Muse

Anger is like flatulence, isn't it? Insofar as it's far better to let it out in increments than to let go with one humongous rattle.

Oh, well, yes, yeah, inasmuch as losing your temper is about transferring that anger to those closest to you.

Well, you're farting in the face of the person you love, aren't you? If you ask the police, they will tell you that most murders are committed by a friend or relative of the victim. They take place at home, in the office, on public transport, in a jacuzzi. Are we still talking about murder? I hold my hands up. The last three examples were specifically farting.

TBTL! Hey, welcome to my show, everybody. I know you did pay $100, but here, here's $100 back to you.

I'll tell you another thing. Once you step inside this circle, the weather never changes. It is always 67 degrees with a 40% chance of rain.

Always. For a number of years now, work has been proceeding in order to bring perfection to the crudely conceived idea of a transmission that would not only supply inverse reactive current for use in unilateral phase detractors, but would also be capable of automatically synchronizing cardinal

gram meters. You're hungry, you're confused, your face is streaked with dry tears, and you don't even remember when you started crying. Let's get to the jokes. All right, hello, good morning,

and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl this is the show just might be too beautiful to live that's one of the five dumbest things i've ever heard of a human being saying in my entire life in any context my name is luke burbank i am your host you've been living in the monkey house coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty and today extremely foggy Columbia cloud fog I would not be surprised if during the recording of today's episode you all the tens of listeners might you might hear rivers piloting their way up and down the mighty Columbia and just blasting their fog horns because right now they're on instrument only right they have no visuals they cannot see where they are going this is all just radar and good guessing I guess Which is also how we put this show together, which finds itself at episode 4,325 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. And another day where we have statue-related content. Who knew TBTL this week was going to be so focused on public art and statues? Well, I guess this is the part where the art gets made. We will tell you what's going on in Miami with a Dwayne Wade statue. And we have an update on whoever it is who's putting up these kind of subversive art pieces in Washington, D.C. They put another one up. And I have to say, it's a pretty good spoof. We'll talk about that. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running cobro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. His art really is just the way that he never misses a good old-fashioned party. I mean, this guy, you cannot keep him home. I'm an activist and house party enthusiast. Unless he's throwing a house party. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Hey, good morning, Luke. I do not say this at all to get in your head or to criticize because it's a very common thing, but I have to point it out because it makes me feel better when other people do this. You did what I call pulling an Andrew a moment ago, and most people know pulling an Andrew is not usually a good thing. You know, people aren't like, oh, good, you pulled an Andrew. You accidentally said rivers are going to be going down the Columbia River. I think you meant Pug Bucks. Oh, no. Yeah, you said a word. You were thinking one word, and you said another one.

There has to be a shipping company called Rivers. Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry. You were just way in the know.

That's who I was referring to. You've embarrassed yourself again, sir. You know what the problem was?

You were too informed. You were too informed, and this happens to you all the time, and it's embarrassing for everybody else.

I usually dumb it down and call them ships.

No, I appreciate that.

But he may be best known for his depictions of the tall rivers.

I think I heard that because I was confused for one moment. I wanted to let the listeners know that they did.

I'm sure that that's what I said. I'm sure it was wrong.

We say a lot of words on this show. I'm not criticizing you, but it is something that really haunts me. I'll do a Hey Dummies video. Oh, by the way, can you do a Hey Dummies video this week? I'll do a Hey Dummies video and then go back and watch, and it's like, oh, I just said a word there that is not the word I meant. You know, it's usually tangentially related, and you catch me on the show doing that all the time, Sometimes saying the opposite, but then sometimes just saying a word that is just like, that's not the word that belongs there.

and i just have no idea i'm doing it in the moment have you ever had this experience and this is going to sound like a real high person conversation but i feel like it's happened to me occasionally of where it tasted colors when you when you're just you've been talking for a while and again because of this job stuff that we have and this job particularly and because of my other stuff that i do i guess there's a lot of opportunities for this to happen but have you ever just been like talking and then at some point your brain and your mouth disconnect in such a way that you then all realize in an almost out of body way like oh i'm still i'm still actually talking like you're not sort of conceiving of each conceiving of each word and then sending it down the pipeline to your mouth to your tongue to express it you're on some sort of an autopilot that that allows you to almost step outside your body and just kind of observe yeah that person's talking that person is me i hope that made sense whatever it was i was saying when i was when i wasn't fully there i feel like that's happened to me a few times lately also could be early dementia it could be it's not even that early anymore honestly um no hey we're not remember we're not old guys andrew we're not old guys who are in the in the age cohort who have to start thinking about those things we're young

cool podcast this is one of those mistakes that you sometimes make where you decide to make a change in your own life and you assume that we've both made it you said that you're no longer going to refer to yourself as an old guy i am going to continue to consider you an old guy and i am going to just like pile on any given chance i have um you know i was as you were describing that sensation it sounds like the type of thing that i'd be able to relate to but i was doing a very um earnest honest scan of my memory pulling a luke i was pulling a luke i was being too thorough thoughtful

where you were really interrogating your own feelings when you were connecting with the listeners?

Being kind to myself. No, but I don't think that particular phenomenon I can relate to, and I'll bet you it does have to do with the fact that you do probably, like, you know, I don't know if you do most of your talking. Like, if you were to do a pie chart of how much talking you do between, like, real life, this show, and your other projects, I would guess that TBTL is one of the highest density words per hour, I would guess. But I'm guessing that because you do so much of this and because it's all performative in nature, including your own private life. No, taking out the private conversations, it's all performative in nature in some way or another. Then I feel like that's probably where that's coming from.

Yes, although as I think about it more, I actually think I have the sensation if I'm just like at Home Depot. and I realize I'm like in minute two or like I was in an elevator that I can actually remember specifically I was in an elevator and I was on my way up it was I was coming over to Becca's place and I was in the elevator going up to her spot and I was making small talk with someone in the elevator and it was so autopilot that like at some point I sort of like re-entered my body and was like hey I'm talking to this nice um gal with her two dogs and we're chatting and we're it's I mean it was it was also just such banal conversation it probably doesn't happen as much here because yes this is our job weirdly enough and we are trying to be in as much as we can entertaining and insightful and whatever it is we do here so this is probably where it'd be least likely to

happen like it's not happening right now so if i'm in a totally a lower stakes conversation no offense to the woman in the elevator nor her dog but it's almost like maybe because you're doing this so often and you have to be have to have a certain amount of presence if nothing else or at least you know attempt an amount of presence that your brain when you're in a low stakes conversation your your brain disconnects a little bit i actually think that you may have hit upon something i think

that i probably feel you know accurately or inaccurately like i've i have talked enough in my life and i do enough talking that i should be able to get through like a 35 second elevator chat that's completely about like some weather we're having i should be able to do that almost literally in my sleep and if i can't i'm really in the wrong profession speaking of conversations can i ask you something andrew were we were you and me and tbtl employee numero uno john sklaroff texting at like 4 14 a.m this morning or is my text just being funky no we weren't i mean i sent

