Muse

What did you think about the ride? It was great, and apparently, I've never been on live television before, but apparently sometimes I don't watch the news because I'm a kid, and apparently every time, apparently, Grandpa just gives me a remote after we watch the Powerball. It's the Powerball. Tell me about the ride. What did you think about the ride? Well, it was great. Why? Because apparently you're spinning around and every time you get dizzy, all you do is get dizzy. Is it fun? Yeah, and apparently I already went down the super slide. When I went down the line, I was scared half to death. I just freak out.

TBTN! now many many people have questions and very serious questions you heard what he said

did you hear what he said yes i heard what he said doesn't make any difference what he says does it no he's mine he's been mine for years and i'm gonna hold on to him you'll never get him

never it's like hannibal lecter had sex with a car alarm and their offspring made a baby with

the ghost of saddam hussein this is my sandbox i'm not allowed to go in the deep end that's where i saw the leprechaun he told me to burn things isn't there a slanket somewhere you

should be feeling with your parts well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live that's a terrific title It jumps out at you like a rat in your underwear drawer. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. It's your lucky day. You just found a USB flash drive in the parking lot. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. It sure is. I have decided this week, though, that there is some gardening and landscaping type of stuff that I don't want to take on as a homeowner. I'm going to reach out to professionals to see about certain weeding, certain spraying to try to keep this place actually from being completely overtaken by the grasses and weeds and things that happen when you're out here on a few acres. So that's later today. As of right now, we are focused on episode 4,289 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. And it's going to be a special one. This is special. This is special. Because we have the triumphant return of a very, very dear friend of the program.

Well, well, well. Look who's back.

And I would like to ask them if I am spending too much money on underwear. Sounds expensive. I don't know. $30 per pair. Sound expensive? It does to me. I'm wearing them right now, though, so I can report in real time if they seem to be worth the money. Also, I am launching a personal journey today. I'm doing something called 75 Hard. Oh, shit. Things are hard. 75 hard-ish. Ish, ish. And I already can feel like this. I'm already having the sense that this might have been a terrible, terrible mistake. I know just the person, though, to talk me down. She is the co-founder of this very program and the, well, really, one of the main reasons TBTL exists. She's my dear friend, Jen Flash Andrews.

I love Jesus, but I drink a little.

And she is joining me right now. Good morning, Jen.

Hi.

Welcome back.

Thank you. It feels very good.

I know.

I'm so happy to see you and hear you and talk to you.

I know. You look great. Now, we're using this. This is a fancy technology for us versus, you know, maybe years past. You and I went through all kinds of different systems and things to try to talk to each other over the years, like when TBTL stopped being a radio show. And I meant to tell you we're using this thing, Riverside, and it's recording us both video and audio. And right before we dialed up, I wanted to send you a message that said, oh, just so you know, there's also photos involved. But you are in full hair and makeup. You somehow intuited that this is now also a visual product as well as an audio product.

I just watched the new Adam Sandler comedy special on Netflix. And there's a point in it where, like, the guy that's doing his music and sound, the dust kind of falls over a little bit. And they run over and prop it up. And it was definitely giving me TVTL being run by. when the whole all of it was held up by a stick well we're sort of back to those days because

andrew is in croatia this week and um so it's kind of left to me and then tbtl employee numero uno john sklarov to get this thing on the internet later but i will tell you i was feeling the level of anxiety this morning that i do not usually feel going into the program because normally my job is to just kind of yammer

on for an hour but i also have to make sure that i'm recording that hour of yammering um so bear with me i may need to lean on you heavily for the content portion of the program i would always feel

that way when you would be in chicago for wait wait and i would sit in your chair uh-huh at the studio yeah like just kind of do all the like making sure it went to land for traffic or whatever not traffic he would be so horrified oh the lanimal land archer i mean just the fact that You were there on the phone, but just the fact that I was in your chair, I always felt a little nervous.

Yeah. And that was, I think, a very crummy chair, if I remember, because those early days of the show, that studio was really nothing to write home about. It got a lot fancier once TBTL was gone. We were always holding them back from a major remodel.

Yeah, our huge budget.

so i am um actually it's so it's so perfect jen that you're on the show today because i feel like in the last i'm gonna say almost 10 years since we were doing this together as a radio thing and even as a podcast thing i haven't been on a lot of crazy diet exercise plans i feel like in the early days of the show it was a constant like for both of us yeah and i just by total happenstance today uh september 9th uh in the year of our lord 2024 i just well i decided a couple of days ago but today is day one of me trying this thing called 75 hard and you've actually done 75 soft what what we'll start with what 75 soft is so you can have alcohol on the weekends oh okay

and there was one other so i did the so you know you do two workouts a day one of them has to be

outside. Yeah. That's, is that on both of them? That's on 75 hard. But what I did for my outside

workout was just my dog walk, which is 30 minutes of a fair, but it's not that he likes to stop and smell. And I watched a video on Tik TOK that said that letting dogs smell is more important than the

walk itself because it stimulates the brain. Listen, I'm a big believer in that. And when I used to take Rudy on these walks, I was very, very annoyed that she wanted to smell everything. And then I probably read the same article or saw the same thing that it's like basically how they're mapping their world. And then I felt horrible for the many years that I just been

dragging her ass around Bellingham. So that was part of why it was SOP 75 for me is that I considered that 30 minutes, but I did read my 10 pages of nonfiction a day and you will die when you hear what book I chose. People regularly are like, that doesn't count. I'm like, yes, it does. Britney Spears memoir is 100% a nonfiction book. And were you reading it or

listening to the Michelle Williams audio book? So I started with Michelle Williams, but it actually distracted me because i feel like i mean again there's you know the the this is maybe not typically where like we talk about the fact that michelle i mean the the current uh incarnation and iteration of tbtl isn't really can you believe michelle williams signed on for that and what an interesting statement about um being a woman in the world etc but but jen you're here so let's just do this what did you think about michelle williams the great actor michelle Williams taking on the role of the Britney Spears audiobook I don't think it actually worked I do

understand why she did it because you know we all Britney is so iconic and epic to all of us in matters and all these weird ways yeah all of us women and men she's just a huge deal to all of us and so I there's no way I would have said no but this book is such a train wreck of a you know it doesn't it doesn't take it's not in order lots of stuff isn't explained people show up then they leave there's no rhyme or reason to it it makes no sense and then to have michelle williams narrating it it keeps taking you out of it like i just needed to i could hear britney telling it's like she just sat in a chair and was like let me tell you what happened and then she just kind of

reeled it off well so michelle didn't quite work for me i see i feel like um i also just learned jen that i'm also doing 75 soft because all of the modifications that you're making uh or that you made i have already made on day one oh going into this okay so these are this is the rules of 75 hard and i actually printed it out and posted it on the wall just out of the frame here uh the real thing and this is some guy just came up with this i'm sure he's part of you know he's probably also like sleeping in a cryo chamber and trying to reverse his aging like that one really weird silicon valley dude uh kendall jenner also does it so it these are the rules uh you know no alcohol of heart. No alcohol. You exercise, like you said, twice a day for 45 minutes. And one of the sessions has to be outside. You are supposed to read 10 pages a day of nonfiction or educational material. And you're supposed to eat, follow some sort of diet. I don't think it specifies,

but you're supposed to kind of pick one, like I did the Mediterranean. Right. And then also,

So, and this is really, I'm learning, maybe the most.

challenging part of this whole thing drink a gallon of water a day uh jennifer can i show you what a gallon of water looks like i know i purchased this on amazon because this holds exactly one gallon of water no guesswork and for the listeners at home i recorded the audio of filling this thing up this morning and i really think because this is mostly an audio show for people i think this will drive home just how much water i'm supposed to put in my body body every day it starts with this water bottle clinking down in the sink in my kitchen and just just listen to how long this takes you might think we're getting towards the end not even close, not even close. This is like a third of the way into it. would you believe there's 20 more seconds of this happening and this is the the faucet

is on full blast i'm glad you're still doing such riveting audio

I was proud of this. I thought this was actually a good idea.

