Muse

Has anybody got a pill speaker? We need to get some boom, boom, pow in here.

Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Joel, aren't you a music guy? Uh, I actually teach middle school choir. I wish I was pulling down six figures like you, though. Stacking dough, you know what I mean? I'm actually saving up right now so I could buy this plane. Check it out. Believe it or not, I've never been on an airplane before. Yo, I can't even process that. Jimmy! I need a brewski like my mama needs a kidney. How's she doing, by the way? She's hanging in there. Yeah, that's all you can do, man. TBTL!

Hey, you know, if we knocked down that wall, it would really open the place up. You know, clean up the blood, maybe add some French doors, maybe a ping pong table right there. You know, I'm just ripping. Is there, and I'm just guessing here, some kind of medication that you maybe need a lot of and have taken none of, or maybe too much of today? Mmm!

Ah!

This gazpacho soup just burned my lips. It's like a despacho? Yeah, it's been sitting out. It warmed up. It warmed up so much that it burned your lip. Let me explain something to you. If you're expecting something ice cold and you bring it up to your lips and it's room temp, it's going to feel like your mouth's on fire. It's going to feel like your body's on fire. And boom goes the dynamite. I could really use a win here.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. We're about to go viral right now. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Everyone's got a podcast. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where we've already experienced like four different weather patterns this morning, and we've settled in on gloomy and gray. But as we like to say, it's warm and dry here inside the podcast. It's episode 4,335 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Another episode of TBTL, another extensive conversation about Frankie Valli.

You've got to be kidding me.

And whether or not he is lip syncing at his shows. The story that just refuses to go away. We talked about this yesterday on the program because we played a voicemail from a listener who had been to a Frankie Valli show. And I figured that was the end of it. And then by happenstance, I found this story in the Washington Post yesterday. a thoroughly and well-reported piece where not only is Frankie Valli interviewed on the subject, but many of his collaborators are and other random musicians are forced to watch footage of Frankie Valli to try to get to the bottom if he's lip-syncing or not. And by the way, Frankie Valli says, no, I'm not lip-syncing. Well, we know you're good at lying. So we'll dig into that today. And also we've got some updates on our various home-improving attempts here. Andrew's Furnace, My Closet Dilemma.

Bring it back home, baby. Bring it back home.

So we'll talk about that as well. Speaking of Andrew, Walsh, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's sticking out his ghiat for the Rizzler. Oh, explicit. And he's joining us right now. Good morning, my friend.

I'm so proud that you used the I Know You're Good at Lying drop because when you sent to me,

You fed me that one yesterday. I did. That was your response to the Frankie Valli story.

You sent me this article, which we'll get to later on. I'm very excited to hear about this. I meant to read it. I'm literally mad at myself because it looks like such a good read. But you'll walk me through it later on in the show, this Frankie Valli story. But you sent it to me. You sent me a link to the story yesterday. And I just responded, well, we know you're good at lying. And I remember thinking, I wonder if that'll make the show. I wonder if that'll make the show. And it did. So thank you. Do you feel mildly starstruck that your idea is now being featured in lights is on this program is honored too strong of a word no honored is not too strong of a word i don't think i think i feel honored and starstruck i do it's an honor and a privilege it really is

to be on this show a show andrew that was mentioned on a much more popular show today chris hayes's why is this happening podcast really really good episode of uh i mean the show's always great but it's just what uh just what i needed to hear i've been talking a lot about kind of my level of engagement with political news and conversations and strategies and the like, and he talks to someone who is an old friend of his and was at one time the head of MoveOn.org. I believe her name is Anna Galand and is now, I believe, a professor teaching policy or something. Anyway, they just had a really, really good, really heartening conversation about where we're at and where we can go. And in fact, they said something which really stuck with me. Chris mentioned this. And he was talking about in another... He was talking about basically all of...

the kind of finger-pointing and recriminations that we're going to see swirling around and we've already kind of seen swirling around of whose quote-unquote fault this was what group of people what demographic what what interest group were we were we too woke were we not woke enough was this because of you know sort of one plank in the platform or a different plank and he was talking about um another place that's been under an authoritarian rule and where they were resisting and he said that there was a saying that they had i'm in this other country uh and it was no one lets go of anyone's hand in other words we're not throwing anyone out of the boat whether those are people you know whether those are trans folks whether those are progressive folks whether those are uh you know folks that tilt towards the center like this is not the time for for us to be unlocking our hands with anyone who's in this coalition you know because it's tempting to want to try to figure out who's the jonah you know why did this happen and i do mean the character from veep i you know i should um oh i should not oh this is not where i want to start the show you're on a hot streak with this i believe yesterday you said something like i've regretted saying things on the show yeah i don't know if i've ever regretted something in

