Muse

Yeah, I just want to say it was a beautiful service, but you and I both know you wouldn't have gotten those laughs if you weren't a pastor I'm sorry. Oh, it's no big deal. I don't care. I'm just saying you're not actually funny. So don't feel proud about today People grieve in their own wasteland. No, no. I just want to say a beautiful service. Thank you I hope you don't think you're deserving those laughs. No, I just told him. I just told him It's the worst kind of hack there is. Beautiful service, y'all. Beautiful. Thank you again, gentlemen. My condolence. For sure. Okay, yeah, for sure T-T-T-B-T-L

Guess what day it is? Guess what day it is?

It's Friday, Friday. Gonna get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend. I just feel like I'm excited and I feel relaxed

and I'm ready to party

you win the best of them don't you kind of feel like a sellout can you really call it a sellout

when they give you a free tesla for doing the show beep beep ribby ribby let's get to the jokes

well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a friday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live hello cd listeners my name is luke burbank i'm your host Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia. It's a cold, but very, very clear blue sky. Nice day. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. Now, if you were listening carefully to the other episodes this week and tracking my movements, like NORAD tracking Santee Claus, you're like, looks at his house. Huh? Yeah, I'm home. Bring it back home, baby. Bring it back home. Yeah, I was not supposed to be here today. I was supposed to be in New York City, but I'm not. I'll explain why. It involves a rare act of personal boundary setting by me, your host, Luke Burbank. Let the fun begin. Who is happy to welcome you to episode 4,323 in a collector's series here on this Friday. I'm pretty excited about the Halloween costume plan that I've locked down for tomorrow in Portland. then Becca and I will be taking part in some Halloween festivities. Also, there is a new, I was surprised to find, completely legit, that is to say, allowed-to-be-there piece of art down near the U.S. Capitol that is quite scatological. We'll get into that, and we're going to talk to this guy, longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's got one burning question here on this Friday morning, and that is...

Is it too early to get a fish sandwich?

He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

A beep beep and a ribby ribby to you, my friend. Good morning. And to you, good sir. It sounds like you have a lot on the docket today, and I had something happen to me yesterday.

None of it interesting, but a lot.

Oh, good. That's almost exactly the energy I'm coming with, too, so I guess we could just flip a die. can I tell you a quick I want to keep it quick I'm going to try to keep this quick I had something it almost happened to me yesterday it's not something that happened to me it was a journey that I went on Luke it's a journey as old as time and it began back in 1976 when I was a small infant being held in my mother's arms I'm just kidding it doesn't go back that far

were you feeling colicky yesterday?

I think I'm teething i uh no i um i wear glasses and um the glasses that i'm wearing now i've been wearing since 2020 in the past i would you know get new so much has changed so much has changed and yet so much has stayed the same the same here we are another election year i've been meaning to get a new glasses prescription and new glasses for quite some time and i don't know why i i like buying new glasses i like the experience of having new glasses but it's something that i've really been dragging my feet on um one thing that i have a complicated relationship with is buying glasses online it's like it seems to be the most affordable way to do it these days we used to do ads for warby parker when it was a newer concept and i was very into it and so i don't want people to think hey when you were getting money from warby parker you were really into online glasses buying it was new and novel and i was excited about it i will say now when i sit down to buy new glasses though the whole like hey you can try them on virtually with the little cartoon glasses and move your head around like it just it just makes me nervous because i got a big fat head and if glasses are too small on me they're very unflattering and i haven't had a bunch of bad luck with the online stuff but like part of me is still just like living

in the 80s or 90s where I feel like I should, you know, what would our friend Camaro Kev say, swangle on in? Does he say swangle? Sure, swangle on in. Swangle on into a LensCrafters or something and like have them actually, you know, adjust the lenses to my face and do it the right way. And in fact, when I was talking a lot about buying glasses online, I would get some pretty like like kind of full throated arguments from listeners who are like optometrists and work in the industry saying hey listen there is no replacement for going in and having professionals make these glasses for you and do all the measurements it's just you're not getting it quite right if you buy them online and i always took that under consideration and but probably for the past decade or so i've been buying glasses online well uh all of that is to say yesterday i finally sat down i have my new glasses prescription which i've been hanging on to since march it turns out um and i sat down i started going on various websites and trying on virtual glasses and i said you know what no i'm just gonna i looked it up i'm like where do you buy glasses these days and i saw there's still a lens crafters where the mall used to be sort of by my house just like classic lens crafters and i'm like that's perfect it's not one of those boutique shops in like fremont or ballard where the lens is right or the frames in the city it's

That you've been potentially slandering on this program now for weeks.

That's probably, I could probably afford that. But I walked into some places that were kind of nice places years ago. Like, oh, let's just do some glasses shopping. I was like, oh, wow, 500 bucks for the frames alone or whatever. They can get pricey. And I don't want to be super cheap about this. But all of that is to say, and I promise I would keep this as short as possible, I did go into the LensCraft. I turned off my computer. I slammed the lid down and I said, no, I'm going to do this in person. and I saw there was a lens crafters near me, so I went over there, and it was a pretty good experience. Three friendly people working there. Crafting lenses. Just crafting lenses. They're lens artists there.

Yeah, just like a guy in a leather apron, just like swinging a heavy mallet crafting these lenses.

You should have heard the sound of just the metal on the anvil. I don't know why there was an anvil. A lot of broken lenses, honestly.

It's honestly a terrible approach to making the glasses. I mean, honestly, how many contact lenses did you forge today? I got like one and a half done. I just think just this hammer just keeps destroying.

