Muse

Coop? Coop? Ah! Oh my god! Ginny! Hey, you're here! You're here! Um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Kitty, this is Ganny. I mean, um, Gaddy, this is Kitty. No, what I'm trying and failing to say is, Kathy, this is Gumpy Ah, f*** TBTL

I don't know a lot about business But he did an internet And now the computers like him And Wall Street is Google It's a little bit of a groove

I'm sorry, but when I hear an undeserved compliment It makes my ears want to throw up Oh, your ears are always throwing up about something

He's the handsome devil That came down from heaven To make some great songs and dance forever.

Please understand that nothing personal is intended here against anybody. I don't hate these artists. I'm not trying to say that God hates them. And I'm certainly not trying to get you to hate them.

Listen, please, please, please. If anybody doesn't know the difference between a Valance and a Jabot, I really need you to leave.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL. The show just might be too beautiful to live. There's no whining in football. But every August, football comes to wine country. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it is an absolutely gorgeous day. This is the actual headline in the newspaper this morning.

I feel warm and I'm levitating.

It said, last beautiful day of the year. i was like how how do they know how can they seattle times how can you know for a fact that this is the last nice day we are gonna have maybe for the next eight months that's what they're saying i'm gonna try to enjoy it got out this morning continuing with my 75 heart ish ish ish I was out for a walk yesterday with Becca, and we went to the finish line of the Portland Marathon, where her sister-in-law, Tiffany, was just absolutely crushing it. Qualified for the Boston Marathon and the New York City Marathon. That is how fast this person was running. It was truly inspiring. and um and uh becca turned to me and at some point said are you still doing the 75 hard ish i thought that's how you know it's working that's how you know you've radically reshaped your body your girlfriend goes oh are you still doing that and i was like yes ish mostly and then i realized that the night before i had texted her hey how would you personally cook up a giant vat of pasta If you were just trying to make like a butter sauce on the side. So anyway, yeah, ish is where we're at with it. And episode 4,309 is where we're at with TBTL. Let the fun begin. Another weekend, another financial disaster for a very highly anticipated movie. So who needs a movie? This week, it is The Joker 2 starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. although not enough Lady Gaga for Lady Gaga fans. They are mad. They're saying release the Gaga cut. We'll talk about that. Oh, remember on Friday how the construction guys dug up the television line for my house and I was trying to get Xfinity to X-Fixit, and this was how I felt?

Television is no friend of mine.

Well, something happened over the weekend that now has me talking like this. I love television. So we'll get into that. Oh, and we're going to talk to this guy. Longest running co-bro of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He spent all weekend in the club. So he's moving a little slow here on this Monday morning. He's Andrew Walsh. He's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. So did you go from literally cutting the cable to figuratively cutting the cable since we last spoke?

I would say literally having the cable cut, much to my disappointment, to figuratively cutting the cable and then figuratively jumping for joy. I did not actually jump for joy, but emotionally I was jumping for joy this weekend when I realized how no longer reliant I am on the Comcast Corporation. Can I just, can we just

jump right into this yeah so here's where here's where i would like to start if i may prod you in

a certain way start the week by prodding you i'm fine with prodding poking probing probing i'm gonna

i'm gonna do all those things the three honestly go for the three p's of podcasting um i uh last

we spoke you i'm writing down three p's of podcasting show title and then people get to find out later though that's prodding poking and probing yeah just the three p's of a lot of things

but also podcasting um when we last spoke of course your your cable literally did get sort of severed by some um some construction i'm looking at it right now it's a weird experience because

it's been this conduit this orange protective kind of piping that has the cable in it the coaxial cable has been ripped out of the ground and is still just denuded just sitting there like a reminder of something um yeah so that happened on like i think it's thursday or friday yeah and

so you're like okay well i'll reach out to comcast have them come out fix it i'll have to pay for it but whatever but your real frustration came not with the actual snapping of a cable but when you could not reach a human i mean the the phone trees of comcast slash xfinity are legendary in their gaslighting i mean just legendary and you told us all just a maddening maddening story about to even call it bad customer service would imply a level of customer service that is not fair to bring to it so that's where i started telling you near the end of the show i'm like listen we're 47 it's 2024 chances are at some point you're going to just leave cable behind anyway everything is moving towards apps on our tv you could pay for something like fubo which will provide you with you know power gloves you need like um but here so i want to hear about your kind of transition to fubo but the reason i set it up like this is because what i really want to hear the most about here luke is if and when you told comcast to go screw well let me just start

okay i will tell you if and when but i also will say this andrew i really appreciate friend to friend colleague to colleague small business owner to small business owner your feedback in my life on friday business owner to shrinking business owner i mean i want to honor this andrew jalapeno jalapeno jalapeno because like strangely enough it had not occurred to me until our conversation on friday that there might be another way i thought that my fate was to just continue doing essentially hand-to-hand combat with a major corporation in america called comcast to try to get some tiny relief on this problem i was having and you said what you just basically what you just said which was like at some point we're not going to be using a physical coaxial cable anymore maybe that someday has come and when you said that a little something in my brain shifted again it was towards the very end of the show this is why you listen to the whole show people you never know when these moments of personal growth will occur um and i was like okay okay maybe i think i might have even said problem or a blessing like you know me i'm very big on this perhaps principle and i know the stakes are incredibly low here for this i want to start with that but this idea that when something that seems like it's bad happens it might actually not be that bad or vice versa like we just don't know what the outcome of something will be based on the immediate moments after it happens or we find out about it or whatever it's probably good to try to keep an open mind on these things so i went from being like my my one goal is to get some technician out here to restring this thing so i can continue to have my very entertainment life a overcharged and be highly reliant on this company that's so bad at this and then all of a sudden i thought well or why don't i just take like a little bit of time and why don't i look into realistically what the other options are and uh and so i went with kind of like the most widely promoted version of this i think there are a few products out there over the weekend our friend television's chris hayes checked in to say he loves youtube tv that's his kind of go-to for for cord cutting i went with fubo one because i think i own some amount of fubo stock i have like a robin hood like investing account that's got like a not a lot of dough in it but And at some point I was talking to a mutual friend of ours who's actually kind of like a stock whiz. And she's got, I think, a pretty decent portfolio. And I was like, what do you recommend? She was like, well, Fubo is going to get all of this live sports streaming stuff. So let's get into that Fubo life. And so I think I bought that. I think she suggested Fubu. I think you got that wrong. Oh, for us, buy us. I think she suggested JNCO. Judge none. Invest what?

But I do think for whatever it's worth, because I've gotten some emails, you know, like I've been copied on. emails maybe mostly to you from listeners who are just like not unlike television's chris hayes saying like youtube is the way to go although i do think there are complications getting your local like mayor like i don't think that that is a way of getting local mariners games and so you're set up whether or not you're going to want to watch mariners games next season at least this way you

should be set up to watch them on fubo that's right there's the question of the on-field product yes that's its own but the but do i have access to the on-field product is the other thing yes so i want to just be clear by the way uh we are not sponsored by fubo television uh at all i mean i guess in a roundabout way i am because i do own over 500 of fubo stock so you know i want to just put that out there i'm the nancy pelosi of podcasting i i just stay right ahead of the curve on some of these major investments that i then actually play a role in anyway i uh so the thing was they i finally was able to get a hold of someone at the comcast corporation after the show and they were going to send somebody out but the somebody was not going to be able to come out until a very inconvenient time for me like it was like we were going to be doing the show and i I was like, are there any other windows of time? And they said no. So then it was, except for like in two more weeks. And so I kind of actually had the option of bringing them out to try to fix this, but I had already started thinking differently about this whole problem. And so, and again, this just speaks to a lack of imagination on my part. I know we've talked about on the show endlessly. I know that a lot of people already understand this, but our televisions, our modern televisions are just a giant laptop. It's a giant screen that's connected to the internet and that's how you should think about it And I was thinking about it as a giant screen that was connected to a cable in the ground I know that I'm not saying anything very, you know earth-shaking here But this is just really and truly like it had not occurred to me That my television was also connected via Wi-Fi until you and I talked about it on Friday And so I went in and I started just gorgling about for like what are the ways for me to get the different kinds of content that I want to get, which was literally live sports, primarily football games, maybe next year baseball games, depending on if the Mariners actually do anything, um, that makes me feel enthusiastic. And then MSNBC programming, like live over the air news content, primarily MSNBC, maybe some CNN in a pinch. Right. But like, And not, I'm going to get these programs 24 hours later or on some sort of other kind of, because that's a thing I've run up against. Even like Becca's TV in Portland, she doesn't pay for cable. But there's like, with her Roku, there's a certain amount of what is promoted as live television. But if you actually go through it, it's this weird, like, uncanny world of like, it's ABC News Minute. Yeah. That sounds like a thing. but then you turn it on and it's like it's not something that was recorded today it's not like but it's billed as live television but it's definitely some pre-packaged thing from a while ago that's i don't know it's a lot of there's a lot of dark web out there that i've frankly been