advance more than what i'm about and that was me retelling a uh one panel cartoon about a jerry jerry lee lewis related i actually i actually forgot about that what's the opposite of a triumph i forgot about that little failure from yesterday's show uh i i guess i'll say it i i really don't want to go down this this this direction today but i'll just i started it so i'll say it um i told you a while back about somebody i follow several people like this um and uh you know and i i listen to what they have to say but i follow you know probably a handful of people that are in my instagram circle who are even further left than me and are so so so upset about what's going on in gaza that they uh were you know leading up to the election like posting a lot of things about like you know you know that the democrats and kamala harris like don't vote for her because she's just as complicit in all of this and like oh the left is okay with genocide is basically what the line was and um you know like i understand i really truly understand where that is coming from you you are in slow motion watching something really really really terrible happen across months and just and just thousands of people losing their lives and you're here in the united states and you feel like there's something somebody can do about this and i feel i feel helpless to do anything so all i can do is try to express this as much as possible on instagram i understand that one you know to varying degrees of annoyances because i was telling you i have one friend who is like who would sort of like kind of say that type of stuff but also in a very very unendearing way i would say in a very condescending like i'm talking to you little babies out there who are not as enlightened as I am on these issues. And, you know, I don't mind the sentiment. I sort of didn't like this one person's sort of tone when it came to all this stuff, this very preachy, this very I know better than thou and I am better than thou vibe from this person. And then I saw that this person posted something yesterday about how terrible life is going to be for trans people under the Trump administration. And I'm just like, yeah, because it's not just one issue that we vote for. And I just there was something so and and by the way, this person comes by it. Honestly, I'm not trying to I want to be very clear here. And just for my own sake, just to be honest about this person, I don't think that their points are wrong on either of these issues. I didn't really appreciate the tone of the post about it. And I happen to know that trans issues have touched this person's life. I think there are people in their life who are trans. And so I'm not trying to diminish that, but I'm just saying that how could you have just spent the last like two months just like browbeating us and saying there's no difference and don't even bother voting or certainly don't vote for Kamala Harris?

And then because it's like, yes, there are terrible things going on in the world, some of which are not addressed enough by one candidate, but could have stemmed the tide of other terrible things that are happening in the world. I was just so I just couldn't believe that she was posting about that. I don't know. Yeah. Did that make sense? I feel like I was not very.

No, I hear you. And that's I think that's going to be that's sort of the tension. I was thinking about that in looking at some of the I love it. I'm like, this is going to be a fun show where we don't talk about turnout in Dearborn, Michigan. I don't talk about people writing uncommitted at the top of the ticket at Dearborn, Michigan. Like, you know, by the way, this is me not engaged with the content, and I can tell you about movement in terms of the vote in Dearborn, Michigan, so apparently it's not going great.

Have you learned piano yet? The second that frigging thing gets here, everything changes for me, Andrew. But anyway, I guess my point is it is going to be messy going forward and there is going to be frustration and there's going to be a lot of the temptation will be to try to scapegoat decisions that were made in groups of people. And and and I don't think that's the answer right now. Anyway, this was made very clear and much more eloquently on today's episode of Why Is This Happening with Chris Hayes, where he also mentions us by name.

Oh, yeah, that was the point of your story before I went on my tangent, which I might cut out.

And we're already getting people reaching out. As I said to Chris this morning, I think being Chris Hayes adjacent is the biggest flex for this show.

Yes, definitely. In fact, that's right. Do we have new listeners right now? We should have really started. Well, let's get to those numbers in Dearborn, Michigan. Let's leave with that.

Exactly. We've got to super serve those P1s. That's right. Hey, let's super serve this P1, that would be me, by telling me how it's going with your furnace.

Oh, okay. Um, I, yeah, you know, I think it was on Friday that I talked about the fact that my furnace was acting up. I will try to recap as quickly as possible. I have an old thermostat upstairs, like an old Honeywell thermostat that had dogged me ever since we lived here. I just hated the design of it and how it works and everything. But, you know, we got by. My father had gotten me. Why did I just call him my father? Dear father, thank you for this gift. Pattern familias. My dad was kind of upgrading his kind of, I guess you'd call it kind of smart home stuff. I think his security and various sort of interactive appliances he has around the house. That really makes it sound like he lives in the Jetsons. I just think he got some new ring doorbells or something. And so he got rid of his old Google ones. And so he sent me his Google Nest thermostat like a year ago. And I was supposed to install it myself because everybody says they're relatively easy to install. But I kept on dragging my feet on doing that for various reasons. One reason being that I was kind of nervous about, like, you know, if I try to do this during the cold months and I rip out the old thermostat and can't install the new one, what will that evening be like, you know, until I can get somebody out here to fix my mess? So I'd been kind of dragging my feet on installing that thing anyway. And then, coincidentally and unrelated to that, our furnace started acting up last week and to the point where it wasn't heating the house consistently. sort of come and go and um some listeners heard me describe how the furnace was acting and just absolutely pinpointed exactly what the problem was we had a we had a guy come out on friday wonderful by the way i sent you this guy's profile a lot of detail on mike this is so great so a lot of these um you know businesses that are that will send a service person to your house now will have an automated system that let you know hey the service person is leaving the last job and is now headed to your place like it's actually really good you know like if you're for example here we don't have a doorbell right now and my office is in the basement so I don't hear somebody knocking on the door it's good to get these text messages and this company and I know that I've seen this with another company at least once before maybe somebody delivering our washer and dryer they send a little profile of the person who's coming to your house and I'm sure it starts with a safety thing it's like you know our service person in this case his name was Mikey or michael mikey is coming to your house he'll be there in about a half hour but it also came with like a little almost a baseball card of information for mikey uh it said that he enjoyed when he's not like fixing furnaces he enjoys making music and producing music and his favorite movie is um what was it the truman show truman his favorite movie is the truman show and then it had one other little dazzling and then his favorite part about working and i'll just say the name of the company is c-town i highly recommend it it was a great experience uh his favorite part about working for c-town is the free coffee of course and i was just like wow this is like we're getting

a lot of information before meeting um i love this by the way like i would just feel just so

much better about the like this must have allayed some amount of your of your anxiety before even meeting this guy because you were or i was trying to tell you that you should bring up the uh nest replacement thing first you you were planning on bringing it up later almost kind of as a last thing after he had diagnosed the furnace just this picture of this guy just looks so friendly yes he looks knowledgeable uh and uh and we know that he loves the truman show and free coffee i mean that's

a that's a wealth of information and makes and makes his own music and i'm not gonna totally dox him here but i well well i'll tell you um first of all mikey is the best mikey is the best And he even said, like, if you guys need anything else, you call the company, you can ask for me, I'll be out here. He came out here. He immediately became friends with Bingo the cat. He was taking photos of Bingo playing with the wires because Bingo was trying to help him fix the furnace. He came out, he diagnosed it immediately, and the diagnosis was what some listeners had pinpointed, as I mentioned before.

