Muse

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as you prepare to go back and deliberate, I would just like to take one more opportunity to let the evidence speak for itself. They say a picture's worth a thousand words. I think we can all agree this one's worth at least two thousand. This one's also very good. It's framed quite well. Could arguably be upwards of three thousand words. This one, ladies and gentlemen, I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm not here to lead you astray. this photo is a little blurry this one's worth about 25 words maximum but if you take a look at this one this is this is actually a photo of me i'm not sure how this got in here but i look great you can see here i i cut my ex-husband out of it this one might be worth no more than 25 words or so here's the defendant again not a great photo 50 words max this is actually me further after the divorce when i'm i've got a bit more color back in my face and my smile is reaching my eyes that's about 9 000 words you can see that i'm really coming i'm turning my life around i'm coming back from the heartache in this one i can't i can't show you that photo if you do if you add up if you do them if you add up and do the math of all the photos there's a lot of it's a lot of words in here i'll give you a chance to look those over take a good look at those actually could i have the one of me and my ex back it's a really nice photo of me i need this for a dating

profile tbtl i was shaking my tongue was shaking my head was shaking my arms were shaking and my

legs my feet too well he bit all the he dogs and winked at all the she dogs the town never knew such a hullabaloo as that little dog raised till the end of that day oh i see dirty monkey not okay

But dirty monkey dance?

I don't know, man. You know, it's just living truthfully in imaginary circumstances. Have a good show, dummies. What you do is so important.

Well, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It's called the internet, and it's a fresh new way to check out sites, buy clothing, and surf music. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. The word that comes to mind is ludicrous. Coming to you once again from the flower city, Rochester, New York, where I am proud to say that after yesterday's program, despite some hiccups, despite some confusion on my part about what day of the week it actually was, owing to my crazy travel schedule, we did manage to actually grow the audience with three key demographics for any podcast.

Women who take day naps with way too many candles burning, couples who steal copper pipe out of the walls at open houses, and kids who skip class to throw rocks at windows.

We're able to look at the dailies and see that we've actually increased listenership in all three of those categories. So that's a huge, huge win for us. We consider those people to be, we call them, persuadable podcast listeners. And they're small in number, but large in importance to this whole game. A game that arrives today, on this Thursday, see me showing off knowing what day it is, arrives at episode 4,297 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. i have as i mentioned at the end of yesterday's show i have been um hot tub shopping which what a fun sexy time for you real plot twist in my life i did not see myself ever as a person who would be doing that but i am i can explain why and also the surprising twists and turns of being in a hot tub store when there's also a hot tub expo happening in the same town plus it's a thursday aka blurs day so it's my birthday today we will do the blurs day messages it's been i think roughly four years since we've done blurs day messages there's been all kinds of uh messages piling up and we are going to get through all of them today on the show thank you for your patience thank you for your service as a tbtl listener and thanks also to this guy for his unwavering dedication to this here podcast now yesterday he was dealing with some issues both uh physical and spiritual physical being that his medicine was missing with his bag and spiritual being that his bag was missing with his medicine in it and it made him real angry but today he is feeling upbeat happy peppy and ready to go i feel happy of myself he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend luke i am so bad at drive-thrus when will i learn how to just To be a cool guy who can go through a fast food drive-thru without making any mistakes. I don't... I am like...

048 over the course of the past several years of having...

Well, you were not set up for success with this. No, I was not. Because you did not grow up in a drive-thru family. I didn't either, honestly, but I'm just kind of a naturally smooth person who doesn't have problems with things, so I was able to overcome the lack of drive-thru in my youth. But you're on the record as saying, Bob Walsh, fan of clean cars, therefore not a fan of drive-through food so you got a late start on this whole thing and then i also think you inherently you very much don't like the feeling of holding people up yes and the drive-through line is a recipe for holding people up and um and and so it probably kind of gets the the the

the pressure starts to build what happened you know it reminds me i think it was a couple of summers ago genevieve and i were driving out to somebody's lake house a friend of ours lake house and we decided we're gonna get some oh i know it was a dairy queen i was like god i haven't had a I haven't had a, what do you call it, a blizzard since I was a kid. I'm like, let's go get a blizzard. And I missed that. I'm like, Genevieve's like, just go through the drive-thru. I'm like, I don't know about that. She's like, I'm here. I'm here with you. I can help you. Somehow, even then, when I show up at the window and I'm ready to give my order, and he's like, you haven't ordered anything. You're supposed to order back there. I'm like, ah. I'm always messing this stuff up. The one place where I thought I was getting somewhat comfortable is the McDonald's near my home. It's very rare that I go to this McDonald's. But one of the things.

Can I ask you a critical question? Yes, indeed. Will you be using the McDonald's app to order today? I will not be.

I don't.

Now new voice comes on. Okay, what can I get you?

Exactly, new voice. Why is one person handling the app orders?

I think there's a prerecorded voice that asks. I think when you log on to your shift, you're responsible to record that. Will you be ordering with the McDonald's app today? But it's never the same person who's actually the person you might talk to.

You know, I noticed that in the moment today, but then I forgot about it. Thank you for bringing that up. And, of course, it's like, dude, you want me to use the app? I don't even know how to use the drive-thru for criminy's sake.

Well, the app might take some of the guesswork out.

Maybe. I don't know, man. I'm also always, like, anxious about ordering at a fast food restaurant because I order my stuff without cheese. Like, cheese comes standard on things. And then as a younger person, I think they've gotten better at it because there's more people with more dietary restrictions now than there were back in the day. But I would always order my sandwiches without cheese, but then they'd come with cheese, and that was another reason I didn't go through the drive-thru because I knew I would have to get back in the line anyway to return it and swap it out, et cetera, et cetera. But I mentioned earlier this week that I am cat sitting for some friends in the neighborhood, and this is kind of the one time that I sort of indulge in McDonald's. It's like usually if I'm doing this for a week, as we are now, maybe there will be like one morning where I pass this McDonald's on the way to my friend's house where the cat is, and I'm like, I can easily take a right turn into that McDonald's. I know you know exactly the one I'm talking about there at Northgate, right? Oh, sure. And so I've been I've navigated this pretty well, I would say, a couple of times over the past couple of years, making one critical mistake with my order, which is a little bit different than a drive through issue. But I'm a fan of the McGriddle. I understand that might be a little flavor blasted for some folks, but it's so rare that I order a fast food breakfast sandwich. And then when I do, I go big or I try to. So I order a sausage McGriddle. That's like a McMuffin, only the muffin is sort of infused with like a syrup flavor or whatever.

Yeah, it's almost like a pancake.

Yeah, it is. It's more of a, yeah, because it's almost absorbed, like kind of absorbs the flavor. It's a little spongy sort of.

When this topic has come up before on the show, I have been, I felt compelled to mention what I'm going to quickly mention here, which is there was a great article years and years ago that I read about the science behind the McGriddle. because it needed to be sweet that the the bun if you will which is kind of vaguely pancake-ish has little crystals of syrup in it and the different like iterations of that so that there could be something that would have a little sweetness to it but that wasn't sticky on your hands because you're holding it in one hand you're driving to work you're eating it the The science that was brought to bear to perfect that experience that you had with that McGriddle is actually quite robust.

That reminds me of my eating experience as well, which I'll tell you about. I wasn't planning on talking about this on the show, but it just sort of popped out of my mouth as we were starting. But I think I did something laughable, too, that you would find mockable. But before we get to that, so here's the deal. I usually order the McGriddle, but I always say sausage McGriddle, no cheese, please. This happened to me like the last two times I did this, and again, this spans, I don't know, a year and a half or something. It's pretty rare that I do this.

And those experiences have gone okay with the exception of – I forget that you have to expressly say you want an egg. In other words, you have to say a sausage egg McGriddle, not just a sausage McGriddle because I was disappointed the last two times when it came out. Everything was fine. There was no cheese, but there was also no egg. And so this time I go into the drive-thru.

