Muse

And now, Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handy. Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself, mankind. Basically, it's made up of two separate words, manc and ind. What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.

now i don't know much about this podcasting business but let me tell you there's something about this show that just gets me hooked these guys have a way of talking that's like having a chat with your neighbor over the backyard fence just like the drop says i i cannot contain my joy

i don't think i've ever related to a drop so much right now it's the story of a man with a brothel of a home in a pool filled with human excrement you heard it here first ladies and gentlemen

and the it that you heard was the things that these people just said please clap

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live welcome to the internet my name is luke burbank i am your host i like turtles coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where we are on day nine of 75 hard ish ish and uh let me tell you my body is not adapting to the liquid intake if you made it all the way to the end of yesterday's show i don't think i've ever been as curt with my dear friend andrew as i was because i was very close to having an accident to wetting myself. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. I got home yesterday from running some errands. And I was in a grocery store down in beautiful Calama, Washington. And the restroom was broken. And I, by the time I got home, I had very close to an accident. I jumped out of my car. You know what? I'll tell Andrew about this. We're at episode 4295 in a collector's series. by the way let the fun begin you are scoring at home as some of you are um along with nearly wetting myself i am uh embarking on a new adventure tonight i'm trying i'm trying to become a different person in a very fundamental way and in a very important way to my life and

i'm nervous about i am petrified petrified with this story uh so we will uh talk about that oh

speaking of andrew my dear friend the longest running cobra of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships i hear the jet lag really do be hitting him now he's blowing through nap time aren't we he's uh woken up long enough to cobro the show and he's joining me right

now good morning my friend the good news is the jet lag works in tbtl's favor because i'm pretty enough for hours no well not hours but i am waking up kind of earlier than i usually would i'm sure that won't last long although i'll try to i'll try to maintain this habit as much as possible because I feel like I'm definitely better when I'm awake for several hours before we start doing the show as opposed to, you know, an hour or less. But, yeah, so right now I'm kind of in my peak. I woke up earlier. I got a bunch of business done this morning. I'm feeling good. Yesterday I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when we spoke. But immediately after the show I had to make some calls related. We don't have to get into details here, but I was telling you I was making some calls in preparation for our big Philadelphia live show in just a couple of weeks here on Saturday. September 28th, the Friends Center in Philadelphia. Exactly, right there on Cherry Street. I just happen to know that because I've been making a lot of phone calls about that. Anyway, I had like this kind of frustrating series of phone calls with some folks I'm trying to work with. Quakers? No, I would like to make it very clear that they are not Quakers as far as I know and they're not related to the facility. But anyway, just trying to get some ducks in a row and some travel plans And I kind of had this burst after the show of productivity because I was kind of anxious about it all during the vacation I just got off of. And so I was like, when I get back, I just really got to hit the ground running. And I did until about 2 p.m. And then I emerged from my office a little bit dizzied by a kind of a weird conversation I had on the phone. And then and also, I don't know how much of that is my fault because I started to realize, like, I'm out of my goddamn mind. And it wasn't just the sleep either. My food schedule has been totally off because, I don't know, just the weird travel days that I had combined with the jet lag. I'm still missing my medication as I wait for my lost luggage to show up. So I've been a little bit more sore. I just came out of my office feeling like a zombie around two.

p.m. yesterday i didn't know what to do with myself i'm like well let me let me take advantage of the fact that i'm trying to get a lot of stuff done today i had some shoes i had to return i don't know how much we need to really get into this i had ordered some special shoes that wouldn't kill my feet if i had to walk around croatia a lot and so i ordered them online but they didn't get here in time so i went to the store i bought some in person before i left and then i had to return these things i wanted to return them in person instead of shipping them back because i'm an old person i don't trust return by mail stuff it's all very complicated and overwhelming to me so i drive up so easy i know it it is for like amazon i'm not scared of but this was a dsw order and i was i basically i go on their website and i'm like i just click the button that says how to return things pardon me and the very first option is well you can just bring it to our store i'm like well where's the nearest store i know they closed the one near me and it's like oh linwood up in the alderwood mall and i'm like listen i'm super hungry right now every time i drive through linwood it feels like the malls of the past it still has like it's like every kind of like commercial chain restaurant and store that i hear on am radio actually exists in the alderwood mall area pjo pooter tutors video only you'll be sorry you'll be sorry so anyway i'm like you know what If I'm going to just – I need to eat anyway. It's been, again, it's been like 24 hours since I've eaten anything, maybe more. I'm going to drive up to the Linwood area, return these shoes, and get something to eat. But I honestly was a little bit nervous even getting in the car. I was like, am I okay to drive? I kept thinking of your description of like gravity working double time on you sort of. It's just like my body felt so heavy. I'm in a state. I return the shoes no problem. I think I passed as a norm, but then I'm looking around like I'm like, I'm so, so hungry. I want like a hearty meal, not like something I'd usually have for lunch, but like something kind of heavy. And I know that's a mistake, but I'm like, what is heavy that would be up here? And I'm like, Red Robin. Yum. Yum. And I've only been there. This is the show where you begin local Seattle taglines and I end them. I'm the closer. You bring me in to say the last part of the commercial. We pay you the big bucks. the lights flash you come out and you go yeah i had never even the mariano rivera of this i had not been to um red ramen ever in my life until you me and our co-bro john went uh like that would have been what about you know just over a year ago right you took in silverdale silverdale my folks place exactly and i just remembered how good those sauces were that we got so veves and i went back once about a month ago and now this is my third trip to red robin And I'm really becoming a Red Robin regular. That's like three times in one year. And I'm just like, what am I doing, though? Like, I'm fighting to stay awake. I have some more errands to run.

I'm like, but I'm so famished. I'm like, I just want a big-ass burger. Do you sell a pillow that I can eat that will then be inside my stomach and make me somehow even more sleepy? And then I woke up from my dream, and half my pillow was eaten. So anyway, I'm sorry that I'm dragging this on. What did you order? I ordered. Spare no detail. Any Red Robin related story I'm so here for The thing I like the most about the Red Robin Is the sauces When I think back on that What's the word I'm looking for? Halcyonic Halcyon memory Of you, me and John Me and John being virgins of the Red Robin We went to town that day Yes, we got those We got those mozzarella They're not mozzarella sticks, but they're mozzarella twists And I don't know why I like them They were lightly breaded I know I'm not supposed to like cheese Everybody calm down about that. People can be inconsistent. That's right. I contain multitudes. Yes. Anyway, I did not get those, but I also remember how much fun I had with all the dipping sauces. I think we said when we were there in Silverdale, bring us all of your dipping sauces. And so we had this big plate of fries, and we were trying them all. And so I'm always trying to recreate that. You know how an addict is always trying to recreate their first high? That's the monkey on my back. Yeah, you're chasing the dragon. I'm chasing the dragon, and it looks like a flat french fry. And so I order three different sauces, a barbecue sauce, a buffalo sauce, and then I'm like, I want a third. I know there's a third. And she said, what about the scorpion? You're not a ranch guy. I don't do white dipping sauces. So anyway, I got something called the scorpion sauce, which is another. It's a different style hot sauce. Are you familiar with the scorpion sauce? The server was really into it. She said, you know, that's my favorite. You're going to like it. I'm like, great. So I got that. I got that and a burger. I got like a, you know, like a Texas barbecue burger or something. Okay. Whatever. It doesn't matter. So I got those. I didn't get anything else. I didn't get any soup. Usually I'd get soup. I was so hungry, but I'm like, this is.

going to knock me on my ass like so bad and so i i wolfed that down the scorpion sauce was good but i didn't know they were going to charge me an extra dollar for it i thought it was just like all the sauces are free do you know that's how they get you do you know they're out there

charging for scorpion sauce rides on your back and you think you're friends with it until until it hits you with a one dollar charge there's also i don't want to be the bearer of i don't know if this is good or bad news but you live very close to a red robin i know but i was up there i had to return those shoes i know but i just mean you could you you my friend could enjoy all the sauces of the rainbow yes almost any time i know very close to one well vives and i did go

like about a month ago or something in the one in our neighborhood but um uh but also i honestly don't go in for that kind of stuff all that often like a big plate of fries which they're kind of known for is nice every once in a while but it always leaves me feeling really heavy and and

logi and and i don't i always say they're bottomless there too which is which always gets me because i'm i'm in a weird way i am not a person who is if i'm in a work environment and there's free food like there's always food before live wire in the green room and i never eat any of it and yet there are other times where like if i go to a red robin and i know that it's bottomless fries i will not walk out of there having had fewer than two refills because it feels maybe because I'm paying for it. There are certain free food situations or unlimited food situations where I feel compelled to take advantage of it. And bottomless fries is one of them. Free chips at the Mexican restaurant, another one of them. I will be, I'll be, you know, sort of disappointed in myself if I don't take advantage of those kinds of things.

And by the way, I kind of miss, and this is maybe a PSA for other people, I misinterpreted what bottomless fries means. They will require you to wear pants in the restaurant. I was, I thought it was like, whatever, I thought it was kind of a whole deal. But I'm with you. When I went to Red Robin—

The Fremont location, you don't—on solstice, you don't have to wear pants.

That's right. The fries are bottomless. First of all, you must wear pants for this. I went in there and I said, the fries are bottomless and I'm topless. Let's do this. Yes. You know, when I went to the Red Robin with Genevieve— Okay, the first time I went was with you and John. I felt like we really did that right, right? We had you as our sort of guide.

I mean, but no, not to brag, but you were, you had a Gandalf leading you on this voyage of discovery, you little hobbit, you.

