Muse

Let's meet the Smith family. Hi, what's your name? My name is Bill. G'day, Bill, and what's your name? My name is Ben. G'day, Ben, what's your name? I'm Janiel. G'day, Daniel. No, Janiel. What? Janiel. You mean Daniel? Janiel? Janiel? Janiel. Jan- what do you mean Janiel? Think Daniel, think January, smooch them together. It's Janiel. Janiel? My name is Janiel. Alright, and what's your name? My name is Danuary. T-B-T-L!

And I stand in and lean back and then just bam, and it sails away out through the universe like a radio wave that goes past Saturn and Jupiter, Pluto, through the black hole and into many other galaxies yet named.

Call Kenny Loggins because you're in the danger zone from Top Gun. Just be careful. No.

and uh uh right on you midnight cowboy that's not a thing all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live let's let a rip this morning my name is luke burbank i am your host just study it out and you'll see coming to you from lancaster pennsylvania i'm perched high above a wegman's grocery store which is just down the hill from my residence in and um it's actually a pretty nice tuesday out there out here in lancaster of course it's October 1st, a blessed Tructober to all who celebrate. Tructober! Much to get to here on this Tuesday. It's episode 4,305 in A Collector Series. Let the fun begin. Yesterday, of course, we played you the TVTL Live in Philadelphia show, and when that show was done being recorded, we got to hang out with a bunch of tens, and it was just an absolutely wonderful evening. A lot of energy, a lot of motion, a lot of fun, a lot of high-fiving, a lot of smiles uh we'll talk about that also the spirit halloween company is upset at the saturday night live program for making fun of them uh saying that they have sex offenders working at spirit halloween i have to say spirit halloween's clap back was actually pretty clever uh we'll get into that oh and we'll talk to this guy longest running cobra of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ship you see what happens when you feel a stinger in the abs he's andrew welsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend how did it make me nervous how i was

going to end that sentence in that drop you just played i had no idea where that was going that that that tightens me up a little bit here on a tuesday well i was just looking around for some

audio to introduce you and i have a lot of you saying like a television friendly versions of when you find a stranger in the Alps or you bleep a friend in the bleep is the real one. And that one I didn't remember. And I'm with you. When I played it, I was like, oh, this is going to end badly. But it doesn't. No. Because by definition, it was television friendly.

You see what happens when you feel a stinger in the abs?

I can't remember what the bit was. That was a long time ago. So famously, the television edit of the more obscene line is when you see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps. That's from The Big Lebowski. That's the TV edit of The Big Lebowski. Did you and I maybe come up, maybe when we were fascinated by that television edit, which I remain, by the way, fascinated by that TV edit, I think maybe we came up with a bunch of alternates or something? Is that why you have a—I'm not trying to put you on the spot. You're on your road kit. But I feel like there might be a bunch of us screaming ridiculous sayings like that.

I think it's you, mostly. Well, that makes sense. Yes, I can't remember if these were other. I think that the Internet might have, there might have been a list somewhere that you're reading. I don't remember that we wrote them.

Maybe we didn't write them. That sounds like a lot of effort, honestly. That sounds like way more work than I'd be willing to put into the show. You're right.

Let's see. I've got another one. This might be the exact. This is, I think, the same one.

You see what happens when you feel a stinger in the ab? Yeah, that's the same one.

I'm just trying to see. Let's see. Andrew, you see what happens. Let me just do a quick search for that. You see. It's good to be back. Oh, okay.

Yeah, it sure is. Here's another one. You see what happens, Larry? You see what happens when you free a sturgeon with an axe?

That paid off. That paid off. Yeah. I was going to say welcome back. For me, it's welcome back. I'm settling into more normal routines. I had a lot of anxiety over recent travels. both my fun time travels to... Croatia, and the recent trip to Philadelphia, which was, given everything, still a blast. It's still good to see everybody, even though, as you heard on the show yesterday, I was under the weather and caught COVID, so I couldn't mingle. I was single, but I couldn't mingle, which was a real bummer for me. I really did.

Genevieve was looking to get you off of her hands, so she was as disappointed as anyone.

I really did have FOMO. I know that I'm not one for much of FOMO, but I did have some FOMO on Saturday night, Just knowing y'all were, you were all having a good old time over there at, oh, we're supposed to shout out to the name of the after party. Yeah, the Mulberry. The Mulberry. It sounds like they were wonderful to you guys.

They were really, really great. Now, this thing tends to happen with TBTL where we will find a stranger in the Alps and we continue to do it and expect a different result. And that's just the definition of insanity. we will um often be going somewhere for like an after party or you know get together and thank goodness Genevieve ran point on this and found us this place the Mulberry and went in and I believe they reserved an area for us and dedicated two servers just to our group now this is the thing though we had a lot of people show up it was like we had more people show up I think we thought maybe a certain percentage of the people who bought tickets to the show would come to the after party i think that percentage was 100 that's what it sounds like it was all

said and done so we said that she when she's planning a party she usually accounts for one out of four people to show up or something like that and she said but then for this one she estimated one out of every two people she expected half the half of the the and she should have been estimating two out of every two exactly because people a male and a female so as to help

recreate the species it's much like noah's ark um here's the thing i was thinking about about noah's ark the other day oh good had there ever been a boat before did he also in as the story goes is he also inventing the whole idea of watercraft i mean there's first of all there's this concept or there's this idea that he built a boat large enough to house like a two of every animal species that alone for a guy and his two sons i mean i know it took him like 600 years but still that's that's a tall order but also you don't read about any other boats in the bible previous to this did he also invent the format and then let's just take a moment to realize he was also apparently the most cunning hunter in the history of humankind unrivaled to this day this is a man who can go get you two snakes he can get you two giraffe he can get you two uh platypus i mean what about like you name it bobcats what about the things that are not going to want to get caught right i mean just uh incredible that i just don't think we give him enough credit for being superhuman apparently it's almost like that story might be some sort of i don't know a myth a fable but anyway that's not what we're here to talk about these and i had

almost the same exact conversation literally yesterday about Adam and Eve like I have no idea what is going on like what happened to us in Philadelphia yesterday Vives and I got on this whole thing about well who did I don't know how so the sons of Adam and Eve were Seth Cain and Abel I didn't know about Seth I think that's maybe what's never talked about Seth no because I was surprised that there was somebody in the bible named seth it seems like it should be seth the jiba or let's cut that from the record but you know what i mean seth seems like too short of a name feels kind of like his name is like skyler it seems like too much of a nickname it should be

yeah that's it was at it was yeah it was uh jacob what was it jacob what are the what are

the adam and eve's kids again cain and abel and seth are the only ones that i know skyler yeah right it should be seth oclad leaves okay i need to start stop trying to riff on names from the bible but uh anyway but we're like but then seth gets married so like who's seth like seth and the one that isn't dead i can't remember cain kills abel abel kills cain i can't remember but cain kills abel they all get married so where are these wives coming from like is it just is are they i

