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Now, here's Libby. TBTL!

Ahoy hoy! Is that still a thing?

I was just fixing to get me some grub. Beans. I love beans. Big, fat, hot, juicy beans. Don't get me going on beans Or I'll be jabbering away

Till the sun comes up If you want to pick a fight with your body's sexual chi It's just going to drive it inwards And that invites disease And death

I love you, oh my god With your cheekbones and your guitar playing And it's all very, very attractive And very, very talented

Well I've said a lot of things in my time Not all of it's worth listening to But let's just say this time round It is

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl it's a kind of magic the show that just might be too beautiful to live my name is luke burbank i'm your host hello everyone coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where my goodness gracious the wind has been blowing it is it is wet it is rainy it is dark It is rough right now.

There is absolutely nothing better for your mental health than waking up when it's pitch black out, and then when you get in the car to go home, it's pitch black out.

I'm not going to let that stop me, though, from giving this episode, which, by the way, is episode 4,336, my absolute all, my best effort.

Let the fun begin.

Will that be enough? I don't know. Historically, it hasn't been. But maybe today will be special. Today will be a special episode because we are going to provide you some very, very wholesome content. Coming to you from Wisconsin. And specifically from the answering machine of Justin Vernon, a.k.a. Bon Iver. Yes, content that will warm your heart and make you feel like maybe we do have a chance here on this big blue marble. Even though it's been a tough Tough week, tough couple of weeks Tough couple of decades here in America I I started down A road that I may not come back From today on the internet And it involved the search term Golden doodle therapy dog

I'll say what's up Dog

And anyway I'll try to talk that out with my friend Andrew Try to talk myself down off of the ledge down off of some bad decision making speaking of the longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he's also occasionally referred to as mr unlimited he is andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke what's

the um well i think i know the answer to this what is the maximum number of times you have re-recorded a hay dummies video before feeling confident and sending it out into the world have Let me rephrase that. Have you ever re-recorded a Hey Dummies video, or are you a Mr. One and Done?

I'm going to be very honest with you, Andrew, and with the listeners, because I do think transparency is one of the few things we have going for us as a show. Complete transparency. You have forgotten what a Hey Dummies video is? Too much transparency. um in the early days of doing hey dummies i probably would semi-regularly re-record them and i would go do these sort of elaborate setups and things and as time has gone on i have become more okay with let's just call it a certain lo-fi

to my hey dummies i believe the last hey dummies i did all i did was put on my pieced together guy fietti outfit and then just answer a random question that was all of the it was all of the sizzle that i added to things so uh these days i i probably as long as i didn't have a big you know something weird hanging off of my face or i was you know out of focus or something i probably wouldn't re-record a hey dummies i would probably do it and i would figure the listeners will appreciate that i'm not overly sort of curating this what i'm saying to you andrew is that my standards for the hey dummies videos that i present have dropped precipitously over the

what five six years we've been doing it well the thing is i i wasn't asking so much about i mean it's relevant i guess but it i think it illustrates our different approaches to this i don't think a Hey, Dummies, video is made or broken. It's better when you say make or break, but when you put it in the past tense, it really doesn't have that rhyme and chime and sensibility.

You can kind of say, this is not a video project that you're going to sort of make or break based on.

That's a good point, yeah, yeah.

Scooch it up into the present tense, maybe?

I think some of my favorite, I mean, sometimes I like to mix up the location if possible. Sometimes I literally will just go out in the backyard so it's not always me sitting behind my studio or sitting in my studio behind my desk and my microphone here. And so maybe sometimes that adds some visual, sometimes go on car rides, although I find that that ends up sort of making the viewer somewhat nervous for our well-being. But, you know, so sometimes I think just talking directly into the camera without having to, you know, zhuzh it up with some sort of visuals. I just mean, like, performance-wise, like, you get caught up in this or you feel like your energy was weird. The reason I bring this up, obviously, is because of a personal experience I'm going through. I thought, you know, today's Wednesday. I thought, you know what? On Tuesday, I'm going to try to get ahead of my production schedule this week, record a Hey Dummies. And I knew what the question was. I was very excited to answer it.

Yeah, I'm excited about some of the questions as well that I see on the list.

And people can send in more. Send me an email, andrew at tbtl.net, and put Hey Dummies in the subject line. You can ask us any question, and Luke and I will answer them. clothing optional when you're sending the email

it's all about translucency

I will always be clothed but you do not have to be clothed while you send in the question but all that is to say

great Def Cab record by the way, translucentism

I was I knew what tomorrow's or this week's question was going to be I was very excited about it, it came from listener Russell it's all about darts, but it's not about throwing darts I think that one was for me it's about dart maintenance and like this is like right that was definitely yes about sharpening darts and when do you you know when do you replace this part in that part or whatever and i had so i brought into my into my room here all kinds of dart stuff that i could show off and i was so excited about it that i think that i actually think that sometimes being too excited about a topic sets me up for failure because i'm too into it and i start talking too quickly and i want to get everything in and so i recorded a video at least trying to think i recorded or at least started recording at least five times yesterday before at some point stopping and saying okay you're literally breathless here calm down start it over and then you do another one you're like oh but i left out this one part i left out the part about the o-rings okay spoiler there's gonna be a part about the o-rings um god i hope i didn't just ruin it for everybody but anyway so i just and i woke up this morning and i've done this before and unfortunately my instincts tend to be right about this even though i probably sat in my studio for at least a half hour if not 45 minutes yesterday starting and restarting and then finally doing a hey dummies that i felt i could live with i woke up this morning i'm like you know what you got to do that was all practice yesterday i feel like i need to do it again calm down a little bit it's been 24 hours nobody can talk to anybody so you're going in a real Jack Rebney territory, Winnebago man. I'm just wondering, you know, and usually, usually when I like kind of have given something some time and then I think about it and I realize, oh, you need to redo that. I'm right about that. Like, I think that for the listeners, for my own mental health, probably I got to grab all that Dart stuff, bring it back in here and probably redo it. Or this is my other option. I now have like two very lengthy versions, neither of which I'm super happy with. I could just, like, make it one of those, like, kind of, you know, chop, edit, like, really fast-paced sort of me. Sure that the kids are doing. What the kids are doing. And honestly, what Chris, what's-his-name, has been doing on Mad Money for a long time now. Although I guess that doesn't have all the edits, but, like, sort of, like, just really bring that sort of, like, intense energy. Who am I thinking of? Not Christopher Mad Dog Russo. No.

Are you thinking of the financial show Mad Money?

Mega Booyahs? Mega Booyahs.

Jim Kramer. or not.

chris jim what is that that guy's got energy and i'm afraid that i might have brought a little bit of that but in a mad way to the dart maintenance talk yesterday i get some god diuretic when i

sit here my mouth just never stops well that makes you want to re-watch is that act is this actual tape from you recording the hey dummies videos i hear you flies we got three flies five

flies i did not like yeah i think the first time i watched it i liked it but then i re-watched the winnebago man documentary about these viral videos and like i think most people are familiar with the background of it like long before the internet these videos literally like were handed around as vhs tapes of this guy jack rebney of his outtakes of trying to sell winnebago's and he

just didn't it was like well actually if i can yeah if i may correct the record sir how to operate your Winnebago that you have already purchased.

Okay. Important distinction there. But anyway.

I don't want any more bullshit at any time during the day from anyone. That includes me.

So that was a whole thing before the internet and then of course it went even more viral when people were able to pass it around more easily. But then like everything that got sort of the documentary treatment in sort of the early 2000s, somebody was like, I'm going to do sort of a Finding Jack Remnick sort of like documentary. Rebney. Rebney, sorry. And said like, you know, and made like a documentary about it.

Put some respect on his name.