I'm also looking at a picture of it on the website, McDonald's.com. it doesn't look to me like the sausage mcgriddle actually has cheese on it so you might be able to

save a step well i think if i said a sausage and egg mcgriddle i think it would see that's that's the deal like i kind of didn't realize that there's two different i thought all mcmuffins and mcgriddles come with egg and then your choice of meat i guess i never really thought it through but this was my assumption and so you say do you want the sausage one or i assume there's a bacon one i don't know and that the egg was just default but it turns out and i had to learn this lesson twice that oh next time i go through remember to say an egg and sausage mcgriddle um and this time i went through and maybe i was like really focused on that aspect of it so i get there's no line i'm pretty thankful for that and now this is again like my third time through this drive-through so i'm you know i kind of know i know i always be very nervous like where is the speaker that you talk into sometimes it's in the menu sometimes it's after the menu i just feel a lot of pressure

there like you mentioned today i'm looking is this one of those mcdonald's now where they also split you off into two lines no no it's just okay because those ones are also very stressful i have i have a follow-up to this as a person who doesn't really eat a lot of meat the listeners might be going why is luke so familiar with mcdonald's drive-through culture and also rohypnol um i can't answer the second question that was a a reference to yesterday's show when you asked what is the name of the active ingredient in the date rape drug and i immediately said rohypnol you answered before the question was out of my mouth uh that's a delay in the line andrew that's a technical thing that i'm able to hear it before you've said it well that's pretty impressive but i'll i'll i had a a couple weeks ago i had an embarrassing experience at a mcdonald's drive-thru but anyway all that is to say some of them now it splits you into two lines of traffic and what stresses me out about that is i never trust that i'm going to end up in the place in the line that i'm supposed to to get the food that I have ordered because it's kind of a zipper merge, right? And I don't understand how they keep that straight. I know. Because you think somebody might jackrabbit somebody else. Somebody might—like, it seems dangerous to have two lines of orders that are merging, but it seems to work out okay. Yeah, I'm amazed by that.

So this is not that situation for you. Because that's the other drive-through that I'm somewhat familiar with now because there's a Chick-fil-A near us, and during the pandemic, Genevieve loves Chick-fil-A, and so she would send me out to get Chick-fil-A sometimes so I'm familiar with it. It kind of splits off into two but then it comes back but then you're just like, they're not going to know who I am and they're like, Mr. Walsh, your order and they're always so friendly and I'm just like, how do you guys know who I am? But no, this is a pretty straightforward McDonald's drive-thru line. I'm pretty confident. I look up at the menu. I make my order. I later realized that I was so focused on saying egg that I accidentally said McMuffin instead of McGriddle. Oh no. So I ended up eating a McGriddle.

You didn't get the right You got an English muffin Instead of a McGriddle pancake

But you know what that was Well Luke another reference back to yesterday's show That was destiny because I didn't even Realize I wasn't eating a McGriddle Until the like the last bite And I was like oh I forgot to say McGriddle But actually this was good I'm kind of glad I didn't need that extra flavor blasting At 8 o'clock in the morning this morning So anyway So clearly I ordered the sandwich correctly i got an english well sort of i got my english muffin egg sausage no cheese i go through the line they hand me my you know i pay i order i pay and then they hand me my bag at the third window i'm like awesome i grab the bag i drive directly i never drive out of the parking lot i drive into the first parking spot and then i examine my order because again it's not like oh did they actually give me fries instead of a instead of a hash brown and i can be fine with that if they put cheese on it it's just like null and void right like I can't eat it so I always have to and I've done this my whole life I get my order first thing I do is I examine it before I go on my merry way so I examine my order I'm like perfect I got exactly what I ordered sort of well I got what I ordered not what I intended to order but I got my sandwich I got my little hash brown and then I'm about to pull into traffic and I'm like ah but I didn't get my coffee I'm like it's not their fault they gave me my bag and I was so excited to get the bag that I just drove off without my coffee so I had to pull over so I did like drive around park go in and be like hey I'm the dingus that just drove off without my coffee so I end up having to get out of my car anyway when will I learn how to use a drive-thru maybe I shouldn't

that's just like that's the lesson there i mean if it's causing you anxiety and i don't want to get into i don't want to be any kind of a food police person about what people choose to eat but but if i can just be frank maybe it's not the worst thing that you don't have a free and easy facility with a hole in a building that hands you highly highly caloric sodium filled food like the idea that it's not just the easiest thing for you maybe not the worst maybe maybe it's good that you have a kind of you have a pretty casual and distant relationship with that drive through because I think it's something that can in my own life at times has gotten out of hand I think of the many times I've been in that exact McDonald's drive through let's just say maybe after a late night at the Mandarin gate or somewhere else and I don't wake up the next day thinking that was a really good call for me so I don't know maybe maybe the universe is telling you to stay away from the drive you could have also gone back through the drive-thru line to get your coffee

But was the line super long at that wasn't super long, but there was no line inside. I will just say to that, though, like now I don't really think I mean, I'm not saying that I live a super healthy lifestyle. I actually very clearly don't. But fast food is just never it's not a weak spot for me. Like I don't need I don't need the universe governing my fast food intake.

Like I can I'm jealous because I definitely I love fast food. And in fact, the reason that I'm still well familiar with the McDonald's is because I have a, I have an, I think addiction would be overstating it, but there are times where I really, really decide that what I need in my life are about six to 10 to 12 McDonald's chocolate chip cookies. Oh, really? So good.

This is new information, I think, or I don't pay attention enough. I'm shocked by that. I would see you go for an extra burger or something before the—I didn't know you had that much of a sweet tooth.

Well, I don't really eat burgers anymore. Oh, that's true. So it's kind of—that's sort of not on the list. I will maybe—I'll mess with their fries sometimes. But, like, I—sometimes I'll be driving home, sometimes maybe after doing Livewire. It'll be late on a Thursday night. I'll be really relieved that the show is done. I'll be listening to Philosophy Talk on OPB. Like, this is one of these—I feel like you can relate to this, Andrew. Like when live, we typically tape that show on a Thursday night and by the time it's all done and the show is in the can and I've had a chance to chat with everyone. I've changed out of my suit back into my street clothes and I get in my car and I start driving north and I turn on OPB and it's philosophy talk. I've never heard of this before. I'm looking at it now online. It's the most charmingly kind of niche public radio show. I think it's produced at Stanford, maybe, by the philosophy department there.

It's hosted by Stanford professors Josh Landy and Ray Briggs.

Yeah, and they're definitely—I think they're philosophy professors first and radio broadcasters second.

Did you know that it's known as, quote, the program that questions everything except your intelligence? I love that.

Andrew, my friend, I am all in for philosophy talk. I love it so much. It's really funny, the show, too, because they'll have these debates about a particular topic and maybe the work of a particular philosopher and if they agree with this philosopher's premise or not. But what they do, because they are academics at heart and because they want to be precise with their languages, they write this elaborate script. It's like a 30-minute script where each person who's been assigned their kind of argument needs to make that argument. But it doesn't, to me, feel at its core genuine because I think it's more that they just need to present side A and side B. And so it'll be like, well, Ray I appreciate what you're saying there But I think it stops a little short Of what Kierkegaard really meant Oh, give me a break, Josh You can't really think that And they sort of read this script

Oh, I gotta say That bumps me out

But it's, here's the thing It's the only, it's all he's ever known It's all he ever will know It's all I've ever known from Philosophy Talk And I think it really has much more to do with Thursday night at 10 o'clock I'm a happy happy camper and sometimes I'm driving home and I'm listening to philosophy talk and I want to treat myself to something and in the olden days that would something would have been many shots of alcohol while playing some kind of a slot machine game at a bar in Portland so that's kind of not my scene anymore now it sometimes is the McDonald's drive-thru in Woodland Washington where I will get these chocolate chip cookies and then I go home and then I tell myself I'm going to have two of them, but then I probably have four of them because they're that kind of...