a little intimidated by but so i just went okay uh can i get uh msnbc live on this and by the way I was doing all of this finally at like, by the time this all came to a head, it was like 5.15 local time p.m., which is 15 minutes into our friend Chris Hayes' show. And there's nothing I enjoy more on a Friday night than breaking my 75 hard-ish, cooking up a lot of pasta, and watching our friend Chris kind of describe the world. And so I, like, sign into this Fubo thing. I look at my TV, which, by the way, has been internet connected the whole time via Wi-Fi. It's talking to my Wi-Fi router. I sign up for this Fubo thing on my laptop. It's on the, like, I have my TV as a Vizio. It's just one of the icons on the Vizio. I go to it. It knows that I'm me because it's figured it out from my laptop. And I just scroll over to MSNBC and I turn it on. And Chris is 15 minutes into his show And I'm just like I was so psyched that I took a video of it And sent it to you And then I just started looking at all of the other Sports watching options on there And it's like so much more sports Than I was getting paying my $200 A month to Xfinity Again I know this sounds like an ad for these people I'm sorry This is just what's been happening to me this weekend It's been a big thing And there's still much more to this story But like I was just like Oh, oh, oh They also have a billion live local channels like it's just it's for me It's all the stuff that I needed plus then some and I think it's 80 bucks

a month i'm gonna pay for this and i was just like it was just one of those moments where i just felt so liberated from this whole other thing that's been really sticking in my craw for a long time because of all the things we've said about what a horrible company cable town is and and like feeling like i just didn't have other than doing something where i have to kind of like put my laptop next to the tv and put an hdmi cable and find a some kind of questionable website to play the whatever and like i just that's the thing i don't want to do i want to be able to pick up the remote control and do my thing and it was completely possible here's where it gets even better i know i still haven't answered the question about breaking up with xfinity i've got a tight five on that this is what i didn't even realize about this thing being a website being an app it's just in my phone at all times like what i could not do when i had stupid xfinity was access the content I was paying for when I wasn't on my personal Wi-Fi router.

Now, I do want to give you a warning. Unless you've already gone out and tried this, I do think that they probably block some live streaming sporting events if you're not on your own Wi-Fi. I don't know exactly how Fubo does it, but I've been part of various programs where I'm legally paying for programming that I can access remotely, except because of these deals with various leagues like the NFL and the MLB, have you gone somewhere else and actually streamed a local sporting event already?

I've gone. Really? I've gone multiple somewhere else. Let me tell you about my Sunday, bro. Yeah. I was living, other than the Seahawks playing a spectacularly bad game, I was living the absolute dude at places where normally football is not watched because of a romantic relationship, but watching football scenario that we've seen depicted in so many commercials.

You were at a bris with your phone hidden on your lap.

I was at a bridal shower. It was, so the Sunday I was at Becca's house and like what I had decided, this is my general, maybe as I start to tell this story, I realize that this is not a great outcome Because when I was going into this Sunday I knew the Seahawks were playing the New York Giants I was like It's a beautiful Sunday I want to spend some time with my girlfriend I don't know when the Seahawks I actually didn't know if it was in Seattle or in New York I was like I'm not going to let this control my day It's going to be what it is I have it recorded Well actually that's another thing I didn't because I was off of my previous TV relationship In which case I had like the DVR set to get all this stuff right? But I was like, whatever. I'm not, this is not going to be the thing that my whole day revolves around. And then it was like, I don't know, we were hanging out at Becca's place and it was like about the time for the game. And she was on the phone with some customer service thing. And I was like, you know, that, uh, app that's now talking to my giant laptop in my living room, that should also probably work on my telephone. Right? So I fired it up and within a minute I'm watching well I actually wasn't watching the Seahawks game because weirdly enough this was when there was this crazy overtime game between I want to say it was the Bengals and the Ravens and so that was on the channel the local channel that was supposed to be playing the Seahawks Giants but they would not break away from the Bengals and Ravens because that game was so compelling and so when that game ran its course then they switched over to my team's playing but I'm just sitting there on my phone I'm sitting on Becca's couch she's on the phone with the Nike Corporation trying to work out some returns. I just have my phone sitting right there on the coffee table and I'm just watching the Seahawks play. Oh, nice. And it took zero hassle. And then after that, I just put it in my pocket, turned the game off for a while, put it in my pocket and we go do some errands in town. We go watch the end of this marathon that was going on. I had to go to the Apple store to get some of this computer stuff. I had, we still don't know what it was, Andrew, but my computer that i use when i'm traveling when i'm on like you know whatever work travel and i'm talking to you on it that computer i was always complaining to you about it before the show would sort of be like this thing has gotten so kludgy yeah um i took it in the apple store and the guy was like well i don't know what's going on but um let's say that this thing has 500 gigabytes of storage he goes yeah like um three to four hundred of it is this one email and we couldn't even figure out what the email was it was clearly a virus something had like oh my god somehow my somehow something had snuck into my inbox that was itself half of the storage on the computer and he was like we can delete that and that was like okay he goes i mean i don't know

He goes, it could also interrupt your email service or whatever, but he goes, it also could just, it could re-add itself at some point. We don't know. But just, I was like, let's please delete that. So he was like, okay. So he goes, I have to have you do it. I'm not allowed to drag it in. So I drag it into the garbage can on my desktop.

So you have eyes on this email. Like, I'm so curious. You don't.

It's a string of code. It's not like, I can't see who it's from. I can't see. It's probably a junk email that I literally had no idea was even like in my spam folder or whatever. um and and and so we like i drag it into the garbage can i hit delete or erase or whatever and he goes it might take a minute i probably took 20 minutes for the computer to delete this oh my god but let me tell you brother once it was deleted it was like my computer took

the most satisfying bm of all time this is both like very this is both like frustrating and relieving to me at the same time just hearing it like I want to know more about this email I want to know like what it was doing I told you sometimes when I am very anxious I will compare my brain to a computer that has something like this like it's got some mistake in it and it's churning and churning and churning away it's a piece of code that's bad it's a piece of code that's churning away and now the fans are going because it's like it's working too hard and it's kind of like sometimes that's me when I have to go to KUW at the end of the week or something like that but like Dude, delete the file. That would be my recommendation. Well, for me, it would be more of a lobotomy, but you can lobotomize computers, and it's very satisfying.

Oh, my God. I felt physical relief from this happening. But here's the other thing. While it's doing this, while it's churning, I'm also just kind of keeping tabs on the football game. And it's just on my phone. I have the sound down. I'm not making everybody listen to it. And I'm also not just totally locked in on it. It's just like, hey, I want to see what's going on. I can just watch it. Then we go back ahead and make some returns. We walk over to Zara. And then she's like in line for the Zara thing. I'm going to go sit on that bench. And I'm sitting on the bench watching the game. Then we're done. Then we go to Nordstrom. Same thing. It's like when I had some downtime, I will like kind of check in and watch it. But then when we're walking places, I'm not like staring at it as I'm on the sidewalks of Portland. It's just like put it in my pocket, forget about it for the time being. And then we just had a really lovely afternoon. And then when it was time for me to start heading back in this direction, I get in the car and I was pretty, at that point, I was pretty certain that the outcome was going to be pretty bad based on how the Seahawks had been playing and what the sort of situation was. And I was quite surprised to see that we actually were lining up to kick what should have been a tying field goal. I was like, wow, this actually really came together better than I was expecting. And then, of course, the field goal got blocked. and then I was just sitting in my car watching this and I was like alright well that was a bummer the way that ended and I just like put the phone away and just got in my car and started driving home it was just like the dream of the 90's was real I was just taking this content around with me interacting with it when I wanted to ignoring it when it wasn't relevant to my experience nobody was like telling me again maybe I got lucky with the way this particular game was being distributed on the platform maybe I'll run into some problems for future stuff but like what I can say is like two and a half days into this it is so it is not just a cheaper but is a manifestly better system for me personally based on what my kind of content needs are now we still haven't gotten to

the xfinity part where you tell xfinity to go screw but i also would like to now add a layer to that which is like are you at all now that you've taken my i think we can call it sage advice about cutting the cable board. I'll absolutely call it sage advice, dude. Will you consider also moving companies as far as your internet provider? Because that's basically what I did. We got rid of cable and we got rid of Comcast altogether and we use, I'm blanking on the name of it, I've told you. CenturyLink. CenturyLink. And all they do is provide me incredibly fast service that has never had an issue and had great customer service at the beginning. And so I'd love it if you could just leave your Comcast behind.