And I can't remember what it's called. It might just be called Winnebago Man. I think so. It feels so exploitative to me now. I don't know the last time you went back and watched it. I watched it sometime in the past five years or something. And it's so much, it's like he's living, he's an old man who's living his life now who clearly does not want to talk about these videotapes and these outtakes. and sometimes it's like that's fine like that's where the story ends and that's where maybe there's some magic in that original thing but i feel like the documentary is kind of like we're all supposed to be like on the side of the filmmaker harassing him until he opens up about stuff he doesn't want to open up about anyway that's my recollection of the documentary last

time i saw it i'm just like is it because you identify with jack rebne because you also need multiple takes to do these videos yes and are sometimes yelling at the flies and also just

like Lee and then leave me alone like geez Louise he's like it really does strike you as kind of like there was this period where I feel like we always sided with the documentarian the Richard Simmons one the that audio documentary that came out you know like 10 years ago or whatever I feel like that was one where people were kind of like finally saying like wait a second no like leave Richard Simmons alone like you are not the hero the person with the microphone and the camera who's trying to invade somebody's private life when they've made it very very clear that they

want to remain private if i told you once i've told you a thousand times i love you ironically

i do feel like that from that podcast i'm not even joking i um i i kind of agree with you that

the winnebago man doc i felt like what happened was they were able to locate the elusive jack rebney but he was living kind of like in a mountain cabin somewhere he was kind of sort of semi-reclusive and just wasn't like wasn't really that interested in being part of this and his health seemed to be in decline and it just didn't it wasn't like we we learned some interesting profound like sort of life lessons from him it was more just like they they they got they got him to agree to sit in front of the camera for some amount of time so they were able to kind of like frame this as we went and found this you know this guy who was behind this viral video but i'm with you it didn't didn't quite pay off in the way that you know other documentaries of the era uh potentially did um speaking of documenting things did you see this photo that i sent you what i came out to this morning as i was coming to work and by that i mean walking from my house

to the madrona hill studio oh shit your lawn furniture is all over the place and broken

oh yeah the wood that is on the stairs is what used to be the oh the inside of the the insides of the umbrella oh wow yeah that's not cheap canvas umbrella that i bought to um shade me and friends and family from the sun if we were to be eating outside at this one little um kind of picnic table type of deal it is so windy up here and i don't know how i slept through this by the way because this is like kind of right outside my bedroom window but at some point last night the wind became so extreme that it opened up this big heavy duty umbrella that was

very much closed i was going to ask too without i was i was trying to figure out how i can ask you how i can regulate my tone and asking you if it was in the open or closed position without sounding judgy that's incredible that this thing here we go again we can't that this was in the closed position and this is what happened very much if it had been in the open position it would be somewhere i don't know over calgary right now with the chimney sweep exactly mary poppins style

no i'm

I mean, it would have, no, it's very much closed, and in fact, when I'm doing the show, I can stare at it, or I used to be able to, and I, you know, we've had some windy days, but it's, I can, you know, it's closed, it's just sitting there, it's kind of, you know, tolerating things. Well, I guess last night was the end of the road for that because it somehow must have the wind blew so hard that it it opened the umbrella and then inverted the umbrella. And I can't overstate this. It's a very like sort of robust outdoor umbrella that goes above your picnic table or whatever. Like so if the fact that it got like turned inside out like the Morton salt girl or something and then drag got turned inside out. Isn't she holding an inside-out umbrella?

Oh, I think it's just a regular umbrella that's sort of protecting her.

Why do I have – I think you're right, but I think there's another graphic that's probably not authorized by the Morton Salt people where that same character as the umbrella has been blown inside-out.

Okay, I thought you were sort of joking, like, you know, on the black market of underground Morton Salt Girl fanfic, which honestly – I shouldn't even joke about that because it probably does exist. But yeah, I think the official one, she's just protecting herself.

I think there must have been, I almost want to say, was it like the band Jawbreaker or something that used the iconography of the Morton Salt? And somewhere growing up in Seattle, I remember seeing like a playful little illustration, but instead of the Morton Salt girl walking comfortably under the umbrella, the umbrella has been blown inside out, and she's trying to sort of hold it back. Oh, wow. Three vintage Morton Salt umbrella girl. when it rains it pours round dishes for sale on ebay yeah huh i may visit that site later anyway

it is a very good little logo maybe you're thinking are you thinking of the similar one where the dog is pulling down the the pants of a child and you can see their buttock that was always a that was always that always walked a fine line for me was that a some sort of a some sun

protection lotion yes i think that was like uh yeah that was a some sort of baby oil or suntan lotion maybe copper tone or something yeah maybe but all that is to say uh i came out this morning and this thing was totally destroyed and i was kind of bummed about it because like number one the umbrella was a not cheap and it's totally like it's beyond there's no fixing it but also because i think what i'm learning is um i need to uh actually batten down the hatches up here as winter approaches like i need to make sure and take i'd already taken most of the outdoor furniture in but there's something about realizing that i'm entering like a five month five six month period where it will not be it will not be comfortable to be outside ever not even for one hour like there's something about actually just like winterizing the house the deck taking everything down putting it in the basement just kind of like it feels like i'm just fully submitting to the fact that we're just entering entering a dark windy rainy cold period like i think i liked leaving this stuff out because I thought, well, maybe we'll get a crisp, beautiful January day and I'll, uh, and I'll just want to sit outside at the table and for some reason put the umbrella up and, uh, and eat my lunch or something, you know, but it's like, now I have to admit, no, it's, I also wonder sometimes I have this kind of slight, like running dialogue with the people who own this house before I did. And it's usually me going like me sort of thinking like, boy, I bet you, I bet you would be impressed at how much better your house is now that i tore it apart and redid it like you fools a lot of this is driven by the fact that i still get nra mail for the guy that owned this house before me so as you can imagine he's sort of low on my list of people that i feel deeply affectionate for and um also just like the way that this the way that they were utilizing the house or not utilizing the house uh was interesting to me because it has this very nice view of the columbia river, but that was not a priority for them based on the furniture set up and the, the windows and et cetera. So I'm often kind of thinking like, well, I, you know, I'm, I've really maximized this place and you guys would be really jealous. And then sometimes I think maybe you guys knew something I didn't like, maybe you didn't build a deck because you realized it's a wind tunnel out there. Maybe you didn't, you know, maybe like there were some things that you kind of knew that I didn't know that I'm going to have to find out the hard way. Like how much of the year can I sit on the deck and relax and is it not much of the year you know stuff like that i've been

thinking about my grill lately i gotta bring that into the garage but i uh did i i don't know if i told you this i know i went on a whole thing about it on spotless because it was a whole thing but um i have one of those and i i know you know this but for the listeners who don't know what kind of grill i have i have one of those sort of classic weber um round charcoal grills that you know with a couple of wheels that you you roll out and it always sits next to our deck uh during

Do you use a chimney?

To start it, to start the charcoal, yeah. And that sort of lives sort of next to it, sort of half under the deck. But anyway, at one point last year, we moved it into the garage. And that might have even been before we had the human door, so look at us. And it sat in the garage, but it must have sat out in the... It might have sat out in the rain a little bit before we brought it in, I'm not sure. But this is where I am really hesitant to admit this, and I feel a lot of shame around it. Because when I'm done grilling something, I clean that grill. Like I have a whole, as you might expect, kind of, I have a process. Like when I'm done grilling, I let the coals get really, really hot and kind of burn off any other gunk on the grill. And then I go out there with a brush and I scrub it. And then I eventually put it to bed for the evening. This is just like an average day in the middle of the summer, right? Well, the last time I used it last summer, apparently I didn't go through all of that. And I'm trying to remember the day. It might have even been because we had some, we ended up having some, not surprise guests, but we had a couple of guests over here and it ended up becoming more of a party than we expected. And I kind of remember like, oh, I'll bet you I just never got back out there and cleaned it that night, some night in August, you know, hot August nights, as Neil Diamond famously said. And it must have just been like that. We never used it again. You never know the last time you're going to use your grill in a season. And then we must have just rolled it in the garage. And when I opened this son of a gun in April or whatever it was this year, I opened it up, Luke, and it was about as disgusting as you could possibly imagine. Whatever, like, fat and grease was in there, it just, like, something grew on it. And so it was all just, like, it looked like I was, it looked like I found a new way to make disgusting soap, basically. Like, somehow, like, the grease just kept on growing or something. And I had to take this thing, and I got a bunch of oven cleaner. I literally accidentally burned the fingerprint off of, I think it's back now. I burned my fingertip. Hey, if you're going to do some crime, that was your window. Well, if anybody ever wants to do crimes and they're trying to figure out, like, well, how can I get my fingertips eradicated? Get yourself a can of Easy Off. Forget to put on a rubber glove before spraying it onto your grill for, I don't know, 15 minutes. And then, Luke, when I got done using that thing, I remember feeling like, ooh, I have a little tingle in my fingertip there where I was pressing down that button of easy off. And then I was like, oh, wow, this tingle is getting worse. I've washed my hands. This tingle is getting worse. Oh, shit. And then it's like five minutes after I've put down the can and my hand is in increasing pain. And I'm like, oh, my God. The damage was done. And now all I had was a chemical burn. I chemical burned my fingertip, my index finger fingertip, cleaning this grill. And I got it all, I got it almost back to factory new last spring.