There's some guy just like shoving coal into an oven while somebody's swinging this hammer. It's like, what are you what are you doing? Crafting lenses. okay so anyway i go in and generally speaking my point is it's a pretty good experience like you know they're helpful but not too in my face they show me around where i can look at glasses and i just spend a bunch of time by myself trying on various glasses taking some selfies as you do so that you can see what you look like because my eyesight is so bad it's hard to see what glasses look like in a mirror if they're not my prescription um you know sent i i narrowed it down relatively quickly but i'm like i don't do this this often so i'm taking my time really

enjoying the experience honestly and honestly i feel like it's funny to me that like you have not been doing this the whole time because you are a person who wears glasses that you need the glasses like it's not like an affectation or just a thing like readers this is essential to you getting around in the day and also you have specific taste it seems like the kind of thing that you would really like honestly i'm amazed you ever ordered any of them online yeah well i mean we

really did have that that sponsorship with warby parker way back in the day that i think got me into that kind of concept originally you get to try them on and then you mail back the ones that aren't going to work for you yeah i don't know if warby is still doing that but that's definitely how it was back in the day now this sort of virtual um you know like the basically the technology of instagram filters or tiktok filters or whatever they are whatever really has it's funny to see them used in a very practical way like hey you can try on these virtual glasses online but like there's just subtleties that you're not where the technology is now is not like i don't fully trust that um and so anyway and i think it also said what size are your glasses and it showed where you can look at uh on your glasses and see the size with my glasses are so old that it's just worn off and i was just like i'm just nervous i don't want to say large if i need an extra large or whatever so i go to the word parker enjoying the experience and i'm lens crafters sorry not warby parker i'm in the lens crafters yesterday and it's just a great experience i narrow it down to a pair of glasses um that i like and they're like 210 bucks which is like you know it's pretty reasonable for i think for a pair of uh lenses and i was thinking the whole time luke and this is kind of what what gets in maybe gets to the heart of the matter is like i very much went into this store and appreciated that it was here and i won and i thought, I wonder how many people come in the store look at glasses here and then just take notes and then go online and buy them somewhere else and i don't that's within everybody's rights to do that i'm not some champion of lens crafters but i sort of got this whole thing in my head of like if those people think i'm that guy i don't want them to think i'm that guy for some reason i did not want the people working there to think this is another guy off the street who's going to come and look at our physical glasses just like use our free mirrors i don't know why i cared i don't think they did assume that it doesn't but i just as i'm taking sort of i'm taking photos of like the the tags on the glasses so i can remember which ones i'm looking at but i'm like somehow painting myself as some sort of quasi hero because i'm like i they think i'm just taking down the information but no they're going to see at the end of the day i'm going to say i'm taking these glasses and can you help craft the lenses and and so i have this weird narrative sort of churning in the very back in my brain totally relate to this can you because it sounds weird specific no but not

specific to lens crafters but to other like retail experiences where i feel like these people don't understand whether it's that i plan on tipping well or that i plan on um one way or another sometimes i'll be in a retail experience and i'll just think like you guys just have no idea what's about to hit you you know you guys think that i'm just some mooch but no no no i'm actually gonna buy this thing or like you know like i i don't know i i know what it's like to walk around in the store and to have this entire experience and journey that is endemic to your own brain

uh-huh yeah and and somehow you like you be well i think this is something that you and i maybe are both a little bit guilty of like you definitely become like the main character in this thing where these folks are just like i don't care i'm just like counting down the the minutes before we can like close the store and go on with our lives but right exactly although i mean they didn't seem particular they all were very you know nice and friendly and welcoming but anyway I can just say

quickly I'm sorry but you've identified you've really identified something that I think drives all of this stuff and explains in to some degree how you how you and I are in the world and also how I guess we're able to do this show five days a week and it is main character energy it is this idea that when you walk into a lens crafters you everyone is obsessed with what you are and are not doing the whole time when in in point of fact they probably don't care and i'm not saying this about you excuse me i'm saying i have the same kind of like i'm i'm constantly thinking about everywhere i am in terms of what is everybody thinking about me and the answer is they're not thinking about me but it feels like they are and therefore i have these these very vivid experiences that again exist only pretty much inside my own head about what's really going on at this place

Yeah, and I've seen people, I think I maybe borrowed that phrase because I've definitely seen it thrown around online, like main character syndrome or something. It's kind of having a moment. Yeah. I call it Tupac syndrome, all eyes on me. Please tell me, is that really a record by him? Am I pulling that right? It sure is. Look at how cool and hip I am. Just dropping modern hip-hop references left and right over here. So I'm having my little main character thing. Like, I'm the real hero of LensCrafters. I'm assuming that when I pick out my glasses.

You're keeping LensCrafters in business.

Exactly. And so I write right next to the-

Forget about Wall Street. You're supporting Main Street.

The wolf of LensCrafters.

All right.

Show title. I'll write it down.

We're done here. Keep talking. We're done here. We got there. So anyway, I do- I pick out a pair of glasses I really like. They're Ray-Bans, actually. You were talking about Ray-Bans recently. But they're kind of round. They're kind of round, you know, like prescription glasses. They're not like super sporty or anything like that. And so I actually, I said something really stupid. I took, after wandering around the store for like 45 minutes and texting Veeves and saying, do you like these or whatever, I land on this pair of Ray-Bans. But then I take them to the front and I kind of don't know who to go to because there's been three people who've offered to help me. And so I go up to one of them and they're all sort of staring at me. And I said, okay, I think I'd like to take these to the dance or something like that. And they all just looked at me. I'm like, I don't know what that means either. I mean, I think I want these glasses. And they're like, well, that fellow over there can help you. So I sit down at one of those little desks in the middle of the Lens Crafters, you know, and he starts to take my information. And he says, first of all, you know, what kind of insurance are you working with here? And I'm like, oh, that's right. Insurance can play a role here. When you buy glasses from like, I'm pretty sure Warby Parker, but certainly like the cheaper places like Glasses USA, where I actually think I got these that I've been wearing for four years.

like an owl and or a lady on a jet ski are they the people who you've been buying your glasses

yes exactly although i mean i like they have name brands over there they're you know they're just

like they're less expensive so anyway i feel like those glasses are made by the same people that make the um uh usa tech

uh like bed like sure yeah you know what i'm talking about what is that product that's like a it's like a for where your feet go in your car you know what i mean oh i thought you meant a bed liner for the back of the pickup truck yeah i was struggling for the term but like you know there's whatever that floor mat company is and their like biggest selling point is it's they're

all made in the usa they always and they always have one big ad during the super bowl right but it's like very non-descript they're just like regular ads and they they do a lot of like

advertising on local and WeatherTech. WeatherTech. I just got there

right as you were getting there.