It was an issue with the sensor. One thing we learned is that our furnace really is too old and probably will need to be replaced in the next year or so. But luckily, it didn't have to happen in an emergency situation right there. He cleaned a sensor. Basically, there are these safety sensors on there that if they're not reading the situation correctly, they think that gas is being released without a flame connected to it, which would obviously be—

And usually that's just you.

It's just me. Thank you. He installed one of these sensors on me, actually. Great balls of fire. He said, save it for the email roundup. But yeah, he came out and he, you know, so basically, and I like the fact that I understand it, that it wasn't just a sensor, but I understand that basically, even though the furnace was shooting out flame the way it's supposed to, the sensor was mistaken about that. The sensor didn't detect the flame and the sensor is there in case the machine really isn't sending out flame. That would be a bad situation if you're just releasing a whole bunch of gas into your house. Only one of us. This house isn't big enough for the two of us, Furnace. So anyway, it was a really quick fix. But then I also right away did say, as a secondary thing, I was hoping to install this thermostat. I don't know if that's something you could do on the fly as well. He said, OK, let's look at the furnace first. And then he said, the one thing about these types of thermostats, these new ones, they're sort of three-wire systems. And I can tell by looking at your furnace that you kind of have a two-wire system set up right now. And I don't know exactly what that means, but he cleaned the sensor. He fixed the furnace. He looked closer at the thermostat situation and said, hey, look, this third wire is just sort of hanging here. Like, one thing about our house is whoever did all the work on it, like, I shouldn't even say this because the listeners are going to freak out. Like, turns out our thermos is not, or I'm sorry, our furnace is not grounded, which is something we have to look at. There are some tubes in there that are not up to code that you're not supposed to use inside of a gas furnace that we're going to have to maybe potentially look at getting replaced or just replace the whole damn thing. But let's just say that whoever had worked on this was not somebody who had the attention to detail that our best friend Mikey had. But Mikey looks at the situation. That person hated free coffee. That person hated free coffee and really did not appreciate the Truman Show. Described it as uneven. But anyway, what I liked about this was he said, oh, look, there is this third wire here. It's just not installed. So I can run some extra wiring to make this thermostat work for you and then install it for you. And so what I liked about this was I had been sort of beating myself up for procrastinating and not doing this job myself. But what I learned was I really wouldn't have been able to do it myself. I would have pulled the thermostat off the wall upstairs. I would have been confused by the wire situation. It wouldn't have worked. I wouldn't have known why I would have been screwed.

And it turns out the exact nightmare scenario would have played out exactly hole in your wall with wires coming out and you don't know how to fix it.

Exactly. And now now it is installed because Mikey installed it. He did it the right way. He let us know some other things to look at in our house that we might want to keep an eye on for various safety reasons and things will probably need to replace at some point. But didn't go on a hard sell with us at all. Mikey is the best. I did not ask him about the Truman Show. I did ask him about his band. I won't say it here, although maybe they want the publicity, but I don't want to totally dox this guy. I was listening to some of his music in my headphones so that not so loud that he could hear.

While he's working, you're like studying up?

I'll tell you what. I'd asked him about it because I'd shared his baseball card with my text chain and they're like, ask him about his band. I'm like, OK, so I asked him about his band. And then I came in here to listen to it on Spotify, and then he came in. He kind of poked his head into my office. Now, I had headphones on, but I felt like Mikey had caught me watching porn. Like, I was just like, I'm watching baseball. Watching baseball, Mikey, as I ripped my headphones off. But anyway, all of that is to say.

He checks his phone. Didn't the World Series end three weeks ago, sir?

Yes. It's called the Hot Stove League, Mikey. But anyway, all of that is to say, like, I am so happy right now is texting my dad this week. And it's one of those things where it's like it's I shouldn't make it sound like it's a small gift. It's not a small gift. This new thermostat, this new, you know, I don't know how much you would retail for. But, you know, it is such a huge change in our lives. First of all, just knowing that the like I described I described this feeling to Genevieve in this way. And I don't know if it'll totally make sense to you, but we moved in this house. I love where we live. There's a lot to love about this place. But I also knew that there are some immediate things that we didn't want to take care of. There are some things on the long list of projects that we'll take care of over the coming years. There are some things that drive me bananas. And then there are some things that I kind of like just don't think about. Like I can't remember how old the hot water heater is, but I know that when you should replace those before they go out because it causes a big mess. But I never but I kind of don't want to think about that right now. And I was like... When I was booking people to fix the furnace, they were asking me how old it is. I'm like, honestly, I don't know. We just moved in here. But now somebody has come out. They've looked at the furnace. They told us all of the warning signs to look out for. They got it working for now. They explained this. They also looked at the water heater, gave us some updates. And I told Genevieve, it's almost like when you're playing a video game that's sort of a map. This is probably unrelatable to you, Luke. But sometimes you'll be playing a video game that sort of has a map. But then you open up a section of the map by achieving something. and now you can sort of see it. I sort of feel like there was this, like, this steam, I call this area sort of like the steam room of our basement. You know, it's got the furnace and the hot water heater in there. And I was just kind of like, I was always looking in there and being like, I don't really know what's going on in there. And one of these days I'm going to have to, but I don't know. And now I sort of feel like that part of the map has been revealed a little bit. Like, I understand what's going on in there a little bit better. And as I told you, sitting here moments before we started the show, I was like, ooh, I turned the thermostat up too hot. It's a little bit warm in here. And I actually bemoaned that fact until I remembered I can just open this app on my phone and turn it down to 67, which I just did. I'm controlling the thermostat from my phone anywhere in the house at any moment. It is so great.