And now here it is, like you mentioned, like I'm looking at my window and there's just tons of raindrops on it because a big, do we say squall? Is that what comes through? A big squall came through today. And I'm like, now my grill is just sitting out there. I don't know what, you know, how I left it the last time I grilled. I have some trauma left over from last spring. So anyway, I got to get my arms around that.

But the grill is in the garage.

It's not. I haven't winterized yet. No, it's not. It's outside. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You talking about having to like, you know, and for us, it's not very much like winterizing. It's not like we have a boat and we have to do all this stuff or that we live on like Lake Erie like I used to. It's just like I just got to drag the grill inside and like the solo stove. But instead, they're outside just like collecting rain. And it's eating away at me, even though it's like a five minute fix.

I went and bought an aftermarket product to cover up my little Weber grill that I have. Like, I have a gas one. I got one of those, you know, charcoal ones for a while because I wanted to be like you and because I'd probably read some guy online saying, like, you know, I mean, if you're cooking with propane, you're just a fool if you want to get the full experience. But then, I don't know, after about five times of grilling with the charcoal Weber and doing the chimney and all of that, I was like, this is a pain in the ass. So I got a little propane one.

Yeah, well, I was grilling this at some point this summer and I was talking to V's. I'm like, hey, I love grilling with this grill. As long as I've been an adult, mostly I've had this style grill. For a period in New Hampshire, we had a big gas grill that was a housewarming gift from my folks. But anyway, I mostly use this type of grill and I do sort of enjoy it. I like the process. I don't like always going for maybe the easiest thing. You know, like I like using the chimney and everything, but I was outside grilling at some point this summer, maybe a couple of times I said to Vives, I'm like, I just don't know how sustainable this is. I feel like if we had a gas grill, I would use it a lot more. Also, it would give us a lot more grill space when I'm it's hard to grill for more than just two people. If you're make if you're grilling both vegetables and meat on this thing, like it just. i run out of room and she's like yeah we can talk about getting a gas grill she's like and we're both kind of like yeah it'd be kind of sad to give up this charcoal weber phase of our lives which has been most of our adult lives together and i was talking to somebody about it and they're just like yeah you should get a gas grill and keep this one and i was like oh yeah i can keep this it's not that big i could have a gas grill but if i also want to at some point you know fire up the old Weber I could do that it's not like I'm gonna be like well I need to sell the Weber so that I can finance the gas grill you know what I mean like it's not worth anything and it doesn't take up a lot of room like it was just like such a simple thing like I had it tied up and even though I don't like to be like oh I'm Mr. you know whatever manliness tropes are surrounded by the person who runs the grill I kind of hate that shit but I did have my personality somewhat wrapped up and the idea of this, like, I love my Weber grill. Like, what would I think? Just like the commercials say, why not both? Why not both?

Thanks, man. What does Nick Wilson say to the guy?

Yeah, I think that's about it. Thanks for the support or something? Yeah, thanks for the support.

I know what you mean, though. Like, I was thinking about this week, how I get really in my head about certain stuff, and it's not as big of a deal as my anxiety is making me think it is. So right now, I am in the process of moving my stuff from the bedroom that I was using, which was upstairs of my little house, down to this new room that I built. And that means also transporting my clothes and stuff. And I finally got a dresser that mostly works, Andrew. I put it together yesterday afternoon.

In the closet, and it fits in the closet. In the closet. Nice, nice.

Mostly works, Andrew. Meaning, it has six drawers. three of the drawers open just great and then the other three you can open them about 85 of the way because they will bump into the closet door having to do don't even try to understand it yeah i know

you i don't know if your video camera's on i'm like trying i'm seeing you you look like i'm just

trying to picture you look like a dog listening to a victrola right now to an rca exactly point is i The first round of this, the Malm, was a total failure on my part. I put it in there, and it didn't open at all. This new one that I bought, which is much smaller, it mostly works, but I still hadn't factored in something, which is basically the doors of this closet are two sliding doors. They can either both be—you can have the whole closet is closed. The doors are closed. You cannot see into the closet. or you slide one of the doors to the far left or one of the doors to the far right and now you have access to one side or the other of the closet. Can you follow that?

Absolutely. Not pocket doors, but just traditional sliding closet doors.

Yes. But what I didn't realize was that means that one side of the drawer, of the dresser, three of the drawers, when you try to open them, they will still bump into the doors even if the doors are to the extreme right or the extreme left.

Because the drawers themselves are somewhat wider?

It just doesn't quite fit. If I had... Anyway, again, it's too complicated and geometric for me to try to explain, except let's just say I fixed about 80% of the problem. I was really looking forward to fixing 100% of the problem. Like yesterday, we got done with the show. I did some other Livewire and CBS stuff, And then I like got to town on this on this piece of furniture that I had bought, which, you know, the trade off for getting relatively cheap new furniture delivered to your home is that we're all now becoming unpaid furniture builders. like I mean the amount of time in this house of mine that I have spent putting together shit that I got in the mail is just like it was four hours easily yesterday I listened to two entire episodes of the Howard Stern show um but um and then when I put it all together and I had to take the closet doors out which meant unscrewing this track in the floor so I could take them out completely so I could slide this thing in thing in so I could put the closet doors back in and set it all up and then sit on my bed and then look at it and then realize that I still hadn't quite thought this through correctly. I mean, it'll be okay, but the thing that gives me agita is bringing my clothes downstairs from the other bedroom, taking them out of the dresser. And I was actually thinking about you last night, Andrew, as I was doing some of this. I was like, Andrew would probably love this shit. Like, he's the guy that unpacks his suitcase as soon as he gets home. and like i get stressed about organizing my clothes in the closet because i want it to be highly efficient and i want it to be there's just so many different ways you can do it you can have an entire drawer for pants or you could just hang your pants up and What is the optimum there? And also, I really basically wear, like, two pairs of pants. I got these tech pants I bought a while ago, and I've got some Levi's jeans I bought at the Levi's store in Times Square recently. That's pretty much it. I don't need, like, eight pairs of pants hanging in my closet. I never go into my closet and go, which of these eight pairs of pants am I going to wear today?

That's a really good point. I'm just thinking about my closet right now, which is just, it's uncharacteristically, like, not well set up. and I try to keep the pants to one side and they are all hanging. But you're right. Like there are two, maybe three that are in regular rotation. And I have so, and I have like, you know, I got to keep some suits on hand, you know, like I have some, but like 90% of what is in my closet is just not, well, no, that's not true. But like 50% of what's in my closet is just not even in the daily rotation at all.

I know. And that's what, you know, that's, so I get really in the way that you thought, well, if I buy a gas grill, I have to take my Webber out and shoot it like old yeller.

That's how I think, like, if I'm disorganized, go, I never loved you.

Like if I, if I don't put this closet together the right way, the first time I have to live the rest of my life suffering in massive disorganization and inefficiency. And it's like, no, just throw the shit in there. And then if you realize that, like, it's not helping you, you're not generally not wearing the stuff that's in there that's hanging or whatever just redo it like for instance i i had like i'm not kidding andrew and i'm not i don't feel proud of this i had at least a five minute dilemma last night of do i hang the chucky shirt that i bought at the spirit halloween in chicago to pull off my guy fieri outfit so remember i needed like a guy fierius shirt That sounds like one of the monkeys That's typing It's like Furious George and Guy Fierius

I was going to say

The Fast and the Guy Fierius So I bought this I bought this shirt that's actually It's like a collared shirt That's pretty loud It's a loud print If you looked at it close up It's like knives and guns You know my brand is very much knives and guns

But you pulled it off Like I didn't notice that until Because I saw photos and videos I pointed it out And then you pointed it out actually if you look closely that design is knives and guns but from afar it just looks like a you

know like something he'd wear yeah exactly but i but it was it was like 30 and so part of me is like i don't even want this stupid shirt but it was 30 it feels wasteful to just like buy it and throw it out although again as you and i say all the time there's so much dumber stuff a round of drinks there's so much stuff we spend 30 bucks on i don't know why i'm hung up on this shirt literally but i'm standing there in the bedroom and i've put it on a hanger and i'm like am i gonna hang this shirt up in my closet will i what are the and then i'm just spiraling into the scenarios in which i might need a freshly pressed shirt covered in knives and guns to wear in public and the answer is like there's no scenario where i'm gonna wear this shirt but i just bought it i feel like to just donate it to goodwill i mean maybe that's what i should do There's probably some Chucky enthusiast out there that'll be like, holy shit.

Yeah, some gun and knife enthusiast.