Okay, that gets us into when I delivered this kind of epic cinematic moment of telling, you know, Comcast, talk to the hand because the face don't understand. So what happened was...

Is that about how it went down? It was about what the reaction was?

It was, I would say, even less sort of phased. Slightly even more muted, yes. do you think it had to do with me using some of the primo burn language of the early 2000s i so i um well like i did i first of all i was i was hasty as i as i often am andrew as soon as this fubo tv thing came together that was friday night i was like Oh, first thing I did was I literally just for no reason, by the way, on Friday night, just completely unplugged the cable box, took out, you know, like took it out, got the remote, wrapped it up, dusted it off, put it by the door. I was like, this thing's going back to from whence it came. What I didn't know was, do I have some kind of contract that's like a penalty if I, you know, sometimes I'll get you into those and stuff. You know, I was like, I don't really like this is a little premature. I'm just going to go down to the store with this on Saturday and be like, take this, you know? so there is a xfinity store that's down in town and i went down there and i'm just walking in with the stuff i haven't cleared this with anyone i haven't talked to anybody on the uh you know like 1-800 number about this a because you can't get a hold of them because i don't want to go through let's say i just do get a hold of someone i don't want to go through like all of the things they're going to do to try to like get me to not cut the cord you know what i mean cut the cable Like, I don't want to have to go through the, no, I really mean this. No, I really mean this. I really don't. So I go down there, and I'm kind of like, I've got my, I've got the armor of God on, as we used to say in the church.

I have some questions about this location, too, because I feel like this story is not even quite to a half hour yet, and so I want to extend it as much as possible. I want to know about the Comcast store, because as a young adult dealing with Comcast stores, I found Comcast stores to be the weirdest places. They were like under a garage somewhere, like literally the one in L.A. was like you had to enter it through a parking garage that was next to the mall. Like I remember it just being the weirdest place. And then here next to that Chuck E. Cheese in Koreatown. Yes. And then where the Korean spa is. And then here in Seattle, like we always, actually not too far from my house here, there was like the Comcast store, which became like the, it became just like, I think it's called just like the NBC. It had the NBC logo. You mean the one that's off of Aurora Avenue? It's like a few blocks, it's like two blocks off of Aurora Avenue, yeah, by Stone.

That's where I once stood next to Basketball Hall of Famer Bill Russell, who was also returning his cable box.

Well, you can't do that anymore because that is now just like closed because he's dead and also because that is closed down. And the last time I went to go to a Comcast store, I looked it up and it's like the game has changed. They now see their Comcast stores as being more like an Apple store or any of the high tech.

Where they sell a lot of like cinnamon Coke. It's a lot of like it's a lot of technology that's just two clicks over from the like they have, you know, something that. That kind of looks like an Apple Watch, but is it?

Yeah, and it's like kind of nice in there, and it's like too much space. And so the last time I went to one, they're like, no, no, you can't go to that janky one in North Seattle off of Aurora. You have to go to like Ballard and like that. And so what was the status of this one?

This one was somewhere in between the two. You're very right that they've decided that these stores are going to be kind of a place that you can come to do all kinds of things related to the Xfinity products. You know, again, they sell – they've got phones there. They've got, like, watches, like digital watches, but that are, again, not anything I've ever exactly seen before. I don't know if, like, an Xfinity-branded piece of technology. You don't want a Comcast watch? there's just 8000 flat screens going with these loops of content you could see much of it trolls three related you're like you know it's a lot it's a lot going on and then there's these different pods what's interesting and this has happened because i have i i um you know had to have this whole process go down when i was in portland because i was like moving my stuff from the i an apartment in portland and uh i moved that over to up here but i had to take the gear back there because it's a different state so i was in that there was an xfinity store right by my old place in portland is the point and what i noticed in both cases of this one that i went to and down in like longview washington and that one is they're also a place where there are a significant number of people older than me who are like have bringing in a physical check to pay their bill ah it's an it's interesting because what it wants to be is the apple store but what it really is is a post office like it's where if you have a cable bill but you're nervous about sending your check through the mail forget auto pay it like in both places i've seen someone bringing in and like an envelope with a check in it going here's my cable bill for the month like they want to be in the future of technology but they still got one foot firmly planted in the we are the people who send content through a cable to your house right it's funny that you mentioned a postal service because

i don't feel like i did a other than saying that it used to you have to access these places off of parking garages or what have you the vibe of the kind of what i'll call like the original style comcast places we're not Not stores at all, but they were very much like rundown USPS. You know, like think about the worst post office you've been to. It would be like that. It would just be like all like dirty tile and a long line of absolutely miserable people.

Almost like just almost everyone's just holding equipment. They're trying to get rid of.

Yes, exactly. And almost somewhere between the worst because some postal offices are quite nice, I'm sure. But, you know, the worst post office combined with like maybe a DMV vibe or what have you. Now, the one thing about the stores now, though, and maybe this makes the employees there feel good, is they do have a leg up as far as foot traffic is concerned because their phone service, in quotes, is so terrible that that is why you didn't even attempt to do this by phone. You're just like, no, I'm going to go get in front of a human being because this is the only way to interact with this company.

Yes, absolutely. So I walk in with the stuff, but again, I haven't really, I haven't checked my contract. I don't know, like, can they just turn this off today from here? Is this going to be, like, an involved thing? Is this person going to try to not accept the equipment? Are they going to try to upsell me or downsell me or, like, tell me that I have to pay a prepay penalty or something? I just don't know how this is going to go. Also, is this going to be a total zoo in here? Like, are there going to be, like, ten people in line or whatever? I walk in. Turns out they have like enough employees. There's like maybe four or five like kiosks and like four of them are taken. But then somebody leaves and then a woman raised her hand. Come on over here. I put my stuff down. I say, hey, I I'm I switched TV providers. I'm just using Fubo TV now. And I just want to take this back. I go, I'm going to keep the Internet for now, because one of the things, Andrew, I don't actually know if two things. One, the internet has always worked fine. That's never been my issue with this company. And in fact, had the guy not dug up the physical line, I would still be in a fairly good place with this company in terms of the service, in terms of getting the product at my house, right? There's not a lot of outages. I don't have a big problem with the thing itself. I have a problem with what happens if you need to get help on something, right? But anyway, so I'm trying to explain to her, I'm like, I want to keep the internet, but I don't want the cable, and I don't want any funny business. I didn't say that but that was implied In my vibe Don't try to talk me out of it Don't try to sell me any bullshit I was just like really Just trying to be I was in a power stance I was just trying to really make sure This wasn't going to go sideways on me And she was like okay no problem She starts typing to the computer She was like alright so yeah We'll just take all the TV off I'm like no TV right Zero TV And I go well how much was I paying for that tv she's like it was this amount i can't remember what it was but i was like what's my new bill going to be just for internet she goes i think it's gonna be you know a hundred dollars a month or something she's like she just had an answer to every question uh she it took like 10 minutes she then said and this is the part andrew where i'm sheepish to tell you about this because because i don't know just as i'm getting out of bed with this company i don't i'm considering getting slightly back into bed with them in a certain way which is she said at the beginning she was like she said something that was actually i can't remember how she phrased it but it was something like hey you know i just something to the effect of like i just gotta ask or we just we're just we're you know we're we're sort of compelled to ask everyone who comes in like how much you paying for your cell service and i was just like i love my cell service which by the way is much like i love my car insurance in italy uh i was like i actually don't love my cell service i pay way too much money to verizon for this but i was like i'm not getting into some