So you don't eat them in the car? You eat one in the car

and you save something? I don't eat them in the car. Really? That's sharp. shocks me well if I well first of all I want to pour a little milk that's a whole system and um and they come in depending on how many I've ordered okay if you order two of them they come in like a paper sleeve right which is totally translucent from the like shortening and whatever else is in these cookies by the time you get at home if you order like a dozen of these bad boys which at some point it's just like you can't afford not to just the it only makes financial sense if you order a dozen mcdonald's cookies they come in a little box almost like a happy meal box but made specifically for the cookies and it's like folded shut how are the cookies

arranged in there are they are they slotted in is it a special box or they're just loose okay

yeah they're just stacked but i think there's like maybe like little tissue paper not tissue paper there's like little food service paper between them or something i forget exactly how they are in there but it's just like it's just happiness in a box for me and i bring it in put it down on the kitchen island and i get my milk and i like do my little scene but what happened to me i don't know the last time i did this was probably like a month ago i'm i've always wondered when i've been in a drive-thru line of whatever restaurant and you're behind someone and they're just taking forever like the order is taking forever they're just sitting there and sometimes it's like you're in a rush or you're really hungry and i will admit to this that i start to make this i don't i'm not proud of this okay i want to be very clear i'm not proud of thinking this way but i start to think what did you do what did you order what kind of weird modification did you make like why why is this line now stretching around the building because of something that you've done i i somehow assume it is the fault of the person who's just in the car waiting there like they somehow made this a delayed process no cheese on your mcgriddle exactly like i want a coffee no cheese hold the mcgriddle that's your classic order right coffee no cheese hold the mcgriddle yep so it's so unfair because what it is is i'm hungry or impatient and i now have made all these judgments about somebody in a car that they are somehow doing something that's annoying that's making this take longer than it needs to and it's again that's not a side of myself that i'm proud of well when i pulled up to get the cookies the very also i love i love the people that work at the mcdonald's drive-thru in woodland washington you know how you just sometimes there are those there are just like store stores or or i guess you know franchises or whatever there's just sometimes a place where you can tell it's run well from the top down from probably the person who may be the the people that own the actual location the people that are the management there and how they're training the assistant managers and how they're training the employees there's just like not every mcdonald's is created equal you know it's just weird it's just totally about that location and what is the culture in that location and the culture at the woodland mcdonald's is totally no notes everyone is just great and do you recognize the same people sometimes or is no i don't i'm not quite on that schedule but but um but i i recognize that every time i've been there the people have been exceptionally nice and this time they were being exceptionally nice and the woman said hey you know what i'm throwing a fresh batch of cookies for you like i'm gonna make these because the other ones have been sitting out for a long time i want you to have like i want these to be fresh baked and i was like oh my gosh that's amazing thank you and then i pull up and then it's about 12 minutes to bake the cookies while i'm just sitting as the line what is growing behind me of people who are probably getting

off the like third shift of whatever you know manufacturing job or maybe they've been out enjoying themselves and had a couple i don't know what the scene is but i just see this line building behind me as i'm waiting for these cookies and i am like feeling so much pressure just like please speed up just please please just um just give me the stalest goddamn cookie you

have honestly like i don't want cookies anymore yes like i was so close to just leaving the line

but now it's like nine minutes now there's all this like sunk cost of my time it's not even the money because these cookies are also very cheap which is probably a bad sign like it was like well now i've been here nine minutes i've already pissed everyone off everyone off i just i guess i'm just gonna wait this out like when i tell you i peeled rubber out of there when they handed i took the woman's hand with me it was still holding the cookie box like that scary stories to tell in the dark tale i remember that i got home and there was just this hand holding on the other side of the cookie box but so i guess my point is i'm i'm going to uh if i find myself in a drive-thru line and the person in front of me it seems like their order is taking a long time i'm going to really try to withhold judgment because it's probably it's probably not their fault they probably just wanted some cookies while they listen to philosophy they just wanted a fresh

batch absolutely um i'd i honestly don't think i've ever had a mcdonald's cookie here's the deal and like again recommend well the thing is like uh what i like to overeat it just usually isn't sweets now don't get me wrong like if there's a box of cookies i don't know why i said box but if there's like whatever a grip of cookies in our house and no matter what whatever uh shape it takes whether genevieve has made cookies or or has bought some from the store or whatever i'm not like saying that i'm like walking around like not eating those cookies like i will gladly tuck into cookies i'm not better than that but if i'm ordering a bunch of food at a restaurant like if i'm gonna like kind of like go crazy on something it's just not gonna be the sweets you know what i mean i would never leave room for a cookie i would get chicken nuggets along with my burger or something you

know yeah well i think that's because for me first of all i've diagnosed myself with low dopamine i think i do a lot of dopamine seeking behavior and because that dopamine seeking behavior used to involve a ton of alcohol and probably gambling and who knows what else now that that's now that i've low-keyed that it doesn't mean that the dopamine levels in my brain are fixed it just means they want to fix on something else and because i don't really kind of i don't eat that many cheeseburgers a year now it's like well what can i have sure yeah yeah yeah it's like what i where i've not gotten with my journey of like understanding myself and and i don't know just living a life that feels good to me and healthy i haven't gotten to the point where i don't need something it's just the something keeps changing yeah sure and so the something has kind of landed the the the tote board cookies it's just on cookies right now if that makes any sense yeah because it's like i gots to have a treat of some kind and also like alcohol has a lot of sugar in

right too so yeah yeah that's what people start to pull off of that like i know that like during the times that i'm trying to kind of cut back on drinking a little bit i do think i'm drawn to more sugary kinds of things whether it's even something as simple as popsicles or something but uh well

known phenomenon yeah which is why as i'm doing the 75 hard i'm just absolutely i'm just i literally was like when i was flying out here and i i went to the alaska airlines lounge and i um you know it's just a cornucopia of yummy bad for you things and not not all bad for you but there's like tons of cookies and muffins and little treats and like and like um you know also i'm trying to not eat a lot of processed food so even if it's a savory food i'm trying to not have like i'm trying to think of they had like all these really kind of yummy soups and breads that go with the soup and all this stuff and also there's a whole bar that i was avoiding so i was kind of like i just ended up sitting in this chair looking at the runway at sea tack and my plate um this is not a flex or anything my plate was like 20 cucumber slices some carrot or some uh some celery and some hummus and a sparkling water and i was like i really thought is this all there is like is there any fun that can happen also it was 11 o'clock at night i was about to fly cross country so it's fine that i didn't choose that moment to like really blow the doors off of it but i just had this moment of being like okay do i have is there anything i can do that's fun right now because like based on this thing that i've set up for myself which is this project of trying to be a little healthier um uh i've realized i left myself with almost nothing but here's a thing that's kind

of interesting too cucumbers are fun i literally most fun you know i literally just because we're recording later today so because i had that um because i because i had that somewhat decadent breakfast i uh i just ran upstairs instead of having a lunch i just grabbed myself a snack i wish i still had it in front of me i was going to show you if we had dialed up earlier i had like i don't know i cut up a bunch of cucumber radishes and uh do you like orange peppers you don't like bell peppers do you i do oh do you like them i gotta say it kind of hit it was it was kind of

good you know what i did on sunday that i am so um i'm excited about because it was so yummy but that's pretty healthy i think so i bought some sprouts i've been on this kick of like wanting sprouts but i'm also on this kick of i'm not eating a lot of um like bread i'm not it's not like i'm disavowing bread or whatever i'm just i'm just trying to not eat processed foods and to me Bread is a kind of a processed thing So I have these sprouts that I bought I impulse bought these sprouts Because they looked yummy to me And there's nothing I love more than a sandwich Like with like a big schmear of cream cheese Or borsin or whatever I'm getting into a world that you Know nothing about But like a spreadable cheese Cucumbers and a big pile of sprouts

You're talking about the green sprouts I always got to specify Because you have the white sprouts

Yeah not the kind you'd put in pho or something the green ones yeah the ones that along with celery were like the most like coated like

80s exercise coded food of all time would be sprouts you know that's the thing everybody was

eating when they were dieting in the 80s this isn't particularly interesting but i have to mention it because it's a strange coincidence i have two big things of live sprouts in my kitchen right now because i got a it was strange i got a very late night call from my neighbor uh when i was in croatia so it was a late night call for me but it was like a you know like a late afternoon call for him oh i see uh and so i'm like why but i'll tell you what and i i know it's pretty tuned up too and i was like kind of crawling into bed but then you see that your neighbor is calling you and you're like why because we don't you know we don't i chat with them every time i see him but we don't call each other much and so i assume that oh no what is going on at the house but i didn't want i didn't like i said i was a little tuned up i didn't want to pick up i'm just like i hope everything is fine and i just sat down you know i declined the call and then i then it was followed up by a text message from my neighbor Dean that just said just left a bunch of sprouts at your place I didn't exactly know what that meant and I came home apparently like he's a chef and he bought like a couple of he was looking for something else but he accidentally ordered like a huge palette of like living sprouts like the green kind those are bean sprouts right am I am I right about

that well the ones that I bought are technically broccoli sprouts oh okay weird because they they look like what I think of as sprouts which are in a rectangular plastic box and they just stick up and that's a sprout to me but the ones that I bought technically said they were broccoli sprouts. I guess maybe they would be, I don't know if they would become broccoli at some point. I don't really know how that works.

