Muse

Cheers. Hey guys, check me out. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Is that a Red Hot Chili Peppers shirt? Indeed it is. How bold. Right? That's what I was thinking. Nice, man. Are those khakis? Yeah, man. You were on fire with this new look. Yeah, I was thinking about being a little bit more bold with my fashion. Yeah, it's like a dare to be bold situation. Yeah, I'm sort of inspired over here by this new look. And it shows. Yeah, it's an inspired look. I love it, man. I've got these khaki pants and a Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt. This is high fashion. You're a vision. Tuck into the khakis, or...? I'd say let it breathe, my dude. Yeah, let that tummy breathe, man. You're iconic. Hey, I was thinking, should I wear it forwards like this or have the back be the front? Let's see the back. Yeah, I'd say just keep it like it does. Okay, cool, yeah. Can't stop addicted to the shing-ding. What's that? It's their hit song. Can't stop addicted to the shing-ding. Really? Oh, I've actually never heard their music. Yeah, this is more of just like a bold-fashioned situation. Iconic. TBTN!

some of you are going to think that i'm stupid or i'm ridiculous or i'm flamboyant or i'm i do not care what you think i love you and i want to marry you do you want me to dress up

like thor i'll dress up like thor i'll dress up like like iron man you look fine i didn't ask

i'm very discreet but i'll haunt your dreams remember you're on stage you have to overemphasize everything you want everyone to see it you want the person up close to see it and you want the guy in the dj booth to see it you want the security guard getting ready to walk in the front door to see it you want everyone to be able to see that you're on stage and you're singing

so much well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a thursday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live my name is luke burbank i am your host i don't know who that is and i don't care to find out coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where once again we're getting wet though and uh didn't know you like to get wet though i am not pleased with this development draining i was getting absolutely drenched uh walking from the house out here to the converted garage that is the madrona hill studio i couldn't do my little outdoor jog this morning you know i'm doing uh that 75 hard ish ish no one's gonna get tired of hearing about this are they for three days in and i'm tired of talking about it but i um you know i'm trying to build my beef castle really i'm trying to build my beef castle and uh start the day with a with an early morning workout and i don't like so the morning i'm trying to um get out and uh and like jog five miles which is probably a little more than i was doing before embarking on this then i'm supposed to do an afternoon workout which i've been taking an extremely chill approach to i.e i found a like a kind of a tall hill and i walked up it The other day, that was my afternoon exercise. But anyway, I don't like going on the treadmill for five miles. I don't know why. It's very monotonous. It's very tedious. And I don't like it. And I like to go outside and like to run around Lake Sacagawea. But I couldn't this morning, so I was on the tedious treadmill. But that's all right. We're getting through it. And we're ready for episode 4,292 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. This is going to be a good one, folks. Very exciting times around here. We have a special guest coming up, P.D., a.k.a. P.D. U.S.A. You're like the coolest person I've ever met. You have no doubt, if you've listened to the show for a long time, heard Andrew and I going on and on about this guy who does these skits. I learned that's what they're called, skits on the Internet. You heard one at the beginning of this show where he plays all of the different characters, and they're having these kind of absurdist surrealist conversations which for some reason are just absolutely riveting to watch um and then he's also a musician and he's going out on tour with two-door cinema club i think starting in vancouver tomorrow night um and we're going to talk to pd coming up in just a few moments or so i am recording this in the wee small not really the wee small hours of the morning when does it stop being a wee small hour is that like four

i think 4 a.m is the cutoff for wee small hourdom of the morning um it's more like 6 30 right now and that is because i gotta get this show out into the world i've got to send this off to tbtl employee numero uno john sklaroff who by the way is doing an amazing job this week helping me while Andrew is

taking photos in Croatia we know he's doing well because we all follow his Instagram account and we're seeing the amazing photos he's taking before he left he said I'm bringing my camera I really would like to be able to have some solo adventures because he's out there with a big group of friends and I'd like to take some pictures and that's exactly what's happening for our boy Andrew so we're happy about that but I know almost nothing about doing TBTL other than this part i guess talking into the microphone and so um i've been i was a little nervous this week about having to do it even a tiny bit more of the important and technical side of things but so far it's going okay but that's a big shout out to our boy uh john sklaroff so thanks to him anyway i gotta send him this show because i gotta i gotta get out of here folks i gotta head down to portland because and you'll all see this on tv and honestly they'll be talking about it for probably days it may completely displace the debate conversation i'm going to be on hello rose city today which it's one of those you know kind of local tv shows in a town this one's in portland uh where they talk about kind of cool stuff that's going on and they have special guests on and um most most cities have one of these kinds of shows i will say that i have also been watching a ton of clips of Nick Kroll's show, Kroll Show, The Kroll Show, Kroll Show, anyway, and they have that show on there, him and Mulaney, called Oh Hello, where they do such things as Too Much Tuna, and since I've been watching that so much, I cannot get Oh Hello out of my head, and I feel like when I'm welcomed onto Hello Rose City, I'm going to be sort of physically unable to stop myself from saying oh hello Rose City and my guess is the interview will go downhill from there but anyway I got to go do that this morning and then tonight I'm going to be at the Alberta Rose Theater doing a live wire and hopefully I will see some of you there it's going to be a really fun night Pink Martini is going to be playing also Emily Nussbaum the writer from the New Yorker the Pulitzer Prize winning writer from the New Yorker I will be talking about her book cue the sun which is sort of the definitive story of reality television that's right in my sweet spot by the way a pulitzer prize winning new yorker writer writing about reality television that is that's where i want to live as a content consumer because i do have a fascination with reality tv i don't watch a ton of it but like i have no interest in hearing Mario Lopez interview the latest Bachelor or Bachelorette on Extra. That's not for me, but a very, very smart, talented, cultural critic like Emily Nussbaum