This is like Taylor's all-too-well 10-minute version. There keeps being more to go.

Yeah. I'm going to join the tortured peers club. And this is also a real thing that I'm concerned about. The way my body works is that once I break the seal on urinating, like if I'm at a baseball game and I'm having some beers or something, I can hold it for a long time but then once I go once it's kind of like game over now it's just like constant needing to use the restroom and right before we started recording Jen I had to make my first trip to the Madrona Hill studio bathroom so I don't know how the rest of this episode is going to go because I may I've got I'd say a third of this by the way what's maybe the most humiliating part of this is what I realize is when I drink out of this thing I look like Donald Trump trying to drink out of a regular cup of water like because you know he has a very awkward way of of consuming water it's like both hands his hands seem very small compared to the thing he's drinking from that's basically what's going on here um and i'm supposed to just go around the world for the next 75 days with this how did you get your gallon of water in certainly not like that

i don't think you're just gonna i mean that's ridiculous that thing is too big i know but i And it's not easy. It should just be something easy that's easy to just pick up and move around with you.

Well, I will tell you what else I did this morning before the show. I also purchased on Amazon a half-gallon water bottle that is on its way. And I figure I'll just fill that one up twice. Twice, yeah. That's the math of that.

The other thing is that that kind of forces you into feeling like you've got to get it down. Yes. And it shouldn't feel like that. It should feel like it's happening all day long.

Right. That's a good point. Um, I, uh, the other modification that I made that you also made is I am going to take a very, very chill approach to the second workout of the day. Like I'm basically like, I got up this morning and I did the morning exercise. I did like ran, you know, like five miles or something that to me, I'm going to try to do, cause that takes me somewhere around 45 minutes. I'm going to try to just have that as a baseline, but I'm going to consider like a walk in the afternoon, some kind of light yoga video on youtube uh maybe just like mowing the lawn aggressively like i am going to take a very very expansive definition and view of the second workout because what i can't do at my age is like work out in the morning for 45 minutes and then work out for another 45 minutes with like weights and be okay it'll be uh it'll be an like do you remember when i did p90x yeah And I did one day of it because I could not move for the next week afterwards. I want to avoid that happening.

Because this is 30 days. Don't burn out. I totally agree. This is 75 days. 75 days. Do the ish. That's the ish part.

That's good. Yeah. So did you actually get through 75 days?

Yeah. But as I told you, it wasn't like that strenuous.

Well, you worked out every day. Did you actually do a gallon? Because I was also reading online that like depending on their body, for some women, a gallon of water, it can actually be too much.

So do you remember when I was in college and I wanted to be in the FBI? Yes. In my meeting with the FBI, they said that I had to be able to do a number of push-ups and run a mile. So I knew I was out pretty much, but I was going to give it a shot. And the guy told me, pick a spot in your house that you go by all the time.

you go by it drop and do as many push-ups as you can and within one month you'll be doing tons of push-ups and he said and don't pick like the hatch to the attic pick somewhere where you go all the time yeah so I picked you know the hallway between my bedroom and my bathroom and it did it did make me do it a lot and so what I did with the water was I I just at every time that I stood up I took a drink and every time that I sat down I took a drink smart and I had it with me all the time and I just did it every single time I stood up or sat down and I got through tons of my hydro flasks You know, I would just refill them over and over.

Yeah, see, I didn't want to leave. The reason I have this stupid gallon thing is because I didn't want to, like, lose track. Because I have, like, pretty much every American now, various powder-coated hydroflask products around the house. But I didn't know what they all add up to. I've got a whole other problem going on, which is that I have this fancy scale. I've been really not a weighing myself kind of person for a long time. But I figured I want to have some sense of this progress. And so I found some batteries for the scale. That's how long it's been. The battery's completely dead. And I got out of the scale. And it's this, like, it's actually this, I've had it for a long time. It's made by this company called Withings. It's like a fancy, it can talk to your watch or something. Here's the problem. They're a British company. It's in kilograms. And I do not even know what that means for my weight. I know that I'm like 80, I'm like 88 kilograms or something right now. So I'm hoping to be less than 88 kilograms at the end of this.

The only thing less helpful would be stone.

I was going to say, I'm like five hands tall and I'm four stone.

Oh man, it's funny because you remember a reporter asked us like our first day of this job, they said, what is the, what is it about? And we said, revenge and vanity.

Yep. I know.

And here we are.

I know nothing has changed. Well, a lot has changed and nothing has changed because it's like, I, I actually, I feel like that, that way of thinking about my life and thinking about the world, I've definitely sort of moved on from, but it's also still very close to the surface. Like it's not the, it's not kind of like, it isn't, those aren't the two motivating forces in my life because vanity is a bus that has left this Greyhound station. It just, and I can't, it's, it's two towns over now. You know what I mean? Like I've really had to, you and I, before we started recording this, we're kind of commiserating about just life and getting older and how it you know somebody said it's you know it's not for sissies right yeah and it it's kind of in a way sort of liberating like when i was thinking about this this hard uh 75 ish uh i was thinking like ish ish i i was realizing that actually for the first time in my life going into one of these kinds of things i really was not thinking about how it may change what i weigh like that's really and i'm probably i might have said that some time ago like it's not about my weight it's about being healthy but i wouldn't have meant that it would have really been about my weight i actually am at the point where i don't think it's about my weight i think it's about i'm not i i feel here's really what it comes down to i have felt like for the last year maybe ish of my life um ish ish that i've been playing defense a lot and what i mean by that is like getting up in the morning and just thinking like i gotta get through today i gotta to like survive today just because life is hard and we all have responsibilities and and work and things like that and i've just i felt like a lot of my life has been just kind of like trying to get through stuff or if i can just make it till the weekend or if i can make it till this thing or whatever if i can survive this stuff and i want to try to play a little bit of offense oh so you know a thing that i added to this we'll see how long this goes i added uh one uh thing to the list for this 75 whatever i'm doing which is getting up at 5 a.m every day and i think that is going to be if i don't stick with any other part of this i think that will be a big help because i think what i i need to do is be awake before everybody else in the day so that i can get all of my ducks in a row so that i can then feel like by eight when everyone else is starting to come online and everything i will be all already because i think i've just i've just felt like I've been in a very reactive state in my life on various levels. And I would like to be

in a more proactive state. The yoga with Adrian, you know, on YouTube. No, I don't. No, I'm writing it down. Yoga with Adrian. She's like the queen of YouTube yoga. Okay. And she always says, you know, remember why we're doing this. We're doing this so that we can carry our own groceries and help our neighbor carry hers. And I would always kind of roll my eyes because I was doing it to look better. But as I'm getting older and getting kind of tired and like having joint pain sometimes and things like that, I'm starting to be like, yeah, I actually, I do want to be able to carry my own groceries desperately, you know? Yeah. And, and, and even I would help the lady next door carry hers if I could, you know, I'm starting to, as you get older, you do want to be ahead of

it. Yeah, exactly. Like mobility is I was, you know, in. in europe uh with becca and we were walking everywhere because that's a big thing with her and i was um mostly i really loved it but in rome where it was very very hot there were some moments where i was thinking like this is not how i want to be spending my vacation and then i also thought i should be so grateful that my body does this still because there will and we literally were going i forget where we were going up some insane set of stairs maybe i was gonna say in rome it's all stairs this yeah right it might actually you know what truthfully this observation might have been when we were at going up the Eiffel Tower in Paris which was like I said we should be so happy that because by the way I waited too long to get the tickets so we couldn't get the elevator tickets it was the like well if you want to take the stairs we can sell you some like cheap tickets for that we're like okay we'll take that and I was like you know we our bodies allow for this right now and we should be pretty stoked she was I was thinking the exact same thing so I'm you know I'm kind of i'm trying to be i'm trying to be mindful of that and appreciative of that and also preserve that sort of as long as i can which is another thing about i guess how i'm going into this at 48 versus how i would have gone into it at at 38 or 28 um i'm i'm also trying to not overdo it right away because if i overdo it then i'll just quit and i'm also trying to not be super duper like hardcore about it like honestly if out of the 75 days if i get 60 of them in I'm going to be pretty stoked. Whereas there would have been a time where I was like, well, if I have one day where I can't pull this off, then it's like, forget it, this project is over. I'm trying to be a little more chill about that stuff and a little less kind of like binary, I guess.

