Muse

I don't think it's overstating anything to say that I was the first female to bring notoriety to our field as Minnie the Moose, the Vernon Community College baseball team's mascot. I once held the splits for the entire length of an extra inning baseball game in spite of excruciating pain and a severe severing of my adductor longest muscle that eventually required four hours of surgery and added two and a half inches to my left leg forcing me to retire i wrote a tale documenting that journey a moosing grace a mascot's journey to god and success in real estate in the next hour we will present information that's both shocking and enlightening

This need you have to be the smartest guy in the room is off-putting. I mean, I understand how people can love podcasts. I just never, they've never fit into my, into my day. I just have never gotten into the habit.

It isn't so much about what it is altogether. It's more about the modulation and what it is once it starts. It's a little bit of a groove.

Can you say apple?

Apple.

Can you say banana?

Okay, T-Bone, time for some serious crunching. Well, all right. Hello. Good morning. Welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. I don't want any more b**** at any time during the day from anyone. That includes me. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill Broadcast Center, first high above the mighty columbia where we had an absolutely beautiful weekend supposedly the rain is moving in we are in i've been saying this now for for the better part of a month i think the nice weather is now moving into the rearview mirror who knows though maybe we'll get lucky um still trying this 75 hard ish thing although i realize that every time i report to my girlfriend what I've been eating. Because that's a big part of our conversation. Mostly it's me calling for cooking advice and then also saying, well, here's what I had a while ago. I realize so little of it is in keeping with my 75 hard-ish. Ish, ish. That I don't know if I can keep playing that sound effect. I can play this sound effect, though.

Let the fun begin.

Because we're very definitely at episode 4,314 in a collector's series. And I made a mistake. last week y'all i've made a huge mistake i mean i know that's really really hard to believe considering the high level of professional broadcasting that i bring here day in and day out but i did i miss i made a mistake and um and i'm going to apologize for it i made a comment

earlier tonight that uh i guess uh went out over the year that i am deeply ashamed of we will

Correct the record coming up. Also, the last Kmart in America is closing. That's the saddest thing I've ever heard. If you think that statement was sad, wait till I tell you about the photos. If you could take the sort of the feeling. I was talking about this the other night on AliveWire with the writer Carvel Wallace, who kind of described something similar to this in his book, Another Word for Love. This feeling that I think a lot of people of my generation maybe had as children, you start watching television, usually on the weekend, and it's daylight outside. But because of, you know, lack of attention from our boomer parents and no one checking on us, you're just watching TV and watching TV, and then it's slowly getting dark. But you haven't turned on any lights inside the room because you sort of haven't noticed, and then all of a sudden it's just like it's dark and it's like you're watching it's like the and the closing credits of mash and like just that crushing feeling of on we as a kid if you put that into a photograph it would be the closing of the last kmart so we'll talk about that and we'll talk to this guy longest joining cobra of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships sometimes on a monday morning he's trying to kind of get you know get his oars in a row as he likes to say but not today today he is firing on all cylinders first things first i love my job he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend i had an idea

luke all right regarding something we talked about on the show speaking of oars i'm gonna put my oars

the water and then maybe steer this boat a slightly different direction slightly different direction we're looking at new hosts but actually that's getting ahead of things we'll talk about that later on in the week um but uh later on this month we noticed on the calendar that uh

you realize that just casually dropping that we're looking at new hosts yeah no i realize fear that that just shot through i'm hoping anyway yeah i'm hoping that fear that that shot through the listeners is probably palpable. We're going to talk about the way. To be clear, I'm good.

I'm good. I'm secure in my job. We're just going to talk about some of the other hosts. They're calming down. What else is... We just want to look at options. We've been doing this for quite some time. Every now and then it's good to shake things up a little bit. But more immediately speaking, later on this month we're talking about maybe having listeners call in and doing some sort of a special Halloween episode that is very listener-driven. And so I asked people to call in to the TBTL voicemail line, 206-414-TBTL. God, I think I got that right. And you can share, like, a spooky story from your life. But here's the deal. I've gotten a few of these, and I haven't listened to them closely. They're not very good. No, I mean, they might be great. I've only gotten a few. I don't know. But I was thinking more about it because I was like, well, what's my spooky story? And I wrote one for the newsletter a couple of weeks ago, but it's not that spooky. I'm like, maybe people don't have that. That might be a pretty big ask. So I'm still, you know, the doors are still open. If you have a spooky story, call in with it.

What you're doing is you're saying if we don't get some genuinely scary ass stories, we may end up not doing this programming.

Well, I don't know. We're going to do the programming, I think. I'm going to have to talk to the new host about that. But, no, I had a thought that something that maybe is a little bit more organic to the conversations that you and I have been having on the show recently has been Halloween costumes. You and I have both been trying to predict what are going to be the Halloween costumes for this year. And it occurred to me almost everybody's got a good Halloween costume story from their past. You know, like I was thinking maybe people should call. I mean, we'll still take spooky stories if you got Halloween stories.

Yeah, but also broaden out the sure. Broaden it out.

And I was just thinking, like, maybe if you want to call in and talk about the best Halloween costume that you ever came up with, I'll bet you that'll light a lot of bells for people because, you know, even me, somebody who is not super into Halloween can think back on Halloween costumes that, you know, like, for example, I did dress up as Columbo once. As an adult, though, as a kid, I dressed up as Columbo for a school project. As an adult, I dressed up like Columbo as a very serious Halloween costume.

I feel like that might be one of the rare occurrences of both a childhood and adult version of the same character.

Well, I like to not change too much, Luke. I love that. I like to feel like...

You're setting your ways even when it comes to your least favorite thing, which is dressing up for Halloween.

That's right. You know, when you achieve perfection at such an early age, why change, you know? Anyway.

The only – it's not even spooky. The only thing I've ever seen that felt paranormal to me was when I was a kid, I was standing – I feel like it was in the yard of some rental we'd had. I must have been very, very young. And there was a tree. And this is real. I'm not setting you up for anything. i swear to god i looked and saw a woman dressed like sort of like cat woman from batman or just think so very feline it was a woman though a human woman is how this person appeared but in some kind of a like tight like tiger kind of striped cat woman sort of suit stepped out from behind the tree and then just disappeared and it's the only time i've ever my eyes have ever betrayed me in a way like that in a way where i was like if it were a uh you know if it were a movie from the 1950s or 60s and i were the town drunk i'd do that kind of movie thing of like rubbing my eyes like blank blank blank huh like that was that's i swear to god and my child even in my my young brain i was like i know that's not real but why did my eyes just show me that Why did that just happen in a way that seemed extremely kind of IRL?

Is there a chance that it was actually actor Sean Young? That would have been amazing. Do you know about her little thing with Catwoman? She wanted to – okay, I'm going to get some of this wrong, but I'm going to get the majority of it right.

We're already apologizing for mistakes made last week, so just watch your step, bud.

Sean Young was a very popular actor in the early 1980s, and I think her popularity somewhat waned by the late 80s, early 80s. 90s, and it must have been the second Batman movie, because there was no Catwoman in the first Batman movie, so it must have been whatever Batman Returns, whatever the second Batman was in the Tim Burton the Tim Burton universe and Sean Young wanted the part, this is kind of a sad story I'm looking at this right now, Sean Young in her Catwoman

costume in 1991

yeah, and she wanted the part so badly that she just started dressing like Catwoman, and appearing, I believe on talk shows making her case why she should be the next Catwoman and then did not end up getting cast for it.

I will say, looks great in the outfit. Yeah? I'm looking at this Catwoman outfit and I'm thinking I would have bought it. Ended up being Michelle Pfeiffer, correct?

Of course, yeah, exactly. Who also did a good job in that role. Absolutely.