writing about The Bachelor. That's exactly what I'm looking for. Then Sean Jordan will be there as well. I don't know why I'm promoting the show. It is sold out. As we've learned this week, Only the most pathetic, sensitive of people care about crowd size. But I will say it is always nice when we sell out the show. It's like one less thing to sort of think about. But anyway, I'll probably see some of you there tonight. It's going to be real fun. A couple things. I mentioned yesterday in the run-up to our chat with Chris Hayes that I'm learning something through this hard 75 practice. I'm going to say practice because that sounds better. I don't know if you've noted this, but like the term practice, which is, I think, kind of related really to a lot of sort of like Buddhist ideas and other sort of like, you know, wellness ideas around mindfulness and things. They call those practices. Like, you know, I've just been really working on this practice. I feel like that word is kind of having a moment as a way of describing a thing you do in your life that might be kind of emotionally or mentally or physically good for you. so I'm going to call hard 75 a practice and um the thing about this practice that is maybe proven to be the most challenging thing all of four days in is the drinking of a gallon of water I alluded to this yesterday on the show I didn't get to it so we're talking about it right now um because that's part of the deal one of the deals is uh you got to exercise twice a day another one of the deals is you got to like try to follow a healthier diet my version of that is I'm just trying to lay off the processed foods so far with a decent amount of success. And then also you're supposed to do some reading every day. I have been reading, but it's for my work. I don't know if that really counts, but I think I'm technically satisfying that requirement. And then the one that's just kind of at the end of the list, which I didn't give enough thought to, but has proved to be maybe the biggest part of it is this drinking of a gallon of water a day. first thing that I did when I realized this was one of the because this is exactly how I this is how I take on anything is what is the product I need to acquire so that I will be able to do this thing that I'm about to do which is a terrible way to take on projects like how about we try the project and then we figure out what we need but that's not how I do it so of course I jump on Amazon. I make the world incrementally and infinitesimally a worse place by ordering something on Amazon. And it's a gallon water bottle. Because my thought was, what I will do is I will fill this gallon water bottle up. I will carry it around all day. I will consume the gallon of water. And then that will be an easy way for me to keep track of what's going on. And if I've had enough and, and this is going to be kind of weird, but it'll just become my system. And I did

that for, I think two days and I found it very, very challenging because the thing about drinking a gallon of water out of a gallon size jug is, um, you keep thinking that you've made more progress. I didn't get one of those, like you go girl slay all day water bottles that shows you the level of the water and it has like uh encouragement on it i don't know if you've seen those this is like the one i got it's like black powder coated you don't know how much water's in there but i kept thinking well this has got to be the last sip and there would be like so many more sips in there and so i uh i i was just like kind of struggling and it occurred to me that maybe what i should think about doing is breaking this down into more manageable pieces amounts and so I got my hands on a half gallon water bottle and yesterday was the first day that I actually tried to use that and I filled it up in the morning and wouldn't you know by I don't know noon or something the half gallon was gone and then I just filled it up again and listen they say don't try to do math on the radio, so I don't want to get into too much high-level kind of ciphering. But I think that's all you have to do. You fill up a half-gallon thing two times, and then you have a gallon. And that's exactly what I did. And last night, like 8.30 or something, I come in. Walt is like looking at Facebook Marketplace or reading C.S. Lewis or something, and MSNBC is droning on in the background, and I take my last sip of the second half gallon of water, and, you know, job done, as we like to say here in the U.S. And to me, the takeaway from this was actually more profound than just, oh, it's easier to do this a half gallon at a time. The bottle is smaller. I don't look like I'm an insane person wandering around with a bucket of water in my hand, but it's the psychology of it, it was very hard for me to consider downing an entire gallon of water from this one kind of thing over the course of a day. But what feels very manageable to me, oddly enough, is drinking a half gallon of water two times over the course of a day. And I've got my rusty trusty, it's not rusty, don't worry, but I've got my little half gallon guy. It's already probably two-thirds of the way empty just from today. It's still early in the morning. And I guess my thought on this, and this is probably not some kind of great insight for most of you listeners, but for me, it kind of is. I mean, it's something I think I've known, but I can be reminded of it, which is there are so many things in life that feel really overwhelming. And almost always, the answer is to break that thing down into something more manageable and then just begin dealing with that small section of it.