Yeah, see, I'm a little confused because I thought these were bean sprouts but when I look at them it just looks like a tray full of like really fluffy green like those little, you know, micro greens that you would put on top of a sandwich but also if you look below it and this is where listeners are going to know more about this than me. I'm wondering, do they grow long enough because if I look up bean sprouts here they look like the white like kind of um you know the types of things you put in pho or whatever and i'm wondering if it's just different phases of their life or if they're totally different products i'm sorry to be so ignorant on this but it's kind of like i came home and i saw these two beautiful things of sprouts growing on our front porch but now i have no idea what to do with them so i just put them on the i put them on the shelf i'm like maybe bingo will eat it and leave my other plants alone for a little

bit be healthy that'd be very healthy for bingo um i well so i wanted to make basically what i really wanted to have was a sandwich with a big pile of sprouts on it but because i was swerving on the bread i got to save those carbs for late night mcdonald's cookie room yeah i um i was like what do i have in the house and what i had was like half of an english cucumber still left over and i um i was driving home from my jog and i had this idea of wanting to eat this and i pulled over to the little market in my neighborhood carol's market which is unbelievably unhelpful in terms of having anything you would ever need i was like do you guys have cream cheese they're like i don't think so we have sour cream i was like totally different products um but they have one skateboard from the 80s that you're not allowed to buy right and as i often say a dale earnhardt

senior lampshade oh i don't know if i remember that dazzling detail i mean just the most random

so like of course you don't have that so anyway i i get home and what i end up doing is is cutting this cucumber kind of in half or like um horizontally so it's almost like a little sub sandwich and i and then i uh what i did have was some tzatziki sauce that like yummy kind of white sauce in the fridge um and i so i i didn't have any like spreadable cheese but i had that i put that on there and then i just put a crap load of sprouts and then i just made this little like kind of sub sandwich out of cucumber tzatziki and um and uh and the sprouts and good bread

no bread oh oh oh more of a wrap i know that was okay gotcha gotcha so but i was surprised at how

satisfying it was sans the bread i see yeah and then of course i had to immediately take a picture and send it to becca and be like hey look what i did and she's very nice she's like um good good job, honey. That's great that you did the lowest level of food preparation possible for a person of your age. But I was excited because I was like, this actually is tasty and satisfying. It gave me something about a big pile of sprouts that's very appealing to me. I don't know, reminds me of childhood or something. So that's on my list of things that I'm going to start making more of, like a little kind of fake cucumber sandwich with tzatziki and sprouts. Then, by the way, i probably and you know it's funny because i love that tzatziki stuff so much i'm not a tahini guy

mm-hmm i'm trying to remember the difference here tzatziki again i'm sorry i'm kind of talk

yeah i'm talking about a world that you don't really mess with i mess with a little bit of

tzatziki um and i have trouble saying that my apologies for probably mispronouncing it but um i'll i'll have a little bit of that on a euro but i don't like how much they usually put on a Hero gets really, really mad.

messy i feel like so i usually so i sometimes i'll say light on the tzatziki and they and that's fine but then what will happen is i'll say just put the tzatziki on the side and i'll put it on myself and then when i get it on the side and i look at it i never have the balls to put it on myself because i still have some weird like knee-jerk reaction to like kind of white creamy stuff like that so if i'm gonna have it i have to have them put it on but i have to tell them to put a little bit on because they're still like too much of it i don't i don't like too much of it

See, I'm like extra, please. I mean, the whole reason I ended up in a paid toilet in Paris waiting on a rainstorm and questioning my life decisions was because I had gotten a falafel and they had tahini on it. I don't really like tahini that much. And I was like, I wanted tzatziki. They didn't have that there. So I was like, put that white stuff on. And she was like, this garlic sauce? And I was like, yeah.

Oh, tahini is a garlic. Okay. Yes, yes.

No, no, no. Tahini is made from, I forget what the seeds are. It's like a mashed up seed thing. and tzatziki is a yogurt sauce I wanted something that was yogurt-y they didn't have anything yogurt-y they had something white but that was just a garlic like a garlic paste in like a squeeze bottle and she was like do you want this on there and I was like yes please and she put some on and I was like more please and then she was like alright your funeral dude she didn't say that but her eyes kind of said that and she was right because 10 minutes later I was looking for anywhere I could go use the restroom because the garlic was getting to me

oh I didn't realize that garlic has that impact on you But I also know, by the way, sorry for my confusion about tahini. I know I have food with tahini on it sometimes, but I just don't know what it is because it's not a gyro. So I don't know why I've had tahini, but I feel like I've had it before.

What does the internet say it's made out of? Isn't it made out of some sesame seeds or something?

I'll look that up. But I will say, though, I didn't realize that garlic has sort of an impact on your digestive system like that. It's hit and miss. your breath thing like you're very like i always think like when i'm enjoying hummus i'm like boy luke won't eat this hummus because it's too garlicky so you you you went right into the right into the mouth of the lion there i did because i just i think my

i i wanted to have this kind of some sort of a white sauce on there more than i was worried about my breath which you know i mean i guess ask becca did i make the right call unclear well Well, she's still with you. I don't know. I haven't been home in a while. That's a good point. So it's TBD.

Tahini is sesame. It's made from sesame. Sesame paste. You know, I can't imagine. Maybe I haven't had it specifically. The reason I know it is because we always have it in the cupboard. It's a very telltale kind of iconic-looking can here. I don't know what the brand is. Joyva, it looks like. It's kind of like a short squat can, and it's got this kind of cool logo, brown and orange. Can you picture that? But anyway, it's always in our cupboard, which is why.

But that's the thing. I'm not into it, generally speaking. I don't really like the flavor for me. And so I'm always trying to... The point is, I bought a thing of tzatziki at Costco, like a tub of it. And I thought, well, this is classically the kind of thing that I'm going to buy that I'm never going to use. And let me tell you, Andrew, it's pretty much gone. Because you know what else I'll do now? I'll have a spoon. and i'll just be like i'll be eating it like it's a soup or something it's very unsettling and thankfully nobody is there to see me except god but um yeah that's so the probably why i like this whole cucumber situation which is because it was just a it was just a um tzatziki delivery

vehicle for me but and am i right that tzatziki is it's yogurt but it is cucumber as well right

it's got it's got yeah i think it's got like a little chopped up cucumber in it and yogurt i mean it's it's so good it is so so delicious i would take a bath in it i'm i'm still in a place that's called greece new york there's got to be some kind of like you know mediterranean style restaurant somewhere where i can just have them bring out a super big gulp a double gulp of tzatziki sauce and let me just break that down all right hey let's thank some donors and then i actually want to follow up on two things from yesterday uh one you wanted to talk tiktok and i've definitely got tiktok on the brain and then i wanted to tell you about my hot tub shopping experience so let's do that thank you for being a 10 all right let's thank some of those donors of these are the fine folks that are keeping me in tzatziki sauce a bath costco style yeah people like rebecca gerkey of kingston washington hey rebecca thank you thanks rebecca appreciate you by the way these are all folks who are donating to tbtl um and uh and keeping us in business folks like kate march of seattle washington thank you kate thank you kate our friend john pinkus of chicago illinois john will uh always live in my mind as the

10 who dressed up like the twilight zone character oh yeah from that one episode that i've been obsessed with about the guy whose glasses get broken all he wanted and all he wants to do it it's all he wanted was time to read and john pincus made a made a almost like uh i couldn't tell the two people apart that was a memorable night for me that was hosting live wire in chicago that was falling down and breaking my face open during a jog that was uh and then having Reggie Watts on the show and also Rick Bayless, the restaurateur, and then going out with 10s afterwards and my face just feeling like it had been cleaved into the whole time and me apologizing constantly for the brutality of how I looked while hanging out with 10s, one of whom was dressed up like a guy from The Twilight Zone. That would be John Pincus.