you uh i sent you sort of a i mean some would describe it as a lewd photos i thought it was pretty tasteful i sent you a photo around four but i didn't loop him tasteful ludes tasteful

lukes yeah i want to uh i i uh earlier in the show i we made an edit and i went over to kind of close uh the doors here because the uh guys that are helping me take care of some parts of the yard have shown up and boy tell you what those

leaf blowers are uh uh they're noticeable when the guy is standing right outside uh the door of the studio so apologies for that sound but just know that we have fewer leaves in the rockery now

and that is a big improvement okay here you know i'm looking at my um i this somehow uh i miss this you know i will admit that i wake up sometimes and there are i'm on so many wordle chats and i'm always getting at least one spam text that comes through that's like a fake alert from some sort of you know, shipping scammery, saying the package was not delivered. Click here, and you can tell us. Anyway, I do see I had like four or five unread text chains here, and I didn't pay attention to this one from you and John, but the thing is you were responding at 5.49 a.m., this is my experience, to a text that John had sent Saturday at 8 p.m.

That makes so much more sense. That text did not arrive in my phone, which I've told you is having problems. Again, this is my karmic punishment.

The one from John, where he was talking about... The whole chain. That's the only two I have in that chain.

I have you asking, do we have any extra kid shirts we could send? Someone, yeah. And then that shows up at 4.31. I had sent... So let me just give the backstory here. My sister Hannah had forwarded me an unbelievably adorable photo of a co-worker of hers, I believe. um that co-worker's uh kid who is dressed for halloween as like a tbtl baseball player little league baseball player and i sent that to you and john because i just thought it was so i said that it's saturday because i just thought it was such a cute picture and then i think that um it might be a danielle uh is the mom of this person and had sent this to john so john posted it on our socials because it's just such a great picture anyway all i have in my phone from when i sent this was my sent message to you and then this morning 4 31 a.m john sklaroff loved my sister's co-workers kids halloween costume and then from john an irl junior slugger and then from andrew nice do we have any extra kid shirts we could send john etc etc by the way really makes me

just seemed like a such a generous gregarious guy doesn't it i what do you mean i think that

you saw this very cute thing and you were like let's make more of that happen in the world yeah

no i'm saying i'm saying i'm not being sarcastic i'm saying i just love that we're putting this text chain on front street because it really portrays me as like hey i'm looking out for

the kids let's get that kid you're gonna you're like a well it's a let's be honest it's a sort of Ebenezer Scrooge-esque turn you go from being like you know humbug to like boy what day is it is it still Christmas and then you throw him a TV chill little shirt out the window because my

first response to seeing this photo of an adorable kid was get this get this out of my feed is what

I say you exactly you were like I guess you'll be wanting the entire day off okay well anyway this

Anyway, yeah, this was a whole text chain that happened on Saturday. You sent the photo. Me and John were going back and forth about if we had a small shoot. I didn't get any of that until this morning at 4.31 a.m.

And then when I got up and I looked at it, I was just like, is everyone having – like John's two hours ahead of us, so a little bit makes sense. But I'm like, does everyone have insomnia here? But that's just – it was a delayed send. And again, it, this is my, this is karma because I have so many times I've, uh, I'm like that. I'm like that cornerback for the Chicago bears. Uh, I'm well, well, well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions, I have for years been blaming my phone for being quote unquote, super weird just because I wasn't being a good communicator. And now it's literally being super weird. Like, um, and I think it's, I think it's throughout my account because I've had some emails that I sent to you that never got to you until a day later.

A week later in one case, yeah.

So anyway, okay, I just wanted to check in. I wanted to make sure everybody was okay because, like, if you're up at 4.30, if you and John are both up at 4.30 West Coast texting about TBTL business.

I was still at the bar, honestly. That's why I was so gregarious in that conversation.

Oh, that's, okay, well, that explains your kind of change of heart. Yeah. I assume you're taking that all back this morning. You're no longer going to provide the children of America with free TBTL Junior Slugger shirts.

I will say, as I sit here and sober up, I do have some regrets about some things I offered now publicly.

That's definitely a thing that happens. Well, why don't we do this? Why don't we thank some of those donors who maybe they are even wearing their TBTL shirt even as we speak. And then we've got to get into statue talk, Andrew, because it is popping off right now. Statues in the news. all right let's say thanks to some of the people that are keeping tbtl uh in existence here as we enter episode 4325 that's a lot of episodes and uh they're possible made possible by folks like katherine jory who's in huntley montana thank you katherine sounds like

a lovely place and just put put montana after anything that sounds like a lovely place you

know what that's a really good point uh let's see what's going on with huntley montana uh huntley montana where is that yeah it's uh boy it's a census designated place uh in yellowstone county

montana so when we're talking about a census designated place that usually means pretty

rural right like pretty out there that's my uh sense of it we could always ask that weird youtube channel to tell us about it um but uh yeah i'm looking at it right now it's right off of 94 it's near lockwood and uh it is kind of in the southeast of montana and again i'm sure absolutely beautiful country katherine an absolutely beautiful person supporting tbtl thank you thanks to zach hofstad who's in tumwater washington another beautiful place indeed

home of one of our favorite kow repeaters

i was gonna say it's not super far from where there was that i thought incredibly entertaining drone situation i think it was during the fourth of july they had a drone it was actually angle lake which is a little bit much up more towards sea tack but that was where all the drones like went into the lake which i thought was a very cool outcome but i think somebody uh who narrated

on their phone said epic fail yes um and of course it did cost somebody or something a lot of money but not i think it cost the company money or probably the insurance company money yeah i put on the show not the municipality or the taxpayers themselves you know one thing we never talked about then and we don't have to do it now we don't have to do it now but one thing we didn't talk about in relation to that story is how you and i feel about the slow let's just call it attempted replacement of fireworks with drone shows because i mean that is something that that's the reason that happened right because more and more people are kind of anti-fireworks because it's upsetting to animals and some people and it's just some sensory overload and it disrupts people's nights and so more and more they're trying to replace it with um drones which you know don't create any kind of actual fire or smoke or noise i was going to say we don't have to talk about that so i was going to ask you how you feel about it but you know let's maybe save that for a day when we need a topic i well let me just quickly say i'm i don't have

a problem with it in particular like i think those things are way cool i don't think i've ever even seen one in person but i've seen videos of them and i for me the thing about fireworks that is mesmerizing is not the explosive quality of them not the like boom like i that part is you know i could sort of take or leave i'm really into the visual of it and so to the degree that a drone show can do some cool visual stuff and they're playing some you know stars and stripes forever or whatever, I think I can get down with that. I will tell you that when Becca and I were in Italy, and we were in Sorrento in particular, for reasons that nobody ever explained to us, there were, like, in the neighborhood we were renting this Airbnb, there were two on a Saturday and a Sunday night, Sunday night being a weird night for it, two fantastic firework shows. It was not, I will mention, the 4th of July, or Italian Independence Day, or anything like that. In fact, I had gone to sleep.