One of the thoughts I have, we're doing Livewire tonight. I, for some reason, even though I've been doing it for 10 years, seems to be going okay. I feel a lot of anxiety around getting ready for the show, the prep that I'm doing. You know, we have guests that write books and make films and do all kinds of stuff. And there's usually this point in the week where I know that I have this thing coming up, and I know I need to begin the preparation of putting everything down on paper. I've probably been working on the book for a week or two or whatever. But I am, it also is probably some kind of undiagnosed ADHD or some sort of procrastination related mental condition for me. But I have finally taught myself this one trick with this other thing. And it just basically is the same as the half gallon of water thing. I create these draft documents that are the prep for the guests. And as soon as I create those, I start to feel better about the process of putting the show together. so like what I do it's so dumb this is a draft in my email that everything I do creatively if we call what I do creative I don't know everything I do creatively starts with a draft email that will never be sent it's just where i i don't have like a convenient like whatever i don't even know what apple's version of word is but it probably sucks so i just like start a draft email and i write so like we have emily nussbaum on the show i write emily nussbaum in 24 font bold and then i write under it cue the sun that's the name of the book we're talking about. And then I put like 30 little like hyphens, like I do hyphen and then return, hyphen, return, hyphen, return. So you have this long series of hyphens that are all justified all the way to the left of the screen. And each one of those is going to be a question. And then I go back through the book and I look at my little notes that I've made and things I've circled and dog years I've made. And I just start thinking about this interview, the flow of it, where I want it to start, where would be a great place for it to end we have a break that's built in anyway all this is to say where my anxiety is before i put emily nussbaum cue the sun and then all those little empty hyphens where what i feel before i do that and how i feel after i've done that and all that is is writing this person's name and what the name of the thing is so i don't like forget it when we're talking on the radio. That simple act lowers my anxiety by like 80%. Before doing that, I'm like, I'm a mess. After doing that, things feel achievable. And so I don't know, I just thought I would share that with you all that like, if there's something in your life that it seems overwhelming and unmanageable, I really, really recommend just finding the smallest part of it, even if it's not the essential part of it. Find the smallest part of it and then see if you can interact with

that. Because just the act of engaging with it, it just, it, it takes for me anyway, so much of the stress away from it. So that's what I'm learning here on Thursday morning from doing this ridiculous hard 75 thing. I'm also learning that you do pee a lot when you drink a gallon of water a day and i kind of i'm only four days in maybe it's going to change i was expecting my body to adjust in some way to like figure out how to hold on to the water no i peed four times last night and i actually got an instagram message from listener k who had a really interesting idea because we had david from the basement i'm sorry daddy from the basement my brother soon to be father, David Burbank on the show on Tuesday and he was talking about how he would never do this project or practice because of the urinary urination I guess implications and Kay said I wanted to recommend something for your bean bladdered brother and everyone really it's called Travel John a bag with a small sachet of that stuff in diapers that turns everything into a solid deposit your liquids give it a minute to congeal and chuck it in the trash when you get to your destination even better keep a trash bag in the car and spare yourself any prying eyes uh but get the real thing not the knockoff peace out from listener k this is a an idea that would have seemed like madness to me five days ago before i was drinking a gallon of water a day but i will tell you i am constantly now right on the edge of having a bathroom accident it just goes from like okay i'm okay right now to like um this is critical and uh you know the idea of having i really was i was lying in bed last night after three times of getting up to pee and it was almost time for number four and i did not want to get up again and i really was like should i consider a chamber pot situation or even just running a hose from my bedroom down the hall and into the bathroom. I don't know. That seems pretty gross for a semi-functional 48-year-old human as a solution for the bathroom situation. But I don't know. This travel John K. sounds like an idea. I will look into it. All right. Let's get to the real good stuff of today's show, which is thanking the tbtl donors thank you for being a town these are the incredible generous just absolutely spectacular people who are donating to tbtl and making this thing possible on a five day a week basis even the weeks when we don't have