Sounds all very disorienting.

It was a bit disorienting. Kim Walter is in St. Petersburg, Florida. We know Kim.

We do. In fact, I am going to go on a limb here. I don't want to undermine Kim's donation here, but I think we can attribute that to both Kim and her husband, Sam, as I see them both listening.

I think this is a co-production, much like their children are a co-production, or child.

Child, I believe. Yeah, and we met Kim and Sam at the Florida show, and it's funny because I follow them on Instagram, and it is true. I remember when they were a couple that didn't have a child, and then they had a little baby, and now that baby is growing up. And somehow I feel like I am part of that family because I'm watching this kid grow up before my eyes on Instagram.

Did I overstep? No, but that's when I feel old is not that I'm getting older, which is happening all the time. and it's noted on the show often it's like the listeners are well aware of our of our rapidly declining physicality it's when someone's kid gets older it's like our friend rodent's kids getting older you know or the listeners or kids who were babies you know like being pushed around on the stroller at a tbtl event and now they're nine years old and leaving us joke messages like it's like that that kind of aging progression really really reminds me of my um of the fact that i'm getting older um elizabeth mccullough not getting older in columbus ohio how does she do it i have no idea i don't don't ask any questions it's not strictly speaking legal but it's working elizabeth it is working thank you so much and then monica regimball is in wait for it burbank washington and you don't believe in a god i believe in a monica though and that's even i i met someone at... Andrew, I have news. I met someone. Oh, congratulations. Don't tell Becca. No, I won't. I met somebody at Livewire recently afterwards. It was after the show. It was very loud in there. And this woman is named Monica, which is a very typical name to have. Not a typical name, but a name that I'm familiar with. And my hearing dude is so shot now, and particularly in a loud room. And she said... I shook her hand and I said, what's your name? And I thought she said Monaha. And I was like, oh, that's a cool name, Manaha. And she goes, no, Monica. And I just heard Manaha again. I said, Manaha. She went, Monica. This happened, this went back and forth four or five times. So her friends were just laughing. And then I was like, wait, what is it? And I put my ear like weirdly close to her mouth. And she said, Monica. And then I had to make it a whole thing. We were posing for, this is a group photo I was posing for with these folks. And then I had to just keep going, have you considered Manaha? It's a pretty good name. I had to make it a whole bit because I was so embarrassed that I had couldn't hear this person talking and thought their name was Manaha instead of Monica, which is the more likely scenario.

I mean, the irony is if their name was Manaha, they would go through their whole life correcting. Oh, Monica. Right. No, Manaha. Manaha. And they would be like sick of it, but they would deal with it, whatever. But no, her name is just Monica. It's a very common name. And so, yeah. But it would be funny if her whole life people are like, Manaha? She's like, no, Monica.

what if you're just one of hundreds well manaha regimbal in burbank washington thank you for supporting the show thanks to all of our donors today for making tbtl possible hello and welcome to top story what's the tiktok talk that you wanted to talk about my friend i

had a question for you luke and i don't know if this can carry a top story segment but i i didn't

That's fine. I've got a hot tub, hot take that is probably a third of a top story. So between the two of these things, maybe we'll get halfway to one top story.

Fantastic. I mean, I think we'll be fine. You know, I just wanted to mention a quick story about going through the drive-thru. And next thing you know, you're in a tub full of tahini or tzatziki. But I was just thinking about TikTok the other day. You know, I have a TikTok account. I don't post anything hardly. Every now and then.

I will post like some weird old thing I find on a VHS tape and I don't know what to do with it because it doesn't fit our YouTube standards or whatever. But, you know, the only time I find myself on TikTok is when somebody sends me something and sends me a link. Hey, I thought you'd like this thing. And then I click on it and then I'm on there for a couple of minutes. It hasn't been addictive for me. But obviously, TikTok in each person's algorithm, each person's what is it called for you will be customized based on their TikTok usage. And so if I am on TikTok, what I'm fed mostly is, like, you know, comedians. I got a lot of comedians doing bits or whatever. In fact, was it, yes, today's show that we heard Sarah Naiman. Actually, good shout-out. Sarah Naiman is somebody I follow on TikTok and Instagram.

Have you played that bit before? Because I really liked it, but I didn't recognize it.

She's great. And we've played several things. Sarah is spelled S-E-R-R-A, if anybody's interested in looking at her work. I just love her presentation. She does a whole bunch of different, like, kind of solo TikTok. And, again, I follow her on Instagram. But, anyway, I have a lot of stuff like that. It's like a comedian doing a bit themselves. And I understand that there's all kinds of content out there that will, you know, that you'll be served up depending on your interest. Having said that, there was a time when TikTok, I feel like, was newer or certainly, like, kind of newer to a lot of people where when you thought of TikTok, you would think of the TikTok dances, you know, like just so many TikTok dances. obviously they still exist but would you say that tiktok has sort of morphed past that phase or is it just that we've all settled into being fed whatever the algorithm is going to feed us because i just feel like i'm just seeing much less references or even like a lot of tiktok stuff finds its way to me because somebody will repost it on instagram you know and i even think of like uh you know win rosenfeld a mutual friend who like i'll follow him on on hollywood power player Exactly. But like he was doing a lot of dances with his kids, like the specific TikTok dance is the height of are we are we past the peak of the TikTok dance?

i think that we are but it is hard for me to say that definitively because like you already mentioned it might just be that the algorithm my for you page as it were is steering me away from it but it is not steering the youth of america or the you know other folks in america who are not me away from it it may still be happening and i'm just not seeing it as much i do i do feel though like it's it is not like in the early days of tick tock during the pandemic when it was just like five out of every seven videos was a dance yeah i would say that maybe one out of every 10 videos might be a dance i don't think it yeah i don't think it's nearly i'm trying to think of also as we're just talking about i'm trying to think of what i feel like the new what has replaced that i mean i would say probably uh a lot of a lot of get ready with me do you see any or get unready with me like i get a lot of get ready with me content or at least there was maybe that kind of moved into the breach that's just basically people typically women like doing their makeup before they go out to do something but then telling a story and it's a very interesting content style because it is like you know like it's like let me do something relatively mundane but then let me talk about something else and that's something that i and whether it's the get ready with me or whatever else it might be did you ever see speaking of cucumbers by the way welcome to cute talk cute talk with luke talk hey if you got cute hair i'm gonna say damn girl you have cute hair you got some cute hair there is this i mean this wave has already crested but there was this um this i'm gonna say kid but it's probably a guy maybe in his 20s who absolutely took tiktok over like a month ago just slicing up cucumbers putting them into one of those you know like the kind of like a plastic to go well it's exactly like if you were to order thai food but you were to pick it up from the store and you were getting a tom yum or a tom guy soup oh yeah yeah the soup the plastic can yeah the soup container um something this this this guy who i'm i have to imagine has some kind of background in cooking his whole thing is slicing up a cucumber a whole cucumber putting it into one of those and then putting some interesting mix of of you know cream cheese and salmon or peanut butter and this kind of like you know asian sauce or whatever and then like shaking this thing up until it's totally evenly distributed on all the cucumber and then just taking a bite of it with a chopstick and it's so refreshing there's like an asmr component it seems really appetizing and what somebody was pointing out was these videos were like you know had like 4 or 5 million views and they'd all start the same way sometimes it's just this guy in his kitchen he's got kind of bottle blonde hair and he would say sometimes you just want to eat a whole cucumber here's how you do it and then he'd have a mandolin you know that he'd be slicing the cucumber with and then he'd do the whole thing and he would have a link in his bio to this