That is very, very gratifying. I like that you were treating the steam room like your actual cardiovascular system, asking very few questions, knowing things are probably not great, but not wanting to really dig too deeply into the situation.

It's exactly like my heart, exactly like that, yes.

Well, it's nothing as exciting as being able to control the heating and ventilation in your home at just the touch of a button. But I did have success yesterday, I think, Andrew, with IKEA taking the malm back to from whence it came. and the guys showed up. They were very nice. You're talking about like the new technology around kind of like letting people know how many stops away you are. I really like that. That's a real improvement in our quality of life as far as the customers go because same thing yesterday. I was like, I needed to be here for the guys and they texted me like we're five stops away. We're three stops away. Okay, we're going to be there in 15 minutes and when they showed up, There were two very nice guys, appeared to maybe originally be from Central America, and I said, I prefaced the guy. I was like, I just want to let you know that it's partially assembled and then partially disassembled and in these boxes, and he just looked at me. And I think what it was was maybe just a language barrier.

I didn't realize it was partially unassembled. I thought the whole thing was assembled, but you had to disassemble it to get it out of the closet again?

Well, in taking it out of the closet, it started to kind of disintegrate. It started to come detached from itself.

I see. I thought it was banged up. I didn't realize that pieces were falling off of it.

Pieces were falling off, and I wanted it to look less jacked up, so I unscrewed a few of those pieces. I put them in boxes. I wanted it to seem as legit as possible because I wanted to get my money back, and I wanted them to take it away. But when I told the guy, I was like, it's like half assembled and half in boxes, And he just looked at me, which, again, I think this was more just maybe a language barrier, but I read it to be him being like, absolutely not. Yeah. Yeah. And it was like the longest what felt like the longest, most pregnant pause. And then he just went like, sure, that's fine. Yeah. And they came in and then they put a sticker on everything so that it was all, you know, each section was had a sticker on it so that later on it could all be kind of cross referenced. I still don't know what's going to happen when this thing. i mean i'm sure it's back there now when it gets to the ikea warehouse there is literally no usefulness for this like all of the lower model god no no one would buy this mom if they saw this version of it it's like it's so jacked up and like and when i was talking to the woman on the phone oh that was the other thing i said uh it's partially assembled and partially in a box and the guy looked at me and then i immediately went the lady on the phone said it was okay your boss said it's okay i literally was like the lady on the phone said it was okay like i was already i was like halfway into my defense or whatever you want to call it my prepared remarks on the topic and the guy again i think he just didn't speak a ton of english i don't think he gave half of a shit about this um was just like you know but i was i was probably misreading the situation but um but yeah i don't know what is i will be so the next phase is waiting for the refund to hit my card yes because that's going to be that's going to be the true question when it gets back to uh you know home base for them and then someone starts going through oh the thing i was going to say is the woman on the phone said if you have hardware just put it in like a Ziploc bag or something you know that's the whole thing with this ikea stuff is it's there's so many little bolts and little whatever pieces of hardware and i did i put it all back in a in a plastic bag but i was like who is going to sort through this who is going to check that it's the right number of bolts that it came with like i assume that i mean again i don't feel good

about this theory on that i actually have a theory on that especially related to um to ikea stuff because I have a few Ikea things still in my house. And one of them I'm looking at right now, I'm laughing because it's a big, it's like three CD towers that sort of attach to each other. I remember buying this and having to go into an Ikea. This is when we were living in Los Angeles and like literally saying to a very young person, like I'm looking for something to keep CDs in and sort of like saying CDs in this way, like if he knew what CDs are, you know because it's sort of antiquated technology obviously but like i was missing a few little pins and pokers to hold the shelves up i don't know so i remember either through ordering it or going back to the store i had to get more of those things i'll bet you there are people who when things are returned just pull all the hardware and just put them into big bins that can be used later that

would make total sense to me that would make me feel a little better because where i was starting to go with this is my lack of measuring and thinking through my basically my haste which is one of my worst qualities and most pronounced qualities my in my haste of ordering this thing without fully thinking through would it fit in this closet has now created something that will be in a landfill you know sooner rather than later like that thing was going to be in a land that malm was going to be in a landfill but instead of being in a landfill in 20 years or 15 years it's now going to the landfill like tomorrow and that's due to me so at least if some of the hardware gets a second life at least that would feel like some kind of a small benefit to the whole thing well

i don't i don't know if this makes you feel better or not but just so you know i have a running list of some of your worst qualities and haste is nowhere near the top honestly so really yeah yeah that does make me feel better yeah no haste honestly it even occurred to me to put haste on the list it's a pretty it's a pretty populated list all right you know who does love me and is

not keeping a list of my worst qualities the donors andrew right we assume folks like zachary rouse out there in jackson heights queens new york city i think when zach emails in does well i'm

making an assumption here he signs his name zach right do we have to i do believe that he is a

zach yeah thank you zach thank you we really appreciate you thanks also to steven gardner

who's in port orchard washington thank you i feel like with a last name like gardner port orchard is

a great place to be yeah he seems like steven is in exactly the right place uh and diane sibert is in Chehalis, Washington, not far from me, not far from here, just a, I don't know, half hour up the road, not too far from, let's see, Winlock, Washington, home of the world's largest egg.