our rusty trusty second time i said that today i don't know what's going on with me and the term Rusty Trusty. Even on the weeks we don't have our dear friend and the longest running co-bro, Mr. Andrew Walsh here. We're still here. We're doing the show. And we're doing it thanks to folks like Lynn... Lindsay Joy of Palo Alto, California. Thanks, Lindsay. Also, Brandy Unruh of Woodinville, Washington. We love Woodinville. Beautiful place out there. I am old enough to remember when Woodinville was like really, really the sticks. Because my Aunt Alice and Uncle Tom lived out there. And you would just be driving forever. And it would just be like, you know, it just felt a million miles away from the city of Seattle. and now it's effectively the city of Seattle, but a very beautiful place nonetheless. Thank you very much, Brandy. Thanks to Mark Sui of Tarzana, California. I'll spare you my Tarzan sound. And is it related? This probably came up last year on the show. Is Tarzana, California in any way because maybe they filmed Tarzan there in the day? Is it just a total coincidence? I don't know. Mark probably knows. Thanks, Mark. Suzanne Olson is checking in from Renton, Washington. I do not think that was named for any part of the Tarzan movie project. I did once look at a—not to buy, but I was looking to rent an apartment in California, in L.A. when I was first living down there, and I looked at an apartment in this huge, sprawling condo development of condos, which some people would rent out to renters, and it was in Culver City. It was pretty close to where I was working at the time. And the two things I remember the real estate agent person telling me was, first of all, the people that lived upstairs were Jack Black's parents, or maybe the people next door were Jack Black's parents, which I thought was kind of cool. And then also that there was like a lake in the middle of all this because this used to be a lot, a Hollywood lot. And I think that was where they filmed some amount of Tarzan. I have a Tarzan association with that place. um but uh but anyway back to uh renton where suzanne olson is thanks suzanne appreciate you also chris walton is in arlington massachusetts don't do it luke don't do it i was okay i'll do it but this is no reflection on chris walton this is because this morning i was watching a tiktok clip from 30 rock of a moment that i did not remember which is jack donaghy's mother who i think is maybe played by Elaine Stritch and she's just like on the show very difficult character she's telling him some winding story that he doesn't care about from her bingo night I think maybe in Florida but she's playing bingo you know Donaghy very Irish Catholic she's playing bingo

at the church and I think the church is actually no it's in Massachusetts hence the joke hence me thinking of this with chris's name or chris's location i think it's like our lady of nervous integration that's the church or like our lady of not wanting to integrate and it just like everything about 30 rock it just flies by like it just does it doesn't even you know they don't even give it a second to breathe but i thought that was like in a sad way in a dark way in an unfortunate way a pretty good joke about unfortunately how this country has operated over the years. Anyway, thank you, Chris, for checking in from Arlington. And then our friend Hemi, so, is in Alameda, California. Do I... Am I remembering right? I've had a flurry of emails coming through my inbox this week, and, you know, usually I try to ignore those, but I can't because Andrew's not here. Is Hemi having a birthday this week? Is that possible? Anyway, speaking of Blur's Days, we are going to do, if you have a Blur's Day this week, or if you've sent one in, this is all going to happen next Thursday. Andrew is the keeper of that flame, and I didn't want to bother him in—I don't want to break up his photography session in Croatia to have him send me all the Blur's Day. So next week is probably going to be a pretty big, robust, you might even say muscular, list of Blur's Day messages. So please do tune in for that. Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right. Our top story today is that we are going to talk to Petey, the musician, who I already kind of gave a bit of a preview to at the beginning of the show. And again, we played one of his skits. Now, the thing about this Petey guy is that he's been a musician. That's been his thing. And he's a great musician at that uh as i said he's out touring starting tomorrow night i think all over with two-door cinema club look him up but um i found out about him during the pandemic when so many of us were home and so many of me were just like obsessively obsessively scrolling tiktok not a lot has changed about that for me unfortunately but one of

the good things to come out of that phase of my life is that I found out about this guy Petey and these skits that he would do with his collaborator, a guy named Will Crane. And they're very, very weird. I'll just say that. But if you like them, they're very, very genius. And then what happened was after Andrew and I got kind of obsessed with these skits, then I think Andrew was the one who figured out that he's also doing music on the side. And sometimes when you find out about a person from one kind of, I don't know, creative medium or art, that's how you think of them. And then if they do something else creatively, it's kind of hard to consider them in that way. And you almost think like, oh God, is this going to suck? Well, it didn't suck, my friends. It doesn't suck at all. It's really good. Petey is a great musician and a very funny guy and is nice enough to call me back when I message him. And so here he is. Petey, welcome. to tbtl hey how's it going good where are you at right now um i'm at my apartment in los angeles

right now and you're getting ready to go out on tour yeah so i'm gonna be going out with two-door cinema club in three days i think we meet up with them in vancouver so i'm excited for that what is

um like the week before you go on tour like for you is there preparation are you packing trail

mix like what goes on there's like no preparation at all until like like 30 minutes before i really just kind of throw my whole all the clothes that i have which is not a lot i'm actually proud of that um in into a suitcase and just kind of take off this one is sort of coming out of nowhere there because i'm really busy right like writing and recording a new album so i i have to like remind myself that i'm going on tour um in a couple days so do you have to get

into any kind of like a head space for like being performative like that in front of a bunch of

people no no i i used to it used to scare me a lot and then i think just through like a immersion therapy over the past three years i've become like desensitized to it in a good way um this is this is a support tour too so it's a completely different feel when you're up there and it's one

that like definitely doesn't stress me out as much um i'm wondering uh like were you playing

music as a kid were you making music as a kid yeah i was always in bands with my friends and stuff in high school like one of my one of the guys from my high school band is in my touring band now so we've been playing together since we were like 14 15 and you grew up mostly in like

what winnetka i think or like a suburb of chicago essentially yeah yeah i'm more sure what um like

what kind of shows did you go to growing up so i went to a lot of like pop punk shows because this i mean fallout boy was from there and then like i would take the train down and go see like i remember seeing stay anything a few times we'll go to metro a lot go to the vic um go to the riviera go see i probably saw death cap for cutie like five times um modest mouse uh yeah it was a really great place for for access for that sort of thing and it was just like really easy to hop