I mean, I haven't seen a Michelle Pfeiffer film that I've regretted the experience. Even outtakes from that Batman movie. Have you seen this outtake Where Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman Has to do this kind of whip Kind of trick I think it's in like a department store And she knocks And this is filmed What's interesting about it is You're not seeing The film camera The Panaflex or Ariflex that was filming it You're seeing someone filming the whole set The cameras So it's kind of It's not the highest quality But what apparently happened was In one take Michelle Pfeiffer comes in And does this whip and knocks a bottle cap off of all of these bottles. She does some extremely hard-to-do whip trick, which I don't think they were even going to have. She didn't have to do it. They were going to, through movie magic, show her whip the whip, and then they were going to cut in close. The plan was to use special effects or practical effects, but Michelle Pfeiffer is so talented that she just did it in one take, and then the whole crew kind of erupts in applause because they kind of can't believe she just did it.

And then they cut it from the movie. They did? I mean, I don't know. I was asking. You said it was a, you know, you said, I thought you said it was an extra scene. Maybe you said it was behind the scenes.

Well, I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of that movie, so maybe it's in the film. And, but I guess my point is, if it is in the film and you saw it and you thought it was movie magic, apparently it's not. Michelle Pfeiffer straight up did that as Catwoman.

But all of that, so I wanted to make my little Sean Young reference, because I do think that's kind of a fascinating story. but that is very creepy that you saw a person but I mean there

she whips the head off of four mannequins in one take

oh that's what she did I don't know why

it was bottle caps yes the plot is Catwoman wants to open up four bottles of Fanta

well it was it was a little bit of Coyote Ugly was very big at the time and so they were sort of trying to split the difference between the two but yeah I mean do you think looking back using your rational brain do you think that you saw a actual human being who was like dressed up for some reason i mean oh yeah you know but or do you think that it was a flight

of fancy that you saw something that wasn't there i think it was a flight of fancy but it's odd because and i'm glad to say this that's not something that has occurred to me much in my life as far as like let's just say breaks with reality um i mean certainly some have been documented on this show in terms of me being slightly delusional about various things um but not in the sense of I'm seeing something that ain't there and uh I I don't I can't explain it I can't explain what was going on in my mind in that moment it was an isolated incident again it's I wasn't particularly spooked by it she didn't come up to me and like say something or menace me let's see one other thing that happened and this was just I think being young and easily this was this is like not again paranormal this was just i don't know parasocial of me i was very afraid of as a kid you know that kind of classic and again i want to be careful with the language i'm using here but the idea of the fortune teller the kind of older woman with the crystal ball and usually a scarf on her head i'm sure that there's a lot of like bad kind of you know stuff tied up in that about like you know maybe like her being a romani or however we say the the term for what we used to say was gypsy but like i just remember being a kid and seeing kind of a lot of that idea of this kind of like fortune teller woman but her being a little menacing yeah like and i remember or no

big is just a machine i believe yeah that's a zoltar that's just a machine certainly though peewee's big adventure even though she's not a she's not a bad actor uh or you know not somebody who is a threat in the movie or anything, but even Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, that fortune teller has a very, you know, a big eeriness about her that can scare a kid.

Yes. After watching Big, I was very afraid of dancing on a huge piano playing Hearts and Souls with Robert Loggia.

I swear I saw somebody doing that in my front yard when I was a kid. Scared the living hell out of me.

But...

I was like a little kid I was running down my street and I remember exactly this is I know exactly where I was it was 77th and I was running Kind of on the sidewalk. I was probably running down to like my buddy's house or something And I was approaching a woman from behind and she was an older woman kind of bent over And as I pulled even with her she turned and looked at me and I think this was a function of her not having you know her teeth anymore so it like lent to this kind of like it gave her this look that i associated very much with that kind of like slightly scary cackling fortune teller lady and she just like wheeled around and looked at me and i think even had like a headscarf on and i just remember being like oh shit like the the prophecy is foretold this is the lady from the movies and the other places that she is on 77th Street, and I got to get out of here. I think it was me just misreading, misunderstanding what it looks like when someone gets very elderly and doesn't have their teeth in. But that was also very scary. But not paranormal, because she was a human being, just a human being whose look reminded me of something I was kind of afraid of.

You know who would have scared the hell out of you? My Bapshi. This is my great-grandmother. She was very, very elderly. I don't know if she made it quite to 100, But I was a little kid and she seemed like she seemed like the storybook picture. And she was a loving woman. Like, I don't think I was I think I might have been a little bit scared of her, to be honest with you. You know, she lives in West Virginia. We only saw her once or twice a year or at least that's my memory of her. She seemed just absolutely ancient and Eastern European and just dressed from head to toe, as I remember the old country. She was from the old country, dressed in all black, I believe. I believe wore a babushka and like just not relatable. really like super i get the whole relatability not super relatable to me as a little kid i will i'm gonna tell you only because um because i feel the need to and then we got to get to your apology because i think we need to clear the air on some things here but um i'm gonna tell you really quickly the story that i told in the newsletter the other day because i gotta say as i was telling it i thought it was not very effective as a creepy story and then it got creepy again for me so it starts off sort of silly um but i would come home like this is in high school i would stay out pretty late with my friends or whatever and then i would like kind of sneak in the back door just kind of quietly trying not to wake up the folks or whatever and i'd always stop in the kitchen which is right there at the top of the stairs i'd grab a snack and go down to my um bedroom which was in the basement and i had a lot of you know kind of private down there which is nice i could turn on the tv i had a little tv in my room by this point and um do you want any spooky music for this i don't think it i think it'll only just i think it'll make this story only just more disappointing um so i was working how about an off-brand cover of monster yeah yeah um but uh anyway so i was i came downstairs and uh or i was in the kitchen i'm like i'm gonna grab a snack i grabbed two oranges which was not kind of uncommon if i couldn't rip into a bag of oreos i'd go for my second choice which were just like oranges out of the refrigerator pretty healthy snack for a kid Not too bad. So I grabbed a couple of oranges, you know, wrapped them up in a couple of paper towels or whatever. My plan is to sit on my bed, turn on the TV, which is kind of above the foot of my bed, and eat these oranges and watch The Kids in the Hall, which late at night, I did not have cable in my room, but late at night one of the UHF stations would play The Kids in the Hall, which I loved that show, and I was astounded that you could get it over the air. Anyway, I come downstairs. I put the oranges on my bed with the paper towels. I go, I don't know, I clean up, use the bathroom or whatever. I come back and I go to eat the oranges and they're both gone they're just like gone gone and the paper towel is still there so it's not like it was in my imagination that I grabbed these oranges the you could see that there were some oranges wrapped in these paper towels they are absolutely gone I tear apart my room I tear I pull the bed away from the wall I tear everything out from under the bed these oranges are gone which is kind of weird also kind of not that interesting until I give up on

the whole orange thing and i sit down in bed and i turn on the tv and it's the very very first sketch of a kids in the hall i'm just catching the beginning of an episode and there is bruce mccullough sitting on a park bench and sitting next to him luke are two oranges that have nothing literally nothing to do with the sketch as i remember that and i told this story a lot at the time i remember telling my friends about it then through the years i would tell them that is pretty wild actually i'm like bruce mccullough stole my oranges like these oranges went missing but then you know that was literally when i was in high school and then i hadn't thought about it too much and then i'm trying to think of a scary story to tell in the newsletter something that really happened to me or something somewhat creepy and i'm like this is fact

checkable and I'll bet you I'm wrong like I did not see those oranges I didn't there was no TiVo I didn't rewind the fact that I call it TiVo makes me right like it was just a snapshot like a quick

you know moment in the show and at the time you would not have been able to go back and enhance and it was just been something that your brain told you happened and I remember thinking like

it was a quick shot the oranges had nothing to do with the sketch at all and then they disappeared from the bench and so like how can I prove that well when I was writing the newsletter and Luke this is where you should check your email I just sent you something I'm like I should just look like what if I just type in kids in the hall park bench I type in kids in the hall park bench and the second video to pop up wow this shot of Bruce McCullough sitting on the bench with two oranges and I watched the sketch and it's exactly how I remembered it the sketch is not very good he's singing a song about why it's good to be a best friend but then it's like he's a terrible best friend or something and then when they shoot back to him on the bench he's sitting next to his weird best friend or something and the oranges are gone but to my point my memory was at least right in that these two oranges appeared for no reason for no reason next to bruce mccullough on the bench then disappeared from the show while i never found my oranges and the so the sketch the oranges are