I feel like WeatherTech is Republican coded for me and I don't know why. It's just mats for your car or truck but there's something about made in the USA. For some reason I figured the same people that were making those WeatherTech things are also making those USA glasses. If you center the USA part of it too much, I start to get a

little sus. Glasses USA. When you go on their website, this automatically plays, which is interesting. Oh, yeah. That's just me on their website right now. Any whoozles. So I pick out these glasses, and the guy's typing in all my information, and I'm remembering, oh, that's right, you can use insurance here. Most of the online stuff doesn't take insurance. think you can maybe submit it later to your insurance but let's just leave that aside um and i'm like oh that'll be helpful and again these glasses are about 210 and i know lenses are expensive but in my head and this is probably wrong but my assumption is always like well whatever the frames are probably double that for the entire cost of the glasses right so i'm sort of thinking and i don't know why i'm thinking this but i'm thinking these frames are 200 bucks lenses you throw another 200 i'm going to be coming in around 400 probably for these glasses or something and then when he mentions that insurance could help with it i'm like oh that'll be great um so he takes a really long time to type in all of my information and and you know on an ipad too luke by the way and i was kind of like if he had a keyboard at the hollywood roosevelt hotel it's like if he had a keyboard this would be faster and then he and then at the very and he asks me a couple of things like do you want the this sort of like blue tint for computer usage and blah blah and i'm like no i don't need those but i do have a very strong prescription so i do need like the thinned down lenses which adds a cost i knew that was going to be expensive um and anyway he just sort of at the very end he's like okay here it is blah blah with the protection um this is going to come to um 989 or something in that ballpark and and then he's like but your insurance blah blah blah we'll take care of like 300 or whatever and so my my part of That would be like $550 or something along those lines. And I'm like, whoa. And for some reason, I'm only thinking about the total cost, not what I will have to pay out of pocket. I am so shocked that a pair of $210 frames are going to cost, whoever's paying for it, are going to cost about a grand. Like you're talking about basically $800, between $700 and $800 just for these lenses that you're going to craft. Now, as we mentioned, a lot of coal goes into there, a lot of sweat, a lot of swinging of hammers, a lot of forging. But like that seems so expensive to me. And then, you know, but again, I did right away say, and this might have him just sort of throwing this thing in at the very end saying, oh, and with the protection, this is your total. I said, what is the protection that you just said? Oh, boy. He said, you know, it's $50. It's the plan. And if anything happens to your glasses, we'll fix it for $25. And I'm just going to like, you never, you never, yeah, it's not even free all time protection. It's just like, you have to pay, you know, I mean, $25 is pretty cheap if I break a lens

or something, but you never asked me if I wanted that. You just did the salesman thing where you threw it in and said it very quickly. And maybe that raised my hackles a little bit, but then to see the total price being almost a grand, I was shocked. I was like, Hey, listen, I'm sorry. That's way more than I thought it was going to be. I need to shop around a little bit. Can you print that out for me or send it to me? It's like, oh, I can email you.

And circle the serial number so that I can easily Google these items and find them online.

Well, I wasn't even thinking that. I was just so shocked. And I was like, I don't want to pull the trigger on this. Like, I'm sitting here. I sort of didn't like the, again, it was only like $49, this coverage he threw in there. I just didn't like that vibe. And I think I was so shocked at the total price. And again, I just want to say, I was estimating in my head, oh, I don't know. it'll be in the $400 range and it ends up being in the $500 range. That's not out of pocket for me. That's not a huge thing. I think I was obsessing over the full cost. I'm just like, how is lens crafters charging $800 just to.

craft the lenses it just seems like too much so i was like i just need to i need to do some

shopping around so i come home i need to actually step away and do some quiet reflection with my

family this is a time for listening that's exactly what i said so i mean i hope i wasn't too stampy leaving there but i did say to the guy i'm like this is almost like four times what i thought it was going to be and then he kind of looked shocked i'm like okay that's not right i mean the glasses are the frames are 210 so maybe not quadruple what i was thinking but it's just way way more than i thought um and then anyway so i come home and i'm like well maybe one thing i can do is just like i know what these glasses are i did take a photo of the tag not because i ever i would remember i was the lens you were the hero of the story i was going to save that entire i was going to save the lacrosse store that is next to the lens crafters i was just going to be the the hero of northgate but anyway i'm like well let me just start by googling these lenses or like seeing on literally glasses usa um you know what these things go for if i can find them weather tech i was dubious that weather tech would actually have what i was looking for made in america but i came

home yeah that's an eagle by the way i want to mention that i think i'm right about weather tech being republican coded yeah i'm reading an article about the founder his name is david mcneil and the article is written on the website super yacht fan oh i thought it would be big game hunter dot net it's i'm sure you take the super yacht to get to where the big game is right um so this is

going on pretty long and now it's getting very um tedious i realized so let me wrap this up just by saying i was surprised that i did find these exact um these exact frames these literally these ray-ban frames that i wanted on a couple of the the cheaper websites i can't even remember which one I ended up pulling the trigger on, and the frames were exactly the same price, $210 for the frames. But then when you go through the process of clicking all the boxes and saying, I want these lenses, I would need the thin lenses, I need this and this and this, the total price ended up being something like $344. And then I upgraded for like a slightly better progressive lens situation for $50 or something. So like the total was like $410. dollars and first of all I ended up buying them online so it's literally the frame literally the frames I was holding in the store so that was kind of nice I really did sort of cheat the system in the exact way I didn't want them to think I was doing I literally had put these glasses on my face I know they look good on me not just virtually so that's good but here's the deal at the end of the day and this is where I think maybe I'm a little bit maybe I'm a little bit short-sighted but here's the deal so i think i was so gobsmacked and a little insulted by and it felt the undercoating gouging and not just the undercoating but just the the full the full price of being almost a grand at lens crafters but insurance was going to eat most of that anyway so i was going to end up paying what maybe five ten but instead i paid four ten or something and not that a hundred dollars isn't isn't a lot of money to me i can buy a lot of i can buy a lot of things for a hundred dollars including happiness and pull tabs um but it's not as big of a deal i'm stuck on the one grand number and i'm kind of like well insurance would have taken that but i'm also like well i don't want to and they're part of me it's like well i don't want to just gouge the insurance and then i'm like what do i give a shit i know right what do i why am i protecting the insurance companies like they're not they're getting out of trying to pay as much as possible too but there was something so galling about the whole thing but now in my head i'm kind of like it probably would be for that extra let's say hundred dollars i can go into lens crafters later i can get them adjusted if need be i do believe that probably having somebody put them on my face and take measurements is better than me like having to measure my pupils at home like you have to i don't know if you've ever gone through that before no um you literally you print out a piece of paper and you have to like get exactly to the millimeter how far genevieve helped me with that another reason i don't like buying them online And I also think of those listeners who are experts in this field who are saying, listen, the glasses that you're going to get if you buy them online, the lenses simply are probably not going to be as good as they are from LensCrafters. And so maybe I should have just paid the extra $100 and let insurance pay the extra $400 or whatever it ended up being.