on the train go see a great show were you like in that crowd thinking like i definitely am going

to do that someday or i want to do that someday yeah totally especially yeah i i remember having those like vivid thoughts during um watching death cab play because i was just like such an

obsessive fan friend of the show ben gibbard oh nice yeah because he's a seattle guy which is where this this show started out as a nighttime am radio show um we actually replaced a sports talk program which i feel like is relevant to your interests yeah as a sports guy which i think is kind of interesting because i feel like a lot of your music kind of gets into this like masculinity and like you know the way that guys are supposed to be but how the way guys really are etc but you're also like a real sports fan like i am which kind of is a side of masculinity that like outside of the fact that i live and die by what happens to the seattle seahawks i in no way can vouch for the nfl as an institution or any of the culture around it

how do you like balance that shit i think that you just have to separate the individuals from the institution i talk about that in my song don't tell the boys yeah it's just like the the second verse where it's like can we like can we support the individual without supporting the whole complex so it's just like it's totally i think we need to separate that idea in our heads like yeah we should support soldiers for whatever for everything that they go to and sort of maybe like the conditions that um led them down down the path of joining the military while also being able to be critical of the military and industrial complex and all that stuff i think the same is true for sports and the same is true for nfl it's just like people just like arrive in these places circumstantially and there's so much

much that goes into how someone gets there and um and we can be entertained by it because it's so it's so massive and and even our own journeys with like with becoming a sports fan happen so uh i sort of like uh separate from our consciousness kind of yeah just like we're just like born into this world where that's what people do and so i've become i've been a diehard bears fan since i was nine years old um and then you sort of become aware of the the problems that go along with like any huge institution as you sort of get older and start learning about things um and yeah i think it's important to be critical things that you're that you're also a fan of otherwise that you can't have a productive conversation about it um you have a song um

more life than baseball which was maybe the first song of yours that i really got locked in on as they say now everybody's locked in um i got really locked in on that song because it really speaks to this like kind of vague area of like male friendship um and i was wondering a couple of things one did you write that about a specific friendship experience in

your life no nothing that i write about is about anything specific it's sort of just like a culmination of like all the different friendships and relationships that i've had and i usually just write the song about like a a theme that i've been there's a sort of through line uh with it all um but that one was just like what we were talking about it's just like yeah it's hard to it's like a lot of guys have a hard time talking to each other about stuff me included uh and using sports as a sort of window into just like opening up a conversation about anything that can later evolve into something meaningful is something that i'm like always been really

really interested in um the video for that song you are the video for that song uh you're doing something that i spent a significant part of my childhood doing which is playing a sport meant for many people by myself trying to kind of like did you do that as a kid in winnetka yeah i did

that uh just classic driveway basketball um i think that yeah that was just definitely the easiest thing to sort of fantasize about by yourself and running running down the clock in your mind and trying to hit a last minute three-pointer but yeah definitely a lot of that

i used to listen to the mariners games on the like a am radio and i would be in the alley behind our house and i would try to pitch the entire game i had a strike zone up on like a brick wall and i would just try to reenact it and they were these were the years where the mariners won like 40 games in the season and i was totally unaffected by that i would just i was like

i was so into it yeah it's so fun yeah i had one of those pitch back things oh dude those were great i mean it's just the greatest invention of modern times i think um um carrie wood is a very specific

moment in chicago cubs lore he makes an appearance in that song right yeah for sure he was definitely

like the pitcher that that comes up for me him and mark prior were pretty because that those were the two guys in the rotation when um the whole uh marlins fiasco happened yeah so that that's definitely my most memorable time as a fan of baseball and then carrie was just the guy

because he had like multiple no hitters or something i feel like he was always pitching no hitters yeah he just had one he hit home runs too oh right that was his thing he we were down

three nothing and he tied up the game first to marlins and hit it like a three run homer or

something there's nothing more cool than a pitcher who can hit at the major league level i mean yeah

it's incredible i haven't gone out to see shohei live yet but i hope i can do that before the season's end i don't think i'm going to but he'll be around for for as long as i'm in la yeah right

that's one of those amazing things where like and i'm not trying to go to sports town with it but like they paid so much money for him and he's absolutely returning the investment i feel like

that's kind of never how that goes yeah for sure especially i mean yeah just with these 300 million 10-year contracts or whatever it's so i mean i think that like maybe philadelphia is getting that with bryce now but yeah like it it's just it's crazy it's just kind of crazy that that's how things work now it's kind of hard to ride from your head around yeah um there's i think a

certain kind of like my friend group we're very into your music um and and also into your you know your sort of comedy performances or your like art film performances sure I think one of my friends um went to a show of yours I think it might have been a festival or something where they could uh he could sort of um get a different kind of ticket to like be in this hangout area and was and had so much was so excited to talk to you and was talking to you and then wanted to talk to you later but um didn't want you

you to think he was stalking you so he left and changed hats and came back like this is the kind of behavior that a certain kind of dude displays around you like how do you like handle that kind