I mean, if you start to really pull on that thread, that sweater unravels fairly quickly. Anyway, we had people coming into the Mulberry 2x2, and there was a lot of them. And this is a testament. I think what Veeves suggested doing was going and giving the Mulberry a good Yelp review. Because the two folks who were assigned to our section, I watched them all night. They were just hustling, hustling. And, you know, it seemed like everybody was in a good mood It seemed like, I don't know if maybe It took a minute or two to get a drink, but I didn't see anyone in our group who was, you know, had been waiting for 45 minutes for their for their, you know, adult beverage or whatever. So I think this was a case where the the folks, particularly the two servers and probably the bartenders, too, just really stepped up to make this thing a fun night where no one had to think like, oh, I also was looking forward to having a beer, but I guess I can't because there's too many of us.

Can I also say that that went both ways, though? Apparently, the folks at the Mulberry truly appreciated the TBTL 10s. And I'm not just saying that, I guess, at the end of the night, and again, I wasn't there, but Genevieve said that, like, her main contact there at the end said, you guys were so wonderful. They're like, can we get, we wish you were in town. We'd give you, like, a gift card or something as a way of thanking you. So they really appreciated, they said that everybody was, like, really kind and patient, which, you know, that scans with what I know of the 10s. So anyway, it goes both ways.

you know who along with the folks at the mulberry in philadelphia who were the people who are the most impressed with the tbtl tens were my philly family in other words my like my aunts and uncles and cousins and people associated with my mom's side of my family i went out to my uncle chucks on sunday and we had a get together of you know some of those folks and they were to a person so impressed with how great the tens were how kind everyone was how into my mom's antics they all are and appear to be um and just how like my i was so nervous going into that because tbtl is just such a specific kind of inside joke laden kind of world of of silliness that we we all love and the tens love but it's you know it's it's not the kind of thing maybe you just sort of jump on the merry-go-round as it's spinning at its normal rate of speed and understand what it's all about or why people would like it or whatever that was my my kind of my my anxiety going in was mostly about my actual family coming and the 10s made such a good impression on them like i don't know how they thought i did as a broadcaster but they thought the whole thing was just amazing because

of the 10s wow well thanks everybody for coming out and i think it was a good show you know i I texted you yesterday after listening to the taped podcast and like kind of going through the tape and then uploading it. It sounded good on tape. I'm really bummed. I guess that the sound in the room wasn't so great. I feel terrible about that. I knew that there might be some issues that I thought we worked out. But because of my covid situation, I couldn't really like kind of be down on the ground, kind of, you know, kind of fiddling with things and and maybe broing down with the folks who work there. Although I got to be honest with you, even if I could have bro down with the folks that work there and they were wonderful at the friend center, like no joke, like loved those people. I told them at the end, I felt like I was part of the family. I didn't want to leave. Eventually, they did ask me to leave on Saturday night. They said, sir, this is not your home. But I was a little bit bummed to hear that the sound in the room was not all that great. And I was not in a position to be able to work on that. Having said that, listening back to the show itself, it's it was a really good show. Like, I felt so disconnected from you. For folks who didn't hear yesterday's show or don't know what's going on, I had caught COVID. And so I was up in, like, the rafters. I was, like, up socially isolated with, like, my audio board. And you guys were all down below. And because of that, I felt a real disconnect between you and the show and what was going on.

And I think I was not – I kind of wasn't helping with that feeling because I think I go into sort of a, like, foxhole mentality when we do the show live. which is like I assume that the people in the audience are going to lob a grenade of disappointment at me at any moment so I'm just kind of in like survival mode so like my pace is so much more frantic when it's there's an audience and I'm I don't let I don't leave very much room for other people to jump in like I just I don't actually really love how I get in those moments and so I was just kind of motor mouthing along luckily Veeves was able to get a few things in which also my family big veeves fans i think veeves may have been the breakout star of the weekend um but then also you andrew i felt like i felt bad because because also you weren't in my field of vision i would just be talking and then i would just hear someone i'd be like god that sounds like andrew and then i would look up and it would be you because where we were positioned because of the speakers were pointed away from us so we literally like i actually couldn't hear you for a lot of the show so i'm sorry if i made you feel left out i did not mean to do that no

Well, actually, that's why I was—and also, I was just in a weird headspace anyway. There's a lot of weirdness about my position in that show. But if you go back and listen to the tape, it actually sounds way more relaxed and bantery than maybe you would expect. I don't know if you—have you had a chance to listen at all?

Oh, I don't listen to TVTL. I've got a pretty big backlog of The Daily and 99% Invisible. No, I actually have meant to, but I just didn't get a chance yesterday.

I actually just asked you that so I could pause for a second and cough because

Apparently, I still do have a little bit of a cough. I didn't realize that I was coming into today's show with that. But maybe I'm talking too much here.

What percentage – let me ask you this. What percentage of the show is dictated by you buying a moment to cough and mute your microphone? I don't know.

I mean, you know, come on, man. I'm sick. Give me a break there. Absolutely.