Can I tell you something about Chehalis that is, again, probably unrelatable? So I get, this makes no sense because I don't think the place, I don't know either of these places, but I don't think they're similar in any way, but I get Chehalis confused with the place where you and the boys, and I did say that with a Z, you and the boys used to go on your summer vacations.

Oh, Chelan.

Chelan. Okay, so they are similar names. I get Chehalis and Chelan. Yeah, they both start with C-H. And you guys call that Chelanigans. Chelanigans. And one time, I think I said to Camaro Kev, oh, where are you doing your Chehalisigans this year? And he's like, my Chehalisigans. And it took us a while to start speaking the same language again.

Well, Diane, this summer, coming to a Chehalis near you, Luke Kamarokev, Dykstra, Race, and a rogues gallery of men who are far too old to be doing what they're doing, coming to a Chehalis near you. Hey, look who it is, Alex Meyer in Seattle, Washington. Thank you, Alex. My dear friend, Alex Meyer. For many, many years I've known Alex.

Oh, from before TBTL, I recognize Alex as a listener. Oh, I didn't realize that. Nice. Thank you, Alex.

Yeah, I've known Alex since Alex was in high school. Oh, wow. Alex did a radio show in his basement when he was a teen. Oh, I remember you telling me this. And we became friends. And if I remember right, although, again, me thinking that I once parallel parked in front of Jake from State Farm, Andrew, has really rocked my world. It's caught me questioning everything. but if I remember right I do believe I put Alex in touch with old Ira Glass and they interviewed him for TAL nice ring a bell now thank you for donating nice to see your name on the list again alex appreciate

you also michael havens is in tumwater washington we're really oh yeah over delivering on sort of the south sound thanks michael and then craig parsons is in conover north carolina ah that breaks the pattern we needed somebody that does that goes way way east and a bit south yeah craig hope you're doing well i don't know where conover is in relation to all that uh sort of terrible flooding and weather problems that went down recently, but hope you're doing all right, Craig. We really appreciate you. Thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL happen today. Hello and welcome to Top Story. As mentioned at the top of the show, there is more Frankie Valley content than you could ever want happening here on TBTL. When we thought that we were all done with this i stumbled upon this story in the washington post by jeff edgers title frankie valley just can't quit he's become the subject of viral memes and jokes about lip-syncing but the 90 year old pop legend defends his live performances and his love of being on stage and it's pretty clear that what happened was frankie valley or frankie valley's people agreed to do this interview in the Washington Post, but not really specifically about the lip-syncing stuff, just about the sort of Frankie Valli's career and the fact that he's still out there performing at age 90. You know this because there's a paragraph on page two where this writer, Jeff Edgers, is talking about the lip-syncing, the controversy, controversy is the wrong word, but basically all the kind of speculation and meme-ification of it and everything. And it said, he hadn't addressed the questions personally until a recent morning in Los Angeles. That's when Valley, after a charming discussion with the Washington Post about his decades as a performer and his love of music, grew quickly frustrated when pressed to talk about the recent online attacks. He made clear that he's the one who decides whether to tour. For him, the stage remains central to his identity. As far as the performances itself valley would not even hint at the possibility that the flawless falsetto that flows over the speakers is anything but authentically live no recording no auto-tune nothing but frankie and the energetic men in black ties who make up the umpteenth edition of the four seasons singers the criticism he says is rooted in envy i haven't had a problem an audience problem for my whole life valley says and if i can't make a note i don't sing it so can i

address a couple of things here because one one part of the story that you and i have not mentioned i think recently when it's come up was it sounds like the first thing that frankie valley was addressing there this idea of i don't go on tour unless i'm the one who decides to was because there were some there were some concerns or maybe even some reports or speculation that not only is he up there sort of lip syncing and looking a little bit you could interpret his look up there as being somewhat stunned by the lights elder abuse comes to mind right and some people were kind of like is he you know is he being somewhat coerced to be out there or people does he have handlers if people in his life were like well we don't make money unless frankie's out there so let's trot frankie out again go el sid on it that's what he's trying to that's what he's trying to like sort of address there in that first statement and secondly i just want to point out And again, I'm bummed that I did not read this before. We're talking about it now. But as you present it to me, I think it's very interesting that the writer of this does something that you and I have been trying to do as we talk about it, which is up front, show the due respect. Like literally, not when you say with all due respect and then you burn the shit out of somebody. Which is like what you like to do with me.

Talk about my list of flaws.

The list interrupts. Okay. i uh i uh i feel like when we talk about the story we really do not mean this in a disrespectful or ageist way we just it's an interesting phenomenon because he is up there he is providing entertainment to a bunch of people who seem to really really enjoy it and that's good but also and this is where i think the story will go on there's no way on christ's earth that those sounds are coming

from his body um you're absolutely right this reporter goes out of his way to talk about the fact that frankie valley is doing really great for being 90 he can he his memory is is still really good he can recall sections of lyrics from his favorite songs and stuff like he's by by just about every measure uh he's doing great for 90 um and uh so that's that's made very clear and also yes the the question of like is frankie valley being forced out on stage is answered in this article, and it's a definitive no. Frankie Valli is in charge of Frankie Valli, and he loves performing.

which also uh is a big part of this article what's interesting to me is like the sort of lengths that the washington post goes to to prove that he's lip-syncing they brought in the av squad for this andrew they took i think it's seven different performances they literally got taped like this was not necessary you look at you look at the video and you know that Frankie Valli is lip-syncing. It's like George Burns wearing a toupee. It's like he didn't...