Exactly. You said, you shall not pass gas on the way home to Polsbo. Not pantsless. First of all, put some pants on and stop tooting. What the hell? So I'm always trying to recreate that. When I went back with Genevieve, and that was, I guess, about a year, maybe it was my one year anniversary of Red Robin. And Vives and I went on a whim, like totally a whim. I'm going to say, like, again, like maybe a month ago. And she had never been before. And I'm no Gandalf. I can't show her the ropes. I think she maybe got a burger. I got some of those. They have a funny word for their chicken tenders. I can't remember what it is. Clucks and fries. Is it clucks and fries? I thought it rhymed. Have they changed it? No, no. They got scorpion sauce. No, you're probably right.

It's probably still clucks and fries. Addie used to get the clucks and fries is the reason that I used to know that. But again, you know, things change, so they might be calling it something different.

No, I think you're right. I think maybe I just wanted a little bit more there from the word play. But what I was getting at was Vives and I both got our meals. We're like, oh, bottomless fries. And then the fries that came out with our meals was actually kind of, I mean, relatively sparse, you know? Like, for some reason, it just seemed like slightly less than usual. I did not have that experience yesterday. But I remember that night being like, well, I guess I'll have to order more. but the server never asked me if we wanted more and i i was being like i'm sitting here i don't need more food in me but there was something that was like kind of telling me yeah but they're bottomless fries you should order more and i was like all right well if she asks i'll say yeah just so we can use up more dipping sauce but she didn't and i walked out of there with a mixed feeling of being like sort of like well that was good you ate the food that you needed to eat you didn't like carbo load more food when you didn't even really want it but on the other hand i felt like, oh, but I'm not doing it right, and I can't tell Luke and Kev about this experience. No, you could definitely not.

It's priced in. I mean, that's part of it is like I'll be honest with you, I think sometimes they don't bring you that many fries because they're planning on you asking for more fries. Yeah, yeah, that's what I thought. So they're like, we're kind of, you know, we're just gonna we're gonna bring them out like about three at a time and just see, you know, if we can keep this person from just going completely bonkers on this. And sometimes too, the fries could be, like, leave a little bit to be desired in the hotness department. ah in the non staleness department i think just depends on the particular day and how busy they

are but mine yesterday were plenty hot i was also like in this in between time like keep in mind this is now like three o'clock so i'm having that thing that is like it's not lunch and it's not dinner it's like somewhere in between and i kind of know that this is probably just going to knock me out by the one last thing about um red rob and my red robin experience with genevieve we walked in there and they now have all those little ipad looking things on the tables right uh-huh and it's like oh do you want to play do you want to play a game and it kind of reminded me of like you know going to those old like kind of um in the 1980s we'd go to like cozy little like um country kitschy restaurants i don't know if i'm thinking of uh the cracker barrel or whatever it is but i feel like there's a time in the 80s maybe it's because i was going to restaurants with my parents as a kid and so we're going to kid-friendly restaurants but they'd have the little try the wooden triangles with the golf tees in it you'd play the hopping game you know i'm talking about it like various games or if you go into like a bar or a pub or something they have like trivial pursuit on every table i always like that you know veves and i it's been 24 years we could always use a little a little conversation sparker you know and so um anyway i pick up the ipad when i'm there with veves and it's like would you like to play a game i'm like yeah sure and then all of a sudden it looks like i've been charged like five dollars to you there's something by the ziosk i believe is that what it's called and i was just like and so i said to the server i'm like i think i just got charged money like i don't want to play any games can you like kind of void that it's a slot machine yeah and she's like oh i think that's from the people before you don't worry about it but i immediately googled it and people were complaining like they go into the and i don't know what the exact charge is so i apologize if i'm exaggerating by saying it's five dollars again it's not something that's necessarily going to like send you to the poor house but like if you're going into this place as a family with maybe a few kids and you're trying to wrangle everybody and then what do you place in front of the kids but a little TV with like enticing looking games and the kid starts playing with and the next thing you know it's either hard to say no to them or they've already unlocked it

So they're like in-app purchases? Like what did you

buy? I think you have to pay to unlock At this point I didn't actually buy anything I saw something that made me nervous because I hit yes I want to play a game and then I said okay you've now unlocked like your $4.99 experience or something like that. I'm getting the details somewhat

That is very very shady. Yeah Because you're exactly right. It's like a kid would do that and then what would happen is and this cannot be an accident this is not something that has that they haven't thought through you know the kids are banging around on the little ziosk and then you get the bill and then you're just paying because and you don't know how much scorpion sauce everyone had yeah you're the parent you run your card it's the bill is eighty dollars and you don't know how much of that is like uh you know freaking minecraft on there or whatever like that's

definitely a little bit shady it looks like it's a three dollar entertainment fee that shows up on your bill at the very end i mean that is getting to play the games i believe so let's see here so i'm looking on reddit here my daughter that is a very very bad policy they added a three dollar entertainment fee to the check what the heck is it uh they got it to take they got the server to take it off but i think it does have something to do with um that ipad i'm sort of like googling

on the fly here. Yeah, I mean, what else would it be? See, that's wild to me, because I feel like as a business, it's smart to create things. Like, for instance, this restaurant in Seattle, Cafe Lago, this Italian place that my family has worked at for years, they have paper tablecloths, and they would bring the kids crayons. Yeah, they still do. I mean, this is a not cheap restaurant anymore. It is almost fine dining prices. But every young person, whether it's my little brothers or my daughter, Like everyone loved going to Cafe Lago because you got to draw on the tablecloth. Meanwhile, you know, the bill is one hundred and eighty dollars or something insane. But like that was such a draw. Like kids are like, I want to go to that place where you can do that. So if you can create that experience as Red Robin, I want to go to the place where they have the iPads at the table and I can play a game. That seems like a benefit. Charging trying to make three dollars on the back end of that seems like a terrible business model.

There's something here called The Rail, R-A-I-L. It's some sort of a publication, I don't know. And it says, it's from 2016, our tabletop tablet ordering system stealing from guests. And it begins with this anecdote. And again, this is 2016, so I do think the price went up since then. It says, a California diner was anything but entertained when he looked at his bill and saw he was charged an entertainment fee by Red Robin. The fee came from the use of a Red Robin-owned tablet. The tablet has information for guests, the restaurant's menu, and a way to order food and pay the bill. I was encouraged yesterday, Luke, to pay the bill via the tablet, which I did. It was very convenient. It says, but it also has games, which the family restaurant chain charges for. The diner didn't partake in any gaming, but the children got into the game section and started playing the available programs. The tablet specifically said there's a fee for playing games on the tablet, but it doesn't require an adult's consent to play. So the kids kept playing, and then he was charged a fee. Back in 2016, it looks like it was $2, but I think it's gone up to $3 since then. So, yeah, that seems super, super shady to me as we've established.

Yeah, that's a very bad idea because you're just going to create bad will, and that's the opposite of what you want to do. It doesn't seem to me that the $3 is going to be worth it at all. But the big question on everyone's mind, did you fall asleep driving home?

From the wide shoe district because of all of the food that your body was trying to digest. No, I fell asleep at the Red Robin. Did you die in a car crash yesterday? And I'm talking to your ghost.

It was a night just like this. Call me large. It was very rainy. Yes. No, you know what I was doing? So I had some more errands to run after that. So I am, and I told you that I had biked around. I hadn't ridden a bike in a long time, but I had biked around a lot the day before yesterday. And I was starting to feel very, very sore. I also don't have my medications for my arthritis because they're still lost in my luggage. So and I don't know like what what was all causing it. But suddenly I was having really bad kind of I'm getting in and out of the car, just like groaning and like barely lifting myself. I pull myself out of the table, out of the booth where I've just wharfed like I didn't even eat all my fries, by the way. Sorry, dude. But I ate my I ate my burger and a bunch of these fries. And then I just like groan as I get up out of the booth and I kind of amble my way out to my car. And my next stop is to my friend's place to go look in at their look in on their cat or cat sitting. Right. And it's time for like kind of the afternoon. And this cat who I didn't know very well before this cat sitting stint is very, very kind of snuggly and lovey. Like, I love my bingo cat here and he's fun and lovey in his own way, but he won't like snuggle up with you so much. but this cat who's been um kind of alone and being cat sit for a while now uh is very um i think missing his people so i go to my friend's house and i sit down on the couch and the cat's name is bear and i say come on bear just just sit with me just sit with me for a little bit i put on a baseball game on the app that i don't care that much about actually i sort of do it as some i put on the cleveland minnesota game um did minnesota pull that out that has uh implications for us but either way yeah they're ahead of us in the wild card standing i believe yes and so i think they pulled out a win over cleveland yesterday which is not great for uh mariners fans but having said all of that um i just kind of laid down on the couch and i put on the game knowing that i wouldn't listen to very much of it and uh just sort of dozed off for a while while the cat purred next to me and so that is how i i tried not to sleep that long though because i didn't want to screw everything up for the rest of the week i want to get so i probably nodded on and off for maybe a half hour or something but it wasn't like a deep sleep nap that i had to roust myself from and remind me who i am and what my name is um and then i went to because that could

be weird if you wake up at someone else's house with someone else's cat that could really throw

you for a loop still bottomless still bottomless just true to the bottomless fries police are

knocking on the door sir i actually don't think i could fall asleep on the couch at someone else's house yeah i don't think i could do it i don't have and by the way uh and i say this with peace and love that's the ultimate old man energy that's the ultimate because everyone has an uncle or multiple uncles who their move is to fall asleep after every family event there's always an uncle in the corner just dozing off in a barca lounger i do not i don't know if it's some kind of like anxiety or something but i can't do that i can't fall asleep in a group setting like that And I don't think I could fall asleep on someone else's couch, even if they weren't there. I think I'd be some kind of, I don't know, some sort of high alert would still be going on in my system.