We'll be right back. particular kind of to-go food container that he was always eating the cucumber out of and somebody was doing the math based on like how many views he got if like even a half of a percent of those people ended up going and buying that food container you know that he would get a kickback for the guy it was like printing money on these little you know probably they probably cost a dollar little soup to-go containers but anyway that that kid was uh was getting a lot of attention on tiktok i guess my point is that i i'm not seeing people dancing as much as i used to so i think your theory is probably right there's just other stuff that's kind of come in and replaced it yeah for me also it's a ton of content of just judges giving lectures to people who are being sentenced which i'm not even trying to watch that content i don't know why it keeps trying to deliver it to me but i'm always like calm down this ain't the people's court you know i was

going to say like it's not just my limited exposure to tiktok and then combined with the complication that we're all served things based on our apparent interests so i'm also sort of judging this by its reflection in pop culture because you mentioned this cucumber guy i've never watched any of the videos but i've heard of that because in this newsletter i read called next draft you don't sign up for next draft do you i can dave pell i think anyway it's a good kind of roundup of the news every it's a daily newsletter that i've been following for years and i love it and he was talking about the cucumber guy and so like there are various things so this question i had about the dancing wasn't just from my limited exposure to the social media stuff but also i'm like there was a period a couple of years ago where like it was a joke in every tv commercial oh dad is trying a tiktok dance again how cringe or like whatever i found all and i'll just say this like i try not to be too negative on the show but every now and then i need to let my real self out and my real self just always finds that stuff super cringe like i i say that just like knowing that like the vast majority of people loved tiktok dances and it brought people absolute joy like there's no downside to it i'm not over here saying people should stop doing that because i think they're cringe it's good it's like dancing it's nothing but positive vibes like go after it my buds but but when i see it i just have to skip past it as fast as possible because i'm not like into kind of like dancing and all of all of that kind of stuff so it definitely was not for me but i do sort of feel like what we're seeing is a lot of just like influencers like i feel like again through the lens of tv commercials which of course i have a special interest in like there are i don't know if you've seen the new duncan campaign that has like um will arnett but then a whole bunch of influencers like whether they're no food influencers or just whatever you name it fashion etc and then there's like an amazon prime campaign that was like kind of a back to school campaign that i was talking about on the show i found it deeply deeply irritating but i didn't even realize until i was recording with genevieve on after these messages that the reason these guys were so annoying is because they're influencers and i kind of didn't know that i'm like why would they cast these super annoying guys they're like they're so unappealing it's like oh no they are incredibly appealing they have zillions like literally if If you count them, zillions of followers are like, OK, I'm the one who is like clearly out of step with culture.

It's like it's like that father son duo that I was really put off by in the Gillette ads. The Boston. And it's like, yeah, it's like, what? I mean, it's like, like, why are we putting? And then it's like, turns out they have a success. They are like father son influencer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's so they have a, you know, pre pre existing condition called fans. I wonder what that's like. We don't suffer from that.

Yeah, I know. I love the way also that we're doing something that by rights could generate that kind of fandom as well. And I'm over here being like, I don't like influencers and dances. And we have luckily, as we just thanked our donors, we have very generous core listeners. But obviously, I'm not providing what the majority of the people want.

no no we're in no danger of being tapped to the next amazon prime campaign because of the and wait till i get into my hot tub talk which really doesn't pay off oh yeah let's do it the long and the short of it is i i i had some dream years ago that and i remember talking to you and about it and anyone who would listen that i really wanted to try to get a shipping container swimming

pool at your place now as part of my original plan yeah that was part of the whole thing was

i i mean i really really really liked having a swimming pool at the uh house up in bellingham i really missed that it was in the summertime it brought a lot of joy to my life and i feel like i'm on a pretty like short list of those people generally the story is if you buy a house and it has a swimming pool most of the people that you hear from are like this is a giant hassle we never use it. This sucks. People fill in their swimming pools. In fact, our Neighbors across the street who were getting pretty up there in age paid someone to come tear out the swimming pool behind their mid-century home, which really, really hurt me, which really, really devastated me to my core. But that's more the case than, like, people were like, you know what's a great investment? This giant cement hole in the yard full of water that constantly wants to fill up with leaves that needs to be, like, cleaned every day. I loved it.

And shoots my insurance bills probably, like, over the top, right?

Oh, we never told the insurance people about the pool. That's the key.

Yeah, sure. Except for the fact that your agent listens, yeah.

And I'm doing the show from the pool most days in the summer. Worst kept secret. But yeah, I mean, so I was somebody who really liked that. And when I got divorced and was moving down to this other thing, because I tend to be like, hey, I liked this thing at this time. Let me try to recreate this thing. I'm very ritualistic. wanted to do this shipping container pool and then found out over time that it just was not going to be financially really feasible. It's like really expensive. Um, getting it actually positioned on the part of my yard that I wanted it in would have been itself this massive expense of hiring some kind of crane to lift it over the house. And, and then it, you know, it just was like, am I going to actually even really use it for all of this expense? And when we bought the house it had the swimming pool it just came with the house this is a whole other thing and probably not a good use of resources um to do so i sort of was like well i'm not going to do that then i went down to maybe i'm going to get a swim spa which is like basically like a rectangular kind of really large hot tub but with like a a water treadmill built into it so it has a current you can turn on so that you can swim with resistance okay yeah so you you're basically like swimming like you're training you know swimming in a river or a lake or whatever but you're just in place it's like literally like a like a treadmill of swimming and that seemed appealing to me because i thought well this is kind of looks a little bit like shipping container pool it's kind of larger and also i could maybe i'm going to become a person who like is really into swimming and i want to just do swimming but then i was like i looked so i was that was the plan for a while but then it was like i looked at the price tag and i asked myself am i really going to be a person who goes out and swims on this treadmill that's not what that's not the joy

that you're getting i mean you are you exercise daily like you get your exercise and i just think that that isn't i mean you don't need me to tell you this it sounds like you swerved on it but like that's not the pool experience that you're trying to recreate you don't want to be no yeah no but

what i liked about it was a rectangle and it was bigger than a just a standard hot tub so i had this fantasy that i could this is really what i like doing when i had that swimming pool sitting in an inner tube reading the new yorker probably drinking a drink and floating and listening to mac miller like and i really desperately wanted something that would allow

me at least a version of that so you can turn off the current basically and just float you can turn

off the current yeah okay um and it just becomes like kind of like a largest rectangular hot tub but then also there's the question of like do i want to be heating that whole ass thing up like the power bill for that when it's largely going to just be me out there you know like it's i i basically have been on this journey of doing something that's very unusual for me which is asking myself do i really need this or do i just want it and am i just going to do this thing that's going to be really expensive and a hassle so that i can have this one moment of like okay i'll be in the inner tube i'll be in this kind of like gargantuan hot tub i'll be kind of bumping into the edges of the of the of the hot tub because it's not a pool but there'll be a micro moment when the inner tube isn't hitting either side where I'll feel like enough I'll feel like those will feel like it used to feel when I was in Bellingham like I've actually been going through this process of asking myself is this going to be worth it and the answer is like probably not considering my current life circumstances I'm also not somebody who has constantly hosting large groups of people out at my house it's like it's it's a very different scene than my old scene and that's okay but i just want to be realistic about that with myself which i'm usually not so what i ended up getting down to was well what if i just got a hot tub and not even like a crazy fancy hot tub like it's wild what you can spend on a hot tub in this day and age i was like i don't i'm not somebody who cares about like the how many jets are in a hot tub that's a big selling point i've learned like this one has a hundred jets like i don't i'll take like three jets is fine and i don't even need those like this like you need some i mean if no jets i mean you care somewhat you don't want one with no jets right well i guess i guess i've never been a person who like if i'm in a hot tub i'm like can someone please put those jets on like it's never been i'm also not really a hot tub person per se but Thank you.

it seems like the most affordable way and reasonable way. Here's the other thing. It's not that warm up at my house. There's a couple weeks in the summer where it's broiling, but generally speaking, it's more cold than it is warm. So I was like, let me get something where the water is actually warm because that's probably going to be more useful for the vast majority of the year.

Yeah, you can use it almost year round. Yeah, people love going into a hot tub in the cold weather.

Yeah, but here's the thing. all the hot tubs they want to sell you now are so tricked out they're like they got a stereo built into them they got this is where i start doing my sebastian maniscalco they got these lights in these hot tubs you've been in one of these hot tubs with these lights it's just so and they're so like the the the like the roundness of the design it's all this like poured plastic that's like, I don't know. I'm not into the aesthetics. There's a coffins of pools.

