. And I wish I could make you kitty president. Head kitty in charge. This is listener Laura Grace and Dane from North Carolina.

We met Laura Grace and Dane, I believe.

Talk about a coup. I mean, how many delegates were actually committed to that cap before you just try to install somebody else?

Exactly. I think we met Laura Grayson, Dane, on the Zooms that we did during the TBTathon, if I recall. Yeah, I remember that. But anyway, Kitty President. Wow, that's pretty good. That's amazing.

I was trying to, I couldn't quite place if, I think that might be an original too, right? It seemed like it, yeah. I would say most of my defaults, and the way my brain works is my pet songs are usually going to be loosely based on an existing song with just some of the words changed. But I think they've gone out on a totally new endeavor there with Kitty President, which I've got to respect. You do have to respect the Kitty President.

Now, I am starting to develop some opinions here. You have to stand up when the Kitty President enters the room. You must. But I went first the last two times. I feel like I'm really putting my fingers on the scale here. So what I'm going to do here is, Luke, I'm going to remind you what we've heard from today's four submissions. And I'm going to let you discuss it first. We heard from Gather in today's opening tape, singing Marian the Catarian. We had Caitlin singing kind of a silly song to her cat, Hal. I love it. We had an anonymous listener singing, I'll feed you now, to her dog. And Laura Grace and Dane singing and praising their kitty president.

Boy, a lot to like in all of these submissions. Lots of different things to like. i am i'll be honest with you i i i am i'm very charmed by the vulnerability of caitlin's halkat song not to be confused with the belltown hellcat completely different experiences so i it would prop my vote hold on i'm sorry oh i just door dashed a firehouse sub with everything on it you did not no but you could in the time that that drum roll left.

You were looking at your phone. I'm like, that seems like something you might do.

So my vote, I think my personal vote is for Halcat by Caitlin, the funny, silly chum head. I was bewitched and beguiled by all of these songs, but particularly that one because of its vulnerability levels.

I'll go along with you on that. I feel like if I were left up to my own druthers, i might give a little credence to the duet because of the performance of it duet it was the only duet and it's a good song they're all good songs but um i did it was a good song um and during this uh you know kind of the the craziness of the political cycle and the political news that's

going on you think you just fell out of a coconut tree maybe i was leaning in that direction but

your argument for caitlin um definitely holds water for me also um caitlin honored uh tbtl and after these messages. I don't know if that should be measured, but congratulations to Caitlin. I was going to make that noise before or after your drum roll, but I couldn't find it in time. But then once you find the boing, you've got to play it at some point. No, you can't just walk away from that. Exactly. So I'll keep that for next show.

Okay, so if I have this right, if we're going, let me see if I can find all these people. So we now have our third finalist in our final four. We had day one, the West Bracket. Our winner was Clementine doing Roscoe, the retired outlaw. That's right. And then Day 2, the eastern bracket. Our winner coming out of NOLA is Natalie doing New Orleans flapper town song.

You're seeing my notes, which are a little confusing. I think maybe Natalie is in New Orleans, but it was that old flapper song. Right, right.

And then today, if I have it straight.

As there's a drive in a deep left field by Castellanos, it will be a home run. and so that'll make it a 4-0 ball game.

Do I have that? I've said some things on this mic, Andrew. I don't know if this is the last TBTL Pet Sounds that I'll ever host. I don't know if I'm going to put it on this headset again.

No, I'm kidding.

You heard that he's now doing... Oh, God. Yeah, he's Brenneman, right? Is that his name? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's been hired for his first post-scandal.

Is there a biblical baseball team league that he's been retained by?

I think it's very low-level college, and it might be football even. Is that a possibility? I feel like whatever it is, it's low-level college. I don't know if it's football or baseball, but I feel like he might be in the football game there. Interesting.