No, no, no. There's no judgment behind that. I'm just curious because you'll say that sometimes. You'll be like, I actually just needed a sip of my water there. And I'm like, wait, how much of the stuff I'm saying, sometimes when the hacky sack comes flying at me, it's really, there's something else going on completely related that I thought we were playing hacky sack and we're playing coffee sack.

Well, I just feel like asking you, hey, have you heard it yet? Like, that was kind of a bad toss, but I really did. I just like, I feel fine. I feel fine. I just, every now and then it'll just sort of grab me and maybe I should, again, maybe relinquish the microphone a little bit because it's just going to tickle my throat even more. But I really was happy to hear that the podcast experience seemed much more natural sounding than I thought it was going to.

Good. Well, that was the calculation that I was making, you know, I guess on stage. And as much as there was a stage, we were just kind of on the ground level with everyone. But I was like your voice where I was, it was a bit muffled for me. Yeah. And I think maybe that was a bit of an issue with that with that speaker. But I thought if we stop and we do like a million rounds of sound testing with the audience here, what's going to happen is what we notice, and this is really the least interesting place for me to take this, but it seemed like it was a challenge to get all of, to get all the different microphones and the music and things all working at the same time in the speaker. It was kind of like something was always going to be a little bit out of whack. And I knew you, this is the one thing I knew, Andrew, was that you were very, very conscientious about the recording you were making. You had headphones on. You were looking at the levels. I was like, if Andrew likes the levels on this recording, that's the, I mean, again, the people who came to hang out and see the show, I want them to be able to hear it as best as possible. But I just thought, if we stop this and we spend 15, 20 minutes going, how about now? How about now? Okay, now Genevieve talked. Now let's play a drop. i was like i bet you these people would rather we just do the show they'll all listen to it as the podcast later and then we can all get to the mulberry in a reasonable time i sort of agree i

felt like so before we start recording the podcast we always come out and do a little hello to the audience that is just in the room right and it's a chance to kind of talk about the business of the show and say okay you know we're gonna i mean i don't think we did it this time but sometimes in the past it's kind of like hey we got mics in here so make sure that we can hear you so it sounds like we're in a room with people like there's a little bit of a behind the scenes and while i i know that you don't you said you don't want to spend 15 minutes on a sound check obviously we don't want to spend 15 minutes on a sound check with a group of people but i do think that we could have spent probably 60 seconds i feel like maybe you don't trust me enough to like not rabbit hole on those things um but i'm conscientious of like there's a bunch of people in the room i feel like if we had although it here's what i really think at the end of the day it is like when i came in i was like oh no is your microphone all distorted and i still don't have a good answer to that i don't know if you and genevieve and your mom sounded

distorted in the room i i think only you sounded a little bit distorted i think ours sounded pretty

okay and that's the thing if it was just me i feel like that would have been something if you just said hey andrew bring your mic down a little bit like the audience could have dealt with that and then that would have been fine because i remember i looked down at you at one point and I said how's the sound and you just did that thing where you shook your hand like not so great but then I didn't know what to do with that and so I was just up there the whole time thinking like oh no the sound is bad but I don't know what to do with it which is why I was glad to hear that but I don't think you were wrong because I saw on like some social media today somebody had posted a photo and said great time the sound was iffy but great time so I don't know if it was just me or not I just feel like you know I'm pretty you know me I like I want everybody to have a good experience i want the room to sound good i was very relieved to hear that i actually think the podcast recording turned out pretty dang good and i think if the circumstances were different you know i could have spent more time before the before the audience had had filled in before the tens had filled in maybe like going in that secret back room where you knew i was having audio issues because levels were pinging and everything but i was like i just can't i can't deal with like covid and the fact that i'm up in the rafters and everything i just couldn't deal with everything at once so at least we got a good podcast out of it i yeah i agree and by the way just so you know

i don't my calculation i was making was not um it was not impacted by me thinking oh andrew's gonna just like andrew's gonna torpedo the show by doing a 30 minute no it wasn't even that what i what i everyone else's mic sounded fine yours sounded a little muddy but also it was hard to tell because at first you had a mask on. Yeah.

So it was a little bit difficult to know if it was the mask on, glasses on, hair up, or if it was, and then you took the mask off. And it did sound a lot better when you were not wearing your mask. And you were, I just want to be very clear, you were so far away from everyone. There was nobody within like 100 feet of you, or even on the same, not only were you 100 feet from everyone, but you were also 15 feet above them. Yes. It was, you were, it was very, it was beyond socially distanced. So I think I couldn't quite in and again, I'll totally own the fact that I think my I have this real ticking clock that ticks a little too fast. And it's definitely it's definitely tied into my own insecurity, like, you know, of like if anything goes even slightly wrong or it feels like the the the pace has stopped or like people are kind of like like I have this idea in my mind that if literally there's one second of silence, the whole audience will just go like, what are we even doing? here which is not what will happen it's my own like insecurity so i think my i think that being an issue for me plays into me being like well we'll just like we'll just it's just andrew's mic it's a little bit muddy but i know we're getting a good recording let's just go but i do actually wish that i would have troubleshot it a little bit is that the past tense of troubleshooting you just rarely hear of yeah somebody use troubleshot in the past tense or troubleshoot Troubled, troubled shoot, troubled. Do we have a show title? But anyway, so, yeah. So, again, I'm really glad to hear that the recording was good and that, you know, and that this thing that many, many more people in the wider world will get to hear and get to experience it as if they were there. And again, I feel like the after party was so fun that I think I'm hoping anyway. And the feedback that I got, I've even been getting emails from folks who came out was that a good time was had by all. And, you know, I think it was a big success and also kind of showed me something about our show, because that was the first time we've ever done the show in a place that's not effectively a bar, you know, or or a venue like a theater or a venue where there's also a bar.

Oh, I see. Oh, you're specifically the alcohol content. I see what you're saying. Yeah.