Why do I think of, like, does that make any, you and I are, like, you're super jet-lagged on the red-eye, and I'm a little bit low-key right now, but when I say, there's something I hate about, I mean, aside from the whole death part of it, there's something I hate about the look of caskets. I'm just always like, can't we make the, I would even just take, like, a pine box, like in the old western movies, over what we have in modern, and there's something about a

Because they're too rounded. Yes, and there's something

about the round plasticness of a hot tub that they feel like cousins to me uh you're you've

you've really zeroed in on something my friend because and i i'm being serious i hadn't thought of it that way but you're absolutely right i think our tiredness is now intersecting for us it only makes sense for the listeners but for us but i'm totally with you like what i was trying to explain to the very so i go to this hot tub place on the first sunday with the seahawks are playing i'm actually going down um to meet becca for something and on my way i'm going to go past the hot tub place in like uh portland oregon but right on the border i think that their goal is to sell to people in washington state who want to pay no taxes but that doesn't even work because if you get it delivered to your house you still got to pay the taxes but so i go into this place and first of all there's one employee and she is unbelievably competent but there are andrew it's like 1 30 on a Sunday I walk in there are probably 10 groups of people in the hot tub store like so maybe 25 people 10 groups of two to three and then me I thought I was going to walk in and a tumbleweed was going to blow through the place it's 1 30 on a Sunday it's going to be me and too many hot tub employees trying to sell me something right completely the opposite I walk in it's every dry hot tub has people sitting in them to sense what it's like to have this hot tub it was totally insane and I'm like and now part of the reason that I needed that I wanted to try to make some sort of decision around if I was going to do one of these or not was because I also have to have the construction guys build a platform for this thing to sit on so that it is flush with my deck if that makes sense I want to be able to walk out on the deck and then at the deck level there will be a water feature of this hot tub and you will get into it but that's a very that's a semi-complicated thing because they've got to build this very very well built very sturdy thing that's exactly a certain height and i knew that none of that could start until i knew the exact dimensions of whatever i was going to maybe buy so i go into this hot tub store like really wanting to at least get the paperwork on some of this before i leave So I have an idea, like, and tell the guys, here's exactly what we need to do. These are the dimensions and the specifications. And I'm, like, so bummed because it's just, like, the place is crawling with people. And people keep coming in. And I learn it's because some fly-by-night operation is throwing what they're calling a hot tub expo in the same neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. But it turns out, the word on the street is they only had seven hot tubs at the hot tub expo. and they'd already sold, like, three or four of them, so they were down to, like, three. The Hot Tub Expo had three hot tubs left, and everyone would go to the Hot Tub Expo, and they would get really mad, and then they would come to the hot tub store because they really wanted to look at hot tubs.

I mean, they had the day blocked off for weeks,

if not months, as our Hot Tub Sunday. They were all charged up for a hot tub, and they were having, you know, unsatisfying, they had an unsatisfying experience at the so-called Hot Tub Expo.

What a terrible expo.

And then they all came to the store I was in.

Are you already thinking, maybe as you were going through this or upon reflection, are you thinking of a parallel to something that happened in your life not unlike this somewhat recently?

No, but please remind me.

Putting you on the spot in a quiz, a pop quiz about your own life.

This is like the time you never— One of my worst subjects. You never go into record stores, but then you wanted to get somebody a quick record before you went to their birthday party or something, and so you go into this freaking record store day. This is the one day you want to go check out a hot tub, and it turns out it's Hot Tub Sunday.

It's National Hot Tub Sunday. It's national. I'm annoyed about a different place I went to look at hot tubs, and now I'm here, and now I'm like, everyone was like mildly annoyed and wanting to buy hot tubs.

Meanwhile, they had some great deals on Krongbin Records.

Ha ha ha ha. Nice pull. And like the woman working there, again, who was really unbelievably effective at being one person who's got 30 people trying to buy hot tubs and also, by the way, infrared saunas. That's another big part of that business now.

So a sauna, and I really have to do this, and I just have to remind myself, what is a sauna? A sauna is usually a wooden, small structure you go into that has intense heat in it, and often it has, like, you can make it steamy in there by adding water to the coals? Yes. Okay, that's a sauna. Or rocks, okay. Or coals, or rocks, yes. So I think maybe as a kid I maybe dipped in, you know, kind of like walked into one of those on vacation once or twice. I hate saunas, by the way. Yeah, it's not really for me.

They make me feel like I'm going to suffocate. I would never survive in Norway

I feel that way about this show sometimes So what does infrared do? I mean, how does this technology intersect?

It's some kind of, I don't know It's probably in style right now for the sauna It's probably supposed to add some medical dimension What I know is that two people came in asking about infrared saunas While I was there trying to lock in on a hot tub But then, the other thing that I was trying this goes back to the the roundness of the hot tub and the casket industry andrew i was trying to explain to the woman that i didn't want a hot tub that was too round i wanted it to just be really kind of like 90 degree angles which is the weirdest thing to try to explain to somebody because the whole industry has gone in the direction of these like flowy curvy and it's all painted it's all the weirdest ass colors now because they can you know what i mean like it's

They're like Zumba stripes or whatever. Right?

It's just all this, it's just this madness. And I don't want any madness. I want basically a very.

Like a Danish designed hot tub.

I want a box that's got a couple of benches you can sit on and warm water. Yeah. And it's a perfect, well, I want it to remind to be a rectangle. But, like, no, I don't want any, I don't want any other bullshit from anyone. I'm with you, man. I'm with you.

Yeah, I mean, I wonder. I mean, I'm sure you've done a lot of Googling of this. I mean, can you buy, like, more design-y, like, hot tubs built with an eye for design, but they're just, like, literally $4 billion?

Well, probably, but that's the other thing. These people will actually bring it out, and part of the purchase price is they will bring it out, and they will put it where you want it to be. Like, they'll put it on top of the structure you've built or whatever, and that was very appealing to me, too, because I don't want to be like, sure, maybe I can find some designy website and buy some overpriced thing and then get it delivered. But then it's like, how do I get it actually in place? And I feel like these people do this all the time. They kind of know what they're doing. So I ended up settling on, and by settling, I mean I put a refundable deposit down on this, and I have six months to decide if I'm really going to do it or not.

Oh, okay. So you did put it in, so you picked one. You said this could potentially be my forever tub.

I mean, you know, or my for now tub. It was one of the cheapest ones they sell, which is not usually my move. It was one of the fewest bells and whistles I just kept. And she was like, well, for $10,000 more, you can get the salt water. I was like, no. And to this woman's credit, she wasn't trying to upsell me. There was one point where she was like, do you want the such and such ozone filter? And I was like, I don't know. She goes, you know what? I have it on mine. I never even use it. Don't get it. I was like, all right. Now, maybe that's just very savvy on her part. Maybe she has one cheapo thing that she knows to tell the person to skip, so then I trust her implicitly on everything else.

I'm trying to look at what the ozone filter does. A hot tub ozanator and ozone generator? Is it a filter?

Oh, oh, oh, ozampic. I think it's supposed to be some sort of filtration thing, but she was telling me that it doesn't really, she said it doesn't make any difference in hers. And she said hers like ran out, and then she didn't ever notice a difference. So she was actually steering me away from an extra charge.

I don't I got to say, man, according to the Internet and it really is just like the Internet now. Like I'm not even going to websites.

It's just like whatever Google is coughing up, whatever, whatever pull quote it decides to grace you with.

Yes. Ozone systems and hot tubs, Luke, are a game changer when it comes to water.

quality, maintenance, and sustainability by harnessing the power of ozone.

This could never have been written by the ozone farmers of America.

By harnessing the power of ozone.

Brought to you by the ozone. It's what's for dinner.

Hot tub odors can enjoy clean, clear, and odor-free water while reducing their reliance on traditional sanitation chemicals. Icy or sanitizing chemicals, Icy. So it's sort of a way of keeping it supposedly cleaner, more pristine without having to put as many chemicals in there. You know what? I think you and I are pretty comfortable with chemicals.