Yeah, we need more of them down in Longview. But you know what I mean? Those are the kind of things that I really will get kind of stuck on, weirdly. And it feels like the decisions that I make around the organization of this closet are permanent and irrevocable. And if I do it wrong, I have to live with it for the rest of my life, which is, of course, not the case.

you know i know that my brand sort of is like kind of being fastidious and liking everything in its place and like liking order and i do like order but i just like i'm also broken in a way that i don't i don't know if you realize i mean you must to a certain degree like when you come over here into my studio like yeah things are mostly put away but like it's very easy for a corner to start like filling up with junk you know and like i feel like i i have a reputation that is somewhat unearned in this case and you know you just talking right there i'm thinking about my closet i'm actually kind of almost getting hives just thinking about my closet out there it's like around the corner from here it's just like a it's uh it's not a sliding door closet it's a small you know it's a smaller closet um you know with a with a door with a doorknob that you open up to go in there and the bottom is just like kind of filled with my shoes that i try to sort of keep like somewhat orderly but i have to leave a space about the and i have big feet too and so it takes my shoes take up a lot of space and big brain and um and but i have to leave a space about the size of a pair of work boots in the back of the closet for bingo because bingo loves running in there and sometimes he likes to spend his mornings just sort of contemplating things in his office which is the back of my closet and if i put shoes back there genevieve will take them away and make room for bingo which is one of my

favorite 1960s sitcoms make room for bingo make room for bingo make room for bingo Ronald Reagan right a lot of people make that mistake it was the guy from my favorite Martian um but anyway um Ray Walton all of that say Genevieve is that his name nice pull yeah only because we looked that up the other day off air I just wanted to talk about him um but uh but anyway Genevieve just the other day uh you know I think I opened up my it's near her desk and so I opened up my closet to grab some shoes or a shirt or something and she said um do you wanna just look down and in a non-judgy way she just said do you want to like start you know we should look for some like some sort of storage solution there for the bottom of your closet so that we can you know stack these because like there's a lot of wasted space from the bottom of my hanging shirts to you know the tops of my shoes and boots if i put in some very basic thing that i could go online like i'd probably buy something that is the proper dimensions because this is an average size closet before the show is over today i could have an amazon delivery person probably at my door with the solution but i just this is my weakness and there are there's evidence of it all over this house like we moved in and we said i'll put this here for now and then i'll follow up on it and get the proper thing later and genevieve is really good at following up she likes shopping for stuff like that she likes um little projects once my shit is in the closet i think yes someday better andrew is going to clean that up but then but tonight is dart andrew and then it's always dart andrew and then i never do it and i'm thinking about my closet right now almost feeling physically sick and the disorder in there and it's so fixable it makes me think sometimes i think like if i were really rich if money were literally no object what would that mean for me because i'm a pretty happy person anyway well i don't know if that's true i grouse a lot but either way like my life is but money wouldn't fix that yeah right exactly my life is pretty good in other words it's not like i'm like oh i wish i could you know cross this off a bucket list i'm not a bucket list kind of guy well my closet is my bucket list i would love to have somebody who just came through my house not marie kondo style because that would mean maybe getting rid of stuff but just like saying hey well let's let's let's build a stored solution for your uh tripod there in the corner and all your camera gear let's like it's all so solvable and some people out there would enjoy solving these problems but i just don't have it in me and i just want to be rich so somebody will

do it for me i don't think there's very much that gives me a more roi than actually like reorganizing a closet or a room i have this little tiny there's three rooms in the upstairs of my house two kind of smallish bedrooms and then a room that i mean you could put like a cot in there i don't know what they were thinking but it's not it's too small to be a bedroom so i kind of treat it like a storage room and for the first couple of years i was here it literally was like i mean if you opened it you would think like that we have a borderline hoarder situation like it was just piles of crap you know what i mean like not even things were not organized folded it wasn't even boxes it was literally just piles of stuff and then one day for whatever reason i just said this ends now and i like spent an entire day pulling everything out i installed a couple of like wardrobe like i i bought like a couple of how do i describe them like a basically a wardrobe bar that you can hang things on but it's kind of industrial style so it's sort of like pipe looking you know totally you can screw it into the wall but it's like very sturdy and very and i hung all of my like um suit jackets up not my full suits that goes in a different place but my blazers and stuff and I put everything in boxes and I stacked the boxes and whatever I organized that little storage room area and to this day when I look in there I feel happy when I go in there when I go in there to like retrieve like it's like oh live wire I have to go do sound check for live wire let me go get a blazer to wear I walk in there I turn on the light I take a blazer down off of the place that it goes and I put it in my car and I drive to Portland the feeling of satisfaction i get from that is really really high and yet there's nothing that i dread more than having to do the job of organizing a room like that i don't know why i put it off so much the basement of my house now is just turning it i spent a weekend kind of getting it sort of together and now it's just it's sort of it's returning to it's it's uh what's it's like entropy is kicking in it's going from order to disorder and i can just feel that i need to set aside another entire weekend to just go to town down there but i i really hate that stuff

and yet i feel so much better when i do it yeah garages are like that too like you can get yourself a garage you can go out there you can spend an afternoon or something totally arranging it in the way that you just feel like oh my god my mind is at peace now everything is in its own place but there are certain parts of a home that naturally will like you would have to stay so on top of it or just realize that this is a yearly job then i'm gonna have to come out like even our garage like we did a pretty good like Like we rented a truck, pulled a bunch of junk out of the garage and took it to the dump. And then Genevieve, I got to give her the credit for then, like she spent an afternoon out there just like really because it's kind of, you know, she does projects and stuff out there, too. So it's a little bit more like her space, whereas I'm just going in there to grab stuff, grab the lawnmower, grab some boxes, whatever. But anyway, so she did a good job of like really organizing the garage, but it just can't hold, especially like you said, sort of in the winter months. you know it's not it's not like a a place where we're spending a lot of time so you're like well throw the boxes there for now i know we have too many boxes but just throw that one on the box pile we'll deal with it later you know and then it very quickly can become like we'll just throw it on the thing and then our garage is already sort of what was the word you use it's um sort of deteriorating

yeah i'll tell you who loves a garage slash workshop slash man hangout area is dudes out here in this county like you will i i drive by so many homes where the the home itself is fairly modest you know might be even a manufactured home or just kind of a very um pretty standard kind of smallish you know tracked home or whatever and then they'll just have this like five car outbuilding that's like got like atvs in it and literally like there's a guy down the street from literally has, like, some version of the Swedish bikini team poster up in his, like, outbuilding. How are they doing? This guy is, like, he's never not in there. Like, I have a feeling that he, if he could get away with it, he would just live in this outbuilding shop of his rather than his home where he presumably shares some sort of domestic life with his family. Like, the guys out here are living for their garages.

I love that. You know my friend Hannah, who I do Spotless with, and her partner Keith. They have a house now, and it's in Portland. I know you know them. I don't think you've ever been over there because I know you were both living in Portland at the same time. But anyway, I think my guess is it's probably like our house, probably like 1940s era or something around there or something, kind of a classic, probably middle-class house in Portland. And they had – I think they have a detached garage, one-car detached garage. like we do but we don't use it for a car um but i think they keep theirs very neat well first of all they're both very neat people um but they keep it very neat because they spend their summers just like they just open their damn garage door and set up a computer with the mariners game on or turn on a radio with the mariners game set up a couple of lawn chairs and just sort of sit in the open area of their garage and just wave to neighbors while the game is on does that i love that i mean that is just is that not the ideal when new pitchers and catchers report

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha keith's place and heard the sounds of uh the mariners bullpen collapsing come floating out

of the garage jordan is a as a big baseball fan i've been to baseball games with jordan um he's a tigers fan and the tigers looking pretty pretty fun this past season and maybe even more hopes for next season i always i mean unless they're in direct competition with the mariners in some way

i always root for the tigers so congratulations for any detroit team sure um you know whether it's the lions the tigers i guess the pistons i don't spend a ton of time thinking about but yeah detroit is one of those to me very rootable cities god the pistons you know i don't follow the nba so

sometimes when you say an nba team it's almost like you're reminding me that it exists like you mentioned the the pelicans yesterday and i always thought that that was a hockey team and i'm like what a great what a great animal to name your team after the pelicans and i never really stopped to think the pistons is such a good name for a team out of detroit i'm so glad they didn't get traded to some sort of place that has nothing to do with the auto industry, right?

If San Jose got a basketball team, would they be the Batteries? Now that it's about EVs. Oh, right, because the EVs. Piston is just such a masculine 19-whatever-60s idea, but now it's going to be like, you know, who knows. Jordan, thank you very much for supporting the show. Thanks to Margaret Spanny as well, who's in Ashland, Oregon, where they do the Shakespeare.