Well, the alcohol, the fact that it's not lit in a sexy way. I mean, it's a Quaker church, you know, it's like really bright. It's, you know, like, it's a very, like, I think I made a joke that the most sober you've ever been like, that was the most sober I think I've ever been in my life. And I don't drink very much anymore. And I was like, this is aggressively sober as an environment, like, which, you know, is not how we typically do live shows. usually there's a certain amount of kind of you know just the all the things that you did a theater in fact i have this on the mind because i'm going to interview the singer maggie rogers out at this big sound stage where they approximate an arena tour and part of that is because there's a certain you know there's lighting there's and you know there's a lot of stuff that goes into something feeling fun and and festive versus something feeling maybe a little churchy and i was worried about that going in but we had such a good time it was a great show the listeners enjoyed it i enjoyed doing it um and so i was like wow we can actually like we can do this show pretty much anywhere where where where there are two or more gathered in our names there will tbtl be in their midst when did this show turn into the biola hour is what i'm really trying to understand who did

seth mary that's all i'm trying to figure out now i don't want to ruin the bit here and i know that we have to be a little bit tight on time today or we are tight on time so we have to be a little um uh god i'm having trouble with words today we need to be careful with our time but i was going to say without i mean i guess i'm just ruining it now but like one thing i loved is never in the actual podcast do you mention your attire not i mean one time you said i'm wearing these fake glasses that are sliding off my nose and at some point i may need my real glasses but Like, the people who weren't there and didn't see photos from the event and just listened to yesterday's podcast probably are just picturing you in, what, like maybe a sport coat? What do you usually wear at a TBTL event?

Yeah, maybe a sport coat, probably a collared shirt, you know, try to look a little bit put together if I can. I thought, and I guess I failed because I forgot about the glasses thing, I thought it would be funny if I was dressed as Benjamin Franklin and it made no reference. yes i wondered if you did that at any point yeah i think that was uh but and then you also you dressed up like the phantom of the opera and let me just say andrew for whatever the you know for whatever the things from a technical standpoint that we wish would have been maybe a little different the moment that you walked out in that outfit i laughed i i laughed in a like a genuine non-performative way in a way that i don't i can't remember the last time i have actually been

that amused by something and it's a lot of it's because when you just looked funny as hell but also because i know you hate that kind of shit like i had i had a fan of a i had my glasses on

over top of the phantom of the opera mask and i had a cape on but and i was ready to go and i was ready to go and i was staying i mean i practiced you know we had like an hour and a half for me and i was like thinking about you know it's probably good to have that downtime to maybe think about you know kind of like some things that would come up on the show or whatever but it did not occur to me until literally the second that you said my name and I looked down a little bit because I'd been looking in the mirror and my glasses were fine everything I looked down at the doorknob of the door I was supposed to open and my glasses fell off all of a sudden I was like these things won't stay on and then all of a sudden I'm running out like kind of into my little into my little area there above everybody and I'm kind of making my entrance and I realize these glasses won't stay on if I look down a tiny bit at the board, at my microphone not only could they fall off, they could fall off the balcony and so I was definitely not at my I thought I had prepared for everything and then literally Luke, the last second I was like, oh we have a new problem here

I was worried about that from the get go i said to genevee before you guys went to spirit halloween or wherever you went i was like i'm like i'm worried that the glasses and the phantom mask are not going to coexist peacefully on this man's face you said i know and so like i wasn't shocked by that but but it was a great i mean it literally just for the moment that you stepped down from this chamber into the balcony it was so funny to me i was i because what happened basically was like we got everything all kind of ready to go And then there was like an hour where we, people were coming in and getting seated and hanging out and buying posters and stuff. And we were both kind of hiding out from the audience because like I was going to come in looking like Ben Franklin. You were going to come in Phantom of the Opera style. So I had so much time in the like nursery bathroom. So I was, I got ready in the bathroom that's adjacent to like where, like the, the, there's like a kindergarten there or something there, you know, there's like a little classroom and cribs and stuff. and i just had and i couldn't decide if it was funnier to come in because i had some music playing and i thought my first thought was i was going to come in like a really hyped benjamin franklin like i was going to be dancing and just like off the chain benjamin franklin but then i was really it was warm and i thought if i get off to a bad start with this if i like completely like if i break a sweat early in this event i may never get it back together because it's a nervous making thing and i'm just a lot of you know i've already said i've kind of got some anxiety going so i decided the last second to go with bemused benjamin franklin entrance so it's kind of like hands clasped but in front of my belly oh i was picturing you hyping i was i thought

you were coming out like because i knew the plan but i couldn't see any of this so in my head this whole time you were coming out and doing like i don't know all kinds of um hip-hop dances in your

yeah i had costume i i was a couple things one i just legitimately decided i thought comedically it would be more funny for me to just be like kind of confused benjamin franklin like hmm one day you're discovering electricity and the next day this is what's happening podcasting is a thing also i was i thought it would help me with the sweating as as in i wouldn't be building up a huge sweat and lastly but not least i don't think i had it in me to just come firing out doing the fortnight dance like from an embarrassment standpoint i just i think i probably made this creative decision somewhat based on the fact that it got me out of doing the fortnight dance

yes and i think you're actually right from the sweating standpoint though i don't know about from i maybe disagree i think the fortnight dance would have been hilarious but um that was my issue too is and i i don't know how much of this was flop sweat and how much of it was just because it was really really hot in there but my original plan before we had talked about me dressing up like the Phantom of the Opera was for me just to wear this this kind of darkish green shirt that I looked it up it's it's a surprisingly like somewhat slimming shirt I mean it's just a plain dark green button-down shirt that I got at some like Goodwill store at some point in my life and like I don't know about a year ago I was like hey this thing is actually kind of flattering I mean I should buy more and I tried looking it up using the tags inside the collar and it was like some shirt from Higby's that was sold in like the early 2000s that is no longer sold so I'm just I've never even heard of Higby's I think it was Higby's it's something like some like um you know

anchor department store making the shirts that are surprisingly flattering on Andrew you didn't

have Higby's out here maybe it was JCPenney because I probably got it out here but something like that and you can't buy these anymore anyway point is I like this shirt it's relatively flattering on me when When I brought it to Philly, I assumed I'd be on the, you know, just kind of on the main stage or whatever. But I was like, yeah, but it is a shirt that does not hide pit stains at all. And so like, am I playing a very dangerous game here? It turns out I was, but luckily I had it wrapped in a cape because I was dressed up as the Phantom of the Opera. And when I walked out, my body just released all, and this might've been the sickness too. It might've been a little bit of the Rona too because I'd been whatever because I had a bit of a fever like my body just released all of the sweat in my torso and like pit stains be damned this whole shirt went from zero to 600 in pure soakedness I'm having trouble with words today and so I was like well thank god for that I can't even tell you what was happening to me up there so this all was happening with my glasses falling off and my body releasing all of this stuff in that moment and then I go back and I listen to the tape I'm like wow you sounded relatively normal given that all this stuff's going on so i guess uh i'm just now celebrating my own ability to stay calm under pressure well i often say on the show

not all heroes wear capes but as a saturday night you were you were heroic and you were in fact Greg a cake.