You don't need to bring a hair analysis expert.

Exactly. It's like, okay, the guy's 90, he's lip-syncing, he doesn't want to admit it, whatever. But the levels that they go to to just totally bust him is just kind of crazy to me. They take seven different performances of this particular song and then they overlay them and they note that the vocals are absolutely Frankie Valli's vocals perfectly in time and perfectly on the same both the same time signature and the notes are hit perfectly as you can hear the live band coming in and out of time with the different versions the point being if you do something seven times it's always going to be a little different you cannot unless you're playing a recording it cannot be I'm just going to play you some of the audio this is seven different performances I believe of Frankie Valley, where the vocals remain absolutely unchained.

You hear the band getting out of time? So they're picking up where the recording ends, basically?

no that's that's the same song but what you're hearing at the end that weird kind of brown note is the variation in the live band between the seven different performances uh i see if that makes sense because those are live musicians playing their instruments and they're never going to like the only thing that is completely microscopically unchanged in those seven different versions is frankie valley's vocals and they basically say in the piece there's the the only way that this could happen would be because it's a recording uh-huh right now i got you yes but again jeff doesn't stop there he goes and starts interviewing people in frankie valley's life to find out if they think he's lip-syncing and uh turns out a guy named jamie kime is a pretty good soldier he's he's the guitarist who was in valley's touring band a few years ago this is jamie kimes a comment on the thing you go see pink in concert and she's swinging upside down on a rope and the vocals are perfect feels like what about ism to me yeah it really does but uh uh the jb kyle said uh who was as i said a guitarist in valley's touring band a few years ago and admits that he had no idea whether his boss was singing live really jamie so he doesn't even he doesn't

even stand up and say he definitely is he's just i don't know hey tone why do i think this guy looks

exactly like silvio from hey i don't know tone uh you know or paulie walnuts yeah my own i don't know if he's singing or not like come on you don't know if he's singing you've been on stage with this guy you're a professional musician jamie kime uh so the reporter doesn't get a definitive answer from jamie so he continues ever forward and uh for some reason and then is able to get a hold of a keyboardist named lee shapiro a member of the four seasons during the 1970s who still talks to valley uh regularly and he says frankly he does lip sync not all the time but at 90 years old if you're destroyed and you've got a concert you've got to do what are you going to do it's ridiculous to make an issue if the show's entertaining and you got your money's worth and you saw the big star that you wanted to see so that's what lee shapiro says which should that should always be

the argument and then in the post did you say this is the post right yeah the post would not do this whole investigation if they were just honest about this point you know what i mean like nobody's looking to take down frankie valley like there's no reason to take him down it's just that well as you say democracy dies in darkness yes um they did they did decide for the first

time ever to not endorse frankie valley you knew where i was going with that well i was but yeah i

I was trying to figure, as I said, democracy dies in darkness. I was trying to figure out my own Bezos-related joke there. But, yeah, so anyway, like, the reason is, it's like, don't, don't, well, I'm going to, I already, I think, kind of swore earlier. So I'll just say, like, don't piss on. my head and tell me it's raining you know what i mean like right the answer is yes we come out because this is entertainment and i also love the fact that the one person you used pink is an example and no offense to pink either but like of all of the of all of the pop stars out there who are doing like huge stage performances i wonder did this person or this person's like niece just go to a pink show like why did why was pink the the person who had to be the example here but there's all kinds of performers all kinds of pop performers who are doing just ridiculously athletic dances and things on stage and it's pretty clear that they're probably not singing at least every single part because they would be totally out of breath and i'm sure there's a whole spectrum of people who who never lip-sync to those who lip-sync huge chunks of their show but i don't think that like you know you might i was gonna say demure um i don't know if i'm using that word correctly and now i'm scared you're going to play the drop um but you might you might sort of just like not answer the question directly that's one of your biggest fears your life is going pretty well i didn't say it's one of my biggest fears i just said it's a fear i love it when one time i remember my aunt said this a long time ago somebody said like well if that's his worst fault and she was just like i didn't say it was his worst fault i'm just saying it was one of the problems with this guy but anyway um yeah it's just like kind of like stop stop lying about it just that that's the right answer yes there is some lip-syncing involved

it's called entertainment and we're entertaining people they do interview uh various fans who kind of uh you know bring different perspectives to whether or not they care if he's lip-syncing roseanne kinley uh age 63 a south carolina fan who saw valley in 1975 for the first time and recently went online to defend him said i don't care if he's lip-syncing yeah i love his energy she says i love his karma i don't know if that's exactly i don't know if that word means what you think it means but okay i love the fact that he loves what he does so he's 90 years old he still loves to do it and it shows when he's on stage but andrew not everyone feels that way robin and gary rosenthal went to see valley in the four seasons at the music center in strathmore in bethesda maryland in 2014 even then 10 years ago robin thought valley was lip-syncing she felt lied to if you're going to see a hologram concert you know what you're going to see she says by the way what a life robin leads she's going to hologram concerts yeah right well i mean nobody

sign me up he's not a hologram he's still a real person tupac yeah right well people confuse him and frankie valley confused all the time yeah i could see that um uh if you go see frankie valley

you expect to hear him singing i don't go to see his face in his body i don't need to look at him Okay, Robin, sort of all over the map with that.