I definitely can't do it if, you know, like I can't do that thing in a public, not a public setting, but if it's a party with other people, I definitely can't. My dad could. He could. My dad used to fall asleep in the dentist chair, like in the like five minutes after they brought him in before the dentist comes. And he could just sleep anywhere. I'm not usually like that. I'm pretty comfortable here now. You know, the friends we're talking about, of course. And so I don't know why it's just not worth saying that they're out of town. So why put them on Front Street? But I'm pretty familiar with these folks. So I know and I'm there feeding their cats quite a bit over the years. So I'm pretty comfortable there. But again, it wasn't like I had a real nap, you know, the type of nap where you're actually like solidly asleep. It was more like an airplane nap where I sort of like kind of waking up every now and then hearing the score sort of just sort of nodding just a couple of nodders. A couple of nodders. Yeah, anyway, that's my story.

I couldn't do any napping yesterday, Andrew, because I could not stop urinating. I'm not just trying to be funny or create content for the show. It reached some sort of like, it almost made me reconsider this, how much water I'm drinking for this stupid project I'm doing. Because there were multiple times yesterday where I was, I mean, at the end of the show, I literally ran out of here after. I don't know what you said at the end of the show You might not have said And good luck to all

I said other things Waterfalls The drip drip drip of a faucet But you were already gone

And then I just said good luck for all I sprinted out of there Because I was Legitimately very close to having an accident. And then I was grabbing some groceries and I walked into the little grocery store down in town and they, sure enough, the restroom had a sign on it that said out of order. I was like, you gotta be kidding me because my plan was to go in there. I had already used the restroom. Where had I been previously? I had stopped somewhere else. Oh, a gas station and used the restroom at the gas station and then drove up to the grocery store and then needed to pee again and then it was out of order so I went and got my stuff and then on the way out of the store I still tried to open the door and I had a whole plan in my mind like there was a woman who worked for the grocery store that was kind of in the little office that was near where the restroom was with the out of not working sign on it and she was like doing the till or something and I had a whole story planned for if I were to open the door and go in there and try to use this bathroom, which they were telling me not to use. Which was, when I came into the store, I very clearly saw the sign. But then I bought my stuff, I went back out, and when you approached it from the other side, you couldn't see the sign. So my plan was going to be, if I opened the door and she was like, hey, what are you doing? I was going to be like, oh, I didn't see the sign. And I was playing out how plausible this was in my mind before I even tried to open the door because I didn't know if I was going to get hollered at. Well, it was locked, so I couldn't even do my, my scandalous thing i was also considering telling her it's only number one yeah because

she said hey what are you doing if that thing is closed and locked i mean it could be because it's like a clogged toilet in there and like you know you just want to i don't know because you're like in a situation where like it's such an emergency there have been times i don't know if i've done this before maybe when i was younger and angrier but like if i i would stop at like a gas station and i have to go to the bathroom really bad like on a road trip and they say oh it's out of order and i never really believe them i just think they don't want to deal with the

public i was wondering if that was what was going on at the grocery store by the way and so then i

always think like well what if i just pee on your front door like i just like in that moment i i've never to be very clear i've never peed on a gas station's front door but i think there might have been times uh where i've gone around back i'm like okay you're not gonna let me use the restroom i'm gonna pee in the weeds behind your gas station well that's basically i didn't pee at

I was looking for a place to pee outside of the grocery store, but it's a very, like, it's a lot of impervious surface. Like, it's just all concrete, and people are parking, and there's families. There was literally nowhere for me to duck into and do that because that was my plan coming out. So then I jump in my car, and I'm driving, and I'm really, like, I'm struggling with if I'm going to make it home or not. and i had basically like a guy coming over big mike my guy big mike who does uh drywall stuff here and uh he was stopping by to look at some things i wasn't there but he was going to like look at some projects and then you know give me the estimate or whatever i was really worried he was still going to be here and i didn't want to have to like i didn't want to have any conversation i didn't want to like interact i wanted to just like run to the bathroom and what i ended up doing was jumping out of my car running to the edge of my driveway and peeing in my own yard because i could not get down to the house and i remember thinking is this indecent exposure like do you have the right to pee in your own yard but by the way my neighbors could conceivably i'm kind of

now that i've been there i can kind of picture these are the neighbors that i think it's okay for me to say like sometimes shoot guns right so you're kind of peeing like you're peeing inside of their house and your little garden back there right but you're kind of standing in the sight of their house yes yeah i was exposed there you're not like up against a bush or anything no it's

very and i did look over and i didn't see bob's truck so i thought it was i was like it's probably safe and so i'm going to the bathroom in my yard and then his like um like air conditioning unit or whatever he's got one of those big like you know train like whatever i don't even know what that's called basically hvac thing kicks on i was like oh my god like i thought i for some reason thought he was coming out of his house or opening his garage door or something and i really did i was like i wonder if the police i wonder how often the police show up at a like public urination thing and let the person go and i wonder also if that's considered like you know public exposure or whatever it's becoming a real issue in my life because i again am constantly constantly needing to go to the bathroom i will say that i've got the clearest urine i was gonna say you could ever imagine like whatever the opposite of when you're dehydrated and it's like you know the color is a certain color and you're just like you can kind of just you could sort of see the coffee and the you know the other impurities we are dealing with the opposite of that like it is like a mountain stream or something but it's very um it really takes a lot of planning and i'm going to be flying tonight by the way this is the other thing i wanted to tell you about this is a big thing for me i am seeing if i can become a red eye warrior because i have to travel for particularly the tv job so much and it's very inconvenient in my schedule and it means there are a lot of days that get lost and afternoons that get lost and i thought you know when i went to nashville before my big trip i'd be out of necessity had to take a red eye because i had to go to los angeles and talk to old Ryan Seacrest, and then go directly to Nashville. And the only way to make this all work was a red eye. And I was actually surprised at how okay it went. Like, I slept. Actually, what happened was the woman sitting next to me was solo flying herself to rehab in Florida and was going there to kick some kind of a, like, a benzo addiction. And I was her only friend in the world. And I ended up talking to this woman for like half of the flight, just encouraging her and telling her she was really making a good decision. I was surprised no one in her family went with her on this trip. But anyway, when that finally, you know, petered out, I then went to sleep. And I actually, I slept a little bit on the flight. I didn't feel as ruined the next day when I was in Nashville as I expected to. And this got me thinking, I wonder if maybe, maybe red eyes, I've avoided them assiduously in my life. I've assumed it's just a complete and total day ruiner. But now I'm wondering if it might actually be the secret to Me having a better schedule in my life So I'm going to try this tonight I'm going to be in upstate New York The next couple of days on a CBS shoot And then I'm going down to New York City on Friday

Actually Thursday night for this TV interview with the singer Maggie Rogers And I'm going to try this tonight And you and I are going to get together and we're going to record a show tomorrow, Andrew I'm going to be in Rochester, New York And we are going to find out if, in fact, I am a person who can take a red eye, get a little bit of sleep, and then be functional the next day. Because if it works out, this could really be a benefit to my life. Because it would mean I don't have to lose so many days of travel. It could just be an overnight thing, and I get me some shut eye, and everything's fine.

We'll talk about the red eye thing in a second, but out of curiosity, are you staying on the East Coast all the way through our show in Philadelphia? Are you bouncing to the West Coast and then back to Philadelphia?

Andrew not only am I not staying The current plan right now This is so ridiculous Is Filming in New York on Friday I get up at the crack of dawn Saturday morning Fly back to Portland for a wedding That I As a friend of Becca's A colleague of Becca's And then Sunday night fly back to New York Because I have to film at the United Nations on Monday For this story I'm doing about this AI artist So you're going back on Monday of next week i'll be in new york on friday and monday when i talk to you but i will have been to portland in the interim and then i will also be back in portland for live wire on thursday night jesus and then back and i will be in philly and then i'll be in philly with you and john on friday that is the current schedule and um it's uh yeah it's a doozy but um but all that is to say uh yeah i will be i'm i'm trying to get up the gumption to bail on this wedding and i don't think i have it it's it's it's it's like it would be a lot easier if i didn't go but i also feel like being in a relationship part of that is showing up when you have said you were going to show up for months and months in advance and not allowing the the vicissitudes of life and work to

make me a shady boyfriend you know yeah yeah yeah i mean i have a million there's a million follow-up questions i could ask but i want to be i want to be like respectful to to becca since we talk about her on the show and this isn't like just sort of a a black box situation here but um yeah that is that is a really interesting conversation i mean what i want to ask but wouldn't was just like how close of a you you you know you sort of said friend and then you said

colleague and then you know it's kind of like well i would say work like probably work bestie in other words the person at her work who she's probably most friendly with and i know this because when we are out in the world on a weekend they will be texting about work stuff i i consider them to be good friends and i think that maybe she's the only person from her workplace invited to this okay yeah no that's that kind of gives you some context yeah and becca's gonna go either

way and so you're going so that becca doesn't have to go alone which is what you should do as a good partner like i definitely understand that i have like i already kind of ruined her uh her

her 20th or yeah 20th high school reunion or something or whatever it was it was a big high school reunion and i had to do a live wire project at pickathon and she had a dress for it and was all ready to go and then it was just going to be like really late

By the time I could even get there after my gig And then it just ended up getting scrapped So I feel like I've already kind of like I've already kind of ruined one of these things That was on the calendar with work And it just seems like it would be bad form To ruin another one But it is definitely something That I'm going to get a lot of credit for I am going to make sure I'm going to be like Danny Kaye in White Christmas He saves Bing Crosby In The War But there's absolutely nothing better than the scenes in White Christmas when they are trying to reasonably present Bing Crosby as a fresh-faced 20-something G.I.

They didn't have the technology that we have now.

He is so manifestly middle-aged, if not late middle-aged, but they're trying to make him seem... Because he and Danny Kaye were in the war together, and this is, I think, maybe before they were ever performers, but they became friends. And the plot line is this wall collapses on Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye saves him at the last minute but then sustains an injury and hurts his shoulder. And any time Danny Kaye's character wants a favor from Bing Crosby, he then rubs his arm, kind of like, remember this? That's going to be me for the rest of time with Becca regarding this wedding. For the one wedding. Remember that time I flew home from New York for a wedding and then flew back to New York literally the next day?