Oh, yeah? Is that a big Shakespeare hotspot? Oh, it's huge.

The Ashland Shakespeare Festival is a big cultural event, not just in Oregon, but kind of nationwide. Well, thank you. Thank thee, Margaret. Yes. I was going to try to go into some sort of Shakespearean. All I've got is to be or not to be. I don't think. Can you quote any Shakespeare except for to be or not to be?

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes. God damn. I'm trying to do the. Verona? What's the intro to Romeo and Juliet? You still said more of it than I could have. If you give me the first line, I could start the intro, but I... Are you looking for it? No, no, no, no, no, no. Did you have to memorize this? Yeah, I had to memorize it at one point. Okay, hold on, hold on.

I'm going to feed you this line. Yeah, hold on. Even the first word. Let's start with the first word. Intro lines. Okay, hold on.

And I know there's a part that I always get a little bit wrong, but I'll tell you the version that I can...

Okay, two households.

Both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge...

from ancient grudge to line from ancient break oh really to new mutiny oh yeah we're civil blood

make civil hands unclean from forth the fatal loins of these two foes something something something there's definitely loins i know a pair of star-crossed lovers take

their life from whose

from whose

no no from

from whence whose

oh no no no whose misadventure

hideous overthrows from I did it

do with their death bury their parents

bury their parents strife okay I think I've proven myself that I am ready for Ashland Oregon Here I come, Margaret.

Honestly, Andrew, this probably tells you how low my personal bar is for you. I was impressed.

I got a rewrite. If you have anything in your mind that is that close, I should just go back and fill in those blanks because, you know, that could be a good party trick. My dad used to have the back of toothpaste. There used to be standard language on the back of a tube of toothpaste. And my dad had it memorized from being a kid. and it's probably different now. And I used to, because I was impressed with my dad, I remember I memorized it at one point and now I am, but I know it has dentifrice in it. It is a something, something dentifrice.

That's a great party trick. Mine was, and I don't think I have it anymore, but I once memorized a couple of Shel Silverstein poems for a talent show. And one was, I cannot go to school today, said little Marianne McKay. I have the measles and the mumps, a gash a rash and purple bumps and then i forget what the rest of it but basically her just like with a really over the top description of how sick she is but then she has forgotten that it's saturday and so by the end of the poem she remembers it's saturday and then she's just like shot out of the house you know out of a cannon and then i so i memorized that one and then i memorized one called dirty dan which is i'm dirty dan the world's dirtiest man i never have taken a shower you can't see my shirt it's so covered with dirt and my ears have enough to grow flowers but The water is always a little too hot or else it's a little too cold. I'm rusty and dusty and musty and crusty and mangy and covered with mold, but the water is always a little too hot or else it's a little too cold. I also forget how that one ends.

Oh, you had a lot of that. And also, not unlike your experience with showers, you have some trouble getting the right temperature, right?

Yeah, no, I mean, it was honestly formative for me. But this was what I thought was, this was my little creative breakthrough for doing this. And I did perform these two poems at the Snow King Stars of Tomorrow talent show in Mount Lake Terrace, Washington. I started off, I did Dirty Dan and I was wearing one of my dad's like grease monkey kind of zip up, you know, things that was all like covered in grease and crud. And underneath it, I had on one of my sister's nightgowns. So I did Dirty Dan and then they killed the lights and I like unzipped my jumpsuit. And then I'm wearing this like, like, you know, nightgown.

And then I do change. I love it.

You know, it was I don't think I placed with that number. Unfortunately, I was the next year that I ripped off Stephen Wright, the comedian that I finally got client clawed my way into third place.

You said you didn't win that year. And without being snotty about it, do you think any do you think that here jumping forward? 35 40 years 35 years whatever it is um more stars of tomorrow do you think anybody else on that stage has more of a star of tomorrow quality than luke christian i mean you know uh putting all

modesty aside i am guessing that even my microscopic level of quote-unquote celebrity unless you know like chris pratt was in the competition we didn't note him or something i i probably would be the person with the highest public profile that i can remember having taken

part in that if that makes that's what i'm saying that it's not a good way of measuring the stars of tomorrow and i think we need to revamp that program that's what i'm going for well i think

that what they uh let's see here i'm looking to see if they are still doing this in places wow there is a Stars of Tomorrow show that was at the Blue Heron Middle School in Port Townsend, by the way. I used to drive by that middle school. This must be something that was like, there's a 2024 Stars of Tomorrow talent show going on in Cheyenne, Wyoming, put on by the Cheyenne Kiwanis Club. Love that this is still a going concern for these kids. I do think what I really learned from that, which has served me well over the years in entertainment, is if you don't have a good idea steal someone else's idea sure yeah and pass it off as your own yeah yeah

i um i when i was a kid there it wasn't called stars of tomorrow there was some sort of a talent show or whatever and i basically just memorized a jonah lair book and just presented it as my own yeah i mean sure everybody was wowed but eventually they were kind of like i don't think i'm amazed i

mean that was a pretty that was a pretty smart well i was a pretty smart audience that they

were catching what they're picking up what you're putting down yeah exactly i was very forward thinking too considering that guy's like 10 years younger than me anyway uh we also want to thank

eliza halder who's in minneapolis minnesota we got to get back to the twin cities at some point and like i was talking about it becca lived out there for a while and uh is going back there for a work event in a few months and i said you know i miss that place like that was one of the nice things about working for american public media was it made the twin cities more central to our sort of day-to-day thoughts and experience and uh and we could usually trick them into letting us come out there on their dime once a year or so so we got to do that again except now we're tricking ourselves into doing it on our own dime we're tricking john sklaroff into letting us do

it on our dime you know what um you know what happened to me this morning so i mentioned and i know we have more donors to thank i'll make this very quick i mentioned to you last week that i have been on the platform blue sky which is sort of like a twitter i promised i was going to sign

up for blue sky and upload a photo and i did not upload a photo yet it's more than and i mentioned

to you that like i've been on this website for a couple of years now and you know very little interaction a few people follow me i i don't really post all that much but then i think um related to the run-up to the election and the election results people really want to leave elon musk's website behind so just a huge flood of people have been going to blue sky and like i literally have gotten probably like 300 followers in three or four days and i'm not promoting it i don't know why i just think there's this huge flood of people coming over and this morning i woke up to get a notification that um i have a new flower a new follower called apm reports so there is somebody inside the old mothership at american public media who i found they found me on some list or something and now our old friends at apm are looking to engage with me again luke i'm assuming that they're crafting it's probably madeline baron and they're probably crafting a letter begging us to come back i will let you know what i hear or they're investigating

you for something oh shit that's right they're not you don't want the apm reports people calling calling you or your employer or your loved ones because it means something's gone deeply wrong

and they are going to get to the bottom of is this i ronin farrow has started following me too Is that a problem? Yeah, you've been caught and killed. Okay, sorry for the...

By the way, Madeline Barron is at the New Yorker now and doing great work there. I love her and the team's stuff. Jessamyn Bateman Eno is in Burien, Washington.

Thank you, and thank you for using the pronunciation guide on your donation form. That really helped because I think we've messed that up in the past.

If you're the kind of listener that would like us to say your name correctly please avail yourself of the pronunciation feature when you're filling out your donor info and if you like us mispronouncing your name please feel free not to exactly whatever you're feeling jessamine decided to uh help us out because i would have probably messed up that last name and now i know it's bateman eno thanks and then nancy cook is also in burien washington do jessamine and nancy know each other is the big question burien burien as

you know i'm an expert it's not a huge town it's not a huge town it's near the airport yes i think

a lot of cool mid-century stuff in burien because like you find in a in a lot of areas it got built up in the 1950s and 60s as air travel was becoming a bigger and bigger thing and so you you tend to have if you want to find the cool mid-century neighborhoods often they're clustered around

airports yeah that's oh that's right i remember you mentioning that on the show yeah like here

in Portland, too. There's one called, like, Roseway and Roseway Heights or whatever. Same kind of a thing. But anyway, Jessamyn and Nancy down there in Burien, thank you so much for the support. And then Jennifer Stockall is in Stockton, California. Is—did we—no, we were in Sacramento when we did the show. We were not in Stockton. No, but did we go through Stockton? I think we did. I think you sort of have to pass through Stockton to get to— If you're going through Sacramento and going south as we were, I think maybe you go, I don't know. I'm bad with geography, but I'm good with appreciating Jennifer Stockall in Stockton for supporting the show. So thank you very, very much to all of our donors today for making TBTL possible. Hello and welcome to Top Story. I want to play you some audio that really tickled me yesterday. It was posted by Bon Iver on his official, or somebody who works for the singer who plays under the name Bon Iver, on the official Bon Iver account. And I love this so much. Basically, so Bon Iver is a guy named Justin Vernon. I think he's from Wisconsin. And I think he was a high school basketball star maybe. I know he's a taller guy. I know he's real involved in basketball and stuff. And he's kind of like a real Midwestern dude, right? and what this is is it appears to be his actual neighbor in wisconsin calling him and leaving a message to tell him that some of the contestants on the tv show the voice were covering one of his songs and that he might want to tune in so this is bonniver's neighbor whose name is justin that's why he says hey justin it's your neighbor take a listen to this guy hey justin hi this is brian