Yeah, I think you'd be great.

How much, this is a personal question, but how much do you think is too much to spend on underwear? For a guy, for a guy. I don't think that's the right question. Okay, what's the right question?

I think that once you figure out how much support you want, then you now have to figure out how soft you want the support to be so i i think that you have to find underwear that gives you the exact right amount of support and it feels the best on your body and then you just pay what you got to pay for that i think that's kind of where i eventually

have arrived with this this is what happened that's where women are well that's the thing too and i don't want to overly gender this but it's i feel like men and women have a different

relationship with undergarments right well we just figured this out a long time ago I mean, Jason and I argue about it all the time, because if he's traveling and he needs to pick up underwear, he will go to Target and buy Hanes. And that gets home and I throw it out because it's too scratchy.

OK, this is basically exactly the journey, the journey of discovery that I've been on, which was, OK, when I was going on this big trip, I actually had to I started out in Nashville for a week for like a work thing and then went from Nashville to to Europe for a couple of weeks. And as I was going to Nashville, I was I was grabbing some underwear and I realized I have like four pairs of boxer briefs left and they're not like matching and they're getting threadbare. For some reason, I am like, by the way, not very good with money. I spend money very kind of casually, but none of that applies to the underwear that I'm wearing. Like I will just wear like a pair of underwear that, you know, it looks like I should be burning a fire in a trash barrel down at the rail yard. Like it's a real hobo core.

No, it's not okay.

Well, and so I said to Becca, I was like, oh, somewhere I go on this trip. When I get in Nashville, I've got to go to a Target and get some underwear. And then I never did. And then we got to Europe and I went to a fluff and fold. I found somewhere in Rome to get all my clothes washed. so then I still had my like three pairs or four pairs of underwear and then we when we went to this other town we had laundry facilities so we I basically I got back from the trip having not replaced or or or sort of uh supplemented this underwear supply and and I went to I did the laundry when I got home and then I pulled one of these pairs of underwear out to put it on and it was you could see through it Jen it was so it was so sad and I just thought like what am I doing here? Like, why is this the one area of my life that I'm not actually prioritizing with making this like a thoughtful purchase of something that will actually serve me well? Right. And so I went on Amazon and I looked around for underwear and I couldn't seem to find anything that didn't have its logo on it. What is, how did that get started as the like how is that the standard for particularly men's like boxer brief underwear right which if you can't picture that at home it's like brief like the jockeys you'd see

jim palmer wearing on the billboard as i answer most questions i blame tommy hilfiger really how so i feel like he's who started with this logo branding yeah like on every single thing and now you can't get away from it.

And you're right, it's metastasized to every other underwear maker, because really all I wanted was some of the, oh, and the thing about the boxer briefs is they're like boxers, but then they have little, like the legs go down a little bit. And I just wanted some of those that didn't have writing on them, because I didn't want to be doing an ad for any company if my shirt, I mean, first of all, if my shirt rides up in public, I'm already in, I'm already in an emotion. I'm in an emotional free fall as I've, as I've said many times, probably to you, the, the longest moment of time is when you're in the airport and you're trying to take off a sweatshirt and your t-shirt comes up to that half of a second might as well be a lifetime. So if, if anyone is seeing the waistband of my underwear in public already, things have gone off the rails, but at the very least, I don't want it to say Tommy Hilfiger. I just want to be like, I don't want to be doing an ad for you. So I'm scrolling, I'm scrolling and I end up, I see some ones that don't have a very prominent logo they're all black and they are and this is not an ad even though the funny part is this underwear company i think in the long past may have sponsored tbtl briefly and so to speak um and uh and it does a lot of ads on like the howard stern show but it's called tommy john which for me when i hear tommy john i think of tommy john surgery if you're a baseball player and your arm falls off they will replace the ligament with something from your like leg or some crazy shit um but uh i see these tommy john underwear and i remember having gotten some freebies when we were doing ads for them and i remember i kind of liked them and they were black they didn't have any noticeable marking so i throw them in the old cart and i go to click on them And when I tell you, Jen, that it was, I believe, $105 for three pair. Now, this is the thing. They are apparently returnable, which I think raises a lot of other questions. Like, how can those be? I would be okay with Amazon saying these are not on the list of things that you can return. but i really thought like okay it's a hundred dollars i'm going to try them if i don't like them i guess i'm going to send them back although i pray to god they're not trying to put them back into the supply that's not what's going to happen what'll happen landfill oh you're going to love them well i'm wearing them right now and i'm loving them you're gonna need to have another three pack because i mean buy on a three pack no no i know i can't and and in fact the thought went through my head today because i'm on pair number two i wore the first ones yesterday i'm wearing they're great they really are great your wish list and then you'll get an alert when they go on sale oh very smart i didn't even know that was a thing because this is the this is this is where i'm what i've arrived at is that seems like a ridiculous amount to spend on underwear and yet

i mean how critical is underwear to someone's like life experience and happiness and like there's so many other things i would spend money on that are not as critical to my happiness like things like having decent sheets having an okay pillow I will sleep on some like sad pillow that's like deflating and becoming like a you know like a crepe over time instead of going to like the bed bath and beyond or whatever whatever currently exists there yeah right like and getting an okay pillow that's $30 or something like there are these weird things that I just never think to actually prioritize and they're probably a lot of times the thing that is very critical to my

overall my overall sense of well-being yeah i one thing i would say is before you order more wash them and wear them again and make sure that they've held up and they feel just as good after

a washing so smart yeah so smart it does that's the other key that's a real okay that's a really

good idea so i'll wear invested 30 in this pair of underwear they need to last a year period that's

a that's a we're not joking about that no we are not tommy wherever you are i mean it does kind of kill me that like this is the it's basically like buying a casper mattress with your own money if you're a podcaster it's like it's like dear god they're giving these things away like like you know this is like these are falling off of trucks if you're doing a podcast and yet i'm the guy that's out there spending i'm i'm paying retail for tommy john underwear the hell is going on it's funny all right well speaking of paying retail the way that i'm able to do that is thanks to the tbtl donors let's thank some of them thank you for being a 10 i don't know if you if you happen to catch this jen but uh our last tbtl-a-thon it was titled thank you for being a 10 and our friend leanie did a whole series of golden girl-esque musical things for us they're so good they're so good so happy that some of them still got That's pulled down from like YouTube in Romania. Because they were, even though she's singing Thank You for Being a 10, musically, it was like such a spot on, like, I guess you would say parody, that it still alerted whatever their web crawlers are. But that's like the highest compliment you can pay a parody song is that it actually tricked the YouTube, you know, whatever systems into thinking it was the real song. Speaking of Jen's, let's thank Jen Miller, who's in Fullerton, California. Every time Fullerton, California comes up, I mention this, which is that I mentioned, like, the Biola Hour. I don't know what kind of home. I know that you grew up, like, sort of, you were Christian, but I don't know what the Christianity looked like.

Home was it? The school.