not relevant to the sketch they have nothing to do with any those aren't his best friends that

he's bad friends i re-watched it like yeah it's just like they're just sitting there maybe because as you see in that shot i sent you a still image of it it's like maybe they just felt like hey we need to fill out this bench a little bit it's weird by the way i love the framing of this yeah and i think maybe at the end at the end he's going to be sitting next to somebody so that's why they couldn't position him maybe in the middle of the bench like so that he could maintain so maybe they just need to fill out that space or make it seem less weird this feels proto wes

anderson to me by the way with the two oranges just sitting with the offset the green of the bench the like leaves that are that are just kind of surrounding him the colors the way that like you said he's not centered in the shot it feels it's it's it's got strong Wes Anderson vibes before

there was a Wes Anderson yeah actually now that I look at it I see what you mean like you could definitely see Royal Tenenbaum sitting down with his two grandsons on that bench like talking to

them so it must have been very satisfying though to locate these and realize no you didn't imagine

that yeah I didn't this was just like a couple of weeks ago and I was like damn dog that story got me creeping again that's how i know that's my intern that's my possible show title story got

drew creeping again no um uh that seems like something that would happen on the twilight zone like or amazing stories or whatever like in other words something happens where a kid is watching tv and then suddenly something yes in his world is in the television exactly that was the that was

the vibe that i got and again see i honestly think that seeing finding the still image without hardly any effort by the way just typed in kids i mean how many sketches did the kids in the hall make and how many of them would have been outside in a park i feel like more than one but i literally just typed in kids in the hall park bench i didn't type in oranges or anything oh really yeah i think you'll probably get the same result if you try it although i don't know how these things work so anyway that that's the closest thing that did pay off i mean i think it would

have been better with a cover of the monster mash but probably still it was still pretty boys becoming men men becoming wolves all right let's thank some donors who are helping tbtl continue to exist as andrew foreshadowed Later this week, we're going to be talking about the intersection of technology and podcasting. For now, I'm very happy to report the state of TBTL's union is strong.

Did I foreshadow that?

I'm really confused.

Did I foreshadow that? Did I say something?

Well, you, did you?

I thought you just said, as Andrew foreshadowed, we're going to be talking.

Well, at the beginning of the show, like the first words out of your mouth were, we're going to talk about hosting. wait later in the week we're going to talk about hosting and then we had a whole conversation you and i did unless you cut it out about about the fact that i'm you're not going anywhere i might be going somewhere i said we're scaring the listeners i see but did you just make a reference

to ai just now i was not making ai jokes i was just thinking i said a reference i said technology oh i see okay sorry yes no i did make a reference to looking at some staffing changes certainly yes i didn't know that they were i don't think of them as technologically i felt the need to contextualize

Because, you know, these listeners, as we've learned Folks like Robbie Cowan in New York City Hey, I'm going there tomorrow night These folks love this show so much, Andrew They donate money voluntarily And I don't want them to be worried that either their favorite Andrew Or, you know, one of their top five Luke's Are somehow departing the show That's not what's happening No, I was just spoofing I want to manage their anxiety around this It's an anxious time, Andrew. Yes, I know. I heard the word. Andrea Walden knows that as much as anyone. Andrew's in Port Orchard, Washington. Beautiful Port Orchard, Washington, where I'll be, I don't know if I'll actually be passing through, but I'll be pretty close to there come Thanksgiving when the old big Burbank family get together, gets together once again. That's out by where my folks live. Colby Blanton is in, you've been through Port Orchard with me, Andrew, when we had remember when we had that van? Yes. Was it a Sprinter van full of, was that full of the lunchboxes, and then we drove it over to my folks?

It wasn't even a Sprinter van. It was just a cargo van from old U-Haul. And yeah, we drove. We took the ferry. I was a brave boy, and we took the ferry, and then went through Port Orchard, waved to Andrea Walden, said, Hello, Andrea. Tossed her a lunchbox, and then kept moving. Uh-huh.

And then Colby Blanton, who's in Seattle, Washington, we also swung, I think we swung by Colby's place. What's the past tense of to swing? To swing. We swung. Swang. We swang? We swang by Colby Blanton in Seattle, Washington We did not make it to Rod and Dana Blazkowicz's down there in Corvallis, Oregon That whole city's still on notice regarding our signs Yes, exactly So, I mean, and unfortunately Like many police investigations, we may have fixated Too early on Cheryl in Corvallis And her kin She'll be happy to hear that I mean, unfortunately, now at this point We've used up all of our investigative Resources on that lead So we don't have We don't have the manpower or the money to look properly into Ron and Dana Blazkowicz. So we'll just thank them for their support and let them know that we're watching them. Yes. Erica Sparkenbaugh is in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Thank you, Eric. Hope you are doing all right out there. Hope you were able to make it through the storms okay and didn't suffer too much damage. Erica, we do appreciate you supporting the show. And also April Nilsen, who's in Edmonds, Washington. in Rick Steves Town.

Oh, I saw he had a little... I did not realize that he is in some sort of therapy for cancer. Did you know that? Yeah, yeah. It was a headline in the Seattle Times this week. He's sort of giving an update to his fans about kind of how his treatments are going.

He's also got some... He's got a new, I think, McMemoir out or something. Oh, I see. So it's tied to that. I believe it's maybe prostate cancer, Our initial reports were that he said that it was caught early. He has a very good prognosis, which is nice to hear. We love National Treasure Rick Steves. But I think he's also got a memoir out or something, because we were thinking about maybe having him on old Live Wire when we do the show in Seattle in the spring. So anyway, thinking good thoughts for Rick Steves and thinking appreciative thoughts for our donors today. Thank you so much for making TBTL possible. We could not do this without you. hello and welcome to top story all right uh on the show last week i believe right yes you were mentioning oh right because i was like well how was andrew watching football at the eagles when it wasn't the weekend but that's because the seahawks played on thursday night and i believe that was when you learned that our text chain that we've been on now for many years you and i and my brothers and my good friend john goodwin and camaro and even what stew bot steve newman oh yeah buddy uh the this text chain uh at some point the name got changed um and it got changed from the fun loving criminals which is a like a very tortured attempt at making a joke about the one time producer engineer for the mariners play-by-play broadcast kevin cremen who who i just loved anytime i would hear basically rick riz talking about kevin cremen it delighted me also our friend camaro kev uh who used to engineer the mariners games from the radio station had millions of kevin cremen stories because they interacted quite a bit so we were called the fun loving criminals and then somebody changed the name to pnw sports i thought it was my brother david from the basement you found this out from our friend camaro kev on that thursday night you didn't know this because you're on an android and uh which is what i'm going to start calling androids now and so you were not ever seeing the name of the group um so you just assumed we were still the fun-loving criminals you found out we were in fact the pnw sports and it

really kind of rocked your world the way the technology works for android users is you just name a group whatever you want to name it and it just looks like that on your end so when your brother got a new phone about a year or so ago and you said hey we got to recreate this group uh you sent out a new text or however it worked you grouped us all together again because you're the common the common denominator amongst all of you

of us um i just got the new you know text and i said okay i'm calling this the the the um fun loving criminals now this is the name of this group now and i went on my merry way now you guys have a technology where the person who either um creates the group or decides to name it it sticks and it shows up for all apple users that that that is not how it works on my end well yes that is that