your neighbor just thought i'd let you know on the voice tonight there's a couple of girls singing

skinny girl on there by the way the song is skinny love which it's also just it's just like i love that it's just so perfect right it's like that it's it's not even he's not even saying the name of the song right but anyway it's that that somehow makes it all better hey justin hi this

is brian your neighbor just thought i'd let you know on the voice tonight there's a couple of girl singing skinny girl on there um just thought i'd let you know if you're around it's on the

voice tonight channel 13 talk to you later have a good day so great i love i would die for this guy yeah you know what i mean like that is just that is the most that is the most midwestern thing i have ever heard calling up bonniver to let him know that they're doing some cover of his some Covers of his music on The Voice and what channel it's on.

And what channel it's on. It's mountain time.

I just think that's so, so charming and sweet and such wholesome content here on this Wednesday.

You could see, like, maybe running into him or, like, you know, talking over the fence or whatever and say, hey, I saw somebody was doing Skinny Girl on The Voice. Did you have to catch that or whatever? But I love the action of picking up the phone and just letting him know.

Yeah. I wonder what these folks I wonder what they talk about They probably talk about the Packers a lot Presumably I'm wondering what the other interactions are With this Brian Also I wonder It's funny because I have a neighbor that's a Brian Who has Actually I'm on very good terms with But initially I think he was a little suspicious About my level of lawn care

Well I have a voicemail from him Because he called the TBTL line first That's right Do you want to hear it? No, probably not Probably not

I probably want to get his clearance on that, but you know what I do think is a little bit interesting about our relationship is that, and it's very cordial now, but it's like we kind of wave if they're pulling out or if I'm going to have some worker guys that are going to be blocking the driveway, I'll kind of make sure he knows and make sure it's cool and everything. But also I noticed that they have OPB, they're like members of Oregon Public Broadcasting, they have a little window cling On their car, a little sticker Which makes me think that they're donors Which makes me think they listen to a significant amount of Oregon Public Broadcasting Which makes me think they listen to Livewire probably Like I wonder I wonder like it's like a Saturday And they're doing stuff around the house And they're playing the radio and they're hearing Their neighbor on the radio But then they also see their neighbor like out in his yard fighting with tansy or something or like you know back in my more uh sort of alcohol fueled days like you know guys sitting out in his yard getting drunk making a firelight i just wonder what their conception of me is if they are if they're experiencing like the stuff that i do for my job by way of tv and radio but then they're just like looking at me just being a dingus wandering around my yard or doing whatever it is i'm doing well i do always wonder about that voicemail because it was before i think you guys maybe met or maybe no i don't think that's true i think maybe you met once but clearly your neighbor did not know how to get a hold of you this is when you were very new in that neighborhood and i just checked the tbtl voice line one morning and it's like hi this is so and so looking to reach luke burbank you know we got a tansy situation or whatever if you give me a call back and i'm just i remember just sending that to you but it always makes me wonder like what was the journey you know he's like okay well at some, first of all, he noticed the tansy first and it probably was, you know, how long did you sit on that? How long did he sit on that waiting to see if you would take care of it yourself? And he's like, okay, I got to get involved here. I got to reach out. I'm not going to go over and knock on the door. Or maybe he did come over and knock on the door and never was able to reach you. And then he's like, well, I'll just maybe, I mean, I don't know. Like I'll just Google my neighbor's name. And again, at that point, does he know that you're on live wire? Does he know who you are? I doubted at that point too, although I don't have any evidence, but then at some point just like, well, he's a podcaster he does tbtl he goes to the page that has the number on it like i don't even know where that was on the old website you know but somehow like does all of this to reach you and it just i just i don't know i have trouble sort of like picturing all of that yeah i was um like

it's so funny too because when that when i got that message um i i had two different thoughts One was my typically my initial thought of defensiveness of just like, you know, like leave me alone. But then also for once in my life, I actually I think wisely was like, let me just kill this situation with kindness. Let me actually be very apologetic about my lack of attention to the tansy and the other things. And let me get on top of it. And that was very much the right call, because after that, we've been we've been aces. we both i'm checking their driveway i think we both still have our harris wall signs up which i'm that's another thing andrew i don't know when to take that sign down like on the one hand it's like okay we got thumped although we really didn't get thumped i think that's important to look at too we probably lost by one to two percent like you know the idea that like everything in this country has changed the ground has shifted under us in a way that we could have never imagined and that you know the democrat party is officially done you know going forward forever i think it it sort of i think that that overstates things considering that this was a very close election that ended up going by one to two percent in a direction we don't like and yet i described it as we got thumped um but anyway i've got that sign out there and part of me is like when i take that sign down it's officially over which i understand the sign has no bearing on the current state of politics in this country but there's something very sort of ceremonial in my mind about going out i had one thought was like do i leave it up for four years just as like a artifact of something just as a like don't blame me i voted for these folks kind of a thing like i don't know i can't quite bring myself to go take it i had so much agita about putting it up but now that i'm used to it being up taking it down also feels like some sort of a

surrender that i'm just not emotionally ready to do yeah i got an i like ike sign out in my front i have not been able to bring that um actually he won but anyway yeah canoe and tyler too i understand you know i i i don't have that particular situation because i've never had like a you know bumper sticker or a yard sign endorsing any kind of um politician or or even like you know kind of ballot measure or anything but um yeah that must you know i just told you i'm having trouble getting my bringing myself to bring my grill inside the the garage but yeah the emotional baggage attached to that and um you know not that we need to keep relitigating this and i know you're right when you say that like it was a very close election it wasn't a thumping but i think the I think the reason this one hurts in a way that is different than 2016 is like there's just no – it's just you can't chalk it up to, well, people wanted to try a wild card and you don't know what this guy is like in office. You know what I mean? Like they're there. You can't chalk it up to anything other than just millions and millions and millions of Americans saw that person and said, yes, I'm going to actively go to the ballot box and say this person deserves the Oval Office. There's just like, you can't, you know, I know we've talked about this, but that's why maybe it wasn't a thumping, but there's also not a, well, it was an electoral college thing or it was this thing. It was just like, no, this is America.

I agree with you that this is America and that we have to be realistic about it. But I also feel, and I probably said this in the days immediately after the election, that there are a lot of people who I think. were voting for what they felt like was their economic life much more than they were voting because they liked Donald Trump. In fact, there are theories out there that, in fact, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, to the degree J.D. Vance played a role, actually held the Republican sort of popularity down. Like, they won in spite of them, not because of them. Now, I know what you're saying, which is that people who went and checked filled in the box for trump vance they they had to at some point have seen donald trump on television and heard him speak and probably heard something about the allegations against him and they did not find that to be disqualifying and that's really really troubling but also i think like you know you look around the world and every party that was in power of major just about every party that was in power of every major nation as we were coming out of the pandemic and as inflation was growing have all had really bad electoral defeats in fact the democrats lost by a lot less than like the tories did in england than the the ruling party in japan uh did which was actually kind of conservative party like it seems to cut across ideological lines which you basically have worldwide is incumbent parties that were in charge when everything got more expensive are just getting tossed out left and right now and again a lot of this might just be me rationalizing things or you know trying to make it feel less depressing or something but i do i do think that there are were a lot of people who were voting for trump but not because they're trump fans now that again at the end of the day does that really matter what their motivations were the guy is going to get to be president which is again remains a very troubling fact to me and something that i don't know if there's somebody at morning edition whose job it is to ruin your day yeah to wait until they see me log on but freaking two days in a row i want that job i decide to

that would just make you so happy my job is already basically to ruin your day never mind go