It was less home and more at school. So you probably didn't, you were not subjected to KCIS Christian radio as a kid, were you?

No, but I was in many a carpool.

So, right.

So I did.

Exactly. Because if I said Fullerton, California, would that cause you to think of the Biola Hour?

This will make you laugh, but it actually does make me think of Jen because she sends me a Christmas card every year. Oh, I think I do think of Jen Miller when I think of Fullerton.

Oh, Jen. From one Jen to another. Heather Rude.

She's Jen with two N's.

She is. I mean, listen, here's what I'll say. I was going to say this at the end of the donor segment, but I'll say it at the beginning of the donor segment. i'm talking to you now jen um jen flash andrews that all of this all of these donors all of this like community the cards being sent i was talking to my my mom is like a not a p1 of the show but she's a p1 of getting attention on the facebook page and she's always marveling i mean my mom is really deep in the community of tens now and she was marveling at the community of tens and how much they help each other out and i was i said to her i was like this is all the legacy of Jen Andrews. Um, so, you know, I just want to give you your props on that, that this was, this was a, this was a ball that you started rolling down. Really, you were pushing it up a hill. Let's be honest. It wasn't rolling itself down, but you, you got this ball rolling and, um, and here we are still thanking people like Heather Rood in Bothell, Washington. What comes to mind

when I say Bothell, Washington? Uh, it's where my husband grew up. How about for a day or a lifetime?

Oh yeah. I forgot. What a sign. That really made its impact on me as a kid. And also the fact that Jason is from Bothell. How about, let's see, Daniel Patterson's in Aberdeen, Washington. Anything come to mind with Aberdeen? Well, I mean, Kurt. Yep. That's pretty much what I've got as well. Kurt Cobain. Daniel, you take care of yourself, Daniel. Yeah, that's right. Make sure you get enough vitamin D. Yep. Because I feel like Grays Harbor, the whole Grays Harbor County can be, as the name indicates, a little gray. It can be a little overcast, a little downer sometimes. So make sure you're keeping your TBTL listening. Because this is obviously like, doctors will prescribe TBTL as an antidepressant, and they have. Those doctors have had their medical license revoked, but I'm just saying it's happened before. So Daniel, stay with us, and hope you're doing great down there in Aberdeen. Also thanks to Matt McGillan, who's in Oak Park, Illinois. There was somebody from Oak Park, Illinois, who was very famous. And it was maybe, it might have been, who wrote The Wizard of Oz? Frank something? Baum.

Frank Baum.

Yes. Wow. Nice memory. I think that guy was from Oak Park.

Is it possible that the high school that John Hughes always used for his movies is there too?

It absolutely is. No, you're totally right. In fact, you know what I saw the other day online was someone went and found the, what do you call it, the garage from Ferris Bueller's Day Off that the car is in, that glass box that's cantilevered over that little canyon or whatever you want to call it. And I think that might have been in Oak Park, too, which is why I've got Oak Park on the brain. Kristen Myers is in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm in big trouble related to Atlanta right now Jen and people have been getting at me people who don't know anything about TBTL but have googled me because they saw me on CBS and are getting on me because I referred to a place in Georgia it's called Dunwoody Georgia it's where Ryan Seacrest is from and I did a story about Ryan Seacrest and I called it Tiny Dunwoody Georgia and people are mad because it is a suburb of Atlanta they don't consider it to be Tiny dunwoody georgia and where do you come down on that like if i said have its own city name like if you mail a letter there does it go to dunwoody like if i said tiny bothell washington let's take it back to bothell would you i mean i do think it's a legitimate question i don't think i know the answer like if something is a suburb of a big city but itself is not a large city if i say tiny bothell washington is that kind of misleading because it's really part of the megalopolis that This, yeah.

Oh, I mean, I guess possibly it's misleading, but I think that you can't be considered tiny unless you're less than 500 people and you do not have a stoplight.

Oh, wow. Okay, well, then I'm way out of bounds. I was deeply wrong. It's really funny when people, like when the tens reach out to me, they know like what a sensitive little hothouse flower I am. So they'll be like, love the show. It's so great. And I'm, you know, and I know that it's... Just real quick. But like, yeah, they're like, they're like the whole, The thing is front-loaded with all of this sort of like making me not feel bad. It's a compliment sandwich. Yeah, precisely. And then the people who just saw me on CBS and found my email, none of that.

No.

Just like right to the fax.

Hey, Jack Hall.

You called it to tiny Dunwoody, Georgia. What the hell is wrong with you? That was not Kristen Meyers, though, in Atlanta, just on the subject of which. And then Jason Clarendon is in Tacoma, Washington.

That makes me think of Almond Roca.

Oh, God. Brown and Haley.

I wanted to live there because they make almond roca there.

You know, I'll say this. Tacoma was really, as a child, they really covered the life's rich panoply of food. Because you had the Nally Valley, where the Nally Pickle Company was. I think also maybe Nally Chips were made there. You had Brown and Haley making almond roca. There was every kind of food you could like, from the sweet to the salty, was being represented there.

Yeah.

um did you see that seattle times article about this place that i'm kind of obsessed with in tacoma that i haven't been but it's called java jive and it was it's shaped like a big coffee pot it's like from that era oh i saw that picture yeah when they were building you know it was the hat and boots and googie the googie era yeah r.i.p googie denny's and ballard that was was that like week two of the show or something we got we took some hard hits right right at the

beginning all of our childhood stuff went away a bowling alley like everything just like

shutting down right yeah that was that was uh that was really tough thank god we did end global loneliness yeah um at least that one we hit by the way i was very proud of uh we did a kind of a travel series last week and i was kind of reporting on my different cities i went to and i tried we tried to kind of frame it a little bit like a rick steves type of deal and I named the series, wait a second, what did I call it? No, I called it TBTL Travel Guide Curing Lonely Planetness, which I was very proud of that name. But anyway, thank you to Jason Clarendon in Tacoma, Washington. We'll see you at Java Jive. Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right, Jen, our top story today, what is going on with your relationship with potatoes?

Oh, okay. So I went to see Taylor in Arizona.

Okay.

We flew in the day of the show. We went to the hotel. I went to park the car. Jason went to take the stuff up to the room.

Did you go to the Arizona show because somehow the tickets for a closer show were hard to get? Or was it just you thought it would be fun?

It was the first of the tour. So I went to the opening of the tour. so jason took the the luggage up so when i got to the room jason said i don't think i can stay here it smells bad and i said it just smells like somebody was smoking pot in here and they tried to cover it with you know and they did some kind of sickly sweet spray yeah don't worry about

it so we got ready now can i just ask very quickly why not ask for a different room

i didn't have time we had to get to the show okay gotcha i had to get in my cute reputation era

outfit. Yeah. What is that? What can you describe that for me? Um, it was like a black dress with

a hood and the red lip. Okay. Gotcha. And black boots. Gotcha. So we got ready. We went to the show. We did not know because it was the start. Nobody knew yet that she was going to play for three plus hours. Oh, I just thought it was going to be a normal show. So we got, I was starving and they ran out of water almost immediately. You know what they needed? Yeah, I know. It was just such an incredible experience of just not knowing what we were walking into. So I had a hot dog.

Okay.

A stadium hot dog, which I don't normally do. So on the way home, my eyes were itching. And I said, stop at that 7-Eleven. I'm going to get some Benadryl.

Were they itching from all the crying? Like, did you cry during the show?

I cried sometimes. I mean, it was just the most amazing experience. I mean, that's why I ended up going more times. Because I was just like, I want to see this every night of my life. so we went to bed in the morning i woke up and i couldn't open my eyes and i said jason and he turned over and he said i looked like when martin short gets stung by a bee in that movie

yes oh is that inner space no i can't remember what movie it is but he's like super I mean, he's like, I was unrecognizable. My eyes were completely swollen. Everything was like, so we got up and we like put everything in luggage and then he raced to get the car. I go by the front desk and I lifted up my sunglasses and I said, I can't stay here. I'm having an allergic reaction to your hotel. And they're like, no problem. They wanted me out of there as fast as possible. Like we'll refund you immediately. Sorry.