But I was just so shocked that I could buy literally lenses online, have a $344 price tag, LensCrafters $988 or whatever it was.

that's the end of my story i think that i mean i think there's a few things going on here i think that probably because insurance tends to cover the way that lens crafters can probably still exist charging a thousand dollars for glasses is and i'm sure that that price is going up and up and up as the warby parkers of the world eat into their you know into their sort of customer base and so there's it's probably a kind of a bit of a vicious cycle where you gotta there are not as many people coming into that lens crafters as there used to be and so when they do get somebody they've got to charge more and i think most people if they happen to have insurance um also optometry insurance like dental insurance famously unhelpful i feel like i've experienced in my own life at times but if you do have insurance that will knock down a significant portion of it then um uh then people probably most of them just don't think about the overall price they think about the how much am i paying yeah i think this is totally about the difference this is this if i would have i could have coached you up on this and totally like level set for you or like changed your expectations about the entire experience i think you right now would be uh waiting to go get your glasses from lens crafters and this is what i mean if i would have said to you before any of this happened okay so here's the scoop andrew like if you go to lens crafters like they they actually charge what seems like kind of a lot of money but the deal is half of it gets knocked off through insurance and then the good news is you're getting it from a brick and mortar place if you have a problem you can go in there they'll do the like really legit measurement like it's just you just have that nice hands-on experience and you can go to them if there's any problems now that's going to cost you like a hundred dollars more than if you just kind of piece it together online but uh so it's like is that worth a hundred dollars to you to just know that there's like a human being who can help you with this that's a short drive away like if that would have been And what you expected going in, I bet you would have made the lens crafter's decision. But what happened was, first of all, $1,000, real sticker shock for you, didn't appreciate that they were kind of trying to pull the move of throwing the undercoating on there without actually really asking you, things like that. So you just ended up having kind of a weird, shocking experience, which then just drove you scurrying back to the Internet.

I think that here's the other part of this. Since glasses are relatively cheap when you buy them online these days, I think more and more people have gotten used to having more than one pair of glasses. Growing up, I was always like, you have this pair of glasses. And, you know, under my under my parents care, I think they were pretty like on a pretty strict schedule of probably getting my eyes checked yearly. And so I would have a pair of glasses for a year. Then it would be replaced by another pair. And I in the past have had like a couple of glasses, like kind of in rotation. And I like these. I don't know what you call these. I think they're called like brow line glasses or are they frow line glasses? No, they're like, I don't, they're kind of, how do you describe these?

I would, I would call those a horn rim.

No, maybe not horn rim, but like thicker on top with a very, very thin wire underneath sort of like.

I would call them, where were you in, were you anywhere near Los Alamos in the 1940s?

Yeah, like kind of that classic glasses look.

Real kind of science guy glasses, but they're very in style too. and i wish i i'll try to figure out the name of them and i kind of like that they never go out

of style so it's kind of a classic unimposing look sort of but then i like i always like to have one of these and then i like to have like a rounder they're called uh horn rimmed glasses i mean i've heard of horn rimmed glasses but that usually means they're more pointy coming out of

the the sides right by the well all i know is if i google that you know maybe not i don't know don't don't quote when i googled horn rimmed glasses i started to see a lot of pictures of basically what you're wearing but now i'm also seeing a lot of pictures of things that aren't

what you're wearing so i don't know what do you get if you google horny toad okay wait just forget but then drop searches on hold on let me unblur it anyway all of that is to say i might go back to lens craft so this this new pair i bought is the other style that i like to wear which is just like fully round like kind of plastic glasses but i might want a pair i might i might want an extra pair and so now i'm sort of thinking now that the shock has worn off and i'll know what i'm going in for i might go get a second pair of lens crafters maybe in a you know yeah in a few months or something and then i can have a couple and then i'll sort of like you're pulling a real burbs why not let the insurance you know cover half of the other one but i was just like so uh again sort of shocked that the the price of the glasses was going to be almost four times the cost of the of the um of the the frames themselves i was just like what the hell are you guys pulling over here but all of that is to say i'm going to be a very handsome boy pretty soon you really are when i roll into this video conference with you which is what i call doing the show with you and in my new

glasses well um i love to hear that you're finally embracing your inner burbank of being like okay i like these glasses like presuming that you like the glasses when you get them that you're like so i should definitely have an identical pair somewhere else or not somewhere else but just

like in case something happens oh no i'm sorry the opposite of that no no i'm gonna get i like having two i basically wear two different style of frames and i like having one of each so now i've got this one locked down i might go back and get a secondary pair well that's where i would

have two of each different frame so four glasses total you wear them all at the same time and i

have supervision i gotta say and i really and i i think you know this i like to be sometimes i like to bust your chops what do we say on the show yesterday get your goat or what have you but i also like to be sensitive i don't i don't like to go too hard but you said something on the show that i didn't i don't think i reacted to in the moment at least not audibly no this is like months ago years that has just been oh no i shouldn't say it's been on my mind but you're reminding me of it now and it really did shock me because we had a well we probably had years of conversations about crocs and then we had a very long conversation about you potentially no not croc sandals right tevas yeah tevas tevas tevas you were going to try a pair of footwear that you were so reluctant about because you'd never worn anything like this before in your life you were so reluctant we had therapy sessions about it on this show and then when you finally lost a lot of listeners over it honestly and then you said yes i'm gonna buy this and then didn't you say you immediately bought two pairs without even trying them on