ahead like so two days in a row i get up and i think okay you know look life must resume in some way for me and and my life usually involves listening to that programming in the morning and kind of hearing about what's going on and thinking about my day and the national, international agenda, et cetera, et cetera. And, like, so two days ago I decided, okay, I'm going to turn this on. And I also have them back in my mind, like, well, maybe they're trying to help me out a little bit. Maybe they're trying to, like, maybe in the news meetings at NPR they're going, okay, we need to cover a certain amount of politics because it's our responsibility, but we've got to also really try to plug in some nonpolitical stories right now. Just give folks a little break from the doom scroll, as it were. and so I was thinking maybe they're doing that for yesterday I turn it on and it's how realistic is it for Trump to end basically Obamacare and this morning it was how realistic is we're literally when I turn it on for Trump to basically fire and eliminate hundreds of sort of career government positions that are nonpolitical which are in a lot of cases sort of what stands between their terrible agenda and the american people like they don't like the fact that there are lots and lots of career civil servants people that work at various levels of the government who are there and who are by the way experts generally in whatever it is that they're doing and not non-partisan experts who are are there to you know help run various things you know efficiently and in a way that uh reflects hopefully the latest in science and things like that think about like do you want a uh trump employee a trump appointee who's from the national uh concrete association in charge you know or at a high position within the transportation safety you know bureau etc like there's just all these places where you need someone who is just non-partisan just making the decisions that need to be made not somebody who's coming from some industry or whatever all that is to say yesterday it was like are we are my parents going to lose health care andrew like are my mom and dad who are on you know whatever medic which one is when you're older is that medicaid medicare i think medicare care yeah i'm like are my parents prescriptions gonna be like unaffordable that's yesterday and today i'm like is the last little layer of protection that we might have in the last layer of like a functioning society as far as like civil servants go is that going to be eliminated by elon musk so i was just like nope back to um back to my jazz music back to my um oh i forget uh my little uh i can find it on my sonos i've been listening to the same like uh kind of very mellow uh jazz music uh every morning when i'm not listening to morning edition as my safe space and i went right back to it this morning i have a song i want to send you i think

one time I sent you, I tried to send you the song by

this guitarist whose name i'm blanking on right now it's ellis is it burt ellis i don't know but i don't think it's burt ellis but there's i sent you a whole album one time and then i later on said don't listen to the whole album i didn't realize it's not it's not all for you but there's one song that i have it on some sort of i have a record that genevieve got at like a white elephant sale called like the guitar jazz greats or something like that and i don't usually go in for compilation records but and i usually don't go in for guitar jazz by the way but my god there is some great great stuff on this and there's this one song every time i hear it is it burt ellis i don't know i'll send it to you i think luke would dig this the most man please send it

my way i need to i need because it's the oscar peterson trio that's who oh yeah you love that i tend to i tend to put on um although you do get a lot of like vince garaldi which i've got to be it's got to be post thanksgiving pre-christmas for me to fully immerse myself in the garaldi because it's very Christmassy to me. That's another thing, Andrew. You know I'm in an emotional free fall. This morning, I spent a significant amount of time considering if I should just put my Christmas tree up.

Oh, yeah, I saw other people kind of commenting on that. I even saw a New Yorker cartoon. Oh, really? Somebody just putting up a Christmas tree in a New Yorker cartoon and saying to their spouse, it just makes me feel like we'll make it to Christmas.

I mean, I didn't know this was a trend or an emotional response, but I legitimately thought, i mean part of it's just like it's dark here and the weather is really is really turning and like obviously everything that we've talked about politics very depressing i thought god i've got the giraldi on i got the aluminum christmas tree up i'm lighting some candles it's cozy i like that would feel really good right now like i seriously thought could i get away with that i'm gonna wait because for me what i enjoy about the whole christmas experience is it being a limited time offer i really i kind of think i like that fact of it being post thanksgiving but i was tempted this morning i thought it's like i i want it you know i just i just want something to make me feel better and somehow the christmas tree seemed like it might be solving that problem for me in the

short run listen i know i'm breaking my own rule and i hope that playing a little bit of this is not going to get us pulled down from the major podcasting platforms i'm going to play a little bit i'm cutting into this song by about 30 seconds it's uh herb ellis by the way and his album is ellis in wonderland which is just awesome um and uh i'm gonna play a little bit of this for you and then i'm gonna ask you a question at the end so that's ellis on guitar there who do you think is playing piano on this future me Oscar Peterson Oscar Peterson I love this song but I'll bet you I remember that Oscar Peterson is somewhere in the back of my brain I'm like oh this is why Luke would probably like this this is your boy Oscar

yes will you send me I'm very into this kind of guitar too yeah so anyway 0 for 2 morning edition

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.

All right. I ran out of time on telling you about my rabbit hole that I started to go down, along with thinking of Christmas trees. I was thinking of some other stuff. Based on, I'll explain it to you tomorrow. I also need 24 more hours to consider if I want to bring it up on the show because I feel like it's a very loaded topic with the listeners. Oh, okay.

Not with me, though. You're not worried about my reaction? Not with you.

Well, with you probably as ombudsperson for the listeners. Okay. I think you and the listeners would both be, like, not a fan of the thing that I was considering this morning. And we'll talk about it tomorrow on the show in the meantime.

Okay. Yeah, how's that for a little forward promotion? Man, if I could remember anything more than an hour, I would be definitely tuning in for tomorrow's show.

We got this email from listener Lisa. um i yesterday was talking about the the ikea dress or the malm that i had assembled and then managed to smash into my closet and then realized it didn't open because it was too large for the closet and then pulled it back out and then it kind of started to disassemble and then i like kind of left half of it intact and half of it not assembled and they came and took it away the other day which was a relief except i said that's going straight to the landfill here's what lisa said uh i expect you might have had a lot of emails and v-mails about this but ikea has a secret room where you can shop all of the assembled but returned items i'm sure a lot of it is also display furniture from the warehouse but my favorite thing to do when i go to ikea is enter video.

the exit because in my stores that's very close to where this room is and uh shop that room before i go shop the rest of the store i had no idea this was a thing lisa i also didn't know that

you could go in i didn't know you could go in through the outdoor because um i i think they that's how you used to be able to do it at costco you'd go into the exit if you wanted to just get a hot dog but you remember like there was a big thing about them putting the the kibosh on that Oh, yeah.

And then, by the way, they're now scanning your card. Becca and I went over the weekend. And, like, it used to be you just hold the card up.

Now they're scanning it. I have not experienced that, but I read that. I remember when it was a headline because they really are. Clearly, they are really trying to crack down on, like, I guess, membership scoff laws. But anyway, the whole thing about IKEA is, and I kind of forgot about this because it's been so long for me. But, like, even if you just want to get one little thing, oh, I need a new thing of those dish towels that Ikea sells, you have to go through the entire Alice in Wonderland maze of Ikea furniture.

I believe Alice in Wonderland.

Alice in Wonderland maze. And I didn't know that you could just sneak in through the back door and just go to the things that are closer to that.

It's also very smart because, as Lisa mentions, oftentimes whatever I am looking for is in there, like a side table or a shelf. And it's way cheaper than full price. See, the other thing is, provided that you have enough room in your car to get the stuff home, I love the idea of buying something that somebody else has already put together.

Yeah, right. That's true, too.

See previous comments. Too much of my life has been taken up with assembling furniture in my house. And I would really rather somebody else did it for me and I could just bring it home and put it in the place it's going to go. Lisa says, I'm guessing Luke's Malm will get assembled. Maybe they will replace some pieces and it will go in one of these rooms at a big discount. So fear not. It's probably not going into the landfill just yet.

Yeah, that's really cool. And that makes sense, too. Yeah, because if you had, you said, maybe a shelf or a drawer that maybe got banged up, maybe, yeah, they can just grab from a pile. Because a lot of that stuff is like, you know, this little, the side of this cabinet works on several different cabinets or whatever. That's the whole point, right? So that's actually really cool. I love this.

Lisa says, power out. P.S. Can you please do a no point? We need more content, and you know, hashtag GoPackGo. Other topics, the rise of Jaden Daniels, the fall of Deshaun Watson, the collapse of Aaron Rodgers, the GD Chiefs, MVP, Lamar or Goff? Andrew, one minute, go.

On all of that, oh, shoot, I thought you were going to give me one minute to find the No Point music, which I was looking for, but I'll give up on that. I will say the fall of the-

Rise of Jaden Daniels.

I can't speak to the rise of Jaden Daniels. I'm going to skip to Deshaun Watson and just say that the fall has been complete. The man left the field crying and will never play football in the NFL again. It's not justice enough, but it's as good as we're going to get. The collapse of Aaron Rodgers is almost complete. I am guessing that he will finish out this season and hate every moment he has to spend on the field. I think it was wonderful that the teammate that he threw under the bus in a public press conference in the most Aaron Rodgers of ways ended up being traded and ended up being a hero on the football field for the Pittsburgh Steelers this Sunday in catching the game-winning touchdown that put them ahead of the Commanders by one point and go Russell Wilson.