By the way, the movie, the movie was pure luck.

Pure luck.

With Martin Short.

That's what I looked like if anyone wants to check. So we still, we were there for the show and then we had decided to stay for spring training. So we weren't like going home. So we went and found another hotel.

So you thought, so you're at that point, the theory was this, this stinky hotel is, is full of some kind of a thing that's making you have an allergic reaction.

Something made me sick in this hotel.

Okay.

So we went to another hotel. I just kept taking the Benadryl over the next number. I mean, I just went to the games. Julio saw me this way. Like with my, I had my hat.

Is that why he hasn't been right all season?

I think it was bad for him. It was bad for all of us. It was so awful. so it slowly over the week like got better and so I went to an allergist specialist and they tested me for everything but the first thing he said to me was he goes I don't think it's going to be an allergy because the Benadryl didn't help but they tested me for everything under the sun so I come in for the big meeting the big reveal and the first thing he asked me was have you had exposure to mold and I said well I mean I grew up in Seattle Washington my house was in the basement i mean my bedroom was in the basement so i i make i marinated in

mold i would assume you should actually be at this point completely immune to it yeah you're

like i'm more mold than woman yeah i was just like obviously and he said well he goes this is really weird but he said i think that you have like mold in your body oh that's like dormant and he said the only thing that we found was mold and potato intolerance and he said i think that he said it was a weird thing where you had that hot dog bun that had potato starch in it oh and then you were in a in a he said it wasn't that they were covering pot they were covering mold that was what the spray was in the hotel room so these two things could like activate each other yeah he said it was like a weird perfect storm he's like you don't have to like live your life worrying that this is going to happen again it was a weird thing but he said you do have pretty severe potato intolerance he said but clearly that hasn't bothered you that much in your life and I said, well, I do get itchy eyelids. And he said, well, that's what it's done. It gives you itchy eyelids. So that's just up for you to decide.

You already knew that about potatoes.

I didn't know that's what caused it.

Okay.

I do get itchy eyelids, though, sometimes. And that's the first thing that started happening on the way home from Taylor, was I had itchy eyelids. And so he said, you know, you just can decide if you, you know, on Thanksgiving, if you want to mash potatoes.

I was going to say, how big of a role do potatoes play in your typical weekly?

Two roles. Once a year at Thanksgiving, I have mashed potatoes. And the other one's more important, which is that I love sweet potato fries when I'm in a bar. But I just don't do those anymore. And I have a, and I, you know, apparently I have mold in my body, which is terrifying.

Wow, that's kind of upsetting. Did they localize it to where it is? Is it like in your lungs? Is it in your toes? It's just in there.

So that's how I found that out. But then the funniest thing about this allergist is he said, while you're here, he goes, I truly believe that everybody in the world has Epstein-Barr syndrome. And right then I thought, oh, no, I'm at a crackpot. What do I do? And he said, I think everyone has it, and I have the cure.

Wait, what?

And Luke, you know me. I don't know how this happened to me. But I'm like, oh, I guess I was trying to be nice. He's like, oh, that's great. He pulls out a tincture straight out of Little House in the Prairie. It's a blue.

Is it Doc Baker?

It's a blue medical bottle with a stopper in the top. Oh, my God. no words on it there's not an ingredient there's nothing listed on it except epstein bar cure on tape wow and he said drink a swallow of this a day until it's gone and you will have eradicated epstein bar from your system and i don't know it's like i quantum left i don't know what happened but luke i did it so i am here today to tell you that i am also epstein bar free well wait a second

because um did you is that something historically that you've wondered like have you had sort of chronic fatigue stuff epstein bar stuff see that's that would make me nervous because first of all i i wouldn't be surprised to find out that the guy is correct that most people have this thing but for most people it's just dormant and then something activates it i would not want the epstein bar to know i was coming for it you know if it's dormant in me it's like leave it alone. Much like the actual Epstein flight records. Leave it alone. Let's not get into that right now. If I have something in my body that's not doing anything to me, I don't want to go in and try to eradicate it because I might piss it off. I can't believe I did it. I can't believe I didn't put that tincture in the garbage.

What did Jason say about this?

He was laughing every day. He was laughing. Sorry. He's like, oh, you're I said, I'm eradicating it. I just I think for some reason it tickled me that this guy was like and it looks so old fashioned and old timey. I was delighted by the whole thing. And I just decided to do it. I mean, I might as well have ordered ivermectin from China.

I mean, yeah, I would say so.

Not who I am as a human being. I can't believe I did it. But I do like to probably say that I am Epstein-Barr-free.

I think I probably also would have taken it, to be totally honest, just because I would have felt like, I don't know if, I mean, on the off chance that this guy has really cracked the code. Although I would say big, if true, like, I feel like we'd be reading about this in JAMA.

Somebody would have known.

I feel like it would have made. Now, do you feel like he was correct about the other stuff, though? Because like, OK, so that didn't undermine because it's kind of like he's telling you stuff that's pretty scientific. He's a trained physician.

And it all was like lab core, you know, like lab tests were real.

he didn't do it in his back room right right so it's like it's like okay this is checking out this is all real and then he's just like uh you know i've invented a perpetual motion machine the first person like he's like telling you something that he's done that's like never been done before and it just happens to be this guy in rosalyn well and the other thing is

that when um months later i my eyes got really puffy and itchy and i wasn't doing any potatoes and i went to my just regular doctor and she had his no he had sent her all of this stuff and she looked down and she goes oh i'm looking at this mold situation do you drink mold coffee what and i was like well i'm not a neanderthal and she was no all coffee america is the only country in the world that allows mold and coffee and if you don't specifically buy mold free coffee you're getting mold in your coffee and so then i went to mold free coffee and i haven't had the problem again so i think he was right i think he was spot on and so i have to assume i had up steam

bar wow mold there's mold in all of the coffee yes unless it's specifically made mold free and

they have to like have an fda label that they're mold free and all this stuff that they've been

tested you know speaking of keeping track of things and and people's files i gotta give it up for the great clips in the fred meyer at in longview washington you do where i've been getting ten dollar haircuts and it shows i think that place is a goddamn zoo okay like first of all You'll go online to make a reservation or to get on the waiting list.

I can't believe they have that.

It'll be 190 minutes. I'm like, how many people are going to this? Great clips. But this is the one, and it's never the same person. I would describe the training as minimal, but it's very affordable. It's relatively close to where I live. And this is the thing, Jen, because I have to put in my little, because I make a reservation. It's not even a reservation. It's like I'm putting myself on the waiting list, but without going all the way down there. they got a file on me and they I come in and whoever I get she just has a card and she goes so they do like number four around the sides and then a half inch off the top and I'm like yeah that's exactly what they do and it's I'm getting the same haircut every time from them it's like what an I mean I guess maybe like you go to a person so this person I presume Jan so this person knows what your like specifications are but if you aren't that kind of person like me and you've just been wandering you know like uh david carradine at the end of kung fu just or maybe bruce banner at the end of the hulk just sadly wandering from town to town looking for a haircut to just have some consistency for the gal to just have a printout that goes we're doing number four and a half inch off the top it's actually it's pretty great i'm feeling very

taken care of it's such competency i love it i mean do you remember i used to make jason carry that little picture of ryan gosling in the notebook so just tell him i want to look like this

right i mean uh yeah i would just say shout out to great clips that is a very i mean everything else about the experience is absolutely terrible but but the um i thought you were gonna say they

had mold-free coffee and i was gonna be like what no i'm just it was on this very expensive it was