Yes, exactly. Thank you for being a tan.

Hey, let's thank some of our donors today. That was the other thing I was trying to explain to some of my family members on Sunday at my Uncle Chuck's was the business model of TBTL. is that there was let's just say uh what is the usual response which is a slight amount of confusion wait so it it costs money well it doesn't cost money i mean unless you feel like you want to donate okay but so if you don't donate what do you get well well the same thing the same show well why would a bunch of people donate if they don't have to i'm like well because if they don't there won't be a show it's like why would a bunch of people buy tickets come to philadelphia come to the uh friend center and then come to the mulberry with us because this is a special group of human beings folks like uh fluffy nicholas of benson arizona a.k.a alicia yeah i

wasn't sure what to do with that alicia is one of the few people who um used the um pronunciation uh part of the donation form and it looked like the pronunciation was fluffy so i'm guessing

that's a nickname that's why i kind of sent it to you i love that can we uh maybe next year just

have it be what's your nickname yeah i think we can what's your uh it's a whole yeah uh jerome

bergquist of richfield minnesota just goes by jerome which is or seth sometimes depending yes thank you also thanks to shauna madden of kettle falls washington like the chips have you been Have you heard of it? I haven't been or heard. I mean, I think what kettle chips, I guess that's just because they're cooked in a kettle. Kettle Falls, Washington. No, that sounds like a fun place. I literally don't think I've ever heard of Kettle Falls, Washington, unless I've read Shauna's name in years past, and then I've said Kettle Falls before, but that feels like new information to my brain. Thank you, Shauna. It's on the Columbia River. Alexis Loving. Okay. Wait, wait. On the Columbia, the mighty Columbia?

Wait, am I seeing this right? But it's way up. what does the columbia do what do the columbia do um i have it well it does go out to the ocean

through astoria so it's it connects up with the pacific ocean um and but then it also it's an amazing river because not only does it run by where i do the podcast but then it hangs a left it starts going east and west and then it runs through what's called the columbia gorge it separates washington and oregon and then it goes for some distance well i have this all i have

kettle falls and i didn't realize the columbia river goes this far north it must hook way north because i have kettle falls in sort of um northeast washington right on the river uh yeah

map says it's the columbia river yeah it probably goes up and uh does it i wonder if it i don't know if it forms any of the border between washington and idaho but it i could see it going up into canada probably yeah it's gotta go to some big snowpack somewhere yeah kettle falls is right

below the canadian border so that's uh that's a beautiful place well thank you shana again thanks

to alexis loving who's in melrose mass melrose massachusetts thanks alexis and then teha gant

is in olympia washington hey i know where that is i've been there once um nowhere near the columbia

river but a lovely place it's near capitol lake though which is uh which is a beautiful lake that's It's right there at the foot of the Capitol. Taya, thank you. And then thanks to Jennifer Siemens, who's in San Jose, California, another lovely place. Thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL happen. We would not be able to do this without you.

hello and welcome to top story uh our top story today uh bad blood between spirit halloween and saturday night live um the saturday night live they debuted their 50th season is it weird to say that i'm surprised it's only been 50 like i would have thought they've been around like they've they've only been around two years longer than i've been alive it seems like they've been

around forever yeah that's interesting because i sort of feel like i remember the big 50th celebration and i feel like it was like when i was still way younger uh like actually in in in high school i must be thinking of the 30th anniversary or something or maybe the 40th

didn't they do a thing where they had like all a bunch of alums come back and like eddie murphy

and stuff was that for the yeah that must have been the 40th yeah i remember that now that you

say that so there uh gene smart was the host jelly roll who i just can't seem to get away from i i'm starting to wonder if jelly roll is literally following me he was performing or at least he was appearing at that that conference that i went to that i was helping out with in nashville the adjacent conference jelly roll was appearing then i found out that he was performing in Oregon at a state prison and he was wearing one of these outfits that was made by incarcerated people which I've been doing a story about called Prison Blues and now he's on SNL. That one's less of a close connection to me but I just feel like it's Jelly Rolls World and we just live in it right now I actually saw this sketch before I knew that there was any kind of sniping going back and forth about Spirit Halloween Here I'll just play it for you here

Times may be good on Wall Street But on Main Street, communities are struggling. Closed stores, shuttered businesses, empty parking lots. When hard times hit, it's easy to feel like no one cares. But help is on the way. Because when others leave, we show up. We don't see a dead-end town.

We don't see an abandoned Kmart.

We see a spirit. A Spirit Halloween.

Since 1983, Spirit Halloween has been helping our struggling communities by setting up shop in every vacant building in the country for six weeks and then bouncing.

And thanks to us, what used to be a condemned auto zone where a murder happened is once again a thriving business where a murder happened.