am i right about that yeah you are andrew you're right about that i can't get over that it was a weird move um what it was i mean if you really want if you if you really want to crawl into my brain for a moment and i wouldn't recommend it um the way that my brain tends to work is is If I identify what I think is a sort of maybe a need in my life or some sort of maybe an experience that I want to have, and then I think that there's a product that will help me have that experience, then I start looking around for it. So the experience that I was looking to have was comfortable footwear in Europe where it was going to be very hot and maybe not something where at the time I thought was, and we talked about this a lot, there's always a little bit of a, there's always kind of a bit of a dilemma regarding shorts, shoes, and socks, like particularly if you're a guy, do you go with the um the socks that are like very very short that you kind of can't even see those sort of cycled in and out of popularity over the years do you wear like you know regular gym socks what do you do exactly and so I was trying to figure out what's it going to be like in Italy it's going to be really hot and maybe the answer would be for me to just get some comfortable sandals with that I wouldn't wear socks with I'm that's probably a Billie Eilish is probably somewhere right now wearing tevas with socks um it's i'm not able to go there i know that's probably back in style but not for me so i decided i'm gonna get these tevas or tevas excuse me and when i went on the website to buy them the tevas that i identified as being the ones that i kind of thought might work the best were like 24 for a pair oh okay i mean that is disposable shoes

that is incredibly cheap i did not realize they were that cheap and but again it's like i went

from being like i don't even know if i can pull these off or if i want to wear these two well shit they're 24 a pair let's just get two because if i love them then i'll probably have the pair that i just like wear in europe and they just get totally thrashed but then i'll want to have a pair like maybe this is my new shoe maybe this is who i am now and this is where my brain is just so weird because a normal person would go would be like considering wearing this to like well let me get a pair and see if I like them and then only after finding out that they really loved them would they ever consider getting another pair but I go right to my new identity is guy who wears these sandals and guy who can never be without these sandals and I must have two of them so that if i burn through the first pair of sandals just through sheer enthusiasm then i'll just i don't have to i don't have to take a whole four minutes out of my day to reorder another pair they're just right there under that bench in my side room andrew you know by the way returned

both pairs did you you only tried on the one and then send it back i take i didn't trump all over

Gideon, the one pair. I brought them to Europe. I wore them one time between the Airbnb and the pool. And I couldn't even, I couldn't tolerate that. I put them back in my suitcase.

Mentally, you didn't tolerate it, right? Not uncomfortable. Mentally.

It was not a, no, they're physically, emotionally. I mentally, and I'll tell you this. Okay. So I, by the way, I put those back in the suitcase. I never took them out again. when i got back home probably like looking at my credit card bill from the various things that i was spending money on in europe and i looked at the amazon.com and or wherever i was returning it to maybe it was zappos i don't know and they were like i realized both pairs of tevas were within the window of return and there was no restocking fee and i was just like all right i will be generating a return label for these and i got my 48 dollars well you know what that's i don't know

that old burbs would have done that i think

old burbs would have just thrown them in a closet and forgotten about them so that's gross i'm not even joking that sounds really condescending but it's it's legit condescension this time

that's good i'll take that now let me tell you about one other thing though andrew let me tell you about one other thing that this is this is the capper to this story and then we should thank some don't yes becca and i i should actually text her although that'll delay this story We were, you know, of course, I was talking to her about these sandals, and I took some pictures and said, can I pull these off? And she said something noncommittal. That's right. I forget what she said.

Talking about faint praise. Not even praise.

Those are sandals or something. You know, it's something that just factually described the situation.

I recognize this as a photograph.

Exactly. Let's see. Where were we when we... I'm texting. Let's see if I can... this starts off so romantically where were we when uh so i'm texting her because what basically happened was after there's a whole you know long journey about me and these stupid sandals and me trying to wear them and then me being like i just can't pull these off and me putting them back in the suitcase i swear at the end like at the end of the trip we're like walking through the airport and a guy walks past us in the opposite direction and he has on the exact Tevas that I had purchased. And they looked so stupid. And Becca and I just looked at each other and cracked up. It was just like the universe got to send me a sliding doors jingle all the way version of me in them. and it was like i've never felt more i've never felt more sort of confirmed in a decision i've never felt more validated in my decision to like not make this sandal like my new life

sometimes not taking the leap is better than taking the leap honestly and it was like it was

because because the whole thing about think about this with shoes particularly it's very hard to get a real read on how you're coming off in the world you can look down first of all looking down at your shoe is the perspective only you have okay so that's not even really helpful what you really need to do is see the shoe on someone else that's the truest read on how the shoe is coming off because when you look down at your shoe that's not a perspective most people are having of your shoe you can kind of try to look at the side of it in the mirror but that's also not you know what I mean like it wasn't until this person sauntered past us in the exact sandal in question looking like a complete foolio

that i realized what a bullet i dodged and let's hope that that person was not one of today's daily donors it's time to let the mighty eagle soar once more let the eagle soar

We are finally, Andrew, bringing this show back to its patriotic roots. And I, for one, salute. I wouldn't say the political work of John Ashcroft, but I would say the musical contribution, at least to this program. Absolutely.

Can you separate the art from the artist when we're talking about John Ashcroft? It's difficult. It's difficult.

I would love it if he was more a part of that conversation. You know, there are the obvious go-tos. there are the woody allens of the world the michaels jackson sure you never hear about

separating the art and artists and terms of john it's true it's a huge blind spot for our culture

maybe not for christian mckee of portland oregon who's our first donor we're thanking today this is us thanking people who have been supporting tbtl financially thanks christian uh great name by the way it's my middle name and uh the name i really wanted for many years of my childhood before i realized that the luke thing was just it had you know it was too widespread in my life too many people just knew me as luke i couldn't couldn't make the switch um also thanks to rachel howard till who's down there in woodland california thank you rachel look at this and oh my gosh how'd this happen wow and you don't believe in a god christian stanley in hadley massachusetts

There is no way that it's a coincidence that we started this with John Ashcroft singing, and we have two Christians.