thing with this company so anyway as we're running through this process of dissent disentangling decoupling these two services for me and she's just the person is so competent she's like yeah no problem she's doing it it's all done she's showing me the screen which shows that this is all off now she didn't say anything like well you still have to pay through like you know november 15th or something she was just like okay and i was like let's talk about this a cell phone situation what's the uh what's the damage and she's like okay well uh who's your carriers like verizon she's like all right um and then she like looks into the thing and then she's like well here's what it would cost and again this person i don't know if they're on commission or not but she if if she's on commission she's a master salesperson because she seemed totally and completely to have zero dog in the fight of if i signed up for any of this shit or if i but not in a like she wasn't helpful way you know like it just was not phasing her like if i wanted to cut the tv cable which i did or if i wanted to keep the internet or if i did not want any part of their cell service or if i kind of did she was like well here's what it would look like and it was all like very clearly stated it wasn't like well for the first three months there's the introductory you know she just was like none of this weird it's going to be this price but then after that expires but then I can credit you back ten dollars a month I hate all of that stuff because I feel like I always end up overpaying I can never track the real numbers on it you know so anyway she just goes um uh yeah okay so you can keep your number it'll be the same you know the same thing you have with Verizon in terms of unlimited data whatever whatever and she's like yeah it's 50 bucks a month added on to your cable bill now mind you i've already taken 100 bucks my internet bill sorry my bill yes thank you so she's like yeah it's like it'll add 50 bucks a month to your thing and it's like for the for this is for the same service and i go i go is it the same service she goes it is she goes if you go to the verizon store she goes they will tell you that it's not as good because they don't like people changing she goes i also used to she goes i've worked at a lot of cell phone places we don't ever like it people go do a different service so we tell them it's worse but it's actually not worse it's the same stuff it's like appreciate the the honesty there and she was like yeah it's like 50 more bucks a month um you know and i said well can you write this all down for me and i'll think about it she's like sure so she just writes it down on this form with like her info and she's like yeah you know just think about if you want to do it or whatever when i tell you that that has been living in my brain for the last also two and a half days of like Man, if my cell service was an additional $50 a month instead of the, like, $200 a month I pay or whatever ungodly amount it is, that's a pretty good deal. But I feel like I've just reduced my exposure with the Comcast company by 50%. Do I want to go back to a higher level of exposure with them also having my cell phone account? I have not done it, but it's an intriguing offer.

See, that's the thing for me is, like, what brought you here wasn't your desire to cut cable. You liked cable. What brought you here was the absolute inability as a consumer to deal with this company because they make themselves so inaccessible. Having said that, you also went to the store, which I don't know how far of a drive this is from you, but I've had one experience in one of these, as I will call them, newfangled Comcast stores. And I remember it being ridiculously helpful and easy as well. You telling me that.

I had a very good experience at this store on Saturday.

I remember thinking, I got to go to Ballard now, some of that weird place, you know, that was like a. The Bill Russell. The Bill Russell DMV location. But then I remember like, oh, there was like a kind of a dedicated parking spot. It was only for 15 minutes. I remember going in and I think similarly, I couldn't get somebody on the phone. So I was just like, I had my equipment and was ready to do business like there. And it was like everything you said kind of reminded me. And I remember like the ease with which I was in and out of the store with a guy who could not care less about giving me a hard time about cutting my cable. Like it was just like, oh, yeah, if I had service like that all the time, maybe we wouldn't be here. So maybe the thing is like, well, we just know it's terrible phone service. So when eventually you have an issue with, you know, we're all going to have some sort of issue with our phone. Like the thing that drives me crazy is like one time suddenly my bill jumped up and there was an explanation for it eventually. But like when suddenly your bill goes up by 30 bucks a month, there should be a very clear explanation for that. And you should be able to call somebody and say, hey, why did my bill just go up 30 bucks a month? And that was when I was just I think that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I could not get a human being. I could only get like robots saying your bill is this. You owe this. It's like I know what I owe. I want to know why I owe that. And it's so maddening, the customer service, that that was why I was so glad to break up with that company. But I guess one thing you could think about is, are you willing to go to this location the next time you have an issue with your cell service or your Internet?

Right. Maybe it's just thinking of this as more of a brick and mortar company than we're used to in 2024, right? Like, yeah, you have an issue. You go down to the place where they fix the issue with it. I mean, again, I was only there one time, but I found the customer service to be excellent. I got exactly what I wanted. And if I had to once a year go back down there to iron something out with my cell phone bill, I feel like that would be, you know, because here's the other thing. And, you know, I don't know if this is the most fascinating content on a Monday, Luke's various customer service gripes. But I have had this problem with Verizon, which is this watch that I have, this Apple watch, is supposed to be a telephone. And I've been paying $13 a month for the whole time I've had this Apple watch, and it's never worked as a cell phone. And no one's ever been able to figure it out at Verizon. I've taken it into the store, and they tell me, you've got to call the 1-800 number, and I call them. I've taken it to the Apple store. Nobody can fix it. Now, that's kind of annoying.

And you're paying for an extra line for that, right?

I'm paying for an extra line for this watch that has never worked. And again, a person who's, I don't know, better at follow through would have solved this a year ago, $130 ago. That's not how old LB works. But my thought is it can't be worse. Like if I go to, if I switch over and they can't make this watch into a phone at the very least, I won't, I'll turn the watch off and I won't be paying any extra money for it as an extra line. Like, like it's the service from Verizon has not been, uh, you know, ideal and it's definitely not cheap. And I could conceivably go from like having been overpaying for my cable and overpaying for my cell phone service to cutting all of that down, consolidating and paying a much lower number. You know what else? I was so inspired this morning. I went through, I canceled Hulu, which I never watch. I double checked that I'm not paying for MGM plus anymore, which me and my dad had for some kind of World War II show he wanted to watch. Like I I'm on a I'm on a mission right now, Andrew, to trim the sails, to like all of this stuff that I've just been kind of because of laziness and disorganization. I've just been kind of just leaking five dollars here and ten dollars there and who knows what. And just being like, this is just the cost of being a person in 2024 to being like, does it have to all cost this much? And can I actually like can I just be smarter about this and not be wasting money on things, you know? And it all started because of this Fubo TV thing of like, hey, I can just pay for this one thing and get all the stuff that I wanted and not be – I was just trying to fix these annoyances with throwing more money at them, and that's clearly not the answer. And I'm very inspired on this Monday morning to approach life differently going forward with all of this stuff.

I love the idea of like sort of like digital cleansing and like you unsubscribing from these things. And maybe at some point you'll need them again until you'll resubscribe. But like, I don't know why this bothers me. I don't I don't know your business. Maybe you're watching Disney Plus all the time. But I think about how you just signed up for Disney Plus so you could watch the Mandadorian. Pardon me for one second as I clear my throat. That's what I'm bringing on a Monday. But I think about how, like, you signed up for that because you said your nephews were over and you wanted to. But that was, like, two years ago. And my guess is, just based on what I know of Disney Plus programming and what we've talked about on the show, I don't think that you've ever brought up another Disney Plus show. So, like, again, this is your business.

I checked it this morning, by the way. Yeah. I am not currently subscribed to Disney Plus. But I was surprised by that news. Here's what's weird about that whole thing. Hulu and Disney Plus are somehow in bed together now.

Yeah, and there's some plans you can get where they intertwine them.

Because I logged into, like, the Hulu interface I was getting at Hulu.com had, it looked a certain way. By the way, not a very good web portal. But anyway, it worked. I got in there. I said, no thanks, Hulu. And then I was like, but let me check on Disney Plus. It's the same website? Oh, okay. Interface? Then I got into, but different, like, login and password. Then I got into Disney Plus, and they were like, you don't have a Disney Plus account. I was like, exactly. Perfect. So, like, I'm down to, like, this is what I'm paying for. I'm paying for Netflix. I have Amazon, I think because of having, you know, Prime or something. I've got this Fubo business, and I've got to get to the bottom of if I currently have Macs or not.