is how it's gone down and and i assumed because of the timing because it was my brother david from the basement it's a new phone i figured he had just renamed it pnw sports and i figured you know you know change is change is good we don't have to always you know get stuck in the same sort of pathway of our minds and so uh whatever i said on the show i think it was you should take this up with david from the basement well that was very wrong because we learned via text message uh over the weekend i think that it was the stew bot it was steve newman oh yeah buddy who last night attended an mj lenderman concert in eau claire wisconsin where it was capacity 150 people and 15 a ticket yes virginia there is a santa claus it's called eau claire wisconsin i cannot believe that even happened like mj lenderman is becoming a whole thing this is what stew and i were texting about yesterday um but i guess stew is the one who did it not david from the basement so i want to apologize to my actual blood kin david for besmirching him the reason well one

of the reasons i went into so much detail about the difference between an iphone and an android is because number one i once i start talking about that i kind of can't stop and that's why that was such a long explanation but it also is relevant here because i think it's notable that the stew bot for a while while he was a member of what i will forever call the fun loving criminals text chain he was temporarily an android user now i don't remember if he was an apple user who then went to android or if he was a lifelong android person who recently like in the again in the past year or so switched to apple but i think it's notable or iphone i should say i think it's notable that when we realized that the stew bot was the one and the way we found out that the stew bot was the one who changed the name of the group for everybody was a screen cap sent from your brother david who scrolled scrolled scrolled back to the moment it happened and he said i have the receipts and it said steve newman has changed the name of the group to sports ball or whatever it is and then steve the stew bot wrote to us he said i sincerely apologize um i apologize i apologize to my family i'm gonna take some more time to be with my family during this difficult all time yeah um and uh it's now time for him to listen it makes sense it makes sense step back and listen he said i didn't know i was changing it for everybody i thought he just thought i'm just gonna name it what i need to name it on my phone this is my assumption here because he was an android person he didn't realize that he was taking over the naming rights for everybody with

an iphone right so he did that on his android but it somehow changed it on no i think that he

was when he jumped back onto the iphone i think he changed it back to iphone not realizing the functionality the implications between i think he thought he was just making a private little note to himself and he brought which by the way i was thinking about ever since this conversation happened on the text chain it's a good thing he wasn't like the idiots in seattle or yeah he could

have named it something shorthand just for him this bullshit that blows up my phone with mostly irrelevant speculation about teams that i'm not a fan of i mean it's a long name but he could have

named it that exactly so anyway i was a little bit thankful for that um have we changed it though like you have an iphone can we on the air right now can you go i've never known how to do it but right now this is gonna give it a shot excellent radio while you do that can i can i uh mention one other thing that i think we have to apologize i don't know if apologize for but correct the record on we got a voicemail this morning um and the audio i'm not going to play the i'm not going to play the voicemail here it was from the road but it was a listener who wanted to mention that we had referred to gypsy rose blanchard as gypsy rose lee who are very different that's probably from them is that from the musical gypsy i don't know i guess gypsy rose lee was and i didn't know this until i think that's yeah that's definitely the wrong name sorry um gypsy rose lee was a um like a stripper and a dancer of like a what do you call it and there's a movie called gypsy

starring Tyne Daly, where she plays Gypsy Rosalie, I think. Okay, I don't

know about that, but she's definitely a she was a, like an entertainer, and what, burlesque. I can never think of the word burlesque. She was a burlesque dancer and singer and entertainer. So anyway, that's who Gypsy Rosalie is. She did the shake dance. She did the hoochie kuch. She did the hoochie kuch.

Yes. Okay, here's the thing, Andrew. For some reason, I also can't even find this. Oh, it's not even named anything anymore. It doesn't look like anything. thing on my phone. So I'm going to rebuild this thing right now. I'm going to try to do this. Andrew, let's see. We're doing Andrew Walsh. We're doing Camaro Kev. Let's see here. I have a lot of Kevins

in my phone. This is going to get interesting because can you add somebody that you're currently blocking is another question. Oh yeah.

That might be why it's being weird.

There's one person on our text chain who kind of has a lot of negative things to say during games. For your mental health, you have

blocked that person it's all about boundaries andrew everyone's in blue except you you're in green oh yeah baby andrewoid yeah you know the other thing that happens because you're on an android is i can't edit my texts to you yeah you mentioned that my function i'm the most obsessed with now bums me out okay uh david let's see and then we've got of course john this is amazing radio. This is good. This way everybody knows who the camera is. Let's see. Andrew, Kevin, Sammy, Durs, David, John, and then Stu. Sorry, Stu. You made this mess. You've got to lie in it. Let's just get to that. Okay. So I think I have the whole thing now.

I am giving it. I don't know how. This is probably I don't know if I need to say this on the show. If you haven't already hit go on that, you could add Roden if you wanted to. I've been hearing that he's been interested in joining the game. Does Roden want to be on this? Yes, apparently this is something that he wants. And so if you're rebuilding it, you might as well just, like, throw him in there. All right. It's okay to have this conversation on the –

I mean, where else are we going to have it? Off air during our private time?

Yeah. I don't like to talk to you during my private time. All right, Rodan's on the list now.

He's also in green, by the way.

Oh, another Android user. Good. That's why I wanted him in there.

Give me some – Now, here's the thing. I don't It doesn't seem to Give me an option I don't know how to change the name Of a group On iPhone This is how this whole problem Started in the first place Because I don't think I ever even named it The fun-loving criminals formally You know what I mean? I think I just called it that I don't think I know how to Name a group of people on my phone Something And then also, yeah, I don't know how to – it's clearly doable, but how do I do it?

I don't know. I mean, here's the thing. And this is why maybe this bothered me so much. It's not just because I'm –

And I assume it's your fault for being on Android.

Yeah, maybe. And now you can blame Rodin too. But I – it's not just that I'm reluctant to change. I love the name Fun-Loving Criminals. This isn't just like, oh, this is what it used to be and I don't want to – it is such a good name. You said it was tortured before. I totally would argue against that. That is not true. It is the perfect joke. It is in honor of an obscure but important figure in Pacific Northwest sports broadcasting. We are nothing if not broadcasters. How many of the people on this, at least three of them are broadcasters? StuBot used to work in broadcasting. That's like four of us. I just think it's the perfect name for our particular group.

Name and photo. Enter group. Name, Andrew. Look at you.

Lovin'. Do you know how to spell Kremins? Please.

Do I know how to spell? You mean criminals?

Well, I often would think that Kevin Kremins spelled his last name with a K, but it's not true. It's with a C, so I wasn't sure if you knew.

So I do actually think that the original, to the degree that I had written this down somewhere, I think I was spelling it wrong. That actually makes it funnier Criminals Fun, loving, criminals Done Andrew, I'm going to send you Actually, this could be our show pick today Because it doesn't actually give anyone's number It just shows The people that are now On the list Okay, so there you go I will send this to you So let it be written, so let it be done I apologize to David for this Stu, you did steal Northwest Valor. I think that's another thing Steve said was he felt like he stole Northwest Valor.

Yeah, that is true. Got a little Scooby Snacks going on in the background for you. If we talk over it, we won't get pulled down. This is the fun-loving criminals, right? Was this their biggest hit? It was the first thing that popped up. I think so, although I think... Oh yeah, this song is actually pretty good. Yeah, this seems like the type of song that I would have either ignored or rolled my eyes at at the time, and now I hear it and I'm just like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

but we can't let i also i think i think for a long time i was confused and i misattributed or i i thought that ben harper was associated with the fun-loving criminals but i think he was associated with the innocent criminals oh ben harper and the i think his backing band might have been called The Innocent Criminals. No, I did not know that. I had a big Ben Harper phase in college. Did you? But anyway, okay, it's all done now, Andrew. It's all fixed.