of that kind of attention from folks um it's usually pretty pretty consistently pleasant um

that's how my love making has been described yeah yeah pretty consistently pleasant yeah i think i

i was having this conversation with my manager slash co-creator collaborator uh will the other day is um i was kind of like damn i have we haven't i haven't had time to post an instagram video in like or a real like a skit in probably like four months or something um and i'm about to go on the road and i think i was like god do you think this is like is this a should we be thinking about this a little bit more like what's going on and he was just like dude you are your fan base like you know like these people are you and you are you you know exactly and if you're if you're you're not sitting around on your phone sort of just like begging for the next comedy video to come out just like like everyone's chill and that's totally true and like when i'm when i'm talking to folks um at festivals or or whatever it's like having a conversation with i just feel feel like we know each other so well you know it's it's uh it's just like kind of like my friend group growing up um and that seems to be like um a pretty consistent vibe which is nice and there's

not a lot of curveballs in there well because it's like your music and also your like skits are so kind of specific that the kind of person that that that stuff appeals to them they're going to probably be somebody that you can kind of vibe with yeah yeah i think by virtue of just

like understanding the world uh we're all kind of living in the same same same plane i'm really

curious okay so you call them skits i i didn't know what the terminology is for the videos that you make with your friend will crane right this is a collaboration um they're like we have tried my so normally i have a co-host on the show he's out of town right now but he and i have and this is a daily podcast this thing happens five days a week and we have spent i don't know how many hours trying to describe by way of audio what happens in like a pd sketch and it's been so bad for the listeners because it is you just have to see it you cannot hear two guys repeating what the what

happened to the skin it makes like no sense yeah you know what it's not even funny when it's written out like the amount of times that i've written something out because i just write it out on a notes app and then we'll we'll scan through it to like sort of like frame out his uh do like blocking or whatever and he'll be like okay and then you know and then the final product which has a ton to do with his editing ends up being just so far i'm just that that that's the the

funny part um but how do you process do you so i mean i'm i'm so curious about yeah the process of creating one of these so you is it that you see something like an old rusty showerhead or like some handprints in the concrete and your brain just says like that could be a thing and

you start kind of fleshing it out oh yeah i mean when we were really getting after it we were doing like four or five a week and we were living together at that point and we were just sort of like churning them out and sort of being very handsomely uh rewarded for that just yeah like you mean financially like it was profitable it was profitable the ad deals were profitable but most importantly i think it just um sort of it informs like the deals i get on the music end too because i just like it's concentrated the following into such like a passionate fan base that it's like really been helpful for like negotiating deals with record labels and and just that like that whole thing so the the moral of the story is it's been it's been great um but there was we did put pressure on ourselves to do it all the time a lot of those videos especially the ones that have done really well are just sort of me searching around the house for something interesting to create this dialogue around and uh yeah the limitations from or have always been a pretty big i've always been great yeah i think stephen colbert said this thing

that like when he's his most creative is when the producers are telling him like we don't have the money for that like prop or that character or the whatever and then he's in a box and that's when he gets really creative and i try to remember that in my little world of jobs when i'm kind of like annoyed that there's something we can't do i try to i'm trying to think of that more as like a chance to actually really do something interesting and be creative yeah yeah because you have to

replace that with just um i guess just thinking about I'll see you later.

how to you think about how to make something funny in a different way when you're when you have these limitations and usually it works out pretty well were you i mean the very first one

of these that you and will made where it's you playing multiple characters having a very kind of surreal conversation or absurd conversation were you guys just making it to make each other laugh i mean i'm imagining you couldn't have thought well it isn't gonna become a sensation

yeah it was totally i mean i was on an indie label at that point covet had just hit so like we knew we had some money in the bank and all the free time in the world uh and will had a tiktok account up and running already okay um and so it was tiktok he was just like let's try this out and i i wasn't really paying attention to it but i i just kind of like wrote something that i thought was funny and um he edited it on his phone and um it just kind of took off but he we did like 20 of them because i thought it was really fun and i got like 80 000 followers on tiktok before i even like logged into the app and checked it out it was just sort of something that just like lived on his phone um so yeah pretty surreal in that way but it's been really nice because i got into it completely like separating my uh i don't know i guess like sense of worth from like social media like i don't it doesn't nothing about anything that goes on on tiktok bums me out as it relates to like how my videos perform and i really think it's because it just like seemed so not real in the beginning and then continued to just be

surreal the entire time um well and because you have your music career right which is obviously like the thing that well i don't know what you're most passionate about but like that's it's my sense is that's your real thing and the other stuff is just this kind of amazing like amazingly popular thing that that isn't what you've tried to make your as your creative focus is that accurate

totally yeah i do not have um any pride at all in like my comedy writing uh for better definitely for better but i do i just think a lot more critically about like writing songs and stuff and it takes a lot longer because like you know songwriting can it's just like feels like embarrassing sometimes so you just like think more about it well i wanted to ask you about