Which that's probably, I mean, I don't know why I'm telling you what's worth it and what's not and why Disney Plus bothered me, but, like, I don't know. I always will always feel like kind of a legacy attachment to Macs, even though they did everything they could to make me not like their brand by calling themselves Max instead of HBO. I feel like they have such a deep database of movies that you can just at any moment kind of turn that on and find something worth watching.

Yeah, it just seems like once a year they do get it together to put on some sort of interesting, whether it was the Jinx 2 that I was watching. Once a year they do something that to me sort of justifies their existence as this like premium content purveyor so you know i i feel like that one all but but i don't need any of the other stuff anything else that i need will just be a la carte but again this is and then we'll wrap this up and then we'll thank some donors and we'll talk about uh joker folly adieu but like the other thing about this is because a lot of this stuff content was coming in through what i was paying xfinity because you know that's how it used to work back in the day was like you signed up for cable and then they tried to upsell you onto hbo and all this stuff it was much harder for me to conceptualize this where some of it was like a side piece some of it was like here's go buy yourself something uh pretty here disney plus here's a little walking around money but then oh max max you're that's my number one squeeze i get that i get hbo through xfinity like it's you know what i mean it's like hard to conceptualize all this stuff now it's just like no again i understand that what I'm describing right now is a place that 90% of the listeners have already arrived years ago but for me this is a revelation what's happening now is I just am

gonna pay for these different things that i want to get the content i want i'm not paying this overarching content company xfinity to give me a five dollars a month off on hbo for six months until it kicks into the regular it's like no i don't want to i'm not dealing with what tier are

you in you know what i mean and like it like oh well the mariners games are now in this higher tier where when you get that you also can get you know a uh skinamax and god knows what else It's just like the way they bundle everything together. I am going to get the Skinamax app, 100%. You have to get the Skinamax app. I can't believe somebody hasn't just created it. Well, you know what? Maybe they have, and I shouldn't suss it out to find out. Don't Google Skinamax? Yeah, it seems like somebody could have just created that at this point. Thank you for being a 10.

All right, let's thank some of our donors today. These folks are supporting TBTL with a financial donation, And we are so appreciative of that, of all of the little the little bills that we all pay every month. I'm talking about consolidating. These people have not consolidated their way out of supporting TBTL. And that's because whereas if I am smarter about my my account with, like, say, Disney Plus, Disney Plus ain't going nowhere. If I decide I'm only going to start paying that again when a program comes on that I need, that is not how TBTL works.

No, and you know what I can say, like in all earnestness and patting sort of ourselves on the back, but really our employee on the back, TBTL has great customer service. If you have any issues with anything, well, except for my performance on the show. I will not be taking emails regarding my performance on the show. I'm going to give this out to you. If you have any problem, the number to call. John, without an H, J-O-N at tbtl.net. And that man will super serve the P1s, honestly. And that's something that, while I can't take credit for John's great customer service, I will brag about it when we talk about people needing help with our show.

That's right. We consider ourselves the anti-Comcast. And we also very much need these donations to keep doing this thing. And we want to thank Amaya McElena of Nashville, Tennessee. Hey. Big weekend for Nashville. Big weekend. Vanderbilt beats Alabama. Nate Bargetsy hosts SNL for the second time. It was a big Saturday.

Why do I know Nate Bargetsy again? I saw him in a promo for SNL, and it's like, I know that name so well, but I couldn't quite.

He's a stand-up comic who, well, I've talked about him, I think, a few times on this show. I'm a fan. And he definitely, like, the pandemic kind of really rocketed him to kind of a new level of fame. I think it was just because we were all spending a lot of time on our phone. and his like a lot of his comedy clips just started circulating around tiktok um to where he just became this phenomenon he went from i think a you know decently successful working comedian to like arenas playing arenas and things like that um i again i'm quite a fan but um the other thing about this weekend for nashville was so i had been in nashville this summer remember i was talking about broadway that kind of like you know that's the street in Nashville that's got all these quote-unquote honky-tonks on it, although now too many of them are sort of Kid Rock-related probably for my taste. So Vanderbilt beats Alabama, and that's a shocking development because Vanderbilt was unranked Alabama's number one team in the country. And then they rush the field, the students rush the field, and then they tear down the goalpost. That happens, you know, when crazy upsets like this go on. But where the Vanderbilt students took it to a new level, and I thought this was pretty dope they then carried the goalpost out of the stadium down that street through the middle of all of that to the river which is where I was doing my jogs when I was in Nashville so I was like so deeply aware of the exact place where these students had gone to the river and we're now passing this thing and threw it right into the river now you could see this as vandalism or property damage but i'm sure they fished it out of the river you know somebody did later and i saw it as good clean fun and it made me very happy for the folks in nashville because vanderbilt has historically not been uh you know super successful football program now we're and i could be totally

wrong about this i thought i saw a tweet or something that had the basic tone of oh bless their heart look at them trying to take down those goalposts did they have some issues i think i saw

that too i didn't watch so here's the thing once that game was over i was kind of shifting my attention to the huskies playing michigan so i didn't watch like how long it took them to take the goalpost down but i do think there was some kind of like they don't have a lot of experience with this kind of a thing but i also i assume the goalposts are reinforced

now in a way that they didn't used to be because if i'm being totally honest probably kind of dangerous yes pull that thing down it's metal it's probably kind of heavy like yeah there was a i know that there's like in college football there's like sort of a known thing when like a number one team is coming into a place and and there's even a small chance that the the local team might win i know that they've been known to go in and reinforce the goalpost to make them more difficult

to tear down it's one of those things where you don't want to be the the cranky old dean who's no fun right but on the other hand you're just like god if i was responsible for those goal posts if i was responsible either from a like uh just you know keeping like grounds keeping perspective but then also from a ground keeper andy from an insurance perspective from like every perspective It's just, like, amazing how if you put me in charge of those goalposts, my attitude about that shifts so significantly.

I don't know. I don't see any liability there of, I don't know, a thousand drunk students trying to pull down a heavy piece of metal.

Yeah, underage drunk students, yeah.

And then carry it out of the stadium. I mean, yeah, you're right. It's one of those things that is so much fun for everyone who's not in charge of the situation. Yes, right. So thanks, Amaya. Yeah, thanks also to Corrin Copps, who's in Seattle, Washington. No goalposts torn down, but we were, as Husky fans, pretty happy to get the W. Although none of the relevant people were associated with the project, really. As in, it was a rematch of the national championship game, except none of the people on the field or coaching were the people from last year. Everyone was on different places.

That was a big, surprising win, though. Genevieve, I was at a local sports bar watching it with Genevieve, And there were some very happy people there.

I was, I was stoked about it. I mean, I don't think it changes the trajectory of, of like the, the Huskies are, I think a work in progress. I think Michigan's a really good team. It's like one of those things where it just was nice to kind of like check it off the list to go. I don't think it portends that the Huskies are going to come roaring back and become the team they were last year. So I, I'm sort of, I'm enjoying it for what it is, but I'm trying to, for once, not get over my skis on this one. Get over my goalposts on this one. Thanks also to Michelle Hall who's in Long Beach, California. Strong Beach. Beautiful. And then look at this. Lindsay Randall is in Nashville, Tennessee.

Whoa, it is in the cards

today. Big weekend for Nashville, Andrew. Why so? We had Nate Bargetze, the Tennessee kid. He was on SNL. What am I just went right back into the rift? Thanks, Lindsay. Hey, it's our pal Brock Goodman in San Diego, California. Thank you, Brock. Big weekend for Padres fans. Did they win the second game? Oh, yeah. They won it, 10 to 2, but the game got canceled. I mean, not canceled. The game got delayed because people were throwing baseballs at Jerickson Profar. Oh, really? Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah, it was a wild game. So the second game was also at Dodger Stadium. Yeah, so that you wouldn't. And so they were – it must have been because – Oh, was it? Do they switch back and forth per game? Because game one was definitely at Dodger Stadium. I caught a second of that.