It would be amazing if that was on the 4th of July, if Italy is just like, we're going to put on a show for the 4th of July.

Well, what I think is that there is a connection with Italy and fireworks. I don't mean they invented it, but like the families that do a lot of the fireworks tend to be Italian-American, like the Fratelli family, I think, or there was an Italian-American family that was always in charge of the, I think actually the fireworks in Seattle were called Fratellis because I think it was like an ice cream brand or something when I was a kid. But also the families that tend to be in the fireworks business, like the professional you put a barge out there, it often is Italian-Americans. And they were just going off in this town. I mean, we weren't even in Sorrento. Sorrento, we were out in the hills. And this was like a full-on municipal fireworks show, except there was no town anywhere. I didn't know what was happening, but I was loving it. particularly because the first night I had gone to sleep a little early as like a young cool guy who goes on vacation and then decides to go to sleep like 10 p.m. But so and then Becca was like, oh, man, you missed it. There was like a full on firework show last night. I was like, what? Because we had this like really great kind of balcony area that looked out on like over the valley and into whatever was going on down there. And we're really these weeds are getting whacked. Yeah, it might be loud enough.

We always talk about like the errant.

sound that could be leaking into the microphones and usually the listeners cannot hear it at all

i like to think the listeners were able to hear some of that banging around let me tell you quickly i'll move off of fireworks and move on to the journey of a lawn care and lawn things i'll tell you uh why there are people weed whacking outside of the studio right now i realized at some point that this yard of the madrona hill studio in my little house uh has a lot of difficult to deal with areas when it comes to like weed intrusion and like there's a lot of rockeries i think i don't know if it was the guy that owned the house before me or somebody before him but they decided that because this house is kind of it's on a hill and so there's different like levels to like where you where you park and where you go down to the little house or where you come over to the studio and anywhere there's like a separation between different altitudes if you will they put those big giant rocks everywhere and almost like almost like retaining wall rocks kind of retaining walls but this and somebody would know somebody smarter than me would know the names of these kinds of rocks but it's like you know they're fairly substantial they're like probably about the size of a volleyball a lot of them and they're all piled up and they yeah they hold the hillside back but they also allow for a lot of like weeds and grass and things to grow in between them and And no matter how, I would spend a Saturday pulling out all of, and this is like in the spring and summer, pulling out all of the weeds and stuff. And then just to have them grow back like two weeks later. And so finally, I don't know, maybe August of this year, I decided I am going to find out how much it actually costs to have someone spray some like anti-weed stuff on there. I'm going to pull out all the weeds and I'm going to hire someone to come in and like just treat it so that it doesn't grow back. And also to kind of like, I realize also I hate weed whacking. I know that's a crazy thing to say but I actually I really love mowing my lawn because I have one of them riding mowers and that's fun but the weed whacking I actually actively dislike that practice and so I would

do you have a strong one that sort of rattles your hands? it gets the job done when growing up we had like a I was going to say a real we had a gas powered like relatively strong weed eater and that was my job to use that and it it would just vibrate and rattle me so much especially like kind of in my hands that it gave me a sensation i didn't like now i've got this little free guy that kind of came with the house it just takes a little battery and similarly gets the job done but does not have any of those side effects it's like a toy practically um and so i i don't mind weed whacking i'm wondering if that's what the if that's what the hold back is for you

Well, yeah, I have an electric whipper snipper, weed whacker, but it's got a ton of, you know, um, oomph. It's got a big old battery on it. And so it effectively is like a gas powered one. And like you said, by the end of walking around the, all the just nooks and crannies of this yard. And there's like, you know, this deck that we built. And now there's the footings of the deck, which is to say the cement squares that are in the ground of the deck rests upon those. now are areas where i can't mow that right like grass grows around the square this i've created unintentionally a million little places where you have to go manually weed whack it because there's some kind of a thing that's blocking it now like this when i moved here this was place was fairly open there was just a lot of grass and not much not many footings right so i uh i i got in touch with this nice man cesar and i said how much would it cost to just have you all kind of actually that's not true what happened was i said how much would it cost to have you uh spray these rockeries so that weeds don't keep growing back every two weeks um and kind of just take care of some of these areas and he said well we can do that and it's you know x number of dollars he goes but also we can just do a maintenance for you which is we'll just come a couple times a month and stay on top of it and i was like well that's got to be thousands of dollars it's a hundred and ten dollars it's like a visit no a month whoa really it's the best it's the absolute best hundred and

dollars yeah and it's probably better to not spraying things on weeds is probably well yeah

i was trying to hold off on that uh as long as i could and and and yeah they don't but here's the thing they don't pull the weeds i pulled all the weeds um but now that the weeds are gone they come in and they will spray it occasionally not a lot but enough to make sure that nothing grows back so but what they also do is they weed whack they go around they clean out the beds they like they just like do a bunch of things i still have to mow the lawn these are not folks that are here to mow the lawn but they're just here to kind of like spruce the joint up and it has radically changed my experience here at the house because what was happening is every time that I would go out of town for more than a few days I would come back and things would just have kind of gone a little gray gardens around here and now they just always look a little little bit they're just kind of a little more together a little more trimmed a little more dealt with um than than they used to be and it is it's it's greatly improved my experience here it's probably like some people would report i you know i've never in my life at least as a single person ever hired anyone to do any housekeeping that feels like a some sort of richie rich some sort of a you know the you know billionaire fantasy or something like um and a lot of people who who do hire people to come you know do housekeeping say that it's you know it's a really good idea for them because it's like things get really deep cleaned or there's just like ways that people are professional cleaners are just better at it than we are you know they've got the time set aside to do it like it would never occur to me to do that even though i'm sure that i spend that amount of money on lots of other things that are probably less improving my life than you know having so this is i'm still not going to hire anyone to come clean my house because it's tiny and i'm a grown-up and can do it myself but uh as far as this having some guys come a couple times a month and just kind of walk around and generally spruce things up in the yard

man it's a game changer out here i also feel like it's a lot easier to have people come and help you with outdoor tasks while you can do your work indoors i feel like having somebody because this conversation pops up in our lifetime every now and then i like to clean i'm a clean person but you know like now that i have my own bathroom i don't really clean genevieve's bathroom upstairs very much and um I've seen some things up there my boy and so sometimes it'll it'll come up and it'll be like hey should we just get somebody to take care of these things um and the thing is it's like it always ends up sounding like more of a pain because well what day of the week well am I going to be recording when this person is showing up am I going to be recording when this person is cleaning these I don't even know that the conversation ever got this far but like these are just the considerations in my head and it's like you know what how about I just get done with my work and clean your bathroom you know like how about how about we just do that it just seems easier whereas somebody coming and like just like you know getting going to town on the weeds

outside i don't have to engage with that well the famously people who do hire like you know some sort of housekeeping help have reported that you end up sort of cleaning the house up before the person gets there because you're embarrassed about the state of the house well there is a