That's pretty spot on because the Spirit Halloween down in the town I live near is literally next to an auto zone it's like they really nailed the specific kind of retail business that's somehow still holding it down in an otherwise abandoned kind of uh shopping mall it's interesting because i'm here you know in lancaster and i'm looking out at this wegmans and it is just a thriving concern but it almost feels like a throwback to something because it's like i mean i'm basically my hotel is in like a shopping mall area the kind that in many parts of america has been totally abandoned and is a spirit halloween but for some reason this one seems to be doing great all of the different stores have a lot of business there's no spirit halloween in sight it always just makes me wonder i wonder what accounts for some of these malls doing fine and some of them just being in an auto zone where a murder happened i know you want to

get back to the tape i was gonna i almost said this on the show on um saturday night but i went to spirit halloween to get uh my phantom of the opera mask and cape yeah and um the thing that astounded me was i was in downtown philadelphia i went with genevieve and the spirit halloween was like in a historic building like if you had told me this building was like a building where the declaration of independence was signed like i don't know what it was like once you're inside it was like a normal store or whatever but like we walked up and it's like this beautiful old brick majestic building that they had like i i'm so mad that i didn't take a photo of it

yeah it's like there's something like we've we just have as a society we've surrendered to the idea that any kind of like mall built in the late 90s or you know a shopping plaza that's kind of fallen on hard times that's where a spirit halloween goes not like pennsylvania avenue in philadelphia not main street in pa where like like you said the founders were like you know

hashing out the constitution or something it seems so wrong i mean maybe i'm exaggerating you know its role in american democracy a bit but it definitely was like an old beautiful brick

building we're here providing vulnerable communities with the things they need most wigs that give you a rash single use fog machine by the way that benjamin franklin get up i was

Dolphinately gave me a rash.

Like, I mean, nothing that's, you know, fatal, but I got back to the hotel room because I changed into my normal clothes to go hang out with everybody at the Mulberry. I also it was very important to me that members of my extended family who were only going to see me briefly understood that I don't look like Ben Franklin all the time or even a guy in a Ben Franklin outfit. I really needed to try to, like, let them know that that that's not my look. so i was like quickly changed into normal clothes and got my butt over there so i could catch a few of my cousins and be like this is the real me just i want you i don't want you to be worried

remember this take this home with you take this memory home with you please put this in your

fantasy file what anyway um but like i did notice though when i got back to the hotel eventually that like my chest had all these like red bumps on it from the like frilly those are like a fake kind of frilly lace collar that came with the outfit and then the the wig itself which had this built-in kind of like high foreheaded kind of wharf from star trek the next generation style bald section yeah to give me a higher forehead and in spirit's defense any rashes that you got

this was an amazon purchase i believe right not a spirit that is true okay very true very true i i'm

not trying to put that on spirit you're right don't want them coming after us this is a jeff

bezos problem and costumes of famous characters tweaked just enough to avoid a lawsuit now this

is a great visual i don't know if you actually watched this ad yeah yeah yeah but like one of the great things about spirit that i hadn't really thought of was they don't have the rights to any of this stuff so they have like so i i feel like the picture is like what's clearly supposed to be a minion but it's listed as like chubby yellow worker and then the other one is definitely like uh somebody from charlie and the chocolate factory but they're just called candy slave

candy slave yeah i know that that's been a kind of a bit about a spirit halloween for a while it's like it's never actually called you know it's never called the thing that will get them in copyright trouble and so it's but i did see candy slave that did give me the little

giant lollipop yes yeah but it's not just empty buildings we're investing in it's people by creating six-week jobs for some of america's hardest hit perverts hello before i ring you up

are you over 18 years old no by the way this is mikey day playing and mikey day is you know mikey day is sort of on tbtl i would say he is maybe one of the most he's one of the quietest but most prolific contributors to the tbtl discourse because he's also it's literally illegal that's mikey day right from the before he was on snl just from making these videos with a pretend david blaine he's also one of the david s pumpkins dancers skeleton dancers he and bobby moynihan like mikey day is this kind of just like very subtle like we don't spend a lot of time talking about Mikey Day, but he's a big contributor to the TBTL world.

I get him confused. He's not the guy who yells a lot on I Think You Should Leave, though. That's a different guy, right? Tim Robinson? I realize. Oh, no, Connor. Oh, no, no. Connor O'Malley. The guy who yells a lot. Oh, yeah, Connor O'Malley. Okay, I do get those guys confused a little bit.

But this is where, I have to say, and this is I don't know, Spirit Halloween, they didn't specify that I saw what they were particularly, like, specifically mad about. I would say this is kind of a funny joke, although it does not actually scan with my experience at Spirit Halloween, where I went last year trying to find a Ken Jennings style wig because Becca and I went out as Ken and Barbie, except I was Ken Jennings and she was Barbie. And we ended up just buying some blonde hairspray and she kind of like made my hair look blonde. But I went into the Spirit Halloween in like, you know, Tigard, Oregon or whatever. And I will say this. It's kind of not it's it's a funny joke, except it does not scan with reality. Like, the people that are working at the Spirit Halloween do not have any sort of sketchy vibes, in my experience. Did you see any sketchy vibes at the Spirit Halloween at Constitution Hall in Philadelphia?

I'm glad you asked, because I had almost the same exact thought. Now, I don't have a lot of experience in Spirit Halloweens. Both of them have been TBTL-related, I believe. You and I went into a Spirit Halloween and interviewed a bunch of people for some radio show.

Oh, trying to do a Halloween episode.

Yeah, and I think it got cut from the—I don't think we got great tape there. And then this weekend I went into one for for my cape. But I will say that the fellow who checked us out was like, you know, he's a younger than me. But who isn't these days? But a very nice young man. And they were blasting some sort of I mean, it wasn't like scary Halloween music. It was like that super like sugar crush. Like it's only kids singing some sort of Halloween song. It's just like it was so bad and it just was relentless. We were only in there.

probably five minutes found what we needed but the song never ended i just said to the guy as i was checking out i'm like do you hear this song in your dreams he just looked at me he's like you know it he's like this and several others i cannot get away from the sound he was very down to earth having said that this joke about providing jobs to perverts made me laugh out loud when i saw it

it is so funny except again i i i want to just i want to just defend the the the the good people that are working at spirit halloween i've never noticed them to see i don't know what i don't know what one of these pervs is supposed to look like i haven't gotten any pervy vibes out of anybody there so of course to play the joke up more he's well you'll hear this but he's his character is not allowed to talk to anybody on the age of 18 although he is complimentary about the sexy nurse

outfit that this so i am not legally allowed to talk to you so let me grab one of my associates to help you out, okay? I'm sorry. It's gonna be good, though.