This is a very, very different situation, and so I want to make it clear that I'm not conflating this or putting a veneer of this story onto Becca's situation. But the reason I ask how close of a colleague is because I just will always carry around the – I don't want to get into Genevieve's personal or private professional life here. But she had a job at one point during a time where I had, you know, we were in L.A. and I had a very, very stressful job. And I was very I mean, you think I'm protective of my of my alone time now or my personal time. I had so little personal time during this chunk of time that I lived in L.A. that I remember really being bummed that we had to go to some wedding of a colleague of Genevieve's. And they weren't, like, super close. And the writing was already on the wall that Genevieve, like, her relationship with this company was not, like, fully working out, right? And I felt like there were definitely, like, snakes in the grass. And I sort of felt like the person getting married was kind of part of that snake in the grass situation. And then things kind of ended in a way that I expected. And, like, I will always hold a grudge that I gave up, like, a Sunday, like, to go to the – not a grudge against Genevieve. I mean, I think she does, too, where we kind of joke about it a little bit. But when I just think about it and it was like we had to drive from L.A. all the way out to like the Santa Barbara area, I think, you know, really an all day affair. And then also just like that's not a super comfortable vibe for me. Everybody's always dressed up and I always feel like a schlub, although I'm sure I was fine. But when I, you know, kind of get ready for a formal event like that, I always feel like I'm a, you know, 13 year old schlub again. And I'm making like small talk with all these professional people. Like not one person at this wedding that I know or can bro down with or I'm friendly with. It's just like all colleagues or friends of colleagues or just like people I have no earthly connection to and understand that I'll never have any earthly connection to. And then like after this, it wasn't long after this wedding that like Genevieve and this company sort of parted ways. I'm just like, we should have never gone. And I think we got her like a nice gift, too.

Well, if it's any consolation, I'm sure those people are divorced now.

Probably. and maybe even remarried if there's any justice in the world yeah right exactly anyway that's a long that was a long tangent um the the red eye thing yeah i'm interested in hearing how that works out like i was booking our tickets to philadelphia yesterday genevieve's coming out to philly with us too for the show and i was kind of surprised um to see the a lack of options for this particular flight for the days that i need to get out there it was very it's kind of a strange thing but were you looking exclusively on alaska not at first actually i'm glad i went back to Alaska I was using a Travelocity and um what's the other one I was kind of bouncing around a little bit kayak no um maybe the canoe name another water vessel it'll be that one yacht stand up paddleboard no I can't remember the other one but anyway um I was bouncing around a little bit and then I'm like let me just go directly to it because I could not find an Alaska flight on the way home at all like let me go directly to Alaska's website and actually a lot it was a It's an expensive flight, but, like, at least Alaska provided me something that they were not showing on the other sites. Like, I don't know, man. It's kind of a pain in the ass, but I'm actually really glad I did order directly from Alaska. Having said all of that, I was looking at one red-eye flight. I'm like, it could kind of work out if we took a red-eye flight, but I was like, and that would have been on the way out there. But I'm like, I'm booking this.

while dealing with jet lag right now. And I know how the effects of that can really impact me. And so I was like, I don't want to run the risk of being on stage feeling the way I am as I'm booking these tickets on a Tuesday afternoon.

And I'm kind of dipping my toe in the waters of this in that all I have to do tomorrow is do TBTL with you from the hotel in Rochester. I'm not filming tomorrow. So basically, I mean, the thing that really Is a hassle about going from west to east Is you pretty much lose an entire day And so, I mean, that's part of what this is trying to solve for But in order to be where I need to be on Thursday When we're filming I needed to basically lose a significant portion Of either today or tomorrow to get there So I might be a little loopy on TBTL tomorrow But that's, you know, that's not the first time That's happened for the listeners So, yeah, I'm not trying to do this and then go get on stage and host LiveWire or do our live show in Philly or anything like that. So I'm trying to take it a little bit easy with this. But yeah, if it works out, I'm really going to commit to trying to get some sleep on the plane tonight. I'm going to probably wear cozy clothes, which is not a thing I generally do in public. I'm going to bring a little sleep mask and stuff. I'm going to really try to cocoon up and see if I can get a solid four or five hours of sleep Because if I can, that could actually really – that could get me out of a couple of jams.

Speaking of cozy clothes on a plane, can I tell you – I think you'll understand how I felt here. It's a somewhat – I feel like this is going to be a somewhat complicated thing to explain my emotions on. But I think maybe sort of like you, I'm not somebody who leans into like super comfortable clothes on an airplane or even in my own home at night.

You don't wear your Minions pajamas? Right, exactly. Your fleece minions pajamas out in public?

The whole joke on the show is my tonight pants, right? And what are my tonight pants? We're like old chinos or khakis or whatever. Because I'm always like, well, there could be a fire in the middle of the night. I don't want to be out there in my underwear or even anything that looks like I'm not professional. I want to be able to escape my house fire and, if need be, produce a talk show at the same time. So anyway, people would not be surprised to hear that I don't like – You know, I always wear jeans and a button down shirt wherever, you know, if I'm flying. But knowing that I was, you know, leaving Seattle to go out to Croatia and leaving Seattle on a warm day and knowing I was just going to go to warmer and warmer weather and knowing it was going to be a really, really long flight, I decided to wear shorts. and I bought, oh, I think we talked about them a couple of weeks ago, these very, very comfortable sketcher tennis shoes that I bought that are good for my feet because I'm dealing with this arthritis stuff, but also like not the type of thing that I would usually wear anywhere but to the gym. I'm not somebody who's comfortable just wearing like athletic shoes in public. Like I know everybody does it. It's not a big deal. I just, I don't know. I just like, I like wearing something that makes me feel a little bit spiffier than that. But here I am, I'm boarding the plane and i'm wearing my you know shorts and i'm wearing these very comfortable shoes with like white athletic socks or whatever and i just look like the the most basic middle-aged dad whatever guy and again there's nothing wrong with being that person but like it's just it's not how i

envision we've already alienated the middle-aged mom types so do not alienate the middle-aged dad

type that's all we have left i am the middle-aged dad type i'm a 47 year i mean i don't have i don't have kids but i mean i'm 47 i'm trying to be comfortable you know like and so i'm like coming to grips with that anyway i make the right decision i go out there um and everything is good and then as we're leaving croatia i'm like i guess i better do the same thing wear shorts on the airplane again i can't explain it to people people wear shorts on the airplane all the time but for me it just it feels like some sort of like gross cosplay or something and i'm just like okay so in croatia that morning i put on my my comfy shoes and my and my shorts and everything's fine until i land in iceland and like told you yeah it is like you know i i mean it didn't physically but i'm just looking i never had to be outside we we had a we had a ramp to the plane unlike you um but like i just felt so dorky i mean first of all so many beautiful people in that airport but everybody looks like they just got done hiking in chilly weather but they're rich too so they're wearing like really nice like kind of hiking comfy gear or whatever or they're just like fashionable or whatever and I've never felt well I'm sure I have I felt very secure many times in my life but like it shouldn't have mattered at all I'm in an airport nobody knows me or will ever see me again or whatever but I just felt like the biggest dork like clomping around in my shorts in Reykjavik airport while everybody around me was like kind of beautiful and again dressed for

Icelandic weather I would never wear shorts on the plane because it gets so cold on the aeroplane No matter like sometimes. when you're boarding and they don't have the fans going it can be a little a little warm but once that thing is up in the air i feel like it turns into a ice box you were not cold in your shorts

no i was never cold in my shorts but i will say that something happened near the end of our long flight home so that was like an eight hour flight home it was broken up a little bit more on the way home um and i'm going to say in the like like last 90 minutes or last two hours of that long flight it got really stifling hot on that plane again i don't know if they changed the the setting on the do they have a thermostat on the airplane i don't know exactly how that works and then there's a dad

who says that is not going above 68 degrees exactly so i was sort of i mean i guess i was

sort of glad on the plane i i mean honestly the this is going to sound super unhinged but like the amount of space that i have or lack thereof between my knee i've spent the past like 24 hours really examining people's um the length of their femurs because i'm not the tallest person on the airplane but i will look at people who are taller or as tall as me but their but their legs bend at a different place i just have long femurs like from from my hips to my knees uh i'm gonna turn listen to a song from my hips to my knees I'm just long in that area and so there's something about airplane seats that are especially bad for me and the guy in front of me had his seat reclined the entire way on the 10-hour flight on the way out there that was so rough for me I had downloaded like all this stuff on my on my very small laptop to watch to pass the time but once he pushed that seat back in my face there was no way for me to even put a laptop on the table in front of me like i had no space i had to like sit crooked in my seat for like 10 hours and so like there was also part of me that was just kind of like well wearing jeans just adds more layers it just takes a another like quarter of an inch away one more micron exactly i know that's what i told you is on

stuff no i understand that kind of psychology becca and i i forget which leg of the flight we were on but it i commented this to her so it had to be our flight we were some on some part of this maybe it was air it must have been lingus it was it was air lingus um where we had this very annoying american family in front of us they were doing some real reputational damage to the brand like they were just right out of central casting like they had way too big of suitcases for the overhead and it didn't really fit and then it had there's a whole thing and it delayed everyone and they had these two kids that i will actually be honest the kids were less annoying than i was expecting them to be, considering they were like two nine-year-old boys who I just expected them to be like the kids from Raising Arizona that when H.I. and Holly Hunter, whatever her character's name, Ed, when they go visit that family and the kid has just written fart on the wall.