on the subject of your allergist talking to your general yes i was very delighted by that that they had spoken let me ask you a taylor and travis question um uh because we're talking we could do 10 hours i could talk about it all day um what do you think about this leak of of i was just coming back to the u.s and seeing this when i was in the airport somewhere and and um i got eyes on it just in time but supposedly a pr firm that represents one or both of them there was a leak of basically some dates when their breakup would be announced and what would be said and things

like that uh what do you make of all that um so i have a theory about it okay do you know who the galers are no so there's this group called the galers and they're swifties who are who are gay and they are very much convinced that taylor is gay oh and they have built a real a huge documents after documents proving it but like how she changed lyrics and where it should have the proper rhyme would be her but she didn't use that rhyme where it was

obviously how she originally wrote it like that she's what a what a what a subculture to get into

it's great they're lovely and delightful but they're also a little unhinged and i think that they i think that this contract comes from the gailers i think because they desperately don't want taylor and travis to be real because i see kind of i see this whole thing Yeah, because I saw my niece just tried to do it on on AI just to show me how easy it because I said it's so legal. It's like so much legalese. It's like this was a lot of work. She's going, oh, hey, I can generate that in one second. And she kind of showed me how quickly it could be like generate a contract. It says this, this, this and this. And it did kind of pop up really quick.

So that's my theory. OK, so you do not think that they are actually going to break up or that they're planning on breaking up.

I don't think they're planning on breaking up. I'm sure they will break up. but I don't think they're planning on it.

That's what, I mean, that's sort of how I feel about it too. I find it so kind of sad in a way that people, the way that like a lot of regular civilians assume that everyone who is famous and rich is just living a complete fabrication so as to make more money or get more attention. I always think about this with like Caitlyn Jenner, like people that would just be like, well, and first of all, we'd be lucky for them to use the proper pronouns, but let's just go with that as a theory as a example they'd be like uh she just wants to make more money and be more famous and i'm like how much would you have to get paid to get your junk cut off to make more money it's like people are living their lives generally it might be rich

they might be famous but the idea that these trying to get by these two people these two people

would pretend to be together to just get attention as opposed to just like they happen to like fall in love and granted it's like a it's a sort of a weird fairy tale thing of two super famous people that are at the top of their respective games, literally and figuratively. But I just find it so weird that people just, there is a lot of this country that assumes that if you're famous, everything you do is a complete act and totally faked just to get more attention and more fame.

Right.

Well, I'm glad to hear that you think they're going to stay together because I'm rooting for both of them. I am a little hurt that Travis and Jason Kelsey signed like a $100 million contract for podcasting because that was supposed to be my thing. every time I read one of those contracts I just think what I know how did we fumble the bag on one hand how do we fumble the bag but on the other hand it's insane that tbtl is still here

I know and like I'm so amazed that you're still doing it every day it's like good for you

I mean I'm I'm I'm very proud of it and I'm very proud that it's a it's a full-time job for three people like it's it's it's kind of remarkable I mean we did not unfortunately we did not somehow follow the path of Call Her Daddy or Rogan or Great Heights or any of these insanely profitable shows. But the fact that we're actually still here and doing this in this very weird media market, I'm kind of proud of.

I am too. Did you by any chance watch Call Her Daddy with Gwyneth?

No. Okay, let's talk about this a little bit. The way that I experienced that show, call her daddy is i see clips of it on tiktok and i saw for instance the katie perry interview recently or dr luke and stuff uh most dishes oh he was the doing dishes thing i saw which i think was basically her saying that with orlando bloom that's a big uh turn on for her if orlando bloom has has has been a supportive partner in their life together domestically that she's really going to return the favor so to speak um but what so you you are it sounds like you're a regular

consumer of call her daddy i i would say i probably if i'm on a road trip i'll i'll download one if i'm driving somewhere along so you know once a month i'll listen to an episode i'll pick a celebrity i'm interested in but i just when it said something on her on please so they started talking about the difference between having sex with brad pitt and having sex with ben affleck and it was so jason and i are just like driving along in nevada listening to this and she said okay with brad it was like we were so in love and it was so like he was the one and it was we were engaged and it was just so incredible and it had that like heightened feeling of like this is the one forever and ever and that's really special and i was like oh wow and she goes but with ben he's technically perfect wow and we had to just pause it wow and then we just kind of drove along silently for a while and then i was like that would be amazing to be technically wait is that

a compliment yes oh he's technically perfect see i hear that to be i hear that to be technically perfect but missing that certain something which i feel like really describes ben affleck

generally that's exactly i mean she was like it wasn't true love obviously and you know she there's not she didn't have other things good to say about him but

in the act of sex he's technically perfect see i still feel like and maybe just because no one will ever describe me that way i mean none of us i have i have a i my read on that is like technically perfect but missing that certain something that that that you know that makes it real that makes it real and like i don't know though i'll be honest i would be i wouldn't be mad if someone described me that way i think maybe as i think about it i would take technically perfect as well um can we i've been warm and real my whole life i've been i've been described as

pleasantly tolerable um that's about anyway that's i think what's incredible about that

show is she gets people to say you know i think maybe i should maybe i should um engage with that show i think part of it is that when it started out my understanding of it was that it was a very very very sexual program that was women talking about their sex lives which i don't think should happen in the public space first of all I'm not even I'm not even comfortable with it happening behind closed doors no but you know like I just I kind of just thought well this is probably not for me um but I when I see clips of the show I think you know this I think that the uh interview and I don't know the name of the host um Alex I I think she seems like a good interviewer from what I see and and like you know good at the job I think also like seriously part of it for me is I have a really hard time seeing all these podcasts that are wildly successful. And then sometimes I'll go into a mode of asking myself, why not me? In the words of Russell Wilson, current backup quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, why not me? So I think I sometimes kind of just like reflexively, I skip past some of this content because I kind of can't deal with the fact that it isn't us.

It's like Jason can't watch HGTV. Right. right like it's so it's too close and not to mention that i think if i was jason i would be

annoyed because what they do on hgtv and what he does as an actual talented architect are so radically different there may occasionally be some architect who's working to kind of make something happen but like the the way that they're like well you know we're going to put down some gray laminate floor and put a giant clock up yeah that's the remodel i will say this have you did you guys watch restored by the fords no okay wait he won't watch any of them because he says it gives

him dead like pant deadline panic and it's just it's too close okay well listen if you find

yourself and you know there's no shortage of things to watch but if you find yourself looking for something to watch in the home improvement space i cannot recommend restored by the fords enough it is i don't think it's on hgtv for the first of all it's a brother and sister the fords they live in pittsburgh and they're so great um the the the sister does like the design and everything and she just has first of all phenomenal taste and it just really like not in the kind of hgtv hgtv way where you start to kind of see the same stuff happen a lot and then her brother is this like six four lebowski-esque character who is not playing it up for the camera i don't know if he knows he's on a TV show I don't know if he understands he's being filmed like you know you can really feel the manufactured drama on those like love it or list it and they're being like pretend mad at each other like I hate that stuff this is the opposite this is just a fly on the wall of this brother and sister who love each other and the brother is a total kook but he comes through generally and they take on and also it's the the backdrop is Pittsburgh and there's these amazing cool old houses so I feel like that's to me that's like the highest you know level of a home improvement show and as such they've only made like nine episodes okay they're not cranking it out yeah yeah yeah um speaking of one of my favorite people on planet earth jason andrews um you said he recently came into some bad luck while he was hiking or mountain

running or whatever he does he was doing a trail and he parked at the trailhead he said he was gone exactly one hour he got home he got back to the trailhead and the window was smashed out and they had taken his wallet so he couldn't have been gone he said it was exactly an hour he knew the exact trail that he did and everything he said he's got an hour so he called me immediately and I first of all went to the bank yeah and they had bought a car oh my for $4,800 so I don't think it's a great car but they did buy a car right off the bat and then I quickly went to his credit card and they had also gone to Fred Meyer and bought a bunch of thousand dollar gift cards so just the amount of damage they did in such a short period of time was shocking to me um so can i just

mention that this happened to becca while on a run i think the lesson here is do not exercise it's very dangerous for your identity and your bank account she and her friend went on a run down in salem oregon and her car was parked you know around other cars but they busted in and again these folks that got her stuff they did so much stuff in like an hour and it just kept I mean, they were setting up new accounts. It was, I don't know if it's the people that are targeting cars of people who are working out are just extra, like, super criminals at this.