Thank you for the Russell Wilson mention because I was watching some sports coverage last night and also looking at some on TikTok, and I just want to say the sort of Russell Wilson redemption arc that everyone's now getting on, I predicted that before this season. I said Mike Tomlin seems to get the most out of his players. I think Russell Wilson still has some gas in the tank. And then they didn't even start him. And I was like, another Burbank stone-cold lock that's proven to be inaccurate. But, like, I love this Russell Wilson redemption narrative. I love it so much. Like, I'm here for it. It's like the two things that make me really happy about the NFL. Well, the three things that make me really happy about the NFL right now. One thing is the fall of Aaron Rodgers. With the election and everything and the rise of Elon Musk, the bad guys are winning in so many ways, except Aaron Rodgers is just getting his ass kicked, and we love to see it. It's getting more important as the rest of the world gets darker for me, the fall of Aaron Rodgers.

Although he will end up with a cabinet position, so the fall of Aaron Rodgers as an NFL player, not as a politician, obviously.

Sure. Just asking questions, Andrew. That's all. I, you know, so I'm enjoying that plot line. I'm enjoying the Russell Wilson may lead the Steelers to the Super Bowl this year. That's probably not going to happen, but I would be there for it. That's a stretch. I don't know. I don't know. And then my third favorite.

story is jerry jones sunshine gate oh not pulling the blinds right refusing to pull the blinds refusing to let the dallas cowboys have the same treatment that post malone has received

while playing a concert in the stadium oh post malone got it pulled in other words malone had

the blinds drawn apparently for his show uh but that was not uh but they did not decide to afford cd lamb the same the same uh uh you know whatever courtesy he lost courtesy he lost the ball in the

sun and he's like well you know why are the people who are uh running this state uh this stadium why are they not pulling the pulling the blinds and what was what was his response to that it was like

obviously it was a real salty response right jerry jones has now also become sort of in a way like trump trump jr to me or trump senior i don't know what jerry jones's politics are but there's just this parallel to me of like an old white man who doesn't like any criticism who's very very sensitive and thinks they know the answer to everything and has terrible outcomes like the similarities are kind of hard for me to to to ignore and whereas trump is in this moment ascendant and is getting everything he thinks he wants although i do think that the the story on trump is still not written and i think that he's going to be a miserable person for the next four years and historically unpopular when he doesn't deliver on all his lies and um i i again i'll be really interested in four years to see there's one last thing i'll say that i've been thinking about a lot lately is think about when george w bush was re-elected with the popular vote in 2004 he was at this point known to have launched a war that shouldn't have happened based on information

that was faulty and in spite of that but falsified i don't falsified thank you in spite of that

more americans voted for him than the alternative okay so think about 2004 and just how despondent people felt and then think about what happened four years later barack obama and then four years after that a very strong victory re-election for barack obama so i'm just saying and that was also

I'm not making a joke here I also think that was a galling victory I remember it, I've been thinking back on it I remember sitting in a very specific in Concord, New Hampshire taking a lunch break like any reasonable person and going to get a giant calzone or meatball sandwich and eating my feelings at some sort of small one of those Greek pizza places that was in Concord and I remember they had TVs on and I remember just watching him give his victory lap it wasn't an acceptance speech I can't remember what it was, but him bragging about all the political capital that he was going to expend at that point because the voters had spoken. I might be confusing. Now, I might be confusing that particular press conference with the when they took over Congress around that same era. But one thing I want to say about that 2004, that was also the swift boating of John Kerry or two. So there was also that especially galling unfairness, like false claims and, you know, and truthiness ended up like playing a huge role in that as well, which made it especially kind of, like I say, galling.

So I feel like right now, as Trump is getting all these W's, I love seeing Jerry Jones getting all these L's like and I love that he's getting so mad at the every time he's asked about it. So like, it's just like, he's just a moron and, uh, and, and his moronic decisions and meddling with the team is led to yet another lost season for the Cowboys. And like a reporter was asking him after like the, so just in case you don't know, they built this billion dollar stadium and it has these big windows. And it means that between like one and five in the afternoon, depending on what direction of the stadium you're in as the team or what direction you're going, there's blinding sunlight that's coming in through the windows. There's a very clear moment where one of their receivers, their best receivers, C.D. Lamb, is trying to catch the ball. He has no idea where the ball is because he's just staring into a giant. Somebody asked Jerry Jones about it. And Jerry Jones' first reaction was to say, well, we should just tear down the whole stadium then, which is such a whiny little response when he was asked about, well, should you bring the curtains in? And then his other thing was, we know what direction the sun is in. It's like, what, do you?

Do you? Yeah. Then draw. Did you? Yeah. This is your player. When I first heard the story, you know, like I hear, I kind of process a lot of sports news just sort of in the background. And I might even be hearing it and not paying attention. So I just get little, you know, snippets of what's going on. I don't think I realized that it was CeeDee Lamb was the receiver like that. I thought it was an opposing team. I thought it was an opposing receiver who said, I don't like this unfair advantage of when we're on the road. leave these you know because you can do that like Miami you know I listen to it obviously I listen to Levitard show which is out of Miami so I get a lot of like reports from Miami and there was some famous game I believe last season that they call the heat stroke game because some you know like cold weather team came and played and just like miserable Miami conditions in the heat and everything and they were unprepared but that's sort of like well that's home field advantage for for Miami for the Dolphins and so I thought that the I thought that the Cowboys were like taking advantage of their situation but no he's blinding his own players and then getting pissy yes yes

and then getting and I mean he's been doing this all season he he basically like threatened a radio reporter I think he must have a thing in Dallas the way that like the Seahawks do where there's a station that's the like you know broadcast home of the team and part of that whole contract is the head coach has to make an appearance weekly on the morning show or whatever and in some cases i don't know if this is the case with the i don't think that i don't think the cowboys literally own the station like on paper are the owners of it but jerry jones was getting asked i thought fairly respectful questions earlier in the season and he basically starts threatening to have the host fired jeez who's asking him the questions which it's unclear to me if jerry jones actually has that power or not but it's like it's like well well well if it isn't the consequences of my decisions that's what's happening to jerry jones and then when reporters have the temerity to ask him about these things that aren't working out he gets so butthurt and it's one of the main things that's getting me out of bed in the morning now is just jerry jones

being angry at the press and he's getting i think more and more cantankerous because the the sound and i'm not i'm not trying to be ageist here but the reality is he's 82 years old and the clicking talk the you know the clicking the ticking clock of his mortality and certainly ownership of this team like he has no rings right am i right no soup no super bowls under him or it's been a really

really long time and he's not in a long time he got a bunch in the troy aikman emmett smith oh

yeah that was still him so okay so anyway but yeah it's been basically like it's been sort of

a desert um for him for a long time and every and and and they're you know they're america's team and every year it's supposed to be like the year of the cowboys and then it seems like for the last 20 years it's just been one implosion after another um and uh yeah jerry jones is not going to be around forever um but if he suffers if he if he if he's especially uncomfortable uh as we're

sundowning him i'm here for that i remember when i was getting into football some i don't know if i don't know where i heard this but somebody just said that one of the things you need just need to know about football is that the cowboys are always eight and eight i mean that was when there were 16 games in a season.

They'll be 8-8 this year, by the way.

Yeah, well, now there's 17 games, so maybe they'll be 8-9 or 9-8. But, yeah.

Anyway. All right. I don't know if that was a no point, Lisa, but that was us talking more about sports than a lot of the listeners care about. So you're welcome.

He's won three Super Bowls, by the way. Jerry Jones has as owner of the Cowboys. 93, 94, and 96. Man, he's been in this game for a long time.

Who are we rooting for, Andrew, if not the Seahawks? If we concede that the Seahawks don't look like a Super Bowl-caliber team this year, who are we rooting for? Well, that's... Detroit, Minnesota, probably Minnesota, right?

Well, that's where things get really... First of all, I was going to say this, and I don't know how long you want to go on with this, because honestly, I could go on for quite some time. You're going to say Jacksonville? Nothing else. I was going to say Jacksonville. Honestly, I would have said Tampa Bay. I started the season rooting very, very hard for Baker Mayfield because I want to see him do really well, especially because he should be Cleveland's quarterback right now and the thing is he has been doing really well but they've lost their last four games in a row and they've all been close and I do not believe it's his fault I feel like Baker has kept them in all of these games but they've lost very close games and that's sort of a bummer so I'll take them off the table and I'll say like I've had a realization lately and maybe it's like the rejection of my