difference i mean i always think about that though there is a difference between straightening up and cleaning and i do think that that makes sense if you just have like crap all over the place like that's not really the house keepers or the house cleaners job to i mean i'm sure they do it plenty but i can i kind of understand it's like well how about i pick up all of these dirty clothes not that this is a scenario that would be in my house but if you have dirty clothes like all over the floor or something like of course you're going to want to pick that up before somebody

comes to mop or vacuum that floor right uh well again i've literally never had anybody come do housekeeping for me so i don't really know the rules part of me feels like i mean again and i don't want to sound so weirdly i don't know what classist or something but part of me is like well the person has been hired to come and clean the house so any kind of cleaning of the house before they get there seems counterintuitive even if it's picking up clothes off the floor again i would never i could never live in a world in which i hired someone to clean my house and also had a bunch of clothes on the floor like that would i would feel far too embarrassed for that but but people do report having to do some amount of cleaning or at least what you're saying which is just this thing that is in one way a solution to the problem um which is somebody coming over and doing housekeeping but then it creates some other scenarios like you said about if you work from home if the vacuum is going if the house is too messy for them you know or for your feelings about them it just seems like it gets complicated but man these these guys these guys whippersnippering and weed whacking um it's uh i am going to shut it down though probably in a month because the freeze will come and then nothing's growing anyway so it's but then i will a hundred percent lord willing in the creeks don't rise and if kelly raber of bellevue keeps donating i will definitely reactivate it probably in like may or something when stuff starts to really really go for it again

What if Kelly Raber, instead of donating to TBTL, and I am not for this, but what if Kelly offers to come over and do the whippersnippering for you, like sort of a donation in kind?

I mean, if you and John are okay with me just unilaterally receiving services from the listeners in lieu of donations, I mean, I'm not going to argue with that. I feel like it does cut you guys out of the process a little bit.

No, because I got a plan because Dan Sundberg of Seattle, Washington, right here in Seattle, Dan's going to come over and help me clean the house. He's going to clean Genevieve's bathroom for me, so we have it all worked out.

This is really getting back to its roots of being a cult. Yes. I feel like what you're describing is just, we just need the 10s to come help us with some simple things around the house. That's right. No, you know what? The monthly donation is working great, and we appreciate it, Kelly and Dan, and also Ashley Simmons, who's down there in Folsom, California.

Thank you, Ashley.

Thanks, Ashley. And then our friend Dave Nakagawara is... In Port Townsend, Washington, just the words, just the words Port Townsend, Washington fill me with all kinds of nostalgia and wistfulness, which is just weird because I really like where I live right now. I was thinking about this last night as Walt and I were hanging out watching another episode of Alone. I was like, I am really, really happy and pleased with the area I live in, with the mighty Columbia River, with getting to do the show from in here and talk to you. Like, I'm filled with good feelings about my current life, and yet I'm somehow wistful for my former life. Is that just the human condition?

I mean, I think so. I mean, there are places that I live that I couldn't wait to get out of that I still will look back fondly at certain aspects of. Certainly, I can see that we're also different people then.

um there are places uh i remember i was trying to google the lyrics in my life i was gonna see how much of that i could do before you figure out the Beatles gone and some remain there are places i remember all my life some have changed uh wow this isn't even though some have changed these these aren't the lyrics i grew up with some forever not for better better some have gone and some remain those are the lyrics gosh those don't sound are you sure yeah

Then they shift a little bit later on. If you scroll down, they sort of revisit it with some other.

That's not the rivers I grew up with. Anyway, thanks to our donors for making TV Chill possible. Couldn't do this without you. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. Where do you want to start, Andrew? Do you want to update on subversive D.C. statues or poor Dwayne Wade's statue down in Miami?

Oh, you know, I knew about the Dwayne Wade one. I don't know that we had an update on the D.C. statue.

Yeah. So this is, I believe, let's see, it's Joe Himes now, and it's his beat. It's just the art that's being put up by this kind of somewhat secretive group. We do have a name associated with the group, but we're not sure if that's actually the artist so just the person who registered for the permitting to put this art up. I read this person's name yesterday. You hear me. Oh, the name is Julia Jimenez-Pizik. The company is called Civic Crafted LLC, Julia Jimenez-Pizik. That's the person who requested the permit. For yesterday, we talked about on the National Mall this desk that's got a big kind of poop emoji shape thing on it, But this all appears to be made out of brass or something or metal. And then it had it was basically Nancy Pelosi's desk. And then there was a kind of an inscription on it that was roasting the January 6th insurrectionists, but kind of pretending to honor them, but really roasting them.

There's a lot of sarcasm. That was one thing I didn't mention yesterday on the show. I was wondering if it was like I speak as somebody who often has either laid on so much sarcasm or so much confusing sarcasm. uh that i stopped making sense in the david byrne school of stopping making sense and i kind of wondered if the the layers of sarcasm on the inscription of this thing i wonder if they could have just done something a little bit more straightforward i feel like the sarcasm sort of

muddies well muddies it a bit see i think i kind of like it because because it's subtle so this is the new one that they just put up it's um it's on freedom plaza northwest just a few blocks from the the white house and it's called the donald j trump enduring flame and the plaque reads this monument pays tribute to president donald trump and they're very fine people who boldly stood to defend when they marched in charlottesville and the torch andrew a tiki torch oh yikes yeah you know and the of course because this is now the joe heim process joe heim interviews so much people walking by it most of whom didn't even notice it or didn't fully get the kind of the implication if you will but i don't know i mean i think that it's and again this one was permitted by the i guess parks department who once again the national park service i should say um they permitted this like they permitted the uh the the poop desk and uh they again are not uh you know they don't weigh in on the content they just i mean here's the thing if it was like if this art was just like a big kind of shepherd fairy style trump kind of you know like a representation of trump but in the shepherd fairy style but saying like fascist okay the guy is a fascist by the way like that's not incorrect but also wouldn't you find that art to be a little more I'm like, okay. We get it. You mean as far as me being a little bit judgy about the sarcasm?

Well, you're kind of not feeling the sarcasm, but I guess to me, a more overt, just like fascist is also kind of, I'll be honest with you, boring to me because it's like, yeah, we all know that. I don't know. Something about the subtlety of this and something about there being a second one, I don't know why it's working more for me today than it was yesterday, but it kind of is.

Yeah, no, that's fair enough. You know, I had scanned the article yesterday about the poop desk statue, but I had not read the inscription ahead of time. So I was hearing that inscription for the first time on TBTL as you read it. And I was kind of like I was a little bit confused at first, a little taken aback. I'm like, wait, oh, wait, who put this up? And I was like, oh, I see they're being sarcastic. And it does. Yeah, it does intellectually make sense, because like, what do you put statues up for? Or you put statues up to, you know, often, especially in the context of the U.S. Capitol or a place like that, to celebrate something or to honor a people's, you know, or an accomplishment. So I get it. It just it was it was it came off so sarcastically yesterday that it made me kind of do a double take. But maybe that's the point. But also maybe what is the point? I mean, it does. Right.