Well, listen, let's be respectful and kind to our donors named Christian. We are not aligning them necessarily with former, what was he, Attorney General?

AG, I think, yeah, during the kind of post-9-11 stuff, right?

Yeah, we're not associating them with John Ashcroft, but it is interesting. I'm just saying much to consider. You're just asking questions. That's all I'm doing. I'm asking questions.

but also saying thank you to Christian Stanley. And thanks to Robin Burlingham of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. What do people do with their blouses there? Oh, they don't tuck in their blouses, Mom. We don't tuck in our blouses like we're in Saskatoon. Thanks, Robin. Thanks to Morgane Gilchrist-Scott, who's in Middleton, Wisconsin. Thank you, Morgane. Right there in the center of the state. I don't know that for a fact. I'm just going off of context. Sure, because ton is Latin. Yes, ton is the ancient Chippewa word for middle of Wisconsin. And then thanks to Kelly Shannon, who's in Edmonds, Washington. I feel like I've been getting a smattering of Edmonds support of late, and we always love to see it, although it does, unfortunately, sometimes raise the question of what is and is not culturally Edmonds.

I mean, was I just thinking, will I get an Arby's sandwich? You know, that Arby's and Edmonds, I used to love it. I'd only been there a couple of times, but it was 1993 encapsulated. It was like all these purple booths with just like it looked like the beginning of a Cosby show from that era. I don't know if you're allowed to make that comparison anymore. But anyway, they revamped it like a year ago. It was closed for a while and they totally renovated it. And I haven't I haven't set foot in there since. I'm sure the curly fries are still curly and the horsey sauce is still horsey. But I just don't know if I'm going to like the experience as much.

Yeah, I, as I've said before, I've had many a delicious meal in that Arby's over the years, you know, the old version or whatever. And it never once occurred to me I was in Edmonds. I'll be clear about that. I'll be very clear. So anyway, thanks to all of our donors for making TBTL possible. hello and welcome to top story okay i'll just be super quick on both of these little updates uh on me a little bg on me andrew these are neither these are particularly uh fascinating but the one thing is i was supposed to be in new york today interviewing um kieran culkin about this new film That he has out with Jesse Eisenberg And basically what happened So I was supposed to take a red eye last night From LA to New York And I was anxious about that And I had purchased a turtle neck pillow Which, hey, by the way I don't think I mentioned this Or maybe I did on the show But I actually strapped that bad boy on for a minute When I was flying from Portland to San Jose I totally fell asleep I wouldn't say that it's You should buy two more An heir and a spare I'm not saying that, like, you know, it was like as if I was, you know, in my own bed at home, you know, in complete rest and comfort. But I will say that I kind of put it on. It's a little weird to put on next to the person next to you. It's kind of like, what is this person doing? But I did at some point realize, oh, man, I just fell asleep with this thing on. So I'm giving it kind of so far, I'm giving it a positive review. I will try it at some point on a longer flight. what happened basically was there was a scheduling conflict uh kieran culkin's flight from london apparently was canceled and there was some question around if we're going to do this on monday or on tomorrow on saturday and it came down to i guess you could kind of say like my schedule versus kieran culkin's schedule and obviously like like he's the person who is the star of this story and also the star of stage and screen and i am but a humble little CBS reporter but basically what came back to me was like they're now saying that this Friday is no longer an option we are now taking Friday off the table the only day that we'll do this is on Saturday and the thing is I am judging a pet Halloween costume contest tomorrow Andrew of a very important job tomorrow which is going to Becca's brother's bar and helping out with this halloween pet costume contest and then hanging out with all of them uh that is to say becca's family and with becca my girlfriend and dressing up and basically having a fun saturday where i'm not in an airport somewhere or interviewing someone it was like my chance to do something

that resembled normal person behavior on a weekend day which has been in short supply for me lately because i've been traveling a lot for job stuff and so i've been constantly missing things and constantly being like I'm sorry and in fact historically what I would have done is I would have just texted Becca with the bad news hey I'm sorry I know you already have your costume picked out hey I know can you just tell your brother I can't help out with the contest like I'm just sorry this is just work and I had this moment yesterday in LA when the producer was texting me about this uh where I was just like actually

no actually i'm not going to just stay in la for an extra day and then go to new york and then do this thing and then blow up again both saturday and sunday at this point right this would have

been like hopefully he'll be saturday but it could also no it would have happened it would

have been i i could have done it if i would have just said you know oh you know this saturday that i was actually really kind of looking forward to because it was a chance to spend time with people i love and just again be a normal person on a saturday like i'm listen i'm not trying to turn myself into some great martyr like i'm very very lucky to get to do the job stuff that i do but a big downside of it that i think i sort of under index and under value is how many times i don't actually get to have a normal weekend like the thing about the jobs is like talking to you this is so fun i enjoy this as a job and i enjoy yesterday i was at this great restaurant called castaway in burbank up looking out on all of the valley and the talking about the history of the baked alaska like the thing about the job stuff that i get to do and hosting livewire it's really fun like i enjoy the job part of it but i think i kind of like then i sort of don't think about the like life ruining part of like just never having a normal saturday afternoon where i i'm just kind of like i don't have anything i have to do today you know what i mean i'm so often the trap the way that the travel factors into it is i'm traveling on the weekends you know and then monday it's like time to go back to regular work so i'm not trying to like complain but i'm just saying i just don't usually think about that and how that kind of can grind you down maybe over time and so this was just one of those moments where i was just like yeah i'm a pass i'm passing on this because i don't want to i don't i don't want to like not have this fun saturday i've been looking forward to um for what so that i am so that like so that i make sure that there's no moment where any of my bosses in new york even have one momentarily negative thought about me

like because again and you're traveling again next week anyway it's not like you're like and now i don't have anything on the schedule it's like you're you get like what three days before