I bet you haven't seen that movie in ten years. I feel like the dad

goes like, scatter! And he like throws peanuts at the kid or something.

god damn who's that actor I can totally picture his face

William something I love that guy but anyway I thought these kids were going to be that and I will give them credit they weren't as bad as I was expecting because I thought they were just going to be fighting with each other the whole flight but this is what really bothered me Aer Lingus is like the southwest of Ireland there's no first class It's very, I think it's a very budget airline And so, you know, there's not a lot of leg room anyway And this is what happened It was like, oh, the other thing that was Well, this is neither here nor there The energy between the dad and the mom was really strange Because there was a couple times This is actually not even a particularly funny anecdote It's more kind of weird The dad, like, so they basically The row was three seats and there's four of them So one of the parents is going to have to be across the aisle you know in the next row or the other row of seats and the dad was not that it matters but

kids are going to be window middle kids are window middle in front of me and becca i'm window becca's like middle okay yeah and then the two parents are like on each side of the aisle yep okay and

i feel like the dad said let's just say the mom's name was carolyn he just said like carolyn and then he just like pointed to the seat like and she just like came up and sat in the seat it wasn't like a negotiation or it was weird and then when we got off the flight we were all waiting for our luggage and he did a similar move where he just kind of like in a way that i would never a do or b get away with it was weird like he was just kind of like it was he was very much controlling the situation in the family which that's neither here nor there it was just weird but they so the dad and then the two kids are in front of us and as soon as the plane reaches cruising altitude both parents and their respective seats Let's go.

lean their seat back, and I believe, I want to say, the dad even reached over and leaned the kids' seats back.

The kids' seat does not need to be leaned back.

It so does not. These kids' feet barely hit the floor, and what I said to Becca was like, this is now going to be, you are setting these kids up to be lifelong a-holes on the flight because they are growing up in a family culture where we're the Smiths and we lean back in our seats. That's what we do. And like these boys are going to grow up and they're going to go on to have lives and probably families of their own. And they're going to continue this like generational trauma of leaning the seat back. It's like, don't, I swear to God, I really think that the dad like pushed their seats back for them. It's like, let them make up their own mind as to if they want to be pushed into my knees or not. I was, I was irrationally upset by this because of that dynamic. I don't like it when adults do it, but don't model it for the children. Don't make the children think it's part of the flying experience by necessity.

And just because you can means you should. Like, again, I'm sure we have listeners who are seat recliners. Like, yeah, you know, the group I was with the traveling, this topic came up and I think at least two out of the seven of us are like, no, we recline. It's just not that big of a deal. And one person says, hey, I deal with some joint issues myself and I'm very uncomfortable on flight. So it really helps me. And, you know, it's kind of hard to argue with that. But like, I mean, I always as somebody who probably reclined in my seat when I was first flying before I realized how awful it was for me on the person on the other side, being the person on the other side of that. I mean, I just truly believe that the extra comfort that you might get from reclining your seat does not even compare to the extra discomfort that it causes for the person behind you, depending on who it is. And if it's me, my body is my body, you know, and it's just like my legs are built this way. And so I again, I was just like I spend like usually the first 15, 20 minutes of a flight just looking at everybody's knees and just sort of seeing sometimes just being jealous or sometimes being like, OK, I'm in the same boat as this guy over here. I was next to I was next to a very tall person, like kind of across the aisle from me whose knees were right up. And I think I was like, please don't let that person in front of you put their seat back. And I don't think they did. And I was very happy for him. So it just can cause such uncomfort for the person behind you for you just to get like maybe an inch of leaning back a little bit. But it doesn't sketch out for me. I wanted to mention I saw something on the plate, which maybe this isn't a big deal. I leaned over and whispered to Genevieve as I saw this thing happening. And maybe I whispered too loudly and she was embarrassed and was just blowing me off. She didn't think this was incredible. But I watched a guy across the aisle in one seat up from me.

So, you know, I had put a package of tortilla chips in the bathroom and get it closed for the entire flight.

And then he didn't step up and do the right thing. It was really sad. No, I watched the guy. So the reason I specify where he was sitting is because, like, if you're an aisle sitter, you know that the person you can sort of, like, I'm not going to say spy on or the person that just sort of catches your attention most on the plane is probably the person who's, like, one seat ahead of you and across the aisle. You know, like, your eyes just sort of wander there. You have a good view. And I watched this guy. He was a parent, too. And I know that he and his partner had their hands full with a young kid that they did a pretty good job with on a very, very long flight. But at one point, he's just powering through a Greek yogurt, but he didn't have a spoon. And I was like, wow. I was just like, look at this. I keep on seeing the beef. Was he using the foil? No, he's just tongue in it, man. He's just tongue in it. And just really, just really working the crevices. Solid game. Like for a while. And I was just like, get a load of this guy. And Genevieve was like, I heard you. And I was like, okay.

i saw a guy i put this on instagram i i saw a guy just absolutely raw dogging a bagel on a flight which is he brought and by the way we were in first class where they give you food um and we were about to take off and he had a bagel in a ziploc bag that he had brought with zero condiments and he was just eating like that just seems i know you're not a a spreadable cheese guy, but that just seems so dry and so hard to get through. A bagel without

any kind of butter. Oh, I've done it. You won't be surprised to hear that I've done it.

It just seems so unpleasant to me in the flying experience to bring your own bagel, have it in a Ziploc bag, to take it out and then to just consume it as the plane is taking off. I was impressed by this guy's tenacity. Speaking of tenacious people.

What kind of bagel that you get, I like to get a chalk bagel those are the best ones to eat dry i think yeah yeah if you can something

that's you know made mostly of like the third baseline at safe cofield right exactly put that all together and cake it up hey andrew speaking of tenacious people could we thank some donors and then can i tell you

about almost getting beat up when I was getting my yard signs?

Oh, yeah.

Thank you for being a 10. All right, let's thank our donors today. These are the wonderful folks making TBTL possible with their donation. We really, really appreciate. You might even say a Schlieff-yate. That doesn't work. Dan Schlieff is in Westland, Oregon. That's what I'm trying to say. Trying to make that a thing. It didn't work. i apologize dan but i do thank you and we thank you for the financial support also thanks to matthew morita who's in kapa hawaii oh nice or kapa hawaii i think yeah sounds right to me although i'm no expert sounds lovely matthew must be nice i wonder if that's that's got to be the frustration of living in a place like hawaii is people constantly saying must be nice and you're like it's a place where people live and they experience real life and yes it's pretty but it doesn't fix

everything and also if you're in uh if you're in a you know a job uh and you're just like kind of doing your daily grind and you see a bunch of people on vacation can have the opposite of like i i i had some trouble actually working in santa monica like there were some days just like i was totally stressed out and just like kind of hating life and i just like i see these beautiful people like unloading surfboards as i'm like going into to work where i can be demeaned in front of my colleagues i'm just like i need can at least be great can i could i at least be in indiana for this shit no offense to indiana by the way i just mean like or cleveland where i'm from i just like there's something about being in a vacation what about canfield ohio where kay constantino is absolutely i know canfield ohio or at least i've been through it certainly as a youth

What about Waltham, Massachusetts, where Krista Carwardine is at? Same deal. I've been through Waltham. What about Mukilteo, where Lori Hope is?

Mukilteo. Have I been to Mukilteo, Luke? Why do I feel like you would know better than me?

Have you taken the ferry boat from Mukilteo ever? You may have passed through there. If you and Genevieve maybe were going somewhere out and you took a ferry, there's a big Mukilteo ferry terminal.

You know I'm scared of ferries. Really? Well, I'm not scared of, no, I mean, just to be clear, I'm not scared of the experience of being on the ferry boat. I like that. Like, once you're on there, you get yourself some popcorn and a Mr. Pibb, that's great. But, like, the long lines snaking down back roads and people cutting, and it just seems like a nightmare to me.

There was a really good story, actually, that got onto the network, got onto NPR while you were gone. um from a and i'm sorry that i'm forgetting the name of the kuow reporter but it was about basically like ferry cutting in washington state and how i think it had started out maybe as a seattle times piece i think the seattle times reporter accidentally cut in a line yep and uh and so that but i was it was a really good piece and uh it's something that i've experienced many many times with parents that live over on the peninsula there the whole like yeah fairy line cutting is if you want to see the seattle nice evaporate in front of your very eyes uh cut someone in the fairy line and you will get you will get absolutely threatened um did you talk about that on like kuow or something you seem pretty familiar with the story no i just saw that

that story the original story floating around i'll be honest with you i didn't dig deep into it but But I just the subject line was something it was like a first person like headline that was something like, oops, I cut in a fairy line and this is what I learned or something along the lines of that. And then I saw like I'm always checking in on the Seattle Reddit now and I saw that it just like spurred a lot of conversation there.

Yeah, it was the original piece was written by Aaron Edwards for Pacific Northwest magazine. And then the piece that got on to NPR was Casey Martin. Oh, nice. Who I'm a fan of Casey Martin's work. It was a nice piece. It was relatable for me. Hashtag relatable. Anyway, thank you so much to our donors.

Is that a use of the word spurred? I said a spurred conversation, but I don't think that's a thing, right? I need to disabuse them. Sparked conversation? Sparked spawned?

I think spurred would work. I think spurred technically is technically correct, but it isn't the way that we typically use that word.

No, and I think I do it a lot. I need to get So what is the word We're thinking of the word Maybe am I thinking of the word Spawn Would somebody say spawn

Spawn Sure spawn would work

Spawn conversation

Sparked A conversation is also fun Sparked is probably

What I should go for I don't like the word spawn

Anyway you were wrapping things up I was I was saying thank you To our donors Thank you for making TBTL possible Thank you for giving me The $40 That I spent On Democratic yard signs So So... Recently, when I went to the Cowlitz County – offices of the Cowlitz County Democratic Party, I got inspired the other day. I just felt like – I've been really – this is a real thing, Andrew. I've been very, very – I guess the word is ambivalent in that I can see it both ways. That's ambivalent, right? I mean that's the true use of the word. I don't mean to spawn a conversation about ambivalence here.