Robin is coming on strong.

But this is where, again, this article just kept going. The lead singer of Heart, Ann Wilson, who is a longtime critic of artists who use technology to mask vocal limitations, watched a clip of a show provided by The Post. Jeff, we know it was you. You can keep saying, Valley recently sat down with The Washington Post. Ann Wilson from Heart was recently provided a clip of Frankie Valley by The Post. It you. You were the one who did it. Here's the quote from Ann Wilson watching Frankie Valli. Oh, my God, she says, his face is completely still. He looks like he's not even there. I suppose he's not. So now we've got Ann Wilson officially on the record, horrified at Frankie Valli.

Well, and this I understand. You told me about this story one day on TBTL, and I remember kind of feeling like, oh, okay, yeah, this is something I'm unfamiliar with. And then later that day, while probably looking for an image to illustrate our website for this, I went and I found the videos and it did not hit me until I actually saw the video itself. And I will say there was some Ann Wilson in my response, like, oh, my God, now I get it. So for people who don't quite get what we're talking about, it is something to see. You have these very, as you said before, what did you say, vibrant? I can't remember how you described the backup singers, the other new three seasons. um and uh and then he does like his it is odd and again i don't want to take it away from anybody who enjoys his shows which sounds like they're a legion but like it is an odd look of him like sort of staring out and barely moving his face while these really long extended high-pitched

vocals are being broadcast well it also seems to me that it is not out of the realm of possibility that frankie valley and ann wilson will cross paths at some point that's true it's gonna be an awkward thanksgiving i mean seriously and then okay ann wilson horrified at frankie valley's performance it doesn't stop there andrew graham nash who still tours and records at 82 said he

was offended by valley's performance now okay you know what i was gonna say why graham nash but maybe it is interesting because if if frankie valley is 90 and graham nash is 82 and ann wilson is 74

So he was trying to go, I guess, fine.

people that are also you know kind of getting up there yeah and i'm guessing that there's a pretty

big difference between 82 and 90 as far as being able to sit you know sing certain notes or whatever i'm pretty you know out of my out of my depths here as far as this um topic is concerned but i actually i kind of appreciate that well let's talk to other people of if not the same generation at

least like kind of closing in on that age range um yeah graham uh nash says he was offended by valley's performance frankie valley is not singing he says he's just lip-syncing badly to a tape as a musician if you're not singing you shouldn't be on stage so he calls it a tape i love that but like so you've now got graham nash and ann wilson officially on the record as anti-franky

valley yeah yeah they're not going to be forming a super group with him anytime soon probably

i mean again i i enjoyed reading this article but i'm just i mean it goes on by the way for many more pages that i will i will skip for in the interest of of time here but this is a very thoroughly reported piece about something that very much doesn't matter that really doesn't matter yeah and that's our specialty andrew yeah i feel like jeff edgers is really just really

horning in on our action well we need it we need real reporters to do the legwork and then we can and then we can talk about on the show because we don't have the budget to be doing that investigation ourselves but uh yeah but again i would just sort of say that like the post does not go as hard on this part of the story except for the fact that people are just lying to their face and there's something about that we were like well don't you know again like i i'm seeing what i'm seeing to use your two don't normalize frankie valley lying about if he's singing or not

right here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female

oh man it's not from a female i have an email from listener dan well it was a link that dan

sent us from as dan signs his email dan in poor man seattle aka federal way never heard it described federal way described as poor man federal way is a lovely place we were talking

about the other day because it is i think technically the home of wild waves oh that's

right yeah and i've passed through federal way before i haven't spent any quality time there

before but don't be don't be down on federal i was once stuck guarding mike dickerson who played basketball for Federal Way and then the Arizona Wildcats and then in the National Basketball Association and the idea that I was guarding Mike Dickerson for any period of time is a laughable

scenario is he a name now that like if anybody kind of follows basketball from that era they know that name or it's a name that stands out to you because of your connection to it I was

definitely much more aware of him than the average fan because he's one of the few people that I like played against who actually that was a believe it or not in that league the metro league that nathan hale was in there were a um there were a number of players who actually ended up going pro jason terry jason the jet terry had a really long career um and uh nate robinson i think was younger than me and then of course jamal crawford so there was like a real bumper crop of like

pros coming out of seattle in a certain way they had to get through you first well that was the

thing yeah i honestly was a huge confidence boost in that boys and girls club summer league i didn't even make it into the like i quit the team before even the real season started but i would i played with the team for like summer league and stuff like that and uh somehow there was some i mean i was not supposed to be guarding him but there was some play where i got switched off on him and just i think he just did like a one like a drop step and then just rose up and dunked on my head

so hard hey the road to the nba runs through luke burbank that's all it sure does it sure does um

anyway dan sent this little link in about a uh rental car situation uh hertz fires back at manager who charged customer ten thousand dollars for 25 000 miles driven on an unlimited mileage contract a hertz customer claims he was charged ten thousand dollars after driving 25 000 miles in a month which is i mean they did the math on it he had to drive like 800 miles a day to do this

i tell you i think recently genevieve pointed out to me that we've had our car since like 2017 or 2018 and we're at like 35 000 or maybe 40 000 i'm surprised that it's that high

considering how much you loathe piloting your car in the city well we did take a trip to the

grand canyon and back okay that helps yeah that's not true i feel like i misdescribe you as like

you you don't hate driving you don't yeah that i just love public transportation i didn't want to

i didn't want to like get i didn't want to get butthurt about that like there are people who are kind of like i can't drive in the city seattle's a scary city to drive i really don't have that issue i just like the freedom of not having to worry about oh am i going to park here do that.