Nice, so do I have a text message here from you inviting us to the new thing? I emailed it to you because I know you like that better for your purposes of show posting. Doing something, bear with me. All right, sounds good. Well, the funny thing is Rodin, who was just added to this list, and I believe it wanted to be added to the list, probably as an android user has no idea what's going on now because he and i did not see that it is called the fun-loving criminals we have to name it ourselves so and i don't know what anyone

else is seeing because i mean i did this on my end i don't know what the other iphone i'm sorry what the other normals are seeing on here but um that is now settled okay let's get to let's get to this kmart story um but let's try to not get too bogged down i'm talking to myself here. No, I'd like to get bogged down. Let's try to not get too bogged down in the fact that I think there is a, there's a writer out there for the post who I don't think is the person who wrote this piece in the times that I'm about to reference. It's attention Kmart shoppers. It's closing time. This is written by someone named Alexandra Petrie. Now I believe very similar name last week on the show, because I was originally thinking you were a Taylor Lawrence fan who's the great writer about most things internet you said not familiar and then i said well what about oh it's alexandra petrie but it's not this person there are who wrote this piece

because are there two people with this name i always said petrie i didn't know it was petrie but i well i don't either but we always i don't know the answer but the the person we were thinking of famously works for the post the washington post and is like the opinion and sarcasm editor for The Post, right?

This is really confusing, though. I'm so confused, Ron. I mean, there appear to be two journalists, unless this person, yeah, their names are spelled exactly the same, except the writer for The Times who wrote this great piece about Kmart is Alexandra E. Petrie, or Petrie. And then there is for The Washington Post, a columnist who's offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day is Alexandra Petrie or Petrie.

I'll bet you the New York Times writer added that maybe came to the game after and had to add the E.

And I got to tell you, Alexandra, you got to add more than the E. Yeah, how about that? It's not enough. Not enough for smooth-brained podcasters like me. Yeah, wow. And that is why in passing the other day, I said to you, like, I think she may have moved on to the Times because I remember seeing this other person's byline in the New York Times. Okay. Wow. Mystery solved. Thank you. Um, this, uh, story about the last Kmart in America, a Kmart in Bridgehampton, New York closing is a really, really, I think a really nice piece of writing and a very nice, uh, very affecting, uh, photo essay on the last hours of, of the last Kmart in America. And by the way, if I'm Alexandra E. Petri, I'm pretty stoked when I walk into this Kmart and I find Chrissy Ekonomos and Gloria McCourtney because I have hit the absolute motherlode of Kmart enthusiasts. These women traveled 1,300 miles to pay their respects to this Kmart because it turns out they are sisters, by the way, and they are from Duluth, who loves you, baby, Minnesota, and the Kmart seemed to be literally the main thing in their life growing up.

If you don't mind, I'm going to set the mood here with a little bit of Kmart music from 1970. This is actual Kmart music. Yeah, this is on YouTube. It's a two-hour, uploaded from reel to reel of the music that would play in Kmarts in 1973. So enjoy this.

Who knew? I mean, a lot of people know. A lot of people remember. But like that Kmart had so much going on above and beyond kind of what I think of the Kmart of my youth, which was it was still going strong. But I don't think it was as robust as this one in Duluth was. They went to the store as children in the 1980s with their mother and grandmother who wrote poetry in the Kmart Cafe. Right. They got there.

What that took? I want to unpack that. That could be a whole. Why is she writing poetry in the Kmart Cafe?

um and is it the the let's see uh they went to the store's children with their mother and grandmother who wrote poetry in the k-mart cafe it sounds like their grandmother wrote poetry

in the k-mart cafe and i'm trying to think back i don't think and i might k-mart might have loomed a little bit larger in my life because i grew up in a more rural area than you and i think we would go to one in brunswick my grandma would be like we're going into town and you'd go in this small town of Brunswick where there were stores like Kmart.

But I don't remember there being a cafe. I feel like I can remember the smell, the kind of plasticky smell of a Kmart. I have various kind of very faint memories of a Kmart. But I feel like having a cafe in a store is a very 2000s sort of thing. You know what I mean? When we started incorporating cafes into all of the Barnes & Noble bookstores or what have you.

That's kind of an old school move too, though. But we used to go to the Woolworths at Northgate Mall, and they had a cafe in the Woolworths. And then I remember later learning about the Civil Rights Movement and finding out that some of the real original moments of trying to integrate spaces were at Woolworths lunch counters in the South.

The sit-ins. Yes, you're right. I mean, that's something I'd always heard about, but I did not grow up around Woolworths. In fact, I didn't know that they were in the Pacific Northwest. I always thought of them as one of a sudden.

They had one in the Northgate Mall. Wow. And I remember it was one of the early, early times of me being deeply mortified by, and she'll probably hear this because my mom has become TBTL's number one P1, and I would say this to her face, Mom, I love you, but, like, I remember being a little kid and my mom ordering us a plate of French fries in the Woolworths Diner at Northgate Mall, in the Woolworths at Northgate Mall, and sending the fries back because they were too cold. now I'm guessing they were probably too cold like I don't think this was you know the golden age of Woolworth's sort of food preparation you know standards I think it was it would probably only be six more months before they just took that whole thing out and replaced it with a perfume counter or something but so I think my mom was probably absolutely in the right but I was just getting to that age where anything my parents did embarrassed me deeply And like sending these friends Again this might be the Mandela effect But my memory is that The woman who was the I guess waitress at the Woolworths Was just right out of central casting Just kind of like in one of those Waitress-y kind of outfits That we associate maybe with the 1950s But it sort of held over like it was either powder blue or pink Diner style Yeah had the cat eye glasses And the pad was writing in it Maybe a mole with a certain amount of hair coming out of it Like it was, I feel like she was, she was perfectly cast for the part. And my memory was that just the look on her face of like, because I feel like my mom might have sent the fries back twice.

Oh, geez.

Anyway, all that is to say there, there, there, you know, there was some sort of culture of having these cafes in these places. I don't think the Kmart on Lake City Way, which is now the Sprouts, that's my main kind of Kmart point of reference in my life. I, that one maybe if it had a cafe, I think it was long gone. by the time I started going there.

I was at the Sprouts yesterday for whatever it's worth. If you just sort of felt a tingling in the universe. You're expanding.

You're really branching out, my friend, in your grocery needs. Yeah, I have more than one store now. They got their driver's license. These are the women who traveled, the sisters who traveled all the way to New York State to see the last Kmart as it closed. They got their driver's licenses there. Also, a thing I didn't realize Kmart was in the business of.

Me neither. This was all news to me.

Was there a DMV in the Kmart? I don't know how it works. Ms. Economos bought her first pregnancy test there Okay, that checks out That seems like a thing they would sell And once they had their own children The sisters would escape to Kmart for their mom breaks So these women are big time Kmart It mentions casually later on in the piece That one of them has a Kmart forever tattoo

Oh wow, I didn't get to that part

Ms. McCourtney who was wearing Kmart Joe Boxer leggings and shares half of a Kmart 4, this is the number 4, Eva, spelled like the name Eva, E-V-A tattoo, on her forearm with a friend. By the way, the friend is not even there. There's a different person walking around Duluth with like half of a Kmart tattoo on.

Wow, so it is one of those Havies. So like one might have the K or maybe one says K-M and the other one says Art. Honestly, if that's the case, the one that says Art wins.

Whatever you take from shares half of a Kmart 4 Eva tattoo on her forearm with a friend. Yeah, I don't know if it's one of those two hearts

that are kind of, you know, each half of a heart or something.

Yeah, wow. Just imagine being Alexandra E. Petrie, and you're like, okay, first of all, I mean, I don't know how other reporters feel. You and I have talked about this a lot on the show. The number one thing I dread is MOS. When we have to get MOS, when you have to go try to find people to talk to them about their experience at a thing or a place, like people who we haven't already set the interview up with. By the way, people are generally really nice, and usually we get good things, and oddly enough, I'm okay at it. Like, when I'm in the moment of talking to people about this, that, or the other, and we're filming them, I actually think I'm pretty okay at that. but I dread it deeply for some, I dread approaching the person and asking them to talk that it's that moment. It's that because there's 20 seconds where they don't know what you're approaching them about. And they probably think you're saying I ran out of gas. I just need five bucks.