I mean, whatever we can do, honestly, to get another mediocre white guy of a certain age calling games.

preserve him at all costs is what i would say right because yeah because he's on you just can't you can't find anybody else to do that i'm no you absolutely cannot so hopefully he'll find his way home oh he's going to be broadcasting on the cw here it is according to uh tom brenneman to return broadcasting with the cw four years after oh that's right luke it happened during the pandemic there wasn't even a crowd i always forget about that little detail piping in the crowd they were Piping in the crowds and it was like cardboard cutouts or whatever. We should go back sometime and look at our calendars.

What a world. Remember you could sponsor a cardboard, like you could sponsor, you could buy a ticket that would be a picture of you in the stands? Yeah.

Did that happen?

We almost, you and me and the fun-loving criminals almost did that. I was earnest. I sent out a call. I'm like, hey, guys, you can PayPal me or Venmo me or whatever, and we'll do this, and nobody bit, and I didn't want to push it.

I don't want there to, I do not, I want to be on the record. I don't want there to be another pandemic, Andrew. Uh-huh.

Okay.

But if there is, we're buying one of those. Okay. We learned anything from the Junior Sluggers. That is incredible PR for the show.

That's right. Thank you for being a 10.

All right, we've got some more Daily Donors to thank before we ski-daddle. These folks have donated to TBTL, are donating to TBTL. This is what makes the program possible. This is why we turned in a 52-minute show when our plan was to do 30 minutes. Is that what we're up to? Oh, we are. My goodness. Should we do a full show or a half show? And I saw Brian Covey's name on the list from Seattle, Washington. I just said, I can't do that to Brian.

Yes.

Can't do that to Lisa Davenport of Cathedral City, California, either. Oh, Cathedral City. I can picture it. A lot of churches. Yeah, it sounds quite holy. And it's interesting that Lisa's last name is also a city. Lisa and I share a bond of our last names being a city. And I'm sure if Lisa's in Davenport, they go, do you own the city? And she would go, how can you own a city? That doesn't even make sense.

Can I ask you a stupid question? Is a Davenport also a piece of furniture or a part of a house?

I believe, so it's Iowa, right? And I believe they used to say the Davenport, that was like fancy talk for a couch or a sofa maybe? Oh, okay. I remember hearing about the Davenport, though, as a furniture item.

It's an indoor couch. For some reason, I had it as, that's why I asked if it was a piece of a house or a piece of furniture. For some reason, I think of Davenport as some sort of a couchy thing that would be on your front porch.

But maybe that's just like an Ackerman, like Bettina Ackerman of Kihei, Hawaii.

I've never heard of that. It's a thing. They do it in Hawaii.

If you hang out in Kihei, you know. Kihei. I love Kihei. I love it out there. I've been to Kihei many a time because it's not – it ain't far from – is that the – wait. I don't think you're a Kihei person because Kihei is Maui, right? Well, no, but I've been through Kihei. Oh, okay. Yeah, but if you stay out in the – what is it? Is that the North Beach, the north side of things? All I know, Andrew, I'm reeling here because I was recently turned down for a gig from the Washington Association of Car Dealerships. Wait, are you getting that news right now during this recording? I got it recently, but it hurt. It stung. Because they reached out to say, hey, we liked one of your Sunday morning pieces. I've done this before with them, by the way. Would you come out to our conference that we have in Hawaii every year and interview someone on stage? And we'll kind of bring back some of that magic of television storytelling. The last time I did it was with a kid who would speed stack cups. Oh, yeah. I remember that. And I'm going to be honest with you. I got cocky. I said to myself, I says to them, I says, sure, I'd love to come do it. They asked me my day rate. I quoted them my day rate. And then I just figured, well, that was just a formality. They would like me to do it. And the next email I get will be them saying, all right, let's go for it. Here are the dates. And the next email was, thank you so much. We decided to go in a different direction.

And do you think, so they didn't come back and say, hey, listen, we'd love to work with you, but that's just a little bit out of our price range. Would you be willing to do it for X? So do you feel like you priced yourself out of this or is it a combination?