Yeah, I think I think people think it means that you don't have emotions, but it actually means that you do have you kind of are struggling with seeing things from different angles.

That's how I've been feeling about putting up a Harris Walls yard sign in my neighborhood, because I my guess is that some portion of my neighborhood is probably more inclined towards voting for Donald Trump. Now, I am very heartened by the fact that no one has any Trump signs in my immediate neighborhood. I don't live near some kind of kook who's got like, you know, three don't tread on me flags flying and, you know, lots of let's go brandoning, brandoning going on. Like I don't live in that kind of an area. So that's kind of cool. I kind of think there's sort of an unspoken thing in this neighborhood, which is like, let's none of us are going to really be super outward with whatever our kind of thoughts are. Right. There is one guy who has a sign for a county commissioner who I know is a Republican, this person running. So that's going to make me think that maybe this person leans Republican. But I've really struggled with whether or not to put up this sign because, one, I don't think it's going to move the needle. I don't think it's going to cause any of my neighbors to, if they're going to vote for them, they're going to or not vote for whoever, you know, I don't think it's going to have any impact on the race. And what I think it is, let me put it this way. If one of my neighbors put up a Trump sign, every time I drove past it, I would just be a little like, ouch, it would just trigger me and it would just feel kind of bad to me. And then I would probably forever sort of attach that to this person in my mind. Like, oh, I like so-and-so. They seem nice. I'd wave at them when they're mowing their lawn. But also, what a bummer that they want that guy to be president, right?

And there are signs not in your immediate little kind of area, but along the main road that you drive on to kind of get to your area. And I'm not even being vague to protect your location, which is good. But also, I just don't know the names of the roads around there. But when we were visiting for the TBTL-a-thon, you know, there were definitely signs that on the way out of town, I finally stopped and to read one of these long, complicated signs. And it was just like about pro guns and like what's going to happen. And it was like this sign on some guy's front lawn that was all about what's going to happen when they take away our guns and all this shit. And so there's a lot of that, I feel like, sort of around there that as a as a snowflakey Seattleite, I definitely see it. And it kind of ruins my day. It ruins my moments, not my day.

Yeah, I actually got an email from a listener, or maybe a former listener, who basically, I'm paraphrasing, but this person said, look, I'm a gun owner, I've been listening since the radio days, and I'm considering not listening to the show anymore because you're just, and this person's opinion was, if you want to put up a yard sign, put up a yard sign. if you want to, you know, like just stop basically, you know, sort of whining about it and just do your thing. And I, what I wrote back to the person respectfully was, yeah, but the thing is when people, a lot of people in my neighborhood and when I go down to Home Depot and stuff are literally armed, I have to do a calculation of like, how much do I want to annoy this person with my lifestyle? Like, is it worth, you know, the possibility of a confrontation when I don't know what this person's exact story is and they may literally have a gun on them it just doesn't feel like a conversation anymore it feels threatening to me to be totally honest now i don't think anybody in my neighborhood would ever in a million years like come and knock the sign over or even confront me about it but it's just a statement and it is a statement saying this is my worldview and it's not your worldview potentially and now you're always going to kind of have that you're going to associate me with that well yeah and one of the and one of those worldviews

advocates for carrying a deadly weapon around and like even if 99 of the people who are carrying those deadly weapons around are responsible they're still deadly weapons it's not an even playing field like if you have one sign that says i want i you know let's just say you have some sign that in some way even directly or indirectly supports what we would call like reasonable gun control other people with the deadly weapons who don't agree with that see that as this person wants to take away my deadly weapons and as we know in this country that sometimes leads to really really bad things and it's not unusual for that to lead to very bad things and i want to be

clear nobody in my neighborhood is that way in my immediate neighborhood like everybody is super nice and nobody i've even i don't i don't even know what their gun politics are but generally speaking where i am it's always kind of in the back of your mind of you know how what is this person's sort of deal exactly. And so anyway, I don't know what happened. I just sort of felt inspired. the other day i was like you know what as cynthia doyan used to say rest in power if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything andrew she used to come into the pledge drives it was so great i loved cynthia she used to host the show on kuow called the swing years and beyond and if there was a person who like like literally was like living in a black and white movie while everyone else was in technicolor it was cynthia and she used to come in for the pledge drives and she would have these like three by five cards and she'd write down all these phrases on that she would read and one of them I remember being if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything um but anyway uh so I just felt like you know what I'm gonna do this I I it's important to me and also I want to be the change I want to see like you know maybe uh there are some you know what also probably inspired I saw a guy in a Harris Walls t-shirt in Home Depot and I almost hugged this dude he wanted no part of it by the way but I was so like I thought it was this weird shirt it basically had this like cat on it wearing sunglasses and it said harris walls and i was assuming that it was saying something bad about them but what it said was mind your own damn business which is kind of like the tim walls catch phrase about like the republicans being weird and wanting to tell you know women what to do with their body and get in the bedroom etc and i think it's a very effective pushback on it which is mind your own damn business i didn't know that that's

funny i knew about all the weird stuff but i didn't know that that was also part of his part of his um sort of i don't know uh framing yeah framing or catchphrases yeah so i so i was

like i literally like went up the gun i love your shirt and it was weird he didn't seem he wasn't as excited for me to be excited about his shirt as i expected him to be i just felt like oh my god we found each other the two people who believe this way in this county but anyway i just i felt inspired so i decide i want to get these signs i call up the office of the democrats in the county and i get a voicemail and i leave a message i said hey you know i would like to get some yard signs and i get a call back like five minutes later from uh the this woman um rosemary who's the head of the local democrats and she says i'll be down here for like 10 15 more minutes if you want to swing by and get some signs and i was like absolutely and she said it's in the it's in the ibew whatever offices, the like brotherhood of something or other. I was like, okay. So I put it into my little map software and I drive down and I'm on the street and the, the map tells me that I'm basically at the thing. And I look up and it's like a, it's a union. It's the longshoreman's international brotherhood of longshoreman or whatever. And so I get out of my car. And I mean, the thing about me in this place that I live is I am constantly out of step, just sartorially from pretty much most of the people like i always just i guess i you you might say i'm a little more dressed up than most of a lot of the folks i'm a little more like i i don't really wear a lot of baseball caps i'm just kind of like i'm out of step with the with the larger milieu here but i've never felt more out of step than when i walked into the long shoreman's building and there's just like four or five very grizzled dudes standing around there's a giant american flag hanging this is like where they get together to have their union meetings and stuff and it's a friday afternoon and they're like probably having a couple beers and just kind of unwinding and i like look around and you know she the map told me this is the place she told me it's in the union hall i'm like this doesn't feel like the vibe but i'm just looking around and i can tell they're looking at me like because i have my like you know again i look like i look they look like they look and the guy's kind of looking at me and i go is this where i get the Democrat yard signs. And the guy's like, just takes like three or four beats. I think he thought like, is this the daily, is somebody from the good liars trolling me right now? Is this one of these internet things where a guy, is this jackass? Is this guy in here to try to mess with us right now and the guy goes what and i go is this where i get the democrat yard signs he goes nope and i was like i'll be on my way he's like slither out of there it turns out it's the next building over it's the international brotherhood of woodworkers which i guess is i guess they're the most chill union it's like very different the woodworkers versus the longshoreman i think is a very different

deal because i i call rosemary and i'm like i literally was like i was like i think i went in the wrong place it's it's what is it called she's like it's the woodworkers union i'm like oh okay and then she tells me how to get there and it was a little complicated i had to do this kind of weird one-way street thing but i end up finally where she is and i walk in and i was like you got got to really let people know that it's not the Longshoreman's Union because somebody's going to get knocked out if people continue to go in there and ask for their Harris Walls signs.

Or they're going to be pressed into service on a show. ship like they used to do in the 1800s i told you that on my birth certificate my mom wrote

longshoreman question mark about my biological father's employment oh question mark that tells you that tells you that i come from a i come from a very very um you know a real sort of uh waspy patrician sort of family longshoreman question mark i should have said that to them hey my biological father may have at one point been a longshoreman so go easy on me as your raining

blows down upon me um he was probably just confused honestly that yeah i mean i'm playing it up a little bit moment in his head you know i mean he probably doesn't even remember it no

oh i bet they remember it i mean it was not the vibe in there it was literally walking into a place and again i i my brain was trying to reconcile this idea that like this place with these guys who look the way they did with that american flag hanging in there somehow was also the place where i was going to get my harris wall sign like i was trying to it's like well you know labor i guess something and i i almost just walked out without asking to call and be like are you sure this is the place you know um but i do my guess is that there was a brief conversation after i left of like what was that all about but i don't think it's i don't think he's talking about on his

podcast for instance um i i apologize and i know we i want to hear about you bringing these home and putting them in your front yard you said something though that reminds and i can't remember what you said that sparked this memory i just thought you would enjoy this i was um getting off the ferry which i was not scared of in um croatia on the way back at the beginning of our long travel day getting onto the ferry i saw a guy in a browns baker mayfield jersey and i kind of I kind of spotted him from like kind of across the way. And I said, geez, look at a Baker Mayfield fan. And, um, I, uh, I didn't see him again for the whole ferry ride until I, we were then D boarding and he happened to be right in front of me. And so I kind of picked up my pace a little bit and kind of came behind him and said, Baker's looking pretty good this year, isn't he? And he looked at me and then in a pretty thick Croatian accent said, I just liked the Jersey. I'm more like European football. and i was like oh okay no problem but i just it really made me wonder i mean first of all you and i talk so much about like my insecurities yeah you about wearing a jersey for him your nightmare scenario yeah i mean he was he was the thing is like not everybody is as insecure as we are right like he was just like he was a young guy and in his home land and he likes this jersey and he wears it i don't think that he felt uncomfortable by me saying that he just said you know i don't really follow it much i just like the jersey and i follow i follow european football or whatever i'm like oh yeah no problem cool but like i he did you know he did he knew enough to say like are you from cleveland or something i'm like oh yeah yeah and i just sort of like tried to disengage because i was putting him on the spot but like again it wasn't like me going up and offering like hey hey i like your jersey are you a baker fan or something like that i come up from behind him and say baker looks good this season which is just like you know like it's just like i'm amazed he was able to piece that together well i mean he was wearing a baker mayfield jersey you got to know something right like you gotta know something even though it's not his team anymore but anyway i just thought that fit into our ongoing narrative of wearing jerseys of sports teams that we might not be super familiar with or when i was jogging past a guy in a in a hat and i was right yeah

whatever it was i said to him and he had no idea what i was talking about i think the takeaway for us is just we're not commenting on anyone's sports hats is that the takeaway for jerseys

I could say that to you now, but if I see another Browns jersey in Croatia that says Baker Mayfield on it, if it says Watson, I'm steering clear.