You're always holding that gas can though, which I'm always telling you like,

that's my signature move. I guess I'm the, I'm the gas can boy on CBS Sunday morning. Seems dubious. But, but if you're Alexander E. Petrie and you walk into this Kmart, And you happen upon these two sisters. You are just like, OMG, this story is writing itself.

I wonder, by the way, not to take the fun out of that story, but I wonder if there wasn't some research done in advance. Like, I'll bet you these folks are mentioned. If they have Kmart tattoos, yeah, there must be, you know what I mean? There must be some sort of presence online of them and their love of Kmart somewhere.

Is that bunk journalism then for them? because then that would mean that Alex how how are we besmirching the journalism of Alexandra E. Petrie right now if in fact she made contact with these sisters through some sort of Kmart enthusiast group and then coordinated it they were like we're gonna go visit it she's like great I'll come visit it too with you should it have been mentioned in the piece um that that we knew that the sisters were going to be there as opposed to the way it reads is they're just wandering

around the store I don't know that I made that same assumption now I only read like the first half of this article when you sent it to me today so I don't know what happens later but it's not kind of like I'm in the store and I bump into it just it starts by saying who Chrissy and Gloria are and um when they realized the store was closing down they knew that they were going to be traveling 1300 miles to get there um there's nothing that makes it seem to me explicitly and I never pictured this I I always assumed that this was somebody that the reporter um had sort of set

up an interview with i don't know what i'm missing i the way that it read to me was well i mean look the headline is attention kmart shoppers it's closing time um when chrissy economos and gloria mccourtney heard the last full-size kmart in the mainland united states was closing down they knew they had to pay their respects even if the store was more than 1300 miles away i guess you're right i guess i mean i i for some reason the way i maybe also had to do with the photos it just felt to me this idea that the New York Times just showed up to see what was due and at the last Kmart. And so I kind of just went with that assumption and then I think fit everything else in.

My guess is, just based on my limited experience as a public radio producer, I have a feeling that you would have somebody kind of set up, you'd make some phone calls, you'd make sure that you're not just showing up there without anything and maybe doing some...

This would explain why I so often

got absolute dreck from my visits to places. It never occurred to me to grease the wheels But we should talk about the photos, though, because I want to say something that is really only for you. The very first photo that I saw, because, you know, the story does set this up. It's kind of like, oh, you know, these sisters wanted to go and see the last Kmart. And then you get to the first photo. And my initial reaction was, wow, why would anybody want to do that? Because that was me trying to do a drop. But they're so depressing. And this is maybe more of an Andrew sort of thing. But, like, I wouldn't want to go for a very sad ceremonial, like, let's say goodbye to this place where all the shelves are just fully empty. And there's some guy who I thought was the Stugats walking through the aisle. That was the first time I saw that. Honestly, I was scrolling on my phone. Then I scrolled back. I'm like, that's not the Stugats, coincidentally. Like, because he's from New York. Cowboys. Blue light special. Collision course. So, anyway, it's not the Stugats, I don't believe. But anyway, it's so depressing that like this is really, really bleak. I would rather say, you know what? Let's just like have a let's remember the good times, you know, let's not go back and have this be our last memory of something that I love because it's so these these photos are just so heart wrenching.

I mean, it's it is a very it's a very, very bleak scene, even by the standards of a Kmart, you know. and i'm not here i'm not trying to roast kmart here or like you know whatever and it's like yeah this is photographically one of the more bleak retail stories i've ever seen it's just i mean again i said at the top of the show there is just some sort of deep sadness embedded in a once proud u.s retailer that is the last literally the last location and these giant signs. Nothing held back. Closing sale. Everything must go. By the way, something is held back. You didn't get to the very end of the piece, Andrew, which, as I learned from Peter Weisbach, is always where the most interesting sentence is. These sisters tried to buy one of the arms of the mannequins and were told they're not for sale. I was going to say one of the best photos in this piece that really speaks to me, I think, is this photo of just a bunch of like decommissioned mannequins, naked mannequins, just sort of like all standing in the corner of the store together. It's the most striking photo to me, probably because there's nudity involved, naked mannequins, but nudity nonetheless. And I was thinking like, oh, maybe you could take a mannequin home. They couldn't even get a part of a mannequin?

Nope, you cannot. The mannequins are not for sale, it turns out, which raises a million new questions, mostly. so okay have they sold the mannequins to some other retail operation like okay the mannequins there is an aftermarket for that so we'll sell those and who's the other operation who is in the mannequin buying business because my sense is retail generally is kind of in decline um and so who is out there who's who who doesn't have enough mannequins for the kind of brick

and mortar retail clothing selling that they're doing especially for closing one store like how much does that offset your losses you know if this was like hey listen Kmart is going under and there are still like I don't know what would be a reasonable number 178 stores around the country

just 178 by the way that's high watermark over 2,000 locations wow okay so yeah actually I don't know if it's a high watermark but in 2022 2002 Kmart then had 2,114 stores and in fact that's when they declared bankruptcy so that leads me to believe that at their height they had many more

than that right and so but let's just say you're a store that's somewhat in decline but then you have to declare bankruptcy and so there's like you know actual legal obligations there you have to make back whatever you can and like so you're going to sell like you know a couple hundred stores worth of mannequins back to somebody who needs mannequins okay there's some sort of there you can see the reasoning there but this is one store michael how much could it cost ten dollars like why right who is are they selling it to the dollar store down the street and also it's like

no offense to the folks that work at this kmart who again i'm sure are hard-working great people who now have to find some other place to work which stinks for them but you see throughout this article like these sisters are posing for pictures with the kmart employees like they are really really bought into this whole thing and you would think somebody at this k-mart somebody at this bombed out husk of a k-mart would in bridge hampton or wherever would look the other way and give the sisters a goddamn hand literally exactly let them walk out one's got a half of a k-mart foe ever tattoo right give the lady a hand maybe the employee is like how do i know the

rest of that tattoo is a Kmart maybe maybe maybe she just has faux Eva or yeah what's a K what is the um Spongebob character that begins with a K Krabby pants or something I don't really know

anything about Spongebob I shouldn't have gone there they work at a fast food restaurant called Krabby Patty and then there's Mr. Krabs who's their boss look at you you're my fact checking cuz well you know why is because well one Addy is in the age cohort of early Spongebob stuff and We went to the Spongebob movie when she was a kid, which was a phenomenal movie and also included at least one song by Wilco on the soundtrack because they know the demo of the dads who are going to the Spongebob movie. So here are two other quick things that jumped out at me. Again, I want to be careful that I don't sound like this is a class statement or anything like that because, you know, people are living their lives and everybody should shop anywhere they want to. There was something about Chris O'Brien I'm not reading this, I'm saying this There was something about the shopping cart Contents of this fellow Named Chris O'Brien that they happen upon That just gave me again A deep, deep feeling Of ennui Chris O'Brien, 63, a retired School teacher from Center Mauritius, picked up Ready, Andrew? Now just again, picture The bare aisles of this Kmart And then Chris O'Brien, just pushing his cart through, he picked up cinnamon-scented pinecones, reasoned chocolate, and Montreal steak seasoning as Bruce Springsteen songs played from his phone. Just like I was looking for some cinnamon-scented pinecones and a steak sauce. And also, I'm going to add my own soundtrack to this whole situation of Bruce Springsteen on my phone. So this clearly sounds like he was just blasting Bruce Springsteen on his phone as he wandered through this.

These empty aisles. It's like as if music coming from your phone couldn't sound tinnier. Like the only place it could sound tinnier would be in a mostly closed Kmart in the empty aisles.

Well, the tears of the people shopping does absorb some amount of the audio.

Sure, of course, yeah, the moisture.

But, like, yeah, could you imagine, just, like, you're in this Kmart. For whatever reason, nostalgia, you think there's going to be a deal, whatever, you've decided to brave the saddest retail location in America on this day. And then just in the back somewhere, it's just like you can hear, was that born in the USA? It'd been down like a dog that's been beat too much, then you spend half your life just to cover it up? What? Does the guy have cinnamon pine cones? He said, it's kind of like playing the stock market. He said, oh, Mr. O'Brien looked at a winter hat marked 50% off. Quote, it's kind of like playing the stock market, he said, putting the hat back. Hold out for cheaper discounts or risk items selling out.