you're flying to Chicago again or something? Yeah, I'm doing a wait, wait, uh, next weekend in Chicago. Uh, you know, I mean, technically different bosses, but yeah, like I, yeah, I just kind of, I think that I've, and again, I, I promise the point of the story is not like, you know, what a hero or something. Cause I'm super fortunate that anyone wants me to do any of this job stuff, but I do think that because it seems like a fun job and I still feel, I feel lucky to get to do this stuff i think the part of all of it that i just don't actually give enough consideration to is just because i can fly somewhere does that mean i should fly somewhere like just because it's achievable or like just because it's theoretically possible does that mean that the answer necessarily has to be yes i'm doing that but you've also built up like a lot of

you know i don't know people always say like capital i don't know but you've built up a lot But like this is with anybody's employment or anybody's even like kind of professional relationships, generally speaking, like, OK, if you were brand new on the job and you had done one story for CBS and then a month later they asked you to do another one and you said, no, I'm going to pass because I'm judging a pet Halloween costume party like that might come off wrong. But you've been doing this with these same people in one way or another, whether the commentaries or what have you, for years now. Like, how long have you been working for CBS? If you go back to those early commentaries that you were doing, probably.

I'm guessing it's got to be like maybe 10 years or more.

I feel like it's getting. Yeah, I was going to say close to 10. I don't know. You would know better than me. But either way, point is like, yeah. Yeah. Not like you're flying around there like you think you're John Dickerson or something. By the way, do you think that he'll end up getting the the the coveted Kieran Culkin gig? Yeah.

Probably. I mean, he was next. He honestly was pretty ticked off that I kind of managed to swangle him out of that. I'm just going to see how many times we can work swangle into the show today.

He'd bring a different energy to it. But any idea, just out of curiosity, so what does happen there? Do you have any idea who gets kicked to?

I don't actually know. I mean, I could reach back out to the producer on the piece. Because, I mean, what I said was, well, maybe you can just find somebody. The other thing is, there's like 10 correspondents that live in New York. Oh, that's true. There's like 10 people for whom this would involve Just taking a lift Down to the village on a Saturday Again, not Necessarily how they want to spend their Saturday either And I don't say that to be like Just have someone else take care of it But I was like, so I guess We'll find out Maybe we'll see, if you see him on TV Being interviewed by somebody who's not me It means that they found someone to cover this shift But now The other part of this, as I mentioned Andrew was uh you know i was looking forward to spending this saturday with becca because there's the thing this fun thing at her brother's bar there's like um and then you know we'll all kind of hang out that night we haven't done that in like months months because i've just been gone so much uh i i wouldn't say that i'm like crazy about dressing up but i know that you know it's something that becca thought would be kind of fun and so we were going around and around and around on what costumes to wear and i felt like i don't know like for a minute it was like maybe travis kelsey and taylor swift but that just felt very basic and then it was like maybe um i was like maybe i could be a chimp from chimp crazy And she could be Tanya Haddix from Chimp Crazy But she hasn't watched that show And she's a little bit like you, Andrew Where you don't want to wear a ball cap Yeah, right Of a team that you maybe don't feel like you have an encyclopedic knowledge of And she was sort of like

Yeah, well, I mean, it's a big commitment I mean, listen, a Halloween costume is a commitment And if it's going to be fun, you should at least know what you're doing If it's a show you've literally never seen before

There's not a lot of fun in that So then it was So she was like, well, what about what about um i'll be uh jerry blank from strangers with candy and you be uh chuck knoblett aka stephen colbert's character i was like okay i could get into that i like that it's funny it's you know easy to do because he's just basically dressed like a teacher yeah a corduroy blazer

has been jerry blank before he could borrow her costume because she saves all of her costumes

very smart well that actually relates to this fascinating story andrew because i still i said okay i mean i love the idea of becca being jerry blank that's funny to me i also like respect i very much respect the uh the costume game uh and again i don't want to how do i put this delicately i don't want to tell anyone how to live their life but um when uh when a woman goes with a halloween costume that's actively disfiguring i'm always a little bit like impressed like jerry blank is not you know lighten the world on fire with her looks oh in other words

It's not slutty Jerry Blank. Basically. That's what Genevieve did. She went with a sexy Jerry Blank.

Okay, well, again, that's why I was trying to be so careful.

Sure, yeah.

I was naughty Jerry Blank.

She was naughty Jerry Blank.

I mean, I'll be honest with you, there's an argument that Jerry Blank is naughty. I mean, I like the pole and the hole.

Good lord.

Certainly fluid. I stole the TV. But so, I don't know. I still had this kind of like, well, first of all, I don't feel like I could pull. This doesn't matter, but I didn't feel like I could really pull off Strangers with Candy era Stephen Colbert, right? Like, he's much younger than I am now. He was much more trim. It's also a very nonspecific outfit. Like, anytime I'm not standing next to Becca, people are like, who let this AP English teacher into this bar to judge this Halloween content?

You know what? You said Knoblet, which is the right name, but I realize I get him confused. when you said knoblet joffrey jelinek i thought joffrey seemed like the better the better costume because you can put on a smock because he was like the art teacher right you can put a smock

you can put a turtleneck yeah yeah well that's also i mean maybe that would have been a consideration i don't know why i feel more aligned with colbert than paul danello although i do have paul danello's cell phone number in my phone i could potentially call him even right now andrew and ask for his

advice you could just have him go at just with yeah that would be great i'm sure becca would

enjoy that more but um so i don't know i just was like i wanted i want to be a part of this but then i was like i was like i don't know there was just something that seemed kind of on me being being colbert uh whatever i don't just seemed kind of like i was phoning it in or something and then this morning, on my little jog, Andrew, it came to me like a bolt of inspiration from heaven above. Can you tell me, tell that I'm looking for this?

Jalapeno! Jalapeno! Jalapeno!

Can I guess? Guess what I still have.

oh oh okay so my original guess was you're going to go as principal blackman uh from strangers with candy that was the thought occurred i got it i got it okay so you're going

to be ben franklin i still have my ben franklin costume and guess what we will be ben and jerry baby oh jerry blank yeah ben and jerry so it's there is a there's a funny connection between the two characters but of course not the ben and jerry that we all think of but again there's something about that like the fact that there when when i stand next to her we will say to people who are we we're ben and jerry but we're not the ben and jerry that you think of from the ice cream and i still have that stupid itchy costume i brought it all the way home from philadelphia I wasn't sure why, but now I have my Halloween costume and it will be easy to do.