that because like a lot of people i found out about you first through the skits and then we found out me and the other guy in the show that you did music and then we were freaking out because we really loved the music but like there is in your like when you're doing the skits you're kind of doing these characters there's kind of a little bit of a like a protection there and your music is really vulnerable and you're really just being peaty on stage like how does that feel for you

and is that ever hard um it's not it's not hard but it's harder to make for sure like it's harder to it's it's certainly harder to write and and you think about it just like sort of when you're really being honest and vulnerable about stuff it definitely gives you it gives you pause before you record something in a way that just being ethereal and silly and and kind of trippy on the video and i you know the the video is like literally just like throwing throwing spaghetti at the wall um but it's not yeah the song is just you just think you just think harder about it you're like oh do i really want to say this because i'm actually saying it and you're going

to say it a lot of times if it becomes part of a song that you're performing pretty regularly right

for sure but i will say it's like i have stopped thinking so hard about it recently based on my experience playing live so it's just like i think when i was writing my last record i was really sort of like beating myself up over the right way to say things and sort of like a bit insecure about how to how to present certain pieces of information and then after a year of touring it i realized that i'm not thinking about what i'm saying on stage at all part of it is because um i don't know maybe a just like a processing issue on my hand it's so hard to be present uh on stage because i i'm just really sensitive to my environment and sensitive to like stimuli uh so it really i'm i'm not actually thinking about what i'm saying on stage i'm kind of just like going through the motions um it but all the while i'm hearing these like lyrics like really vulnerable lyrics like sort of screamed back at me um and when you get done with that like now i'm writing this new album and i'm just not i don't i just have that in mind and i'm just like not being picky or careful about the words at all because it seems like the less careful i am the more of a

response it gets so that's good for everyone is there any is there any universe in which

your experience with the skits and how that's something that for you you're not overthinking has now in some way kind of informed the music a little bit totally yeah especially with songs

like um sounds like we go on walks like i spent like 45 seconds writing that song it was like literally i think uh that was one of those things where it's like the beat that i made took five minutes and the lyrics were the first thing that came out of my mouth and i was just kind of like oh let's just throw this on there um and it's become something that like people people really like and i really like to play it resonates with a lot of people like oh damn i should try and do that more because it's way easier for me uh and people people really like it so yeah i hadn't

really thought about this till you just mentioned it but like this the nature of your music and also the nature of your fan base like for you to be on stage and singing something and then to have a bunch of people singing it back to you even though you're thinking about the like the actual practical implications of doing the concert is that kind of emotional sometimes to just be like having that kind of call and response or we're all in this together thing it's really fun it's very

fun um emotional i would um i have a hard time getting emotional on stage and i really just think it's a sensory type of thing there's so much information going on that i do i i i i feel very a tremendous sense of gratitude and I'm having a lot of fun so I mean I there's just like a lot of joy going on yeah but I don't think that I'm able to truly feel um like real vulnerable emotions as I'm performing it's almost like I do wonder I'm like damn am I I feel a little bit like a sociopath uh and it's work you know it's work like a lot a lot of nights like hell yeah that was fun like work is awesome you know yeah um but i and maybe this is just like how i feel about my own songs too but i don't uh i just like want to have a good time you know um and and that's kind

of the crux of it i wonder if part of it is also that you you said you're not writing about a specific friend you had or experience you had it's more about an idea of how of things that could go on so if you were like if the lyric was like about something from your real life i wonder if that would or a relationship you had or whatever i wonder if that would hit different than more like the conceptual idea of things which is what you're singing about

uh i don't know the song microwave dinner was about a very very very specific breakup okay but it was like you know five years ago and like it's like it's totally not a big deal anymore it wasn't it it wasn't even a big deal back then i just over dramatized it to make a good song out of it yeah right and i play that song pretty much every night and yeah it's so funny yeah i feel nothing i just i'm just like trying to have fun i'm like trying to like play my guitar well because i suck a guitar and i'm trying to like uh give the audience the best experience possible but i i really do think it's a auditory and visual sensory sensory overload for me where i'm just like let's just fucking get through this

do you do you remember the first song you could like play on guitar you could cover on guitar or an early song that you were like for me it was like free fallen by tom petty yeah i was

definitely wish you were here um oh wow because it's so easy and it's just the best it's the best guitar part of all time i'm going through a huge pink floyd phase right now um a sort of like late in life pink floyd discovery that is taking over most of my music listening and i'm having a a great time a really great time i feel like pink floyd i think i'm a bit older than you but i feel

Like Pink Floyd was a band that my friends' dads liked. And so I kind of like didn't really give it a lot of consideration when I was younger and I'm listening to like indie music or what I think of as cool music. And then at some point, I don't know if I'm just have low testosterone now or what's going on, but it's like it really hits at a certain point in your life.

It is. Yeah. And I think that totally makes sense because, yeah, I do remember like Pink Floyd posters because their design work and like everything. like the art that the album art and like all the it was so uh it was so awesome but i didn't listen to the music because i didn't have the attention span to be able to listen to a 20 minute song or really the time because i went to school and stuff uh And now, you know, when I just like do the dishes or something, I have to tidy up the house or whatnot. It's a it's a great thing to put on a Pink Floyd album and just kind of do do chores. But yeah, I'm really, really enjoying it.