Are all statues political in some way because somebody chose who we're going to honor, right? Or what we're going to honor.

Right. And like so – but in particular – and again, I'm not pooping on this poop desk. But I just wonder – I mean asking the purpose of art is a really stupid question. And so that's why I wish I hadn't even started this sentence. But I'll finish what I was starting to say, which is just kind of like this is this is public art. This is a style of protest art. This doesn't. And maybe the purpose of art is not always to. It's not it's certainly not always to change somebody. But I or to change somebody's perspective on things. But like this doesn't this art does what? I guess. What do these things do? They don't move the needle.

It's a moment of poking it. To me, it's a moment of mocking Donald Trump and his supporters in a wry way. I don't think it moves the needle politically. Like, I don't think it changes any minds. I think it's the kind of thing that if you think that, you know, it was inappropriate for those white people to march in Charlottesville with the tiki torches yelling, you will not replace us, if you feel that was inappropriate, this to me is just like a subtle little dig at them which would if i was walking past it let me put it this way if i was on my way to work and i lived in dc and i walked past it and i read the inscription i think a small smile would cross my face more so than if i saw a side of a building that just said like racist and it had pictures of the guys with the tiki torches you know and the same thing with the the kind of um the poop desk which by the way apparently nancy pelosi's name has now been defaced or scraped off the desk which i don't know if that's itself a political statement or just vandalism but i so i guess i don't i don't think that this is gonna change the world um or again change any votes it is the kind of thing that would make me a little bit happy if i saw it i think because it would feel like

we're slightly sticking it to them i feel like i am continuing to talk about this because there's an obligation for me to continue to talk about this no no i know i want to talk duane wade badly But I was going to say that – I don't know. I'm sort of painting myself in the corner because when we started this conversation yesterday, I didn't really have an opinion one way or the other. And now that I talk to you more – You hate it more? No, I never hated it, and I don't say that I do hate it now, but I would say maybe one of the reasons this doesn't speak to me one way or the other, or at least that's where I'm sort of starting on it, and maybe turning somewhat negative about it, is how you just described it as, oh, this is a different form of trolling, basically. Like I said before, does this move the needle? And I want to be very clear. I understand that art does not have to move any kind of needles. I mean, there's all kinds of art.

Unless it's like Maria Abramovich actually like moving a needle across the Gobi Desert.

Just one inch at a time.

I started at this end of the Gobi Desert with this needle and I pushed it every day. Nude.

So, you know, like I don't want to I want to be very careful weighing in on the purpose of art. Art has a lot of different purposes. But so there should not be an expectation that this is somehow going to, you know, you know, play a part in the in next week's election. You know, like that. That's not that's not the role of art. Having said that, maybe I am starting to realize, OK, what is the purpose of this? It's to kind of I don't know, kind of twist the knife a little bit, you know. And again, I have no problem like trolling the racists who picked up torches and anti-semites who picked up torches and marched in the street. I mean, I'm not crying for them, but maybe that's one of the reasons this doesn't speak to me so much is because I'm not super into trolling culture.

into trolling on one side or the other necessarily and right while you compare it to maybe a more blatant message and i'm not sure how i would feel about that either or if i'd still just be like okay look somebody somebody has a someone's got something to say um maybe there's something about the trolliness of them it kind of like yeah you know what that is where society is now right like everybody's trying to own each other i did that oh look you owned them you owned them

mm-hmm yeah i could i can kind of see that i i maybe i've just kind of given up on when they go low we go high you know and you know maybe i've just been unfortunately kind of drawn into the conflict to where now it's like a good owning of the maga movement maybe it's also because i just live behind enemy lines i was noticing uh the other day in fact the fact that i described them as enemies is probably not great either the fact that i don't agree with the politics of a lot of people out here but i was in portland with becca and we were in the car and there was a car in front of us with a biden uh or excuse me a harris waltz bumper sticker and i literally like a little a little jolt of excitement went through me and i was like oh wait no no no i'm not in my neighborhood i'm in portland this is this is what everybody's doing here like out here where i am i told you the story but i saw a guy in a mind your damn business like waltz t-shirt in the home

depot and i literally almost hugged oh yeah you told me about that yeah i had not to a hugging level but i had you were talking earlier about at the beginning of the show about maybe having a conversation and then kind of forgetting where you are for a moment i was somewhere recently it was probably a grocery store because that's where i spend most of my time but i saw somebody in a seahawks jersey and for i can't even describe the most the most fractional the most fractional of a second i was thinking oh the seahawks i like them i was like i was in a grocery store in seattle you can't seattle yeah like of course there's a seahawks crap all over the place but i think like i had whatever you have when you're traveling somewhere you see a mariner's hat or or when i was in croatian i saw baker mayfield jersey i had this quick moment of just like oh one of our oh yeah this is seattle like literally everybody even if it's a tiny little seahawk on the back

of your fleece everybody's got seahawk stuff yeah and that was basically what my version of that was what my heart did when i saw that harris waltz bumper sticker and then that was when i was just like you know i was like what must it be like to be living somewhere where everyone 90 of the people like if you live in portland or seattle maybe not 90 but a very very high percentage of the people are kind of on board with what your what your leanings are as opposed to out here where i'm happy to report that my sign is doing just fine no one's messed with it and in fact I've had you know people come by the house for various reasons including to sort of work on it guys that I know my buddy Big Mike I could guess what his politics are he's the guy that's been doing some some dry wall work here some sheet rocking and I literally had the thought I wonder if there's going to be some weirdness when he comes by to do some work now that I've got this sign up and you know what zero weirdness it's all the same so i'm everything is uh is going to be okay unless andrew you are the uh couple that made this duane wade statue that's down outside of the uh kaseya center in miami wasn't that wasn't miami wasn't that one like the uh crypto.com or crypto is what used to be staples but i feel like they had a crypto one that literally had to be taken off

right and but it stayed up for a really long time i think you're right was it crypto.com and yeah

it was miami yeah yeah they had which i mean i lived in miami for maybe a year and that feels very miami to me that they were on whatever the leading edge of like bad crypto was and i love our listeners in miami i actually loved my time in miami but some of that seemed kind of on brand uh to me based on my experience well f they decided was i believe ftx thank you that's the uh that's the sam bankman freed one right yes yes that was the problem yeah because the what used to be called the staples center is now crypto.com and it's still that and in fact a guy nicely corrected me when i was in la recently and i was having some dinner talking to the the waiter and uh i said oh something about staples center we were talking about basketball he goes

you mean crypto.com arena oh god shudder aside aside from that though let's just take a i think i've done this on the show before but let's just take a very quick moment to appreciate the fact that like crypto is not creeping into every goddamn conversation we're having there was a period there where everything was crypto or those goddamn crypto monkeys or like whatever and it's like born apes now we're i believe they're called crypto monkeys and don't you correct me it sickens me i um it's a line from mystery men that me tonight quoted each other all the time but um I wonder if that's a reference to Shatner Oh really? Because he says it sickens me I wonder if

the Mystery Men line is when that famous tape of Shatner, you say sabotage, I say sabotage, when you correct me, it sickens me.