I do. I already know that I look the part. In fact, I'm a very convincing Ben Franklin, unfortunately. But the idea that it ties in that it actually I happen to have the stupid costume and it actually creates in my mind a tertiary joke of Ben and Jerry. I'm feeling very strong about this.

And that's good for me, too, because I'm just firing off a note to John right now saying that we no longer, as a business, have to pay for your Benjamin Franklin costume because you're using it for personal use, not just the professional use of the live show.

You know what actually the thought came to me? As I was thinking, I was like, you know what? I never expensed that thing. I don't think I ever did expense it. I actually literally had that thought this morning. I should probably expense that. Well, I don't know. 40 bucks.

I don't know. John will hear this. We'll see. I'm not sure yeah no that's that is a good idea I wanted to can I just mention I had two things that kind of sparked something I wanted to mention to you Genevieve is going up for is dressing up for Halloween that's what I'm looking for Genevieve is dressing up for Halloween is something that I wanted to mention to you on the show because I think it's funny and it's another thing that is sort of based on wordplay in the way your joint costume is but I'm not going to tell you what it is because I think we're efforting to have her join us next week.

Okay, yeah, yeah, don't give it away.

Yeah, so hopefully she might be able to join us for the Halloween show next week, and she can talk about it. And she's come up with some really goofy costumes over the years, so we can talk to her about her history on that. And also, to the person who was somewhat disappointed in me, because you brought your Benjamin Franklin costume home with you, I had just gone to the Spirit Halloween shop, which was in like a historic building in downtown Philadelphia, which felt so weird. Unsettling. I probably spent like $15 on a Phantom of the Opera mask and a very, very cheap cloak, but I just left those in the hotel room because my bag was so overpacked. It just was not worth me bringing them home, and I didn't want them, and I did get a note from a listener who was disappointed that I didn't take them to a thrift store or something, which I understand. It does seem like a very disposable society when I'm just buying plastic objects and leaving them behind in the hotel room. But honestly, there was no way I was going to find a goodwill before my 6.30 a.m. flight on Saturday morning. Yeah, nobody wants to be out there goodwill hunting before their flight. Yes, exactly. Okay, anyway, sorry. I just wanted to get those off my chest.

Well, I was, again, as a person who's generally a poor planner and also, unfortunately, a little more wasteful than I wish I was, i think part of why i'm so chuffed about this whole thing is just because i have that costume still like i've been looking at it it's just like sitting in it's like folded and sitting on a like a little um shelf in my bedroom and first of all slightly unsettling because it's a long piece of

what appears to be human hair yeah i was gonna say like wigs like just a box of wigs or a pile of wigs or even just a single wig sitting there really uh freaks me out for some reason i don't know why genevieve has a box of wigs in it i i i am scared of it the way i would be scared of it if i were like six years old i don't know why it makes it yeah it's it i does it it it seems like

a crime has occurred believe me there are some crimes that have occurred occurred in that room but not not related to you know about ben franklin or anything but now the idea that i will actually get one more use out of this thing is maybe the most exciting part of this like it's sort of like when you're like playing scrabble and you're you're just like you have these letters that are just like i'm gonna do like a q and a something and like and then you're just like you you feel like you have nothing and then all of a sudden just like the perfect thing just opens up and you're like hey this is exactly these are exactly the letters i need like i didn't feel like it was very particularly creative of me to dress up as the teacher from strangers but i knew that Becca had already gotten whatever her Jerry Blank stuff was and everything. So I was like, I just felt a little bit like kind of not enthused about it. And then all of a sudden, it was just like, oh, the letters fell into perfect place. Ben and Jerry.

Nice, nice. Yeah, or like a magic eye. Everything came together for you suddenly. I suddenly saw the waterfall. That has never worked on me, by the way. Not once in my life. Maybe if I go to LensCrafters.

Until your new glasses come in.

We'll see. We'll see. I'm sorry if I'm talking very quickly. I'm looking at the clock. I know that you had sort of a...

Yeah, I'm still in okay shape. You're in okay shape. Should I activate the email V-mail sound effect? Do we have one before we get out of here this week, or should we just slide down that dinosaur, as we like to say?

You know what? I think I went through the ones earlier this week that I wanted to share with you, so I'll check the voicemail line over the weekend and come back on Monday with a fresh batch of voicemails and emails.

Okay. Well, then I guess we're going to wrap it up for the week here and say thank you so much for spending this time with us. We are going to be back here.

on Monday with more imaginary. I'll have a full report of how the pet Halloween costume contest went. That's going to be cute as hell. I am honestly like I just spent 20 minutes talking about my costume. I have almost no interest in human costumes, but I'm deeply intrigued

by pet costumes. That's what I want to hear about. Obviously, there will be a lot of photos for you to share. Monday's show pick better be a cute ass dog. Hey, were you

proud of me yesterday that I ran this? Friggin' track down that top hat, dude. We never talked about that. Oh, I should have told you about that. We have to.

Can you take a note from Monday's show?

Yeah, because it was weird.

You went right onto the, was it Sunset Boulevard or Hollywood Boulevard? Hollywood Boulevard, and you had your photo taken with one of those entertainers down there.

One of the people I had been describing from the window, but not the guy I was looking for. I was, as so many are, I was looking for Jesus. Yes. And I didn't find him.

Uh-huh. He'll find, don't worry, he'll find you.

but um but yeah i um uh i'll if you remind me i know it's going kind of way back but i just want to tell you about the momentary interaction i had with that top hack i want to hear it i do kind of bizarre it actually was so anyway that's on monday please join us for that in the meantime have a great weekend take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too

tall and good luck to all we can save any segment we've done in the past okay remember that segment where we did the world's fattest pets. Glenn lost all the tapes. We made that work.

You mean when we got those two rabbits and we tied them together to look like a big fat one? Yeah, people loved it. They bought it.

Power out.