The good thing, if he just likes the colors, he didn't go with the Watson jersey. Yeah, exactly.

So anyway, I don't know if you were wrapping up your story, but yeah, so you ended up getting the signs.

Yeah, that was pretty much it. I got the signs. I will say this. I had such a fun time talking to this woman who's the chair of the local Democrats. One, it just felt nice to talk to somebody who sees the world in the way that I do But who also lives in the area She's also a total character She and her husband have lived here for 40 plus years They came out from North Carolina because he's working on He was working on Mount St. Helens He was with the Corps of Engineers or something Like after the eruption And she was just a great kind of resource of the vibe out here She said that she cannot keep enough signs in stock she said that like she had this that week had like sold that was her word because you'd have to pay for the signs i guess like 300 signs or something so i don't know what that means but she said that energetically things felt different she felt like there was kind of a shift yeah as opposed to before biden dropped out well but even from like say 2020 oh interesting okay like she was saying that that just kind of anecdotally that you know it feels different to her so i guess we'll Let's see.

the sign up it is in my yard i would be lying if i if i said to you that i don't think about it a lot because again of the we're so polarized now that it's not just like here's the guy or i should say here is the person these are the persons that i would like to see become president it's not just that anymore it's how do i view i view the world potentially so differently than you do but on the other hand guess what andrew down the street from me down the driveway guess who put up a harris wall sign my neighbors after you brian brian and terry yes really so i i mean hero is a word that comes to mind i think for a lot of us but yeah like uh so now there's two now there are two i gotta go point at that spider-man now there are two of us yeah exactly maybe you'll start to see

them pop up like mushrooms now i did you dismount your conversation with what was this woman's name rosemary with rosemary you say now where do i get my reikert sign actually that's a joke but i was i was curious like while you're there getting the the harris sign do they also say by the way are you interested in like you know the signs for

the local elections or statewide yes i have a bunch of them now so you kind of bought a big package of them sort of yeah i got four signs because i didn't want to now what does it say about me that i feel like it's unhinged to display four yard signs i don't understand this it makes no sense do you want to talk you're talking about your jeans adding a micron of less leg room this This is my unhinged statement for the day. I, for some reason, having four yard signs in my yard feels like, okay, calm down. I don't know why that is. I don't understand why that is, and I'm not judging anyone who does that. But I was really taking the other ones kind of off her hands because I do support the idea of these folks being elected. But I got a Ferguson sign from her.

Did you get a Ferguson?

I got a Marie Glusenkamp Perez sign. You can see it's behind me.

Oh, yeah.

I'm a fan of the color. Look at that beautiful kind of Tiffany blue.

Yeah. Now, she's an interesting case, though, right? Because isn't she the one who taxed pretty conservative because of the district that she's in? She was running almost an anti-Biden commercial. She's a Democrat who was running anti-Biden commercials, I think, before Biden dropped out, unless I'm confusing her with another with another.

Yeah, she's definitely very, very centrist, you could call it. I mean, some, you know, there are people that are Democrats in this county. I learned all this from Rose Marie that are very frustrated with her because they see her as not being nearly progressive enough. I think that the counter argument to that is, you know, who's really not progressive? Joe Kent. yeah exactly right against her so you end up in that kind of dilemma that happens a lot about sort of practicality versus um you know a sort of purity test about being let's say a democrat and i don't know every single thing about her um politics and what she has done and hasn't done i know that i think she people were disappointed that she did not support an assault rifle ban of some kind you know which obviously you would really hope somebody would do but i kind of keep coming back to the idea that um she is definitely probably better than the alternative yeah well

joe can't yeah yeah i actually thanks for confirming for me because i thought it was her but then sometimes i get a little insecure about if i if i'm confusing my you know u.s reps in the state but like yeah yeah so she's the one who's like kind of you know kind of whipping up kind of like we fought against the biden administration for too loose of uh border security or whatever and you're like oh god i want to throw my lot in with that but i kind of didn't realize that's not an issue for me because i'm not in that area you know what i mean like she wouldn't be my rep i don't she's not on my ballot but like yeah no but joe kent is a i think she's she ran she's

running against him for the second time right yeah he's won by like she won by 800 votes or something yeah yeah really this is the other thing i found out let's just really get into politics this is the show that people turn to for this but like um i have had this theory about you know i'm constantly trying to figure out is is donald trump sui generis or is this now going to be the case that most republicans when they lose races they just claim that they didn't lose the race and i mean is democracy like will we go back to something that that sort of resembles the normal democratic process small d democratic process um uh when trump is finally deposed in whatever way. And one of the things I've looked at is this Joe Kent race because he lost by a razor thin margin. And I always took it as sort of encouraging that he didn't go out and claim the election was stolen. There was some sort of automatic recount, I think, that kind of was maybe triggered by the closeness of the race. But I look around at other close races that involve Republicans, particularly MAGA Republicans, like Carrie Lake in Arizona is still claiming that the election was stolen from her, which is ridiculous. But I'm always looking for evidence that this is really specific to Trump and that other Republicans, even if I don't agree with their politics, they are going to abide by the results of a free and fair election. And so I was saying to Rosemary, I said, well, I find it encouraging that Joe Kent didn't challenge this, you know, when he lost by a very small number.

of votes because that was considered the biggest upset in that year's congressional of all of the congressional races this was by far and away the biggest upset and she said oh he just couldn't afford it you have to pay for those recounts yourself and he just didn't have the money in his account to do it so that was what stopped him it was i said so this wasn't some sense of like him respecting the process she was like oh absolutely not it's just expensive to do that and if you don't have the money you can't do it and i was like well does he have the money this year and she goes yeah I don't think so I was like all right well but it was interesting for me to get some actual clarity on these things that I've just kind of been driving around seeing Joe Kent signs and having these conversations in my own head with zero factual information to back it up and then I got to talk to somebody who actually knows what they're talking about yeah it's

interesting right and like again I'm the last person who should be talking about this stuff but like that is exactly that is and it's also not really interesting probably to our audience to hear me bloviate on this stuff but like I didn't kind of realize that you are in that district and So that is literally the type of district that swings so hard based on whether or not Biden steps down or not. Right. Because who's at the top of the ticket? Like if if if if the fact that Harris is now at the top of the ticket gets a handful of people out in your county and in that district, that goes so much further to keeping Joe Kent out of Congress.

Well, and the thing, too, that I learned in my session down there at the Woodworkers Union was the Democrats in Cowlitz County are really just trying to close the gap. Like she's not it's unlikely that Marie Gluzenkamp-Perez is going to win this county. But if she loses it by less than might otherwise happen, that's a win because there are the other counties, Clark County, which is where the city of Vancouver, Washington is. And that's going to be, you know, a place where she maybe is winning. but it's like you're in one of these basically this is a i'm in a deeply red county and the thing is the the like the goal out here if you're a democrat is to just have your folks lose by a little bit less than they would otherwise and and that's really also the key in a lot of places where harris waltz are running as far as you know these swing states and stuff this is one last thing and i don't know because i guess we've just fully gone down this political conversation that nobody asked for us to have. I have been really thinking, I've been doing an obsessive amount of reading and listening to so-called undecided voters. They are, of course, a very exotic species right now that we are studying carefully. And here's what I am just anecdotally noticing, and I take this to be kind of a positive. Almost all of the undecided voters that I've read interviews with or listened to on the daily or whatever, they're basically Republicans who don't like Trump. They're basically people who have voted for Trump in the past, maybe voted for Biden one time, but have recently voted for Trump, but are really struggling with his clear moral depravity. And what I'm not hearing from undecided voters are, I'm a Biden voter who is now on the fence about voting for Kamala Harris. Now, I do think those people exist somewhere, but it feels to me just anecdotally that the most I don't I don't know how big of a category I voted for Joe Biden but I don't want to vote for Kamala Harris is I know that statistically there's like some older white males that she loses potentially and maybe those people are just not getting interviewed by the New York Times but it feels to me much more like the typical quote-unquote undecided voter is a Republican who's struggling with voting for Trump it's not a Democrat who's struggling with voting or something who's historically been a Republican who's struggling with the decision to vote for trump versus a lifelong democrat who's struggling with the decision to support kamala harris and i find that to be potentially encouraging yeah definitely like i know somebody

a neighbor of mine i've referred to him before and he's like an older guy and you know he he votes democratic he votes progressive i think but he's also like an old coot and he's he's got some he's problematic in his own way um about some things and like he and i actually like i i kind of usually you know i try to be friendly with him and give him his space sometimes i have to create boundaries with him um but the day after that first fateful debate um or i guess the only debate between biden and trump of this cycle um we actually kind of got into a we actually were kind of a raised voice it was never like it wasn't toxic in a way that like i felt like my blood rushing or any kind of anger toward you know you can get into some arguments that sort of become bigger than what they are. It wasn't that, but it was a very heated debate in the middle of the road. I think it was the day after that debate or maybe two days after. And he is definitely one of those people who really is still mad that Biden dropped out. He thinks that Biden got a raw deal. He feels like the...