Well, I think you're just vulnerable because they know you're gone and you've left stuff in your car because you can't carry it on you.

So his wallet, I mean, again, I don't want to victim blame here, but I'm assuming his wallet was also hidden somewhere. It wasn't sitting on the seat.

Well, I've done a pretty good job of not talking about this, but I can talk to you about it.

Okay, just whisper.

So he says that he usually takes his wallet in his backpack, but it was 95 degrees and he couldn't bear to take the backpack. And so he hid it under his clothes that were in his tote bag.

I've done that. Wait, he hid the wallet in the tote bag?

He hid the wallet under the tote bag that he put his clothes in when he changed into his workout clothes. He put the wallet under the clothes in the tote bag.

Yeah.

Not good enough.

Yeah. They see the bag. I was wondering if they were just busting windows and then going in, but they saw a bag. but just not you know i'm not that's not fully jason's fault um but i'm i'm here's what i would have done and this is what i do when i'm running lake saccadroia where so far there's zero car break in um but i also park in front of a lutheran church i feel like come on nobody would do that in front of this lutheran church has i want to go in and help them because they have like a digital reader board that puts out the most lutheran of jokes and i feel like if you want to update the brand like today the thing was no matter how far you push the envelope it's still stationary and i was just like if you're trying to appeal to a young hip new generation start listening to call her daddy and we need to update these jokes but what i do is i put my wallet under the floor mat so you know how like you probably have these in your car now you know how the floor mats like snap down yeah the weather tech yeah made in america i i put it under the floor mat that snaps down i don't know if that's really going to throw them off but i'm thinking if i busted a window and i went looking around the center console and the glove compartment and

i i don't know if i because it's also they're going fast they're not going to have time to

pry up those and then if you have a bag and you can you've got to get that like under your seat You can't leave any bags in, you know, sight because that's kind of what they're looking for. Yeah. So what did you do?

So I, so, you know, you have to file all these fraud reports. I called the police. I filed a police report. He was like, we've never had a report of this ever at the Manashtash Trailhead in Ellensburg. This is shocking. And I said, well, it happened. And we got the security camera from the neighbor. So I showed him the security camera. You see this, like, green minivan pull up, smash the window, grab the drive off.

Whoa.

um I you know I had to cancel the credit cards it was just so funny because Jason's driving home from Ellensburg with the window bashed out he's so upset and he also was scared to death of running out of gas because he doesn't have a wallet he has no yeah credit card or cash or anything and I'm like you'll have to depend on the kindness of strangers it'll be exciting he's like I I don't want to do that he made it home but it was so funny because I could tell things kept occurring to him and at one point I'm like on the I'm I've got all the computers and the phones and I'm trying to get all the credit cards canceled. I'm freezing his credit. I'm doing all the things. I had to like report the DMV that his driver's license was gone, all that stuff. He calls me and he goes, I just realized my Costco card. I'm like, hon, your Costco card is the least of my issues right now. Like, I can't even believe you called me about that. And he's like, well, I'm just thinking of things that were in my wallet. And I realized my Costco card's in my wallet. I'm like, well, we'll get you another one the next time we go to Costco. I couldn't believe that's the thing that

he was the most worried about. Well, I mean, honestly, you know what fuels these identity

thieves? $1.50 hot dogs. $1.50 glizzies. Well, I actually did, after I had done all that other stuff, I logged on to Costco and I reported it stolen because I felt like I did not want them

to get those deals. You can't just take the back page of Costco connections. Isn't there like a rip out? Like a little thing that you could, has your card been stolen? You fill it out and send it in. I have, I know we've been talking kind of a lot today about the aging process or at least how I'm feeling about it but I will tell you that I there is a Costco that is now just opened in Ridgefield Washington and I cannot contain my joy about this so excited like I've driven by it a couple of times it's gleaming like they haven't even finished all of the like parking lot and landscaping but it's open and like it's I'm like a kid at Christmas and I don't know when I became this person you know when when I started eating their salmon burgers which are way good and I can't you it's hard to find frozen salmon burgers like that are you know kind of ethically supposedly if i'm going to believe the packaging uh ethically sourced they've got them at costco and this i'm eating these things like they're going out of style but i am like like literally one of the best things that's happened to me last month is a costco opening near my house this is this is where we're headed yes it is um okay uh speaking of i don't know if it's break-ins or not, but you.

I asked you if there's anything you want to talk about, and you just put the cryptic question, would you trust Machine Gun Kelly with your house key? What is the story on that?

Well, we've just been talking about it a lot because we were at a dinner party, and it was probably my favorite game of all time to play with friends, which is Loaded Questions.

Is that a game that someone makes, or is it just a game you write things down?

It's a board game, but it has a bunch of cards. So you're all sitting around together, and somebody asks a question, and then everybody answers. You answer for yourself, honestly, how you would answer it. And then the person who's guessing tries to guess who answered which way. They hear all the answers. So one of the questions was, who present company excluded would you trust with your house key? So they're reading the answers off. And it's like, my sister, my Aunt Linda, like da-da-da. And then randomly, Machine Gun Kelly is one of the answers. And everybody laughed. And it was funny. But then we all were kind of quiet. And I was like, I mean, I don't distrust him. Oh, I would absolutely. I feel like he would take it seriously, I think.

I would trust Machine Gun Kelly with almost, maybe not my girlfriend, but just about anything else. I find him so fascinating. It's not like his, neither his rap music nor even his kind of like hot guitar licks are musically for me. But as a human being, I find him, and as a performer, I find him utterly fascinating. First of all, his ability, like you come in as like a white rapper, right? Like that was kind of how he got famous originally. I did not know he had all of that guitar playing and, like, whatever in him. He might be half Scarecrow on his mom's side. He's got all his tattoos blacked out now, which I saw him somewhere describing how it was the worst experience of his entire life, getting his tattoos all black. Like, here's what I'm trying to say about Machine Gun Kelly. When I first saw him kind of wandering around, and I think, is he still with Megan Fox?

I think so.

But like when I observed like a photo of him in the world or a video of him, I thought this is a person who doesn't seem relatable to me. He doesn't seem like somebody I would connect with. And I've never heard an interview with him or seen an interview with him where he didn't come off as very likable and earnest to me.

Yes. Do you know the comedian Leanne Morgan? She's got the real southern. Yes, I do. I see her on TikTok. I heard her telling a story about how she was on a plane and she was seated next to him. And they had the greatest time for three hours just talking nonstop about their lives.

Yeah. It's like we were best friends. Yeah. He seems like a very deeply normal person who is hiding inside of a bizarrely stylish, I guess. Again, it's a style that I don't really understand. But like it's it's like you put a really normal guy inside of Machine Gun Kelly and he's just living in there.

Well, I started thinking about like, OK, so Corey Feldman, he's somebody that I'm really pulling for. I hope the best for Corey Feldman. Yeah. But I would not give him my house key. No. Ever.

He'd bring Corey's angels over. He'd throw a party. It'd be a nightmare.

He would be there with his Michael Jackson jacket. I just don't want it happening.

How do you feel about Limp Bizkit having Corey Feldman open for them?

Well, I've watched quite a bit of it.