And the best part is, we're able to help struggling areas in real time by stocking, staffing, and opening a new location in minutes. Spirit Halloween. We're not just helping communities, we're also making dreams come true. Excuse me, do you have a Taylor Swift costume? You bet. This isn't Taylor Swift. And neither are you. spirit halloween when you need us we'll be here for six weeks because on november 1st we're gone

and all this junk will be in a dumpster spirit halloween coming and going soon

so that's the that's the sketch that is by the way it ends on a somewhat funny but also just kind of like sort of maybe getting a little too real there which is like what are the landfill implications of the entire you know spirit halloween and other things like it world you know i've got this and again i know that amazon and spirit halloween are not the same thing but now by the way andrew i'm the proud owner of this benjamin franklin outfit which i have with me here in lancaster i guess i'm gonna fly it back to portland tomorrow i don't know what to do with it throwing it out feels weird but i don't know when it's gonna be relevant been again in my life but it's also just like the costumes that don't sell like what's the aftermarket for whatever is the a particularly trendy thing this year which if you if it doesn't sell this year then would it even be worth restocking next year and if not then where do those all go like this it is real single use over there at the spirit halloween yeah maybe i

mean i feel like some of it might be able to be repackaged too i'm not exactly sure i'm not saying

that spirit halloween sure a blonde wig is a blonde wig maybe yeah and you just kind of i think the

joke there by the way by the way when she asked for a the the little girl asked for a taylor swift costume and it says like blonde singing woman or something isn't that what it says something like that so you know maybe it can be repackaged now again i don't i'm not trying to defend them like i think that they are they that they're putting the um environment first but also just maybe from a uh from an economical standpoint it just makes sense to like kind of repackage that stuff i will say this that the um cleaning crew at the windsor hotel walked into room 1405 and found a possibly spooky scene of a black cape and a phantom of the opera mask left on one of the chairs so you did not fly that outfit back west with you no i'm like i'm not genevieve has a big like kind of a tub of halloween um decorations and outfits that she's worn in years past that is just taking up too much room as far as i'm concerned i refuse to contribute to it yeah i don't i don't know what

i'm planning on doing with this ben franklin outfit other than something about throwing it in the garbage just felt bad to me i guess i wanted to throw it in a different garbage i want to throw in a garbage on the west coast or something like you know also oh boy i have these i have said this before on the show but like you remember oh you weren't here for this but i've been on a bit of an underwear saga um because i've realized that like for somebody who you know i acquire a lot of things and i generally like you know i'm i'm very uh i'm very quick to resupply myself with new t-shirts or collared shirts or tech pants from j crew whatever it is i think i need and the one area that i don't do that is underwear i just don't like i'm wearing very tattered very threadbare like boxer briefs because i don't know i just i don't i don't think to like i don't think about that as an investment that's worth making then i finally found these tommy john um boxer briefs that i really like they also didn't have any noticeable logo on them i do not want to be doing an ad for someone when i'm just trying to wear my underwear and and but these were like, I don't know, like it's a three pack and it's like $90 or something.

like twenty five dollars per pair jeez um i know right but then it's also like well i don't know i mean i spend a lot of money on other stuff that's dumber than that like what is what's more central to my level of personal happiness than the underwear that i'm wearing you know every day but all that is to say i uh i've realized that i had a pair of uh other boxer briefs that just hit the wall today like i was putting them on in philadelphia yesterday i was like these things this is the last this is the last gasp for these guys so then of course this morning when i get up to put on my running gear i'm like where i'm not putting this underwear back into the dirty clothes bag and flying it back to portland this is going in the garbage but i also wanted to leave a note for the housekeeping that was like there's nothing gross nothing happened we didn't have a situation that these underwear are in the garbage they just have reached their their time yeah probably best

that you don't leave a note just put them in the bottom of the bag and hope they don't find them And by the way, that was exactly what I did. That was a Peskin move that I remember hearing about a long, long time ago on his podcast. I think it was the gist that Mike Peskin mentioned that his move is if he's traveling, he travels with the underwear that's at the end of its life. And that way he can and maybe even said for T-shirts as well. And I've done this from time to time. Like if you're not going somewhere where you need to be presentable or feel presentable or if you just have like kind of a travel day, like maybe wear your crappy underwear. Not literally, by the way. I mean, the underwear that's at the end of its life, wear that on a travel day and then just throw it away. You don't have to pack it up and take it back. You're you're one pair of underwear lighter for your trip back.

You'll be walking through the airport like, God, why did this bag feel so light? There's one less pair of jockeys in there. So Spirit Halloween did this thing, which has actually was a was a meme. I want to say one, if not two Halloweens ago. I don't know if you saw this when it was first popping up, but it was, I don't even know if it started with Spirit Halloween. I'm guessing it didn't, right? But do you know the meme I'm talking about?

Yeah, I think it started as a Spirit Halloween thing. It's like the Spirit Halloween.

So they started, it wasn't someone else.

Oh, I'm sorry. It's based on the Spirit Halloween costume bags, but I don't think that they did it themselves, the Spirit Company. No, I think this was just a funny meme that started.

Right, exactly. I think that someone else had the idea, but then Spirit Halloween decided to jump on it. And so their way of getting back their official X, formerly known as Twitter, whatever X on this matter was, they wrote, we are great at raising things back from the dead at NBCSNL. And then it's, you know, a Spirit Halloween costume. I guess it's supposed to be Saturday Night Live because that's what's written on the bag. And then it says, this is supposed to be a costume to make you an irrelevant 50-year-old TV show. Includes dated references, unknown cast members, and shrinking ratings. So that's what Spirit Halloween has to say about Saturday Night Live.

Although this is probably good for Spirit Halloween, generally speaking. Them being offended and creating this meme probably just helps them. You know what I mean? even like kind of the light ribbing, and even if you do accuse them of being the employment opportunity of perverts. There's just something so funny about just throwing the word pervert around in 2024. Like, I feel like it's not used as much. Like, generally speaking, though, this is all good for Spirit Halloween, right?