Author note, Chris O'Brien did terribly in the stock market.

Now, the other thing, though, that just jumped out at me, which I just think, by the way, again, this is just a fascinating story, really well written. And he kind of just briefly delves into like the demise of Kmart and the theory put forward in the piece is that, you know, Kmart was this very, very successful. It was second only to Sears in terms of number of locations and I think just the scope when it was at its heyday. But what they didn't do effectively was to figure out like what Target did, which is like we have designy things or what Walmart does, which is it's super cheap. Like they just didn't they got kind of passed by these other business models. then at some point when they were both in free fall they combined with sears which was a terrible idea because both companies uh almost didn't survive it kmart hasn't i think sears is you know probably in some trouble too um like okay so two last things one the original kmart opened in 1962 looks dope as hell andrew oh is that the final photo oh yeah those that's the thing

you juxtapose you juxtapose the old classic photos of a Kmart and you juxtapose too much with the the sad photos of the of the empty aisles and it is truly heartbreaking I actually the reason I knew about that Kmart audio is because I kind of go on these weird jags of nostalgia even like kind of pre my lifetime nostalgia and so I've seen a lot of photos of Kmart in their like kind of heyday I think maybe it was around the holidays last year I found a similar YouTube video that was like the holiday music that was played on Kmart loudspeakers during the 1980s or something. And so I would put that on, I think, while we were, I don't know, while we were just hanging out downstairs playing darts or something. And the backdrop of the video on YouTube was just like kind of a revolving photo slideshow of Kmarts in their heyday. and they will give you a feeling man like they will make you want to like time travel back to

the 1950s and vote Republican that's how you save Kmart you time travel back and you vote Republican

I look at this photo and I think you know what I do like Ike I do like seriously though this

particular this photo in the times it's the first Kmart shopping center opened in 1962 and there is a lot first of all again the branding is awesome like because it's 1962 the K Mart sign yes looks great yes and then there's just people lined up it looks like a sunny day there's just like a couple of palm fronds that have made their way into uh the kind of shot and it just looks like America's best days are ahead of it yes exactly you know let's build from freeways yeah right exactly i know i'm messing up the timelines here because you said

this is 67 i had it as a 50s thing but i didn't really or no robert 62 i guess is that robert

moses was that an eisenhower freeway project was that robert moses i think it was an eisenhower

thing and i think he was late 50s early 60s but then you then you scroll down okay andrew too so

you go from that photo of the original kmart and just like again the aesthetics are great to me People are lined up outside It was the Ikea of it's day A store opens and everyone's like Holy shit this is so cool This is an entertaining outing To just go observe this store That's how excited we are for it And then you scroll down to the bottom And it's a picture from the last Kmart By the way we should give credit Andrew Kelly for the New York Times Taking these photos Really nice work by this person And it's just completely bare shelves. We've already talked about it, but then there's just one of these things. I believe these are called an end cap, usually. So it's the end of an aisle, and in fact, in the sort of retail game, getting on the end cap is a very big thing. If you work for the company that sells a certain kind of product, because that's a much higher visibility area, there are people whose whole job it is to go and negotiate with Home Depot about end caps.

I think about that all the time when I'm in a grocery store.

You're looking at this end cap, which Thank you.

doesn't have anything on it but it just has this sign this that's you know this obviously it was a kmart branding attempt you know as as as the titanic that is kmart is slipping below the surface somebody in the band is still playing somewhere at the corporate office thinking we might be able to turn this around and it is a photo it's like a it's a very vibrant kind of print of a megaphone like that hey we're talking into the megaphone thing and then a kid i guess Screaming into the megaphone I don't really understand what they're trying to say It's just like a brightly colored megaphone And then like a cute kid young person And the megaphone and the kid are kind of yelling at each other And it says attention Kmart shoppers That's the classic line And then beneath that it just says Hashtag Life is ridiculously awesome And there is something about Hashtag life is ridiculously awesome in the context of this photo, Andrew, that just killed me this morning.

It is really something. And so I still have a login to the website formerly known as Twitter. And so I have done a search for hashtag life is ridiculously awesome, which, by the way, even in the heyday of hashtags, which I've never been, I mean, I understand the utility of hashtags in the most basic form but what happened to hashtags during the era of like social media marketing which has always been the most ridiculous thing to me in the world even you and I partnering up with some brands who are kind of like you know and then at the end of your thing use this hashtag which is really going to drive engagement and you're just kind of like well first of all that hashtag is 7200 letters long that's not really going to work and also that's just not like how people engage with stuff it's like i just swear to god so many of these hashtags were just created by the marketers and but then without really a lot of thought about who's actually going to type in hashtag l-i-f-e-i-s-r-i-d-i-c-u-l-o-u-s-l-y-a-w-e-s-o-m-e like and then so here's what i get as a top result when i type all of that uh under the hashtag into um the former twitter um somebody named heather took a selfie of herself wearing a um jersey um a number 42 jersey um she's apparently trying it on and it's like a mirror selfie i guess in a changing room and at a kmart at a kmart i'm assuming and she wrote down life is ridiculously awesome kmart It's from 2017, and it has two likes and one comment. And that is the top result for the hashtag, by the way. So I don't know. I just have a real—

I was thinking that this was actually a meta statement from someone. Like, this was not intended ever to be, like, a functional hashtag people used, more just kind of like a play on the idea of, as we will say sometimes, hashtag content, things like that. Do you think that's possible?

The end cap was that? You thought that it was just like a silly thing for them? Well, let me put it this way.

That was my take.

I mentioned, oh, my God. Okay, no, no. So this photo was taken in, for a second, I thought it was in Bellingham, which is going to blow my mind. No, but it was in some place called.

Can I blow your mind?

Belmar, New Jersey, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. I mentioned to you that this person, Heather, who goes by the handle Haunted Bookworm without an O, took a selfie in this dressing room wearing a number 42 jersey. It has two likes and one reply. The one reply came from Kmart on July 15th, 2017, looking super cute, Heather. And then the emoji of an equal sign and a D giving you a sense of a face with the mouth smiling and open. So Kmart was watching the hashtag. we'll see that much

I'm also I'm seeing somebody on Instagram also a woman who's in a changing room who is using the Life is Ridiculously Awesome hashtag how do you spell that and what's that how do you spell that can you spell it for me L I F E I F I'm like the Will Forte guy in the spelling bee i will give i will give this uh woman i'm not sure i think her name might be geisha smith g-a-y-s-h-a smith um uh she's done uh it's three i think 308 weeks ago this went in that'd be so long ago uh life is ridiculously awesome and then a lot of of people well let's say a handful of people in the manner of instagram are all saying that this woman looks really nice which does look really nice in this dressing room, trying on a dress, presumably at Kmart. Although...

The thing is, it does not indicate anywhere that it is a Kmart thing. It doesn't say Kmart in the dressing room, but I'm going to go ahead and guess that this is a Kmart thing. So that one got a few friends of this person saying that she looks really nice. So I don't know if Kmart considered that a W as well.