I like just like, you know, letting the systems take me where I need to go. But anyway.

Yeah, you can love public transportation and you can enjoy driving your vehicle. Those are, you know, we are complex. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, Andrew.

I contain multitudes.

As I learned at Bible study as a kid. Here's the thing about this story. I watched this guy's video. It was posted on TikTok. It's like the only video he has on TikTok. and i'm kind of wondering if he's now there he doesn't have any other videos but my my spidey sense started tingling thinking this was a bit like this was a thing to get attention yes because i cannot imagine a universe in which anyone is driving 25 000 miles in a month for funsies like that's a commitment that is basically like trying to basically provoke a situation Where you can then put a video up Now the thing is this guy doesn't have Like there are guys that their whole thing is basically pranks And going up to people in Home Depot And you know being weird to them Or whatever like this guy doesn't have A whole bunch of videos doing this this is his only video So I don't know exactly His story but the The idea of driving 25 They point out that that would be like 17 hours a day Like that just sounds miserable Driving 17 hours a day for 30 days

Does it say what kind of car this was? Not that it mattered.

No, that's actually a really good question.

Because like if it was a bigger vehicle and you're like you have some friends and you go on some sort of crazy road trip and you're swap around. But if it's like a small sedan, well, let's say if it's a if it's a twenty eighteen Volkswagen Golf, I can tell you from experience that 17 hours a day is not going to be super comfortable.

This this guy who goes under the name Life is Fun 3000 on TikTok. I'm Life is Fun 2,999, by the way. He questions the manager because the manager says it's $10,000, even though he had signed up for the unlimited mileage thing. And the manager says to him in the video, unlimited mileage actually means, quote, a reasonable amount. Initially, Logan, this guy, promised an update. But as of this writing, I'm quoting, by the way, from, this is Stephen Rivers writing on carscoop.com. Basically, Hertz has weighed in on this and said that customer satisfaction is our top priority at Hertz, and we sincerely regret this customer's experience at one of our franchise locations. Per the terms of the contract, the customer will not be billed for mileage. Our franchisee is addressing the employee's conduct and reinforcing our customer service standards. I'm actually kind of surprised that Hertz is coming down as hard on this franchisee and the person who worked there, Because I don't know, like this does seem like this guy was kind of trying to like provoke a situation, right? Like there's just no way that he was casually driving 25,000 miles in a month. Like I kind of understand why this employee's head was spinning.

Here's what I am a little bit confused about. And I think it might just be me not processing the information correctly. So if we can slow down for one second, because I'm trying to kind of read along with you as you as you discuss this. The Hertz official statement is twofold. Number one, we are looking at action towards this franchisee because it broke our policy, but also our policy is sort of an ish, as a friend of mine might say. Unlimited ish, right? Oh, I just noticed that that's literally, I think that was in my head because that's what the illustration is on the car scoops thing. so sorry that must have buried itself i'm stealing their joke although ish has been a big thing on tbtl recently but like if you say unlimited then but then they say oh well it means reasonable and then it's like well is reasonable you have to draw a line somewhere because you can't just say and so hertz is both saying this franchisee act inappropriately acted inappropriately but also our our policy has a gray area but we don't state what that is like i am kind of i think that that is on them like it's either unlimited or it's not you call it something else call it platinum platinum doesn't mean shit like you can then say up to unlimited there's the drop um so anyway that's where i am this is where i am on this i'm confused they need to tighten this up and stop

calling it unlimited also the thing that i don't understand about the car rental game is i didn't think that any of these cars specifically belonged to any of these locations. I say this as a person who has thousands of times in my life rented cars one way, in other words picked it up somewhere and dropped it off somewhere else, and I thought the only way this can work is if, like, if you're a franchisee for Hertz, you pay whatever the fees are, And you just it just means that you have access to this giant.

motor pool of vehicles that is in the Hertz organization and sometimes someone's gonna pull up to your Hertz with a car that came from across the country and now that car is at your location etc I don't really understand why this guy the the person working for Hertz particularly cared about the 10,000 miles or rather the 25,000 miles because I didn't think it was their car yeah specifically their car like it's just in the Hertz system it's going to be

someone else's problem in two weeks and do they know about the ishness of this whole thing and were they looking at the fine print this article mentions look for the fine print but it doesn't say specifically what hertz's fine print is i don't think i was scanning it there but like it doesn't ever say like where in the policy there's some fine print that says well unlimited means up to blank number of miles like you i just feel like legally you have to have that in there and i do think and i'm looking here at the end of the article where all the good details often are It does say that one of the things that apparently, I guess, sort of ticked off both the customer and the sort of Hertz headquarters is as the as the franchisee gave him the bill, he said Hertz donut. Sorry. That was such a long climb for such a short slide. So bad. But that's where we are today.

Yes, and I think that's a fitting end to today's program.

It might be a fitting end to the damn podcast. The show's entire existence.

We'll see. I'm going to apply for a producer position on why is this happening with Chris Hayes.

That's a good idea.

All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. Remember, what's the new phrase? I want to get it right here no one is letting go of anyone's hand just remember that people it's an important concept about this community and all the people that we love nobody's letting go of anybody's hand so we'll see you tomorrow please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all power out