The debate moderators didn't do a good enough job of of calling out Trump's bullshit in that, like all these things that I disagree with, because I'm like, Biden was there. He's the guy who's running for the job. He could have called out Trump's bullshit more. And then he argues that he did. He kept saying he was a liar. It's like he's like the media isn't being fair and calling out Trump more and everybody's beating up on Biden. I think he's still harbors that. I think he's still mad that Kamala Harris.

I think that's very generational. Right. I think it's generational as well. Yeah. I know a person who's in that category and they're they've come around to the new thing, but it was a longer journey for them. And this person is older persons in their 80s. I think it's very generational. Right. Yeah.

And I guess my point just being that there's still no way in hell my neighbor who still thinks that Biden got a raw deal is voting for Trump. I know that he's and he's not going to abstain. I know he's still going to vote for Kamala Harris. You know what I mean? I was just trying to like kind of back up your point there. Even people who are like big Biden heads. I don't I mean, there must I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of like racists and sexists out there that I'm not accounting for. But generally speaking, I just think that the number of people who are like, I was going to vote for Biden, but I won't vote for Harris is.

Yeah, I don't I don't think that's I hope anyway, that's not a huge constituency. And I do feel like it's a significant enough constituency of people that I've been observing through the media who are like, I don't know if I can vote for this dude again. And that, again, gives me some sort of hope. But anyway, well, there you go. There is our hot take on politics, which I think everyone—oh, the thing I was starting to say was I would be lying if I said that I'm not constantly doing the math of who's coming over to my house and seeing the sign. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I put it up in my yard, and it's like, oh, you know, am I going to have it out with the drywall guy? It's like, oh, the person who delivers I'm really friendly with my postal worker The mail woman And I don't know what her politics are It's weird that I'm this hung up on it I think it has to do with where I live Certainly it would not even cross my mind If I still lived in Mount Baker

But in Mount Baker, would you be as Would you be as motivated to get one?

I would because it'd be like Isn't this fun? It'd be like putting out a Seahawks flag It'd be like, hey, I'm on the good team like we all are let's all enjoy this together it would be purely positive in my mind it'd just be like i'm letting everyone i'm virtue signaling here i'm letting everyone know that i'm on the right side of this out here it feels more like hmm is somebody gonna is somebody gonna spit in my oatmeal right you know like is somebody going to like i mean literally like the when i was meeting with the drywall guy which i had already done the previous day and i know he's a good dude But based on the Christian biker wear that he's constantly decked out in, i.e. Harley Davidson stuff with also a lot of Bible verses on it, I have a sense of, I think, where his politics are. And I really had the thought, like, okay, is this going to be a thing when we're wandering around the house looking at stuff? And is it going to come up? And is it going to be like, it didn't, by the way, in any way, because I've hired this guy many times before. And everything was chill. But I was like, I'm I'm surprised at how kind of in my head I am about this little thing that would be such a non deal if I lived in Portland or Seattle or a major a coastal elite city like I'm used to living in out here.

It's a big thing in my mind. I know we got to get out of here. And if I'm if I'm if I know you at all, you probably have to pee. So we should get out of here. But if you don't mind one quick anecdote, because I don't think I told this on the show because I was trying to like whatever. There were reasons why I didn't kind of want to go into detail on this trip, but I was out in Arizona four or five months ago or something, and I was with somebody who sort of shares my appreciation of a dive bar, especially as opposed to just some corporate chain kind of place. So we were out for a quick lunch, and we passed this place that looked like a dive bar, but I kind of forgot, well, a dive bar has different connotations in Arizona than it does in Seattle, Washington, right? So we go in together, and the person I'm having lunch with leaves to go smoke a cigarette for a while, and I'm in there, and I'm sort of sitting at the corner of the bar. Again, this is just like the afternoon. I'm just having a Coke and a burger or whatever. But the guy – so I'm sitting at the corner of this bar, so there's a guy to my left and a guy to my right, and they're sort of kind of facing each other kind of because of the angle. and the one guy to my right is wearing like a trump hat or something and the guy to my left asks i'm sort of across the bar and sort of across me like hey hey what year is that is that a 2020 or is that a 2024 trump hat and he's like oh this is my 2024 and they start talking about their trump hats like i just like the uniform yeah like you and i would talk about like throwback uniforms or whatever right or mariner's hats like oh that was a joke about the croatian guy in the oh oh sorry and the baker outfit yeah right right right but it was very much like oh is that a is that the city connect no no no this is the flash forward or whatever you know and it's in a certain way it's almost kind of cute except it's also you know kind of repellent um and i obviously i'm not getting involved in this conversation but like they're both like you know like true blue maga blue state you know hanging out in a dive bar in the middle of the afternoon in arizona type of guys and then you know now now the conversation is just happening and they're talking and biden's still in the race at this point um and and then well i don't even have to get into it and then like just kind of saying i look at trump and i look at biden it's like they're all like one of them was just kind like they're all terrible i'm just like how can you even you know what compartment are you putting trump and biden in together even if you have issues with like snowflakes like me and and having said all of that um the one guy to my right the guy who's wearing the the trump hat i don't know what kind of business he's in but he says oh yeah i was a i was on a biotech probably probably something something really heady he's an ecologist dietitian anyway um he's like yeah i was on a job i was at this woman's house and she had a she had a biden sticker on her car in the garage and so i just took that right off for her like first of all just just to for the record i also don't believe this because i haven't tried to

take a bumper sticker off of something in a long time so maybe the technology has changed but like i don't know what kind of work you're doing in this woman's garage supposedly and you see that she has a biden sticker and you take it off for her and then he's like yeah did you bring

goof off you bring some mineral spirits how did you get that that's what i asked i said hey i do

a podcast about cleaning how were you able to get um but um where do i get my harris wall sign But anyway, so he's like, yeah, I just took that off for her. And she saw that I took it off and I was just going, I'm just trying to keep you from not getting shot. And I'm just kind of like, yeah, I'm just, it was just like everything that like I assume about like the MAGA, you know, I'm just like kind of like sitting there, kind of a fly on the wall, just having this conversation passed. But that always live in my head, just like all of the hypocrisy of just being like, oh, yeah, I'm trying to keep you. I'm, you know, like I would. I'm both the I'm both the reason and the solution. Yes. Right. This problem. I'm saving you from people like me who would shoot you because of your political preference. But I'm doing you a favor by protecting you from the thing I'm also creating. And also you are probably somebody who later on in this conversation will talk about how you can't say anything anymore. But you're just voluntarily ripping people's like free speech off of their car because, yeah, it's just I mean, there's no logic to it.

The weird one that happens to me out here, sort of not that infrequently, is I have a really pleasant interaction with someone who's wearing some kind of Trump shit because I'm not wearing my Harris Walls t-shirt or whatever. I went into, what was it? It was some kind of home improvement situation, and the guy had on. I didn't even initially recognize it because it was more like camo. It wasn't just the straight up kind of red.

Hey, it works

Camo works I was like, oh my god, the top of this guy's head is missing Okay, be nice to him He was in some sort of industrial accident But, you know, I didn't immediately clock it for being a MAGA thing And then as I got closer to him, I realized it was But, like, by that time, we're already chatting And he and I Oh, we were talking about the Seahawks So that's also part of it It's very kind of, like, Republican-coded, you know And we're, like, or, you know because um you know we're somehow the seahawks come up and then i'm like yeah i don't know if we really you know if we did enough in the off season i'm like everything is just riding on if our new coach is better at coaching than pete carroll because we have basically the exact same personnel and he's like yeah and we're just like talking chat and we're having a totally nice chat and then it's like all right man well you have a great you know have a nice weekend you too man and it's like we have this whole interaction i'm just thinking like man you don't know you just talk to an undercover dem and also it's like and i also found him to not be a despicable human in that interaction even though i find his politics to be really dangerous and it's very hard to square that stuff in your head right you know and i'm sure a lot of our listeners have family members that fall into this category where you love them but you just kind of can't understand how it is that they look at the world and think this one way of responding to the world is a good idea you know it's very strange it's like i don't know if i want to just be like not on speaking terms with folks like this or on too good of speaking terms with them like I don't know how

to I don't know how to deal with it really I love that entire scene that you just painted with your little conversation everything's the same except then you turn around and walk away

and you're wearing a Kaepernick jersey but it's like modified so Kaepernick's kneeling it's like I had it custom made so just to make sure there's not any confusion I didn't just like have the jersey right right like This is a specific Kaepernick kneeling during the anthem of Jersey. Exactly. I could go back into this store. It's a lumber store. I actually go into this store semi-frequently. I should seriously do that. It would be the funniest. I need you there filming it. I need you on a hidden camera to see this. You need me there as backup is what you need. Yeah, exactly. This will be the time for you to finally do your big punch that we've been all waiting for. Yes, it's been building up for a long time. All right. I guess we should wrap things up. It's been about 98 minutes. That seems like enough TBTL for one day. What is your peeing situation? Do you have to go right now? You know, it's been okay. You know what's weird about it is it's not consistent. Like, I've consumed most of this. This is a half gallon. I've consumed most of a half gallon, which puts me about on schedule. And yet today, it's not running through me like it was yesterday. Maybe it'll be in the afternoon. I'm not really sure. But anyway, thank you, everyone, for listening. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers regarding me not peeing my pants in public or in private. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. I'll be in Rochester, New York, telling you how my red-eye flight went. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. Go Mariners, dare I? What are we, two and a half in the wild card? But we're only playing the Yankees. Oh, God, that's right. I honestly might not watch. I don't know if I can do that I'm emotionally prepared for a pretty rough six days of baseball and you're going to New York we'll see you all tomorrow here on the imaginary radio please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all power out