I was looking up your tour information and I Googled PD tour and Google said people also searched for this. Does Fugazi still tour? does bob dylan still tour does boy george tour anymore and does ted nugent still tour these are the other searches that come up when you search for your tour i don't know i don't know what that says about the the fans you have or the fans these people have but that was surprising to me i'm loving the boy george i know right i've been i've been really re-engaging with like karma chameleon and some of those songs i think they're really good i put that on the other day and the people i was with were like really and i was like no this song is actually really good i think

dude i had the same experience with the song my sharona oh wow the knack yeah and it's like uh these silly songs that you grow up as a kid that are kind of associated with like silly parts about movies yeah and all this stuff you you sort of like compartmentalize them and your brain is like oh this is a silly song and like devo falls into that category and stuff too but i was like i was watching the movie uh everybody wants some and that that baseball movie so like life type thing um and i was really really high um and uh my sharona came on and i was listening to it i was and i just had this like oh my god this song is incredible like so like so incredible and like if if i was in high school and like lcd sound system came out with this song i would think it's like great right and way way back then but i i just like kind of fully realized just the rhythmic quality of that and and that's that's kind of been fun as like an adult uh music listener too doesn't care about um what's cool or not so it's a it's such a fun part of life kind of growing up

and yeah i'll have these songs that'll resurface that i'll just spend like a month like this is a really random but there's a song called like missing you by a guy named john wait and it's just like a super kind of downbeat like guy who's sad about his breakup but trying to pretend like he's not missing them and like i i just remember being a kid in the 80s and having no thought about the song and then hearing it at some point maybe i was going through a breakup too i don't know but just being like locked in on that song for like a straight month just being like this is so good and also because i didn't i now no longer have any chance of being cool so i don't have to i don't have to filter my music through is this like the cool band or the not cool band um i i want before before i let you go i want to ask you one um very practical question which is about your website is it accidentally or ironically very almost impossible to navigate it has real spacejam.com energy going on i love it so much i love the aesthetic of it so much but i like i've been like poking around on it and like i feel like i love it but it's like an escape room i'm like trying to crack the code of getting into and out of your website how did you come up with the like error message and all of did you do that did someone do that for you someone did

you know what i mean for the for the sake of preserving the brand identity i'm just gonna say

uh i tried my best to to make a website it's it's so good it is it's art unto itself and i i love it I'm just like going over there and just hanging out because it reminds me of all, like I'm old enough that that was how the websites were when I got started on the worldwide web.

That's how I view computers too. Like if you, my screen, my desktop is, is a horror show. It upsets a lot of people.

I have the same desktop cause we use a lot of audio drops for, for this thing. And I'm always dragging stuff out of like, I'm just like my desktop is just where I put so much stuff until I can figure out what to do with it um and yeah it's it's definitely it's the it's a it's an unquiet mind represented by my desktop situation but well pd i really appreciate you taking the time uh to talk to us today we're really big i'm bummed that my co-host couldn't be in fact he's going to come back from croatia and be pissed that i did this without him so maybe we can have you back on at some point in the future when the new when the new album comes out and talk about that because This has been super fun.

Likewise, man. This has been lovely.

All right. Go Bulls. Yeah, go Bulls. And go Bears, too. What do you think? Based on your hats, I figured you were a Bears guy. And then when I was asking you to come on the show, I threw, like, a Caleb Williams Rome Odunze thing at you. And then I thought, I don't know, maybe he just likes the hats. But, like, how are you feeling about your Bears?

I'm a huge Bears fan. I'm feeling very, very, very excited. I think.

Yeah, slow start, but, like, that's to be expected. On Caleb's end and just the offense in general, they'll find the rhythm. But, like, it's so funny. It's just, like, everything's changed, but it's still classic Bears win, just special teams defense and horrible offense. And we somehow squeak it out. So I'm here for that.

I'm excited for you guys. And I'm a UW graduate, which is where Romo Dunze went. And so I was, like, I was very, very much following him in college. And that guy seems, as they say, special. So I'm really, I'm really hoping for, for good things for your bears. So anyway, Petey, thanks, man.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. All right. Bye.

Bye-bye.

All right. That's going to do it for today's episode. Big thanks again to Petey for taking some time to talk to us. That was really fun for me. And thank you all for being a part of TVTL. Thank you for hanging out with us today. Hey, tomorrow on the show, we are going to catch up with a buddy of mine, Misha Collins, the actor and philanthropist. And what else does he do? I don't know. Just generally makes the world a better place. He and I were hanging out in Santa Barbara a couple of weeks ago, or I don't know when it was. Time is a flat circle. And we were hitting it off. and I just was having so much fun with him. I thought, you know what? It'd be so much fun maybe for the listeners of TBTL to catch up with him as well. So we're going to do that tomorrow on the program. In the meantime, thanks for listening. Hope you have a great Thursday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. God, I'm doing a lot of heavy lifting with that this week. Power out.