Do you know that I left out a key component of this photo of my woman in the selfie? She's taking a photo in this mirror. the mirror itself has a sign on it that says hey that looks good on you you should take a selfie

hashtag l-i-f-e-i-s now i'm on i'm on kmart's account at x.com and they're definitely tagging a lot of things with hashtag life is ridiculously awesome so there you're a hundred percent right this was working so having worked on various failed projects where it's like you hit this point of just kind of like just like throwing anything in the direction of the wall of like maybe this hashtag will turn this around it just gives me it gives me kind of a unique i think i i don't did i mention this on the show the other day or was i just thinking it i think i mentioned on the show that i mentioned that i've been really enjoying jamie loftus's podcast your 16th minute of fame but one of the episodes that really got me was pivot to video oh yeah you mentioned that on the show yeah and just like those kinds of things just give me such a they bad hashtags and pivot to video it just it gives me such a bad feeling because i've been in so many situations with like some sort of show that's not working or media project that's just it's not happening the way we hoped it would and it's you know you just get into these desperation like we just got to pivot to video we just got to get a good can we just go viral we got to get a hashtag it's just like it it never works it's never the thing that turns it around can i um first of all

that that reminds me of one thing that i um said to genevieve the other day i referred to something as new media and then we both just laughed for about 20 minutes i think because remember like you and i lived through the era of just like working in media and then just everything that was web related in some way was just called new media and it's such a it's so funny what an old term new media is now um there was one other thing related to this article that i wasn't sure if you were going to mention or not um so i will mention it and i don't know why i think this is a dazzling detail or necessarily where to go with it but um you had mentioned that kmart had teamed up with sears i didn't quite realize that but i did see a line in the story that said that kmart's parent company is called transform co it's called transform co so i went to transform co to see like what's going on to comment on this story that's right we will not be transform co we will

not comment is there a more like multinational we are we've bought this company because we want all of the um shelving that they have so i am we're in the shelving business in korea and you mentioned

they teamed up with sears so and i went to transform co's like brand website and basically all the brands are kmart related brands or sears you know sears parts direct or sears uh making moments matter diehard is a is a battery brand that i believe sears might own anyway it's just it's all kmart and sears related stuff almost exclusively and so i'm wondering if they just like we need to transform our business let's create this business called transform co and And then all you have is a bunch of guys like me picturing an 18-wheeler suddenly transforming into a PR person that says, we will not comment at this time, and then transforming back into a truck.

This seems – Transform Co., Andrew, you're going to be shocked. It's not from the old country. It isn't a proud legacy, family-owned – it was formed in 2019, it would appear, to buy up the wreckage of Sears.

And then throw some Kmart, just sprinkle a little bit of Kmart in there

Why not? I mean, if it's lying around If nobody's going to take this Kmart, we'll snatch it up But yeah, it just looks like I mean, they must know something that we don't About like, there's some sort of There's some value that can still be extracted from this, I guess You know, because it seems to me like Why would you try to catch this falling knife? Why would you want to get to be a part of this? But it's like, well, if you have no interest in its long-term survival And if you're purely stripping it out for parts, there's probably some kind of a kind of like what happened with the Red Lobster situation. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I was always a little confused about that Red Lobster story. And I believe that was one that you and I discussed and then came back to sort of rediscuss with better context because we feel like the story had sort of we'd sort of fallen for the story. Yeah.

This like endless shrimp trap.

But then it kind of.

It kind of went more viral when Flava Flav got involved, and he's like, you're not going to take it. Did you follow this sort of like third wave of the story? Because it kind of depresses me even more. Third wave lobsterism? Yeah.

I know we've been relying on that joke structure a lot lately.

But like, you remember like that became kind of, because I think the people who had an interest in Red Lobster, I'm going to butcher this so much, we're really trying to sort of tell the story about how this, what was it, $1 shrimp or whatever it was, some sort of- Endless shrimp. endless shrimp ended up sort of sinking the company where you were when we talked about that you were very skeptical of that claim and then more came out it was one of those just like oh yeah these these transform co style holding companies are just like he's shuffling all the chairs on the deck and like it's just like just kind of a gross story about just like late stage capitalism and everything but somehow wrapped up in all of this was like yeah but Flava Flav had seen the articles about how endless shrimp was killing red lobster so then he started like tweeting about it and i believe of his own volition i think he might i think oh then they then they launched the menu now he's like in commercials for them he's like i told you i wasn't gonna let the cheddar bay biscuits go anywhere and then i didn't realize that he has his own menu now but like i get the impression that he had a genuine reaction to this like this story on social media and then i think he's now advertised and the whole thing just stinks to high heaven to me and it feels like he's i don't know maybe being used is too strong of a word i don't think he gives a shit as long as the check's clear and i don't blame him i would probably do the same thing but like the whole thing just seems so so astroturfing and fake to

me well the i had read an article about the like a long a long read about this about the demise of red lobster and and what they were saying was they're yeah all the things we've already laid out which was just basically like they were bought by uh you know one of these sort of uh like what i always forget how they're actually described not private asset firms but like basically a company bought them and then sold all the real estate and then rented the real estate back to the red lobster location so they went from having not that bad of overhead to having these terrible rental agreements just to stay there which immediately meant they had to start making way more money and then that company eventually sold it off to a company that is from thailand i think and their big thing is seafood and shrimp and then they were pretty much using red lobster as a way to just like launder their frozen shrimp vertically they had been providing the shrimp to red lobster already and now it was fully vertically integrated the question of the flavor of flav piece beyonce had a song that mentions red lobster and one of the things that was cited as Red Lobster kind of being back-footed on this is they didn't capitalize on being in this Beyoncé song. It took them like two days to respond online, and they did not jump on the meme of it, which they could have. They were going to get all this free attention from being in this Beyoncé song, and they had no strategy. And that the Flava Flav thing then was their attempt to rectify that. What's pretty funny to me is if you go to peoplemagazine.com, people.com, Red Lobster launches Flava Flav menu after Rapper attempted to save the chain following bankruptcy. The comments under this article are just really pretty awesome. Christopher said, I'm glad someone stepped up to help save Red Lobster, and it had to be one of the best Flavor Flav. Salute. And then Ted just says, Flav is 65. Damn. And then Christopher responded to Ted, at least he stepped up to help. Yeah. What are you doing? Other than calling up people's ages on social media. I think Ted meant that complimentary. Yeah, exactly. Flav is 65.

damn just like yeah and just the passage of time just taking a moment when somebody that you grew up with a celebrity that you grew up with now let me ask you this what is more surprising to you that transform co has a blog or that the blog hasn't been updated since july 21st of 2021

transform co not updating blog andrew i think we got to wrap the show up because guess what

just landed on my workstation and what i am not going to smash landed on your oh a stink bug A stink bug, look at this

Oh buddy, I don't mean you any harm He's wandering across You can't see because of the way my camera is positioned He is wandering across My desk right now And I'm going to toss him outside What you all probably didn't hear Was I had to hit pause in the middle of the show And run over to the house And close my bathroom window Because there were roughly 80,000 stink bugs That had landed on the side of my house They've been doing this for the last week They generally keep to themselves But I've got to make sure all the screens are on, that there's no place that they can access the inside of the house, because I'm not trying to have 85,000 stink bugs in my house.

What caused the plagues, and are you doing it? Excuse me? In the Bible, what caused the plagues, and are you repeating that behavior?

I have repeatedly. refused to let the Israelites go. And Moses is not having it. I'm wondering if that's it. By the way, your response to what caused the plagues and are you doing it was a very fair response, which was, what were those words? Was it suspicious how seriously I was taking the question? I did not identify it as a joke, but as an accusation that I was going to try to figure and get my story straight. That was one of those, I know those words, but that sentence makes no sense types of situations. You're thinking more frogs from the sky kind of thing. Yeah, locusts. I had a real locust vibe. Yeah, these other guys are on the list. You're right. I may have caused a stink bug flick. I played Pharaoh in a production, a kindergarten production at Pillar of Fire Christian School. And I could not, my line, I was supposed to say no. When Moses said, let my people go, I was supposed to say no. I couldn't get my line out because I was laughing hysterically. I think the whole play was ruined by me playing Pharaoh. You were like, okay. I changed the course of the play. Yeah, right? Yeah, absolutely. Wait, you're talking locusts and boils? You're talking boils? Take them. Take them. Honestly, go. Get out of here. Boils are the worst. All right. Speaking of getting out of here, we're going to get out of here. Thanks for listening, everybody. We will be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. Please do join us then. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. what caused the plagues and are you doing it excuse me power out