Yeah, as have I.

I think as Limp Bizkit, you got to fill the seats. Yeah. So if you can have something that's kind of a curiosity, I can see why you would do it. What bothers me is that Corey Feldman is a curiosity, and I hope Corey Feldman knows he's a curiosity because he seems to think he's a pretty serious musician.

Well, I find that whole thing really, really fascinating. First of all, in much the way that I like Machine Gun Kelly more than I thought I would have, I really like Fred Durst more than I would have thought based on, again, I wasn't a Limp Bizkit music guy, but he's had a very interesting life outside of music, film director, and like I think just kind of generally good dude as far as I'm aware and like he you know as Limp Bizkit tours around he's always dressed like a grandpa now for some reason like he's in costume and like I don't think he's the kind of guy that would put Corey Feldman out there to make fun of Corey Feldman I think he's the kind of guy that would like I have enough faith in Fred Durst that I feel like he's put Corey Feldman there because he thinks there's something charming going on with Corey Feldman like I don't think it's he's put out there just to mock him

unfortunately also maybe wants to help him out that too which is really kind unfortunately that's

also created a ton of content of cory feldman yeah doing cory feldman music things and it's it's it is it does raise the question if he where he sort of thinks about his music in the world right like does he think it's good music that's underappreciated does he think it's performance art i saw a clip where cory feldman was blaming howard stern for the fact that his music is not taken more seriously because like 20 or 25 years ago right when he started doing his music stuff he was invited to play on the howard stern show and he was taking it very seriously as a musical performance but they had brought out a whole bunch of people from like the whack pack and stuff. And it was a whole, it was a spectacle and it was clear once he got there that like the joke was on him, they weren't treating it like real music. And he was sort of saying that was, that was the, the, the thing that, that, that made it so that no one would ever actually take his music seriously.

And that's, that hurts my heart.

Yeah. Because I don't think that's the issue.

And I don't, and I think you're right. I don't think it's that Limp Bizkit is trying to make fun of him. They're not making a joke of him, but I think they're trying to help him out. Unfortunately, he takes it so seriously. Yeah. And he's not mentally all together there. And it just it feels uncomfortable.

I will say this. And again, I'm not trying to get too into like bodies and how they look and whatever. But my goodness is Corey Feldman staying young. I mean, for I don't know. I don't know what what is going on with him. I believe he's like vegan and I think he's sober. Maybe that's all helping. But like that guy is not aging. No, it looks good. It looks I mean, I've I've never seen a person who is both as unaware of how they're coming off in the world like musically and also looking as good doing it it's very

impressive here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female oh man

it's not from a female can you stick around for a quick email or two jen sure okay um i during my tbtl travel guide uh last week i took some real shots at the nation of iceland have you and jason on your travels passed through iceland for any amount of time we haven't and which is crazy

because i mean remember we were all so into iceland it was it really was having a moment i

think that the nation of iceland was like literally subsidizing flights to iceland just to like just to try to you know uh sort of increase the tourism base well our old friend of the show

Rachel Bell just last week texted me from a campground in Iceland. Well, I'm hoping she had

a good time, because I really didn't on my way home. We flew home from Paris to eventually Portland, and I was trying to book it all through Alaska Airlines so I could use miles and stuff, and there is some weird thing where even though they're not, Iceland Air is not part of the, as Andrew has pointed out, and as you'll really appreciate growing up in the church, the one world alliance doesn't sound not like something we would have been taught about at jesus creek the alaska one world alliance um but like iceland air is not part of the one world

alliance but it's that is where they do the barcode they do the barcode exactly yes the mark of the beast all of it yeah that sounds like straight one world alliance major one world

alliance paper exactly so somehow we ended up on iceland air because i was able to still use my alaska airlines miles for some of it but the thing is they don't have any they're not associated with alaska airlines so my status my lofty status with them did not apply and the planes were very very old um the uh our time trying to trans we were transferring planes or changing planes i should say in reykjavik and i the whole airport was like it was enormous and the flight attendant on our first our flight was late and the flight attendant on the first flight said it's a tiny airport you have no problem the flight's not even late then we landed the flight was super late we had to go through customs the person uh doing the customs check which i was like why do we we're just trying to get on another plane to get out of your country can't you just have a big like section of the airport where you land you get off one plane you go to the other plane you leave you were never in iceland like why do we go through customs why was this the most rigorous interview that we did the whole time there it would seem like there was a humorlessness going on in this airport amongst the employees and then i remembered the two beefs i have well the one really is with cigar roast they're from iceland and also and i don't know if i've told you the story or not but like i was once flipped off by bjork for no reason also from iceland when i lived in new york i was eating breakfast in a cafe and she walked by the cafe and she flipped me off and i didn't do anything so i went from you know trying to be generous to iceland to realizing there might be a pattern here And some of the listeners agree. Glenn said, while I am in principle loathe to making blanket assessments of other cultures based on limited experience. By the way, Glenn, I am not loathe to do that. I am.

Anecdotal evidence is my favorite. I am pro doing that.

I will make an exception to reinforce Luke's impression that Icelandic people are not particularly lighthearted. that was my thing was i don't think it is a culture of mirth other than like you know famously they like build their roads around ferries like oh that's where the ferries live so we're gonna make the highway go three miles out of the way which is but i don't think they're mirthful about

it and i think they're annoyed when we make jokes about it because they're serious exactly that's

that's actually that's a really good point uh glenn goes on to tell a story of being a faculty member at a teaching hospital affiliated with a well-known east coast medical school and that basically.

They had a new member of the department who was, in fact, from Iceland. This guy was generally dour, dour, and had a bit of a bizarre sense of humor. A couple of examples. He once entered an elevator where my research assistant was riding. Without otherwise engaging him, he looked him over and said, You know, if things are that bad, you might want to consider killing yourself. Bleak. Another time, we were attending a job seminar from a potential faculty member. When question time came, this person raised their hand and repeated something the speaker had said and remarked, when you say that, you sound very stupid. I'm sure there are Icelanders who aren't weird, but I haven't met one yet. That's Glenn's take. But then, of course, we also we have to include all opinions on this. Allison said, hi, Luke. We were in Iceland for a few days in mid-August, and then we went to France and we flew home via Iceland on Icelandair. we just missed you we loved iceland so much we actually tried to redo our itinerary mid-trip to skip france and stay longer in iceland we were traveling with our two young kids and perhaps because of iceland's low birth rate we were practically treated like royalty by iceland air and what is also funny in hindsight is that my husband had to spend an entire night at the hospital in Reykjavik and we still had an incredible time and then um Allison includes a picture of her and one of the cute children that had them being treated very well in Iceland so I guess it just depends I have a feeling that if you plan the trip correctly and you go watch like the northern lights and sit in a natural hot spring it's probably a great place I would just say the airport leaves a little bit to be desired I think that's what's the middle yeah thank you Anything else you want to add before we get on out of here on this Monday? Not that I can think of. I think we covered everything that's important, right? Okay. Well, can we have you back on the show soon? Because what I've learned in reengaging with you is that I have a lot of really meaningless pop culture content that I would like to engage in. And I love Andrew Walsh. I'm your girl. I love Andrew Walsh, and I miss him dearly, and I can't wait for him to be back on Monday. But there are certain Machine Gun Kelly related conversations that we're just we're just not having on the program. And I would love to have a regular check in where you and I just download all of our pop culture thoughts, because I'm still having them over here. They're going on express. So. All right. Well, Jen, thank you so much for coming on today. We miss you and love you. And the listeners are going to get a big charge out of hearing you on the show. So thanks again. That's great. I love everybody. Miss you guys. Hey, do you remember how the end of the show goes? I do. All right. I'll tell everyone. And have a great Monday. Thanks for listening. We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. But in the meantime, please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Power out.