Oh, really? No, I mean, if so, that is an amazing reference because that definitely came before Mystery Men and Mystery Men, I swear, Ben Stiller's character, whatever his name is, just like Rage Man, he says to somebody, don't correct me, it sickens me. Can I play you this

Shatner thing real quick? Spock, sabotage the system. Spock, restore the atmosphere Spock, sabotage the system I wish I knew what to do Observations, Mr. Spock

Okay, do you have line 193 again with sabotage and sabotage?

I don't say sabotage You say sabotage, I say sabotage

Oh, maybe he doesn't This goes into the real footage. Let's see. Maybe I imagined the sickens part. Let's keep listening. There's 10 more seconds.

Is this why you sabotaged my ship? Oh, it has not been sabotaged. We had to make some changes in it to adjust it to us.

You said we?

Yes.

Well, anyway, that wasn't helpful. I have a memory that in the full version, I thought, and again, this could be Mandela. This could be, I've Shatnered myself. Oops. I Shatnered my pants. But I thought he says sickens me. That'd just be funny if Ben Stiller was referencing that. But anyway, you and Veeves say it to each other.

We'll say it to each other. I don't remember what we were talking. Oh, but I was just going to say, it's just nice that we're sort of beyond that crypto story leaking into everything we talked about. I will say it's been somewhat replaced with the AI conversation. But at least AI is more, it touches our lives more like it or for better, for worse, and probably for worse. But like the crypto thing, I never fully understood it. and it seemed like such bullshit, yet it was taking up so much of our brain space. It's so nice to move on.

At least the AI stuff generates some good Andy Rooney content for us. Yes, right, exactly. You can't do that with crypto, as far as I understand. Okay, so the Miami Heat decided to put up a bronze statue honoring Dwayne Wade, and it is sort of pulled from a moment when the Heat beat the Chicago Bulls for the NBA Finals, or at least there was like a big game. This was at a period of time. This is post the Sonics leaving Seattle, so I'll be honest with you. This is a period of time that I was not and I remain in this state. I'm not like super dialed in on the NBA because it just kind of broke my heart. So anyway, there was apparently this moment where Dwayne Wade basically sealed this game and then jumped up on a table or something and screamed, like, this is my house. And so, basically, the Miami Heat wanted to honor Dwayne Wade, and so they decided to have this bronze statue made. Now, this is my house. It's a gesture after sinking a buzzer-beating three-pointer to win a 2009 game against the Chicago Bulls. So maybe it wasn't even the finals. Maybe it was just a dramatic moment. Anyway, the bronze statue was unveiled Sunday Outside Kaseya Center, where the heat play Soaking in the moment This is the funny part Because the statue, it really doesn't look very much like Dwayne Wade in the face People have said that it looks more like Frasier It does look a little like Frasier Kind of looks like Frasier a little bit In certain angles Some people think it looks like Han Solo encased in carbonite From, I think that's Return of the Jedi Some people think it looks like Lawrence Fishburne. Some people think it looks like Jim Carrey in The Mask. That one seems like a stretch.

Well, the mask part of it, but that's the thing, though. And I'm sorry, I heard about this on the radio yesterday, and now I'm sort of seeing the pictures. And one person pointed out, like, it really depends on your angle. Like, some angles, it looks really bad. I mean, it doesn't look like him, and it almost doesn't look human. But then in other angles, it looks kind of fine, right?

Well, in this article, and I haven't obviously been down there to see it. And this, by the way, I'll mention is another piece from The Washington Post. Ben Brash says that it really does depend on the angle. So it would appear that most of the photographs that we're seeing are from, like, the worst angle for this, the least convincing angle. But it's kind of, it's interesting because if you're Dwayne Wade, and this is actually really, because Dwayne Wade is now finally weighed in on this beyond just the the sort of media event for the statue in which Dwayne Wade said who's that guy but I think he he sort of meant it as like can you believe it ma I got a statue but it took on a double meaning because it doesn't really

look like him I wondered about that quote because I I heard that he liked this statue and that he was very very involved in it like to the point where yeah he was going in and checking in and And again, this is all me just quoting stuff.

heard on the radio yesterday but apparently he even went in and like had them correct something because they remeasured the space on his lip between the bottom of his nose and the top of his lip or something very very specific on the face like that so like he was involved in this process and if you're going into such detail as measuring like remeasuring something like that you're not looking at maybe it was a forest for the trees sort of situation like you're focusing so much on these details that you're not stepping back and looking at the entire visage and saying

oh that doesn't look like me i think it might be harder than we realize to make a bronze statue yeah like the person because this seems to happen a lot yes like of course we've we've talked at length years ago about the lucille ball statue i believe in like cellar on new york or something wherever she's from uh in this article they cite some other bummer ones like cristiano ronaldo has a tough one queen elizabeth the second which people think looks like robin williams and mrs Doubtfire, like, this can go haywire pretty easily, and this was created by a place called Studio Rotblat Amrini, founded by wife and husband, Julie Rotblat Amrani, and Omri Amrani. The studio has created more than 300 bronze pieces of artwork, including many gorgeous pieces. The Ken Griffey Jr. outside of T-Mobile, they did that one. That one's pretty good, I think. I've never noticed it to It doesn't look funky Maybe it's the I think part of the problem Is they're trying to Recreate Dwayne Wade In this moment Of just like Full adulation He's just won this game With a last second shot Whereas my memory Of the Griffey thing Is he's more in a casual Like he's just Probably hit a home run But he's kind of In repose If you will You know what I mean Trying to capture someone In the moment of like Who do you think you are I am I don't know

I don't know the particular moment that it's supposed to represent, but the Ken Griffey Jr. one, I think he's still holding the bat, but he's already taken the swing, presumably a homerun. Yes, he's like in the follow-through, I think. Yes, yeah, yeah.

Which is kind of his famous, when you think about him as a Mariners fan, that he had this incredibly effortless kind of swing that was so effective. And I think that's, I've looked at the statue, and at no time did I think this looks like Frasier. So I'll call that a W. And again, I'll point out, this is the same people. So it's clear that these folks have some talent. I did think the whole, like, they continue to, they interview this guy, Omri, who just describes the process. He says, at the end of the day, oh, sorry, Wade's sculptors, Omri Amrani and Oscar Leon fielded questions from reporters after the unveiling. At the end of the day, we want to do the best possible job that is capable with human hands, Leon said. Many of the questions tiptoed around the criticisms One journalist asked at what stage Did Wade and the organization last See the sculpture Another reporter Asked whether there were any requests to the Sculptors that they were unable to fulfill Hey just curious Luke Burbank Miami Herald So when was the last time Dwayne Wade got eyes on this Unrelated To anything just curious

Well what about taking the other side of that And I'm just starting to develop this hot take right now. So this is just like, oh, this is just, well, actually, it's just toasty right now. It's just warm. It's not too hot yet. But what if Dwayne Wade was the problem all along? What if it was like, they're just like, listen, we know our business. You play basketball. We'll measure your face and make a beautiful statue. But he kept coming around and saying, hey, just checking in on the statue. Oh, look at that.