I'm wondering if, you know, considering how the proximity of the teams – oh, that shouldn't really be a factor. I don't know. You know what? I had in my mind – I had decided it was – but you're right because Profar is a padre. He's a padre, right. So that would be no – it must have been at Dodger Stadium because why would they be throwing things at him?

because what he did was he stole a home run oh i heard oh i read you bet i read somebody's description of that that yes he was like totally laid out for it right yes well he went into the

stands and and but the thing was that he did that made the fans mad was baseball is full of so many i think kind of annoying dumb like uh-huh respectability rules yeah yeah like you're supposed to do this if this happens and never that yeah it's like really because like what he did apparently was uh he i wasn't watching the game but i was reading about it he steals his home run and then he kind of plays kind of coy with if he has the ball or not yeah so he's kind of like showboating a little bit because he's excited because he just got home you know stole a home run in freaking playoffs and so that was seen as bad form so the people that like those doyers fans were mad at him because he didn't immediately indicate that he had snagged this baseball you know it's like so then he was on their list then there was somebody else that was like chirping at someone and someone got hit by a pitch it was just like a very very tense game that at some point was stopped oh this is the other thing i guess because people were starting to throw things at jerks and profar the entire dodgers team who i didn't know their manager was mike schmidt mr philly the whole team came out and encircled jerks and profar like physically blocking him, like he's, you know...

Like a politician or something. Right, yeah, yeah, like the president. Yeah, like they were like the Secret Service, and he's the president, which I've never heard of that happening at a baseball game. It's just kind of like a bunch of weird stuff going on, but ultimately the Padres were victorious.

Nice. Go Padres, go Royals.

Which we know is a big deal for Brock Goodman. And then, of course, we had Rachel Langan Lundmark checking in from Olympia, Washington, where I think that the sports vibes were less charged on Sunday, but just like the good vibes were off the charts.

Yeah, they were probably rooting for the Seahawks, which that was, you know, that wasn't exactly probably how our—

How do you feel about the very clear violation of the rules by the Giants at the end of the game on that critical play? Are you up to speed on that?

I was—so I did not really watch the game at all. I listened to the first quarter, and then I listened to—I was kind of out and about as well. So I got back in the car to hear the very, very end of the game. Are you talking about the non-call on the pass interference? It sounds like that's not what you're talking about.

No. The Giants blocked a field goal.

Oh, did they use somebody to launch themselves?

Well, they did exactly the thing that you're not allowed to do. You're not allowed to hold down. So the guy snapping the ball, the long snapper, you are not allowed anymore to push that person down and jump over them. It's a very clear violation of the rule. and what the Giants did was had a dude push that guy down and another dude jump over the spot where the guy had now been pushed down and then he blocked the field goal and they ran it back for a touchdown. It was like, you know, definitely game over. The thing I will say is the Seahawks shot themselves in the foot many times before this. So it's like they shouldn't have been in the position where they had to do this to tie the game, but it was an extremely clear rule violation and not a reviewable rule. And it's like that's where all this replay stuff is so annoying to me because there are so many things that, like, should be reviewable. Like, you should be able to challenge that because you just watch the tape and you're like, oh, that one guy pushed this dude into the ground. You're not allowed to do that. And that should just be a penalty. But you just – that's not how the thing works. And I don't know. I'm not like –

Well, can I ask you about this other thing that I brought up? Because I was listening. I was literally, like, in the – I was pulling into the grocery store kind of wondering, like, oh, thank God they're going to – at first I thought they were going to win the game, And then they were looked like they were going to tie up the game with this field goal. And I was like, oh, am I going to sit in the grocery store parking lot for an extra quarter? Like, how is this going to go down? Turns out that was not an issue. But I wasn't like heavily invested in the game. So I don't want to sound like spoiled or like kind of what is it? Spoiled grapes, sour grapes here. But it according to the radio broadcasters, Wyman and Steve Rabel, it sounds like there was a pretty like flagrant pass interference. And was it the was it the pass right before was it third down or second down that should have essentially been a touchdown, essentially a game ending touchdown that you could just see like somebody like stretching. I don't know if it was in Jigba's or somebody's jersey. It sounded like it was just like blatantly stretched.

Oh, you know, I didn't note that because because I was watching the national broadcast and maybe they just weren't like I was watching on my phone. but they maybe they they didn't seem to like it's possible that Rabel and Wyman saw a guy you know at a different part of the field getting kind of you know restrained in a way that they were focused on that wasn't the narrative that the national tv folks were pushing if that makes any sense there was a drop on so on third down there was a throw to Jackson Smith and Jigba that he just straight up dropped it and it would have been a first down and that would have been a totally that would have changed the entire course of the game because we would have then had a first down with plenty of time to try to march down the field. Certainly the field goal would have been closer. That was just a bummer that he dropped this pass. It hit him in the hands. It was an out route. He was on the sideline, but it was catchable for an NFL receiver, and he didn't make the catch. So that was like a pretty big bummer. But then I didn't even realize that the Giants had totally cheated on the field goal because they did the block. They ran it into the end zone, and then I just turned off my phone, and I was like, time to drive to Florin Decor and see what their prices are on engineered hardwood, literally that was what my thought was and that is what i did yeah and so it wasn't until later that i was like watching on tiktok people were like oh did anyone notice that this guy completely smashed down the center in a way that is very clearly illegal in the game of football i heard

the announcers definitely i do think i heard wyman say something like well it looks you're not supposed to be allowed to launch yourself it looks like you're gonna launch right but then

the guy broke through the line in a way that can only happen when an illegal like you know you watch enough of these sports that you just understand what the physicality of it is like if a guy is that free to the kicker something has gone wrong either one of the linemen has had like a full-on like you know seizure or something probably illegal has happened because you can't get to the the whole thing is there's guys big huge guys blocking you from getting to the kicker nobody gets to the kicker that fast unless something has catastrophically failed and what catastrophically failed was the center not blocking because the center was being smashed down by a different dude you know i will say that um

back to your kind of point about like not let because of the way you're watching the game it didn't like kind of you didn't find it all consuming and then because this was a very it was a pretty it sounds like it was a pretty terrible game to watch like generally speaking it was just like so the the it sounds like um you know it shouldn't have been this close of a game it sounds like the Seahawks were pretty impotent it's just like kind of a crappy game to watch anyway but then it comes down to what looks like is going to be a huge heroic yeah a heroic win for the Seahawks even if they didn't necessarily deserve it to come back and finally get the win But then to so dramatically lose would have been so like I was yesterday was a day where I don't have a lot of these. But when Genevieve said, hey, I'm going to the bar to watch the game with a bunch of friends, I was actually maybe even teasing a little bit too hard. I said, I thought you were going to fill in for me because I was volunteering yesterday. And the truth is, like, I don't want to sound like a martyr. I really enjoy my volunteer gig on Sundays. And yesterday was a perfect example of it. I hadn't been there in a while because of travels. The weather was beautiful. I was looking forward to catching up with like some of the other volunteers who I hadn't seen in a while. I've just been so out of it that I've really been looking forward to going back and to my kind of usual post behind the coffee and the hot chocolate. But having said that, when Genevieve said, hey, I'm going to the bar to watch the game with a bunch of our friends, I was really jealous. Like I was like, I'm supposed to be in that bar. I'm supposed to. I even said this is a little bit cruel. I'm like, oh, who are they playing? she's like oh who are they playing i'm like they're playing i said they're playing the giants i should be there and like i gotta say it was really hard for me um to sort of tear myself or like i guess come to grips with the fact that i was going to miss the game this week um and i don't know why i ended up having a really good time at at pop-up after all and then when that dramatic loss happened i was like these are even sometimes when it's not it doesn't feel like your own choice these are the important decisions like i am so glad i did not dedicate my entire afternoon and this would be more of a me move than you these days but like i also would been drunk by four o'clock or whenever

that and it feels damn near drunk yes it hits really hard when you've spent the whole day kind of getting lubricated and you're emotionally invested you've been watching every snap you're screaming at the refs and then like when it goes right it's the euphoria is really hard too and that's i do i slightly miss that euphoria around my football watching which again is a lot of it's alcohol related but it's also just like posting up at the bar at you know whatever the time is just to like really really like this is the focus of your day um and then when they win it's just like the best feeling but when they lose it's the most empty feeling and then you're just like drunk with bad feelings that you don't know where to put them and it's like four it is four or five

Yeah, exactly. They're like, well, I guess I got to just keep this train rolling. Like, what's my next sad stop? I'm the F in your drunk train.