In this particular case, I don't know. I think I'm going to go with – because that's the idea of salt water is that you don't use as many chemicals. And if cost were no consideration, I probably would have gone with something a little bit fancier. But I don't really want – that's the thing. I guess here's my point, and here's how I'm going to wrap this up. And it ain't much. It ain't much of a power out either. But what I've learned is I am deeply out of step with the desires of the average hot tub consumer in America. And I don't really want I don't really want what the average hot tub person seems to want. I'm I'm I'm you know, I'm I'm not usually a simple guy. Usually I want more bells and whistles. But this is the one time where I was like fewer bells and fewer whistles. Let's just let's just keep this simple. And so, anyway, the other thing I thought was interesting, though, was the woman said to me, I was like, man, it's packed. She goes, oh, yeah, well, because the shitty hot tub expo is in town. She said that? That's a quote?

I love that. Oh, I love this woman.

Because literally everyone was coming in and complaining about the hot tub expo. And she goes, yeah, this happens every year. And she goes, and it just drives so much business for us. Then I thought, well, maybe this is the day to have two employees as a thought. But regardless, I was like, what a funny business model. you know that on the day when someone has gone around putting up those little like shitty printed signs like this weekend only hot tub expo like you know someone's gone around taping the nailing those up to telephone poles and whatever that's going to be the day that your business unrelated to that expo is going to really really be slammed because people are going to keep coming in and going they didn't have any hot tubs at the hot tub expo man it's almost like it's almost like they they could have planned it this way like let's put on the

Yeah, it's actually kind of smart. Because if it was a good hot tub expo, it could drain your business, right? So to speak. So to speak. Because everybody would go there. I picture a hot tub expo as the type of, you know, we used to go to things at the Cleveland Expo Center all the time, whether they were like, you know, like kind of hunting, the boat show. And it's like, I don't give a shit about any of this adult stuff. But a floating key fob that has some sort of a boat brand on it, put it in my bag, which is the bag I carry around, and just collect all kinds of magnets and stickers and key fobs. As you mentioned earlier, Luke, it's been like four years since we've done Blur's Days. However, you know, like we have a we have a handful here, but it's not as overwhelming as you might think. But I would like to thank everybody for your patience here, for those of you who sent in like literally in like mid-July. You sent in Blur's Days, and we're finally getting to them now. I will reiterate, since it's been a while, there is one way to get your Blur's Day message into us, and that is by emailing me, andrew, at tbtl.net, and putting Blur's Day in the subject line, and then writing a very short little message to the Blur's Day recipient therein. That's how you do it, andrew, at tbtl.net. You know who did that? Our good friend, Hauser, a.k.a. J-Dawg. The J-Dawg, who says a very happy Blur's Day to the other Anna in Seattle. And, of course, Anna, also a good friend of ours. Happy Blur's Day, Anna. Hauser says, thank you for continuing to get old and make me laugh. I'm so grateful for you and another year of celebration to you on your Blur's week. Congratulations on your new job and all the adventure it will hold. Side Howie. Here we go again. Happy Blurs Day, Anna. Sincerely.

I was texting with Hauser because we had old Petey on the show last week, and I know Hauser's a big fan, and I even told Petey the story of Hauser changing hats. I didn't mention him by name there in front of Petey. I didn't want to embarrass him in front of Petey, but now I'm embarrassing him here in front of the tent.

And you told me Petey said, oh, yeah, I remember that fool. It was so cringe. It was so embarrassing. Yeah, he did, and then he did a TikTok dance. Then he did.

A TikTok dance. Hey, Lloyd. Hey, Lloyd. Says, happy belated Blurzay to my 10 friend-o summer. Hey, Lloyd. That's the summer that's not the astrophysicist, but summer that came up with the song Luke Couldn't Think Of. Oh, yeah. Remember that song? Oh, yes. Thank you.

Wet and Rusted by Manomena.

You know what I heard on my trip was somebody's cell phone went off in an airport. This was in, I remember specifically, I was in Amsterdam because I almost texted you, but I wasn't sure if my texting would work. Somebody's cell phone went off and it was that old ringtone that you were trying to think of the other day. Oh, yeah, down by the sea. Down by the sea. People are still using it, at least in Amsterdam. But anyway, Hey Lloyd says, happy Blurze to the summer that came up with the song Luke couldn't think of. I hope summer's summer was the best one ever. that's uh lloyd of uh pepperoni pizza fame by the way ali says john in grand rapids wishing you a happy 50th from an old friend who will always wish you the best thanks ali and happy blurs day to john ishmael says my wife hemi has been a huge fan since before we met over a decade ago over a decade ago. And while I may have let her down all these years by forgetting to send a proper Blur's Day message, she is always an amazing, beautiful wife and mother to me and our two wonderful boys. She deserves the very best possible Blur's Day message from us and the world. Thank you, Hemi, for all that you do. Happy Blur's Day. Aw, happy Blur's. You see what I did there, by the way? You said it's a tuna bro. Is that what you're talking about?

Well, Ishmael is the name of the narrator in Moby Dick.

Sure. And it's a famous story about going after tuna. About fish.

See?

Claire says, do you know that I'm reading, by the way, Luke, have you ever read Moby Dick? I have not read Moby Dick.

I've read the first line, which is, call me Ishmael.

Oh, yeah. Good job.

Not as far as I've gotten. I think I might have read it in high school or something, but not in a long time.

We should maybe talk about this at some point. Do you know what I'm reading right now for reasons that I can't fully explain? It's so unlike me. I'm reading The Count of Monte Cristo. Like the original book.

I love that book. Alexander Dumas.

You read that whole thing? It's like huge. I'm like 25. I've been reading it for months. I love it so much. I'm 25% through. It's so, so long. I literally don't know what happens, though, so it's kind of interesting. It's kind of sucked me in. Oh, dude.

It's so good. I mean, again, I think I read that maybe in high school. But it is, it's great. I'm excited for you. Are you enjoying it so far?

I am. Well, at first, you know, let's talk about this another time. Let's put this on the show sheet, and we'll talk about how and why and my experience with The Count of Monte Cristo. It was a strange journey. But, yeah. I've made a huge mistake. Still reading it. It's kind of got its hooks in me, as it were. Claire says, I want to wish my great-great-dad Harley a happy Blur's Day. Your coolest daughter Claire Misses you while she's at college In big Chicago all by her lonesome It's a big 50 this year So have a crazy party but not too crazy Love ya and happy birthday Fat dad That's from Claire

It's not Harley Bart Harley Jarvis from I Think You Should Leave

No I think it is Happy Blur's Day Harley Kristen says happy birthday To me, my blurs is on the 23rd, so I wanted to get it in before the day came. I'll be 46 this year, and I've been listening to TBTL for almost 10 years now. Thanks for being the support for this middle-aged mom type. Aw, happy blurs, eh, Kristen? Very mindful. That's Kristen who greeted us. I'm so dumb. Was it Kansas City? It wasn't Kansas City. Oh, yeah, sure. It was Kansas City. Sure. Very demure. When we took the bus. Exactly. And finally, our pal Tan Ying in Pittsburgh says, please help me wish my now 13-year-old oldest child, Yan, a happy belated Blur's Day. Yan, you are the funniest person I know and a wonderful big brother. I can't wait to see what 8th grade has to offer you this year. We love you so much. Happy Blur's Day, Yan.

I know it.

There you go. Those are your Blur's Day. Happy Blur's Day, everybody.

Thank you for your patience, and thank you for spending this Thursday with us. We have got more TBTL coming your way tomorrow. I will be in New York City. I'll have lots to report from there. I think by the time you and I talk, Andrew, I will have spent some time with the singer Maggie Rogers, working on a TV story about her. And I will have also tried, I will have sampled whiskey that comes from tree sap.

Oh, interesting.

That's the story I'm going to be working on up here in the Finger Lakes region tomorrow. I'm going to Naples, New York. What they really love in this part of New York is places that are named for other places. I'm going to Naples, New York. I'm currently in Greece, New York.

It's that part of the country, though, I think. I know upstate New York is not New England, but it's kind of similar. Everything there is named after older cities.

Well, we'll have much to report tomorrow, and we'll do that. So please join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Thursday, everyone. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Power out.