He has Kelsey Grammer dysmorphia. Kept being like, make it look a little bit more like Frasier.

Yes, but he just kind of keeps tinkering and changing, and then they're getting a little bit nervous because he's hanging around all the time. Maybe that's where things went south.

This guy, Leon, one of the sculptors, explained that they create the sculpture in clay, and then they send the clay off to be bridged in bronze. And I'll spare you the details, but he basically talks about how the bronze kind of changes things. He says the bronze brings out a level of depth and shine and vibrancy you cannot get in the clay. So in other words, what he's saying is that the sculpture changes pretty fundamentally or pretty dramatically between when it's in clay and when it's made into bronze, because bronze is a different material. It absorbs light differently. It reflects light differently. OK, fine. Well, he also says Omri Amrani says the process works best when customers give no more input after seeing the clay sculpture. so it's like he says this this process is really the best if you look at it as the clay and then don't talk to us again and also don't talk to us about the bronze which is going to look pretty different than the clay that seems like a i mean i feel like what he's saying is look there's no fixing it once it's bronze so you just gotta like we gotta hope that that you like the clay version that the bronze is somewhat close to it.

I see. I heard that in a different way because of my toasty little take, which is maybe getting colder and sort of like, you know how when bread is warm, it's nice, but then as it cools off, it starts to get a little. I want to get into making bread, by the way. Oh, really?

Yeah, I've never. So I'm back on that. Never gotten into that.

But I was sort of wondering if he was sort of casually throwing Dwayne Wade under the bus by saying, like, usually it works better if you just sort of leave us alone at that phase. But it was Dwayne Wade going in there and telling them to like sort of like shave down parts of the face once it was bronzed. Or is he saying, you know, once it was bronzed, there's nothing more we can do.

I think he's saying once it's bronze, we can't change it. And also this works best when no one has any thoughts on it once it's bronze.

If nobody has any opinions. This process works better if you don't have any opinions.

Because we can't fix it at this point. Like, I just thought that was a weird line for him saying the process works best when people have no further input after seeing the clay sculpture. It's like, well, no shit, because it's not very changeable once it's bronze. Now, here's the thing about all of this.

And there is one line there. I do think it's worth saying the second part of that sentence, though, because now I have that quote in front of me from the post. He said the process works best when customers give no more input after seeing the clay sculpture, period. It isn't clear when Wade or team reps last saw the statue. So I'm still thinking that that might be a little bit of the artist saying, listen, it's better when they give no input after seeing the clay sculpture, and then read between the lines. In this case, they didn't stop, and they kept on coming in and tinkering. I'm going to hold on to this stale bread of a take.

Well, here's where I've landed with this whole thing, because I really like Dwayne Wade. Like, I love Dwayne Wade's relationship with his wife, Gabrielle Union. I believe they have a child who is queer, and they're very supportive of their queer child, including marching in pride parades and stuff, which is maybe not always in step with the sort of professional athlete life. A trans daughter, right? Isn't that right?

There's a famous basketball player, and now I'm starting to think it's Dwayne Wade. I could be wrong about that, who is just like outspokenly a wonderful parent and speaks up on issues about trans visibility and everything, which is, you know, not something you see a lot in the sports world.

Yeah. Zaya is his daughter who is trans. So I am very, very like, I actually really liked Dwayne Wade, you know, throughout his NBA career. I used to see him play at Marquette. I mean, not in person, but like he's been on my radar and I really like Dwayne Wade. and all Dwayne Wade has done it would seem in the world is make a lot of basketball fans very happy and love his family and raise them in an inclusive environment, all of which are good things and he gets a statue and all we're doing is shitting on it and all he's doing is now having to defend his statue which feels like such an unfortunate position for Dwayne Wade to be in. Here's what he said the next day, if I wanted the statue to look like me, I'd just stand outside the arena and y'all could take photos. That's a desperate man oh man that's a good yeah first of all conceding it doesn't look like him and saying look if you want to see the real Dwayne Wade I just have to be here all the time which

makes no sense yeah he's such a handsome man though it is unsettling it is a bummer that he

got Fraser because he's a nice looking dude this is another thing Dwayne Wade said on social media I care but I don't again this is this is unfortunate because what I'm hearing in this is a person who is being honored and being honored for being a really good basketball player and now is having to comment on if the thing looks like him or not, which is totally not the point of all of this, you know?

Having said that, though, it's very uncomfortable to look at. Like, whether or not, like, you're sort of saying it looks a little bit like Frasier, but like, yeah, but like really with the mask mixed in there. And someone maybe smelling a fart. Yeah, it is just not and I feel like here's where the original sin happened in this particular story was them deciding this is the moment that they wanted to grab. I think, like, you're right. I don't want to be super cruel about this both to Dwayne Wade nor towards the artist, frankly, because I don't have any skill. I mean, if you just asked me to sketch a picture of this moment, it would be worse than the statue. So I'm not trying to make it sound like, oh, making a statue, just make it good. Having said that, maybe at times we say, maybe a statue isn't the right thing here or maybe this isn't the right moment to capture because when you're capturing something there are limitations when you're capturing something in bronze there are limitations so let's maybe like from now on this is okay here here's my hot take from now on all statues new rule all statues should be the person sleeping and now it's gonna be a problem because it's gonna take up more space you know you're gonna it's gonna take up more space along the ground instead of being standing i understand standing is

a more efficient use of space but just like a nice calm moment in the middle of their sleep and not snoring either let's let's let's give them some dignity i love that having been in europe this

summer and looked at a lot of art there definitely are these fads where it's like there's a certain kind of pose that gets very in style and then you see like rooms and rooms and rooms of paintings of like people in that position or doing that thing let's make for sculptures let's make sleeping normally with a non-weird face, the default setting.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man. It's not from a female.

All right.

Email or V-mail. Yes, we have this foggy day. This voicemail from Alicia regarding TSA checkpoints. Hey, friendos.