No, I think part of it was that the other person they wanted me to interview was not available, who was a breaker, somebody who does break dancing. That was the story they had seen of mine, and it was going to be me talking to somebody from the state of Washington, but that person was not going to be around. So we had lost the important component of me interviewing someone who does the thing and doing a demo. They like these to be activated. So I think I don't, but I'm sure also, I think it was more that than anything else. But regardless of the reason, it was like, I have to admit, I've been very blessed in my life. Usually, most of the time, if there's the beginning of a conversation about something, I've been fortunate enough for the end of the conversation to be about, yeah, well, let's go. Go ahead and make this happen. And it was a good reminder for me that everything doesn't always come up Burbank, and that's okay. And by the way, you're right. It's Maui. And I think Kihei is. And I think I've been through it because the last time I did this gig on Maui, as I was driving back and forth to places, I kept going through Kihei.

Vives and I stay near Kihei when we go to Maui. It's been a while. We have not been back since the tragic fires. But Maui is honestly, it sounds like such a cliche thing to say, but I'm not somebody who grew up on the West Coast. I'm not somebody who grew up going to Hawaii. It's not like just something you take for granted where I'm from. And now that I've been an adult living out here in Seattle, I think we've taken at least three vacations to Maui, and it truly is just like a magical, magical place. I love, I love, and we've been to other places in Hawaii too, which are also very, very beautiful, but I like returning to places like Maui that feel a little like, you know, it's like, it's a, it's a, it's obviously a place where tourists go, but it also has a little bit of a, like a comfort, a very comfortable, like sort of town, towny feel to it a little bit. I just love that area so damn much. Can't wait to get back.

I mean, I'm just impressed that you know what island you're on ever.

Yeah, well. Because I do not. Highest Genevieve, honestly.

I mean, I've told this story too many times, but I booked tickets once to go out for a wedding of a friend of ours, and I booked tickets to the wrong island. Because I don't think I literally thought it was one place, but I don't know what I thought. It wasn't until shortly before the trip that Carrie looked at the reservation and said, you know that this is the wrong island. And you ended up getting to the wedding on time, right? Oh, yeah. And it turned out to be a sham wedding. So everything worked out. The paperwork was never signed on the wedding Oh More of a celebration of the idea of a marriage Oh, okay Which then when the marriage was dissolved There was limited liability for all involved Because the marriage never happened I think I know what you're talking about Okay But anyway, I'm not clear on a lot of those places So maybe Bettina Ackerman can school me on that Bettina, thank you for the donation Thanks also to Rob Love in Richmond, Virginia Nothing shammy about that That's true love That's a real place.

That's Rob Love, yes.

Rob Love, baby. Ooh, I want to get you. Get that Rob Love, baby. That's my Father John Misty impression.

I know.

Doing this song, Real Love. Yeah, we knew. Thanks, Rob. Thanks also to Donna Meardall in Fullerton, California. Hey. All right. Thank you, Donna. I'll lay off the references to Fullerton, California, and the Christian radio I grew up with where one of those shows was based in Fullerton. Fullerton is about so much more than that, including being the place Donna Myrdal is living. And then it's Christopher Shade of Barrington, Illinois. Thank you, Christopher. Illinois. Sorry, not Illinois. I blame Sufjan for that one. Yeah.

It was already confusing.

Yeah, and you know, it's a clever... Listen, I'm not above clever wordplay. Please, see music for your beacon. I'm a guy who enjoys wordplay, but when Sufjan released Come on, Feel the Illinois, it really did stop my brain from remembering that it's Illinois.

I have fallen, so it's Wednesday, and I don't know what we're naming the show anymore. I wrote Caught in a Feedback Loop, but I didn't know if you wanted to stick with the tradition of choosing something off of your

list. Did we talk about turtles today, snakes, or marmots? Well, then I'm mostly

out of... Okay, Caught in a Feedback Loop it is then. Yeah, I like that.

Sounds good. So that's the That's the title of today's show. I guess so. Yes. And here we are at the end of it. Actually, under an hour by my count. Barely. Hey, thanks for listening, everybody. We are going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

Power out.

You