I guess, you know, any attention is good attention, and it's reminding people that this is where they can go get their Halloween stuff. I mean, a couple of things. One, I actually find the sort of whole business story of Spirit Halloween to be quite fascinating. You know, it was like literally a guy in somewhere like, I want to say Orlando or something, who had a clothing store. I think it was a primarily women's clothing store. And then he started stocking some amount of like Halloween related stuff, costumes and the like, and realized, oh, that stuff is flying off the shelves. And eventually it just became all he sold was Halloween stuff. And then, you know, of course, as we've already talked about, this business model of like moving hermit crabbing in to these buildings that aren't being used for anything. And just the logistics of that, just the number of Spirit Halloween regional employees whose job it is to just go find these spaces and then get them, you know, turned around quickly enough, et cetera. Like, I think the whole thing is fairly interesting. I also and this is like a weird place to take this as we're getting close to the end of this episode. But like, I also don't think that spirit tweets this tweet, if not for the presidency of Donald Trump. And because I think that there has been a coarsening now, look, Saturday Night Live, they're they're they're firing shots at Spirit Halloween. And like, I think it's OK for Spirit Halloween to be offended by this. but like we are in a different world where corporations are like calling like unknown cast members failing ratings it's very it just smacks of like trump failing new york times sort of energy like

There would have been a time where maybe the company in question would have said, we thought this was a really unfair depiction of our company that employs thousands of people and provides a lot of joy in the lives of our customers. That used to be the way you responded to something. And I think because we've just, the discourse has become more coarse, I say thanks to Donald Trump, that like now the company is just going like, nobody watches it, unknown cast members, failing ratings, irrelevant. like it's just a way of of talking about a tv show that i just don't think would have flown 10 years

ago it's interesting i uh i don't know i mean certainly okay the the actual attacks like the the actual insults you're right those are trumpy and i'm with you on that i do think though that corporate culture has changed in a way it's kind of like if if you know like i mean to go to like wendy's being like kind of the the prime example but like all kinds of brands like no there's

what's that yeah just like letting their yeah the nugs with wendy's they were doing a lot of stuff around that like real kind of unhinged social media i did i didn't know about the nugs thing

in particular but wendy's i mean for a long long time now i think of them as they they came out as kind of one of the main major american brands to really leverage their social media and be very irrelevant or i'm sorry irreverent um on there and to like kind of like kind of starts you know little wars especially in the kind of the heyday of twitter and so like instead of releasing a corporate statement or something like that just letting the the the social media team kind of have fun with it like i think it's kind of a combination of both of those things although you're definitely right about the kind of fail oh the failing show of snl boy once you put that in trump's voice i can't unhear it oh you're welcome yeah by the way did you see the spirit halloween meme that was going around pretty heavily last week it was you know it's the typical meme of the packaged costume thing only this one is just sort of blank inside and it says spirit former gifted child nothing included when people ask what are you supposed to be just reply I was supposed to be a lot of things I've seen like 500 people post that yeah it must be a lot of like former gifted children in my social media feed because I've been

seeing a lot of that one on instagram this year i this is where i'm so lucky that i never had any promise yeah nobody was ever putting me in any kind of gifted or talented programs nobody was like i it's funny too because well this is a this is not where i need to take this and you're right i think that the i think the venn diagram overlap of people who like our show and people who probably were in sort of advanced programs is probably pretty high so i want to be careful about this But I, I remember being in a serious relationship with someone who had been in the gifted and talented program, you know, and, and it had come up a lot in conversation like this was, you know, I was in gifted and talented. Now I wasn't ever in any of those things. So I don't know what it would feel like. But I remember at times thinking, well, that was then this is now like, it's, it's, I like that I don't have to labor under the burden of having had any promise. So anything I do is just probably just gravy at this point, because nobody was like the hopes and dreams of this family are riding on old LB.

Yeah. Being deeply mediocre in high school really helped the Andy celebrations of his performance in college. I'll tell you that much.

No, I mean, honestly, this like our both of our careers are an absolute miracle. The early indications.

You're absolutely right. But I was just a solid C student. And Cs were not really, like, accepted. Well, I guess I sort of won that war. I was going to say Cs were not accepted in my house growing up. But eventually they were because that's what I was bringing home.

One more thing as we're getting out of here. RIP to Pete Rose. Oh, yeah. I think it's, I mean, the music is playing, so we don't have to labor this. I'm sorry, do you want me to? No, no, no, no, this is good. I think you I think you speak for the listeners when you say it's time to wrap this up. But I just think it's kind of it's quite ironic that they I don't think P. Rose is probably the greatest dude on Earth, but also that they banned him for life from baseball. And now every single flipping commercial is for DraftKings and which is only lining the pockets of these leagues. I just think there's just, there's just, in case you wanted, this is just one more thing today to just help us really put the final nail in the coffin of what is organized sports and how just absolutely fiendishly bad these leagues are, particularly baseball. It's like, you ban the guy for life for gambling, except now it's one of the main revenue streams for your league.

And he did not gamble, he did not gamble in anything regarding his own team, right, for or against, right? No, he did. Oh, he did. No, no, he did. did he did that wasn't great but always for them to win and what he said about it i guess this is why it's slightly i can i can sort of slightly associate with him on this because what he said in like one of his books was it he was like i i you know i never bet for my team to lose he was like i i just i always loved that challenge of playing and then i couldn't have that anymore so then i loved the challenge of managing and then i wasn't ready for it to be over at the end of the game like he he was somebody who wanted to put action on everything because it would heighten the experience and you know that's not a good idea and he also lied about it like he did a lot of bad things and was again i don't think a great guy but every time you see one of those draft king commercials or other things in way and in which mlb has aligned itself deeply with gambling yeah just just know just know that they're bad people that's all yeah just wrap things up on a message of hope that's right spirit halloween costume it's rob manfred and inside it's just uh an empty suit or something i don't know all right thank you for listening everyone we are gonna be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you so please do join us for that in the meantime have a great tuesday take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all power out