Alicia in Massachusetts here. TSA talk reminded me of a story I heard from a friend where a relative of hers was traveling went through tsa forgot that he had a gun in his carry-on just like you said luke and i'm with you i don't get it at all but this is the story he forgot he had a gun in his carry-on put it on the belt everything that you'd expect would happen happened all the alarms went off he was you know taking it to custody eventually it was all worked out he was fine the part of the story that really sticks out is the agent who was sitting there you watching the monitor was so excited and proud of herself for spotting the gun and doing what she was supposed to and he distinctly remembered her singing a little song of just i got the gun i got the gun and so you know it was probably something she trained for for years they always have to be so vigilant most of their days they're you know looking at people's toothbrushes and laundry or what have you microphone stands that one day she found she did it she did exactly what she's supposed to do probably still remembers that day so who knows maybe those posters with all the stuff that tsa claims they found in luggage over the years maybe it's you know nine things they found over 20 years but i bet the tsa agents who found those things when they walk by those posters and see that you know box cutter or what have you they remember what was probably a really proud

day for them so good for them power out there you go thank you alicia you know it's a very positive outlook and i i appreciate that i salute that i never thought about the uh you know like um the sort of ego boost if you will or the the sense of accomplishment that that provides for them the sense of justification i mean here's the thing for i i i sort of very obviously suspicious of like the efficacy of the tsa and yet i certainly am not advocating for there to be not metal detectors you know what i mean like it's kind of like i don't i don't know how much that's really protecting us from things but on the other hand if you said let's just go no tsa i'd be like well let's not

be rash yeah right where is the line that's that's actually a really good point there's a line somewhere right what what literally literally what was it like before 9-11 how can i not remember this i mean there was still obviously tsa there obviously wasn't the back scatter stuff you obviously didn't have to take off your shoes you might have been able to leave your laptop in but we still rolled our luggage through um through x-ray machines right and did they uh and did we have to and we just walked through metal and we just walked through metal detectors i think maybe and if we had because i always wear like kind of baggy-ish pants and so i feel like i would get even maybe before 9-11 i would sometimes get like padded down even after i'd gone through the

metal detector created in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks tsa was established by the aviation and transportation security act passed by the 107th congress passed into law by george w bush on november 19th 2001 so there was no tsa before the 9-11 attacks according to the internet but there must have just been security yeah it must have been airport security you know yeah but it It wasn't part of a national network, you know, with everyone having the same uniforms and allegedly the same rules. Although that's my number one. What's one of my main annoyances is that I feel like different airports have all kinds of different rules. And it's getting even more complicated now because there are some places where you give them your boarding pass and your ID. There are some places where you just give them your ID. And now there are some places where they just take a picture of you and it matches something. And they let you through, and there's no predicting which one it's going to be. And half the time, the person sitting there in the chair strikes me as a little annoyed that I'm fumbling, because it really does vary from TSA to TSA. But anyway, I guess the point is, in the olden days, pre-9-11, there was security, but it was probably just a couple of folks standing around just being like, Come on.

through the metal detector yeah and i i that's how i remembered it and i'm looking on a couple of different places including uh npr and some other uh articles at cbs you're familiar with both of those institutions i believe um saying that yeah for all the letters it was like it was a metal detector and certainly you know uh i i definitely know that like all the you know taking off your shoes and coat and everything like that is definitely a post 9-11 thing but man it just Well, it doesn't seem like that long ago, yet it was. It really, really was.

It was a 12, when did Schubert Dip come out?

Exactly. What was it? So it was a quarter of a century ago. I like doing that. I like taking a really big amount of time and then mentioning the fraction of it. It makes it sound like, like 25 years sounds like 25 years. A quarter of a century sounds like a lifetime.

Yeah. Well, is it Alicia? Yeah. Alicia, thank you for that. You know what? I think I, I'm hoping anyway that I have, I've said everything negative I need to say about the TSA and that I will be much like I'm not an old guy anymore, but I'm a young guy. I think I'm a guy who's going to be, you know, recognizing the humanity of the folks that are working there at the TSA. I will say that it has gotten better, generally speaking, in terms of the length of the lines. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I have pre-check and also I have clear. So that helps. But I do think the airports are becoming a more well-oiled machine, generally speaking, as far as the security goes.

So you did go in for clear. I don't think you ever told – if you told us that, I forgot. Because I remember you being just TSA pre-check and being kind of like now they have this clear thing. It kind of – I mean, again, not putting this on you. It kind of bums me out to know that you kind of caved on that because it just seems like such a goddamn racket.

It is a racket. And did you know that they're actually, like, franchises, each one in an airport? This doesn't make it more or less of a racket, but it's just interesting. They're franchises.

That's why they're so thirsty, like, when they're the site training.

You can buy a Clear franchise, and then I guess you get that airport, and that becomes your particular whatever. But, yeah, the bummer thing about Clear is that it sort of creates a choke point for all security, but particularly for TSA PreCheck. and then the solution to that line is to just join clear i think i did it for like an introductory you know thing or whatever and i don't i think i'll let it lapse i've only used it a handful of times um but uh all i was going to say is i feel like now watch you know watch me regret these words because you know the holidays are around the corner and maybe we'll get back into like complete mayhem at the airport but i have felt like the mayhem levels have been lower particularly with the tsa i feel like they're this is my attempt to be nice to the tsa i feel like they're starting to get it down a little bit they're moving people through fairly effectively mostly through yelling at them shoes off shoes off water dump out your water it's working that's

what i'm trying to say i feel like man i better not be confusing your stories with mine but i am pretty sure and and i think that i maybe i brought this up on the show already because i remember taking a photo of something in an airport once this is going back maybe a year or two i was in the airport with genevieve and we saw the most infuriating posters promoting tsa pre-check because it was in the tsa area and it was basically shitting on the tsa experience whoa and it was one of those things i remember taking a photo of this appreciate the honesty yeah and it was just kind of like don't wait in line like you know and just like oh who wants to do this i'm just like this is you this is your department this is your organization to say like we know that we provide you know for whatever reason we provide an experience that is so shitty that you should give us more money so that you can so we can provide you a we still can provide you a slightly less shitty experience it's one thing if you're clear and you're kind of like hey listen we're bringing competition into the realm here not like hey we know what we provide sucks so why don't you buy something else from us and we'll maybe make it slightly less sucky for you

yeah that is bad marketing and messaging although it is true yeah they are they are doling out pretty lousy service we don't do pre-check so the point is and by the way you can do pre-check at the airport now like sign up for it like in portland they have a little desk set up which by the way oh i should how that was not always the system is the dumbest thing right i thought

that when genevieve did it years ago she had to like go somewhere here i had to go to the costco near the costco and sodo oh okay but it was still a years ago a consumery kind of facing thing okay i'm gonna do this like i don't have anything it's so worth it i don't have anything booked for a while and like it's kind of like this would be the perfect time i should do it now because i don't

know how long it'll make your life so much better nice i mean and please understand i am being incredibly selfless by inviting you into this because the more people in the group the less benefit i get and yet

Andrew, that's how much I care about you. The word hero comes to mind. Uh-huh. To my mind right now. This hero has to go interview Gary Steingart in two minutes. So we're going to sign off. But I'm going to say thank you, everyone, for listening. And guess what? We're going to be right back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. So please join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. Take care.

I don't like your tone, Franken-puss. Now do yourself a favor and don't punch my clock, because I'm a Pantera's box you do not want to open. It is Pandora. Uh, please don't correct me. It sickens me. Power out.