That's, I think, why, you know, because the way that I was experiencing the game was just, like, a little dispassionate. But that was good for me. Like, a little bit removed. Like, okay, how are they doing? I'll watch it for five minutes here, five minutes for there. I have a general sense of what's going on. But like, and part of the reason that I had checked out was because the, the, and then was like, I'm just, this game's probably over. Cause I was at Nordstrom with Becca. She comes back and I was like, I don't want to make her sit here with me watching this game while it's a beautiful day. And we were going to go walk over to this park and stuff. And at that moment, the Seahawks had the ball, but they were down by two scores with four minutes left. And they had done nothing on offense to make me think this was going to go well. They'd been totally dominated by the Giants. So I was like, I know how this goes. and I just put it in my pocket. So when I finally got in my car later and the game was still happening and Geno Smith had just scrambled for like 30 yards and the Seahawks were in field goal range, I was like, isn't this a little miracle? And then the miracle, just like that, was over. And then I was just like, all right, let's go to floor and decor. Like, it was weird. It was like, I just enjoyed it the exact amount that I should have and I just didn't carry it around with me, like, emotionally afterwards. I was like, ah, that stinks. but like it wasn't it wasn't weekend defining for me and i think that's probably healthier for me

yeah yeah i i think the bottom line here is we have a seahawks watch party at florin decor next week hello and welcome to top story All right, top story. 64 or so minutes into the program. A pretty lackluster performance at the box office for Joker, Folly Adieu. This was a piece in the Washington Post written by Janae Kingsbury. The second act of Joker has left audiences unamused, falling flat at the box office, sparking fan outrage over Lady Gaga's limited screen time and earning a grim D cinema score. reportedly the lowest grade ever received by a comic book movie um so i guess the plot of this one is that uh joaquin phoenix's character is in arkham asylum because of all the bad stuff he did in the first one and he makes friends with i think maybe another inmate or just somebody in there who is played by lady gaga who's harley quinn um and uh i guess her name is harleen lee quinzel Yeah, and I think you say Harley Quinn, right? I think that's how you say it. Yeah. Yeah. And then they go on to do whatever it is they do in the movie. There's a lot of like, I guess there's a lot of singing. Some of it's cover songs. Some of it's Lady Gaga originals. And that's something that I think has thrown a lot of people is that the music piece has been just kind of like a little confusing for folks. A little bit taking them out of the, you know, I guess reality of the movie or something.

Some people described it as – because I was like, well, I'll probably see this. I'll see any – and I won't see any movie. But I'm like, you know, it's a sequel to a much-loved movie, even if it's getting a little bit panned. I'll go watch it and eat some popcorn. But honestly, having – and you told me it was getting bad reviews. And then I read a couple of just like – honestly, just like viewer comments and stuff on Reddit. Just like it sounds terrible. And somebody described it as like the music almost being like a – it feels like a jukebox musical almost, which is like you want to keep me away from it. Use those two words.

but like the thing that's so okay two things one uh there seems to be uh a lot of uh frustration from lady gaga fans that she's not in the movie enough for them i think it's out of the let me see i have the stat here somewhere um okay uh lady gaga fans uh took aim at the film for under utilizing the actress's talents in particular the singer's fans lamented about her limited screen time and reports uh claim that the actress is featured for less than a quarter of the movie's 139 minute run time the other thing and this has come up before with other actors um uh they're basically really mad because the trailers for the movie had a lot of lady gaga scenes that weren't

in the real movie remember there was a lawsuit about that which surprisingly there was the anna And DeArmis, I think, was the actor and was, I think, cut completely out of the film, right? Oh, that was maybe it because it was truly because I remember having mixed emotions about that. Like, you can't, you know, allow people to sue just because there's a quick cut of something in a trailer and then that exact cut doesn't end up in the movie. That'd be such a bad precedent. But you're right. If you actually have a famous person in the trailer, then they don't even show up in the movie. I guess that is false advertising.

Wow, I have an update on that story, by the way. Two Ana de Armas fans settle false advertising lawsuit over the Yesterday trailer. So Yesterday, I thought it was a genius idea for a movie. I don't think it did that well, but it's basically like a guy wakes up and realizes that no one's ever heard of the Beatles. And so he just starts, like, basically playing Beatles songs, and everyone just thinks he's, like, the best ever. Again, I think that's a really funny premise for a movie. But here's from Variety. this is Gene Mattos writing, two men who rented yesterday on Amazon Prime after seeing Ana DeArmas in the trailer only to discover that her role was removed in the final cut of the film have settled their false advertising lawsuit Peter Rosa and Connor Wolfe sued Universal alleging they were each cheated out of $399 a federal judge sided with them finding that movie trailers are not immune from false advertising but various setbacks followed leaving the men on the hook for $126,000 in universal legal fees. On Friday, they accepted a settlement that will resolve the case. The terms were not disclosed. So it sounds like, basically, from the evidence of court filings, nobody is happy with the outcome. Universal believes it was forced to spend two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars defending the frivolous lawsuit. Meanwhile, the plaintiff's class-action lawyers who initially believed the claim was worth millions of dollars ended up believing that California's courts are rigged in favor of the Hollywood studios. So my guess is, Universal ran up this big legal bill Was looking to have the legal bill Paid by the two plaintiffs The plaintiffs got scared and basically agreed To just like let it go If they weren't going to then be on the hook For Universal's legal bill

Yeah they wanted $8 and they're going to have to pay $150,000 The settlement was, everybody will just stop with this, but anyway, yeah, so that was that whole thing, and this is kind of a version of that, although, of course, Lady Gaga's really in the movie. The thing that, I think I said this, like, the other day when we were talking about Megalopolis, but, like, the thing about this Joker movie that's, I don't fully understand is, like, and maybe this is just, like, maybe this makes someone a good filmmaker, is, like, I really like Todd Phillips' work. I think Todd Phillips seems like a really smart filmmaker has made some films that I really enjoy. It's weird to try to understand how someone who's made a bunch of movies that resonated with people where they like decided cut the dialogue here or show this thing or whatever, you know, whatever directing looks like. How do they then do something that people are like, this is bad. The decisions you made were not the right decisions. Like, how does the same person make like four movies that everyone's like, these were the right decisions? And then you make one. They're like, nope, wrong decisions. And maybe maybe it just means as a filmmaker, you're kind of taking chances. You're not just getting set in your ways. You're willing to try something for the sake of the something instead of how is the audience going to react. So maybe this is a compliment to both Todd Phillips and Francis Ford Coppola that they both recently made movies that people are generally going this bad.

Yeah. If I heard a little bit more like I like movies that are a little bit challenging or even just if they do stretch, like, you know, if the director is stretching a little bit. And if it doesn't totally work, I'm actually pretty forgiving of that. It's the musical nature of this that is just very big turnoff for me. And I will say this, and I don't think I was reading a review again. I was just sort of like scrolling on social media and just seeing some people saying like, wow, like the Joker movie is like so much worse than you think. It's like there's no it's not like even like campy bad or whatever, but almost everybody is like Gaga is really good in it, by the way. OK. And when you say when but but not enough of her, not enough to save the movie. And when you say you like Todd Phillips movies, I was like, well, what else has he done other than Joker? Because I'm not like I was not as familiar with that name. And it's like just tons of tons of projects here that I've I've seen or at least heard of. But but not along those lines. Like I didn't realize this is the hangover. Right. Road trip. Old school. Starsky and Hutch. Borat is kind of interesting. Maybe you mentioned that the other day and I forgot. But yeah, the hangover due date, like all these like, you know, like kind of like either bro comedies or rom-com kind of things. that but then a star is born i had no idea that he was one behind that other and that was a again i thought bradley cooper directed that he just wrote it and was in it uh let's see here i'm looking at feature film oh let's see here i am looking at a chart you are right he was not director i'm sorry i'm looking at a chart that lists all of his feature film projects you are right a star is born he was only a producer on so that is a huge difference so anyway all of that is to say i'm kind of surprised that the person and i should have known this back in 2019 because i did see the Joker and I did like it I didn't realize that that is the same director as the hangover that seems like such different sort of vibe so I appreciate somebody trying something new but it sounds like in this case like it just it didn't work and it also it tries something new

in a genre that I want nothing to do with yeah I think I took that to be like the range of the kind of movies that Todd Phillips has made I think of that as a really positive kind of review of somebody's creativity and their talent you know that you could do these movies like old school and stuff that are so just kind of like you know he also did war dogs which i really really liked it's about these like jonah hill was in it they're basically these like arms dealers in florida who get in way way over their head oh okay um you know like i'm looking at that is that kind of just is that kind of like both one of those actions sorry he was a producer on that too i gotta i gotta be more careful with what i'm looking at here i'm just looking at his i am uh no it does say war

dogs uh directed by todd phillips oh maybe he produced and directed okay yeah so anyway is that one of those that's kind of like it's a little bit funny but it's also very it's a little bit actiony like i don't know yeah yeah okay yeah that's a perfect description of it it's like

it's just basically the story of these two morons who who sort of this thing you know gets way bigger than they mean it to and all of a sudden they're just like selling arms to like you know basically like troops in god knows where out of their like apartment in miami but also it's again it's got jonah hill in it being very over the top in a way that i found very funny and appealing all that is to say like i i like that this i like that this guy todd phillips has tried a range of things and i again most of them i've liked it's just it's just kind of weird when one seems to be totally out of step with what people want to see but um the other thing that i'm seeing about this joker movie is that and i forget now it's somewhere in this article from the post that i was reading but there was like basically what seems to be happening with this movie and with megalopolis is the general consensus like from just like fans from people that just go see movies is this is horrible and then the only shelter from the storm is usually film

reviewers who watch a million films and are like you know what this didn't work but i see what they were trying to do here you know like uh here we go the washington post review from ty burr was more forgiving by the way it got uh it had a 33 rating on rotten tomatoes um a guy named ty burr writing the washington post was more forgiving burr who gave the film two and a half stars wrote it's a movie of ideas disguised as an exceedingly grim entertainment and it's more interesting for those ideas undeveloped thoughts though they are than it is as entertainment now i don't know if that would be my takeaway from going to see this film i don't think i cogitate at that level but i i think it's notable that these are the kinds of movies that were a pretty big seem to be a pretty big flop with the public but the people who watch a lot of movies are a little bit more forgiving of the attempt by the director to do something isn't just the same old thing

you know what this is a not to that point this is a different point that i just thought of that i wanted to mention to you you put a note in the show sheet today about the the gaga angle on this and um i was looking around for that particular story and i was sort of googling and um i ended up on an article and it's clearly not the source material that you're using it's one of those i feel like it was both a british website but one of those that has like ton like it sounds like it might even i don't think it was the guardian but it was one of those websites that it sort of sounds like it should be august but instead it's just like jam-packed it's just like

terribly written the world's worst pop-up ads yes exactly a million thumbnail pics of people from

like love island yes and i was shocked that i mean there are people probably in our listening audience who want to see this so i'm not going to say what it is but this article that i was reading it's a good thing that i already decided i didn't want to see it because without it literally without even putting the words spoiler alert or spoiler warning or whatever it just spoiled apparently a i'll just put it this way because i know what it is and i don't want to run it for other people but there is apparently a huge twist in the movie and this article was just like audiences were also disappointed in this huge twist in the movie when this thing happens i'm just like okay i guess i I guess I won't be seeing that. That's not a statement on the movie. That's just a statement on this article I was reading. I was like, wow, you really don't give A and F about my experience. Like, you're writing this because you just know that nobody's going to see this. You don't even care about the spoilers anymore.

That's funny. That's a really, that's a good point. Because if, you know, I'm sure we have a lot of, particularly like Lady Gaga fans are very, very dedicated to her. We'll go see her in anything and are excited for the movie, even if generally speaking, it's not getting great reviews. And yeah if you just happened upon that article And just had it ruined for you That would like way suck That being said And we should wrap things up But let's not for a moment Because I have been getting I feel like There's a truism A truism with how Headlines for digital Versions of the newspaper Which is now really all the versions of the newspapers Pretty soon we won't have to say The digital version of the Seattle Times because it will be the only version of the Seattle Times. But like when you're at the Seattle Times website or other places like that, I feel like the way that they teach the headline writers is do not ever say the name of the thing or person that you will be revealing in the ad. Generalize it because you need to get the clicks. You can never give the people the thing they're curious about that they read the headline and they're intrigued, but then they don't need to click because they've got the information from the like 10 word headline. you've got to say like you know you know what however it is they structure it it's always like this thing that and when it works on me i'm mad because i'm like i do want to know what the answer to this is i don't have to click on this to get that answer and i just feel like it happens more and more that being said it's kind of funny because like there's this article on the seattle times right now that's i think like dave spoiler alert everyone i think dave matthews is probably inducted into the like rock and roll hall of fame or some kind of thing and i was just scrolling through it a minute ago i can't find it right now but it's so funny because it's like clearly the headline was written from this standpoint so it says like seattle rocker like you know what seattle rocker was uh was was inducted into the hall of fame or the whatever but then the picture is just dave matthews being like wow what would you say and i was like you guys need to get on the same page whoever wrote the headline whoever picked the photo because i don't need to click because i could see it's friggin dave matthews this is what you're talking about though

i i think about all the time i read the seattle times so much it also makes me angry quite a bit for various different things they had one of the most the worst written op i've ever read in my life reacting to macklemore saying f america at a pro-palestine rally um and like

Like, some of the editorial decisions are just, like, just shocking to me. Whatever. But I also always feel bad undercutting it because we need it. It's what's left of a semi. There are some really good journalists there as well. Having said that, I get so frustrated by the Seattle Times specifically clickbaiting their headlines. like you expect it from you know something that is kind of like that has come up in the new quote new media world of a blog or what have you but the seattle times should still be the seattle times and i feel like should adhere to journalistic standards in their headlines not like you're right it'll be like literally it will be a head like i feel like a newspaper headline should tell you a headline it shouldn't say you're not gonna i yeah the seattle times doesn't say you're not going to believe x y or z but they will just put they're doing a fancier version of it they basically are and i think that's really i think that's well i'll just say it luke i think it's bunk journalism

i agree with you and again the tension there is well you got to stay in business if you if you don't get enough clicks and you go out of business then is that like a worse it's like voting for marie gluzen camp perez here in college county i see that sign behind you do we love do we love everything about this person no it is the alternative better also no so that's the thing with like the seattle times but you're right it's like it's like it's like maybe less less tantalizing and more inform informing or something you know that's like did you i just sent you by the way i just love how much they failed at this attempt to have us not know who the longtime seattleite is who's getting into the rock hall i just texted you the picture it's just like the worst collision of like whoever wrote that headline needs to talk to whoever posted that photo you just go like you really torpedoed my attempts to get the clicks

today well the other thing is and again this is where i am i am i'm looking at what seattleite do you think this is is it eddie vetter um i uh no longer recall what i was that's fine you know

what that's usually that's the universe telling us time to wrap this bad boy time to wrap it up You just tell me tomorrow, once it comes back into your brain, we'll get a follow-up.

Oh, I know. I'll just finish my thought. That is literally what my brain just did. I was just going to say, I'm also on the Seattle Times so much. Maybe it's something about me not using Twitter anymore, but still feeling the need to go somewhere and refresh. And for some reason, that's at the Seattle Times, which is also such a love-hate relationship with that website. um in that app but um i will say that i will watch the headlines change drastically like sometimes i'll see a headline i'll be like who the hell wrote and then it's like oh that was the overnight people who wrote that headline and then somebody came in in the morning and said let's clean this up a little bit i've seen like three different headlines for the same article as it passes

through various editors desks you've inadvertently become like a p1 yeah of this thing so that you're like you're you're you're very very aware of all of these small things which then of course also raises your level of annoyance about all these small things because you're just there it's where

you're hanging out currently yes i've been i've been i've been writing a letter in my head to the seattle times just waiting for your rant and rape yes oh i should get back into that game

all right speaking of hanging out places thanks everyone for hanging out with us today that's gonna do it for today's edition of old tbtl but we will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary Radio. So please join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. Enjoy the final day of nice weather ever in the history of the world. And please

remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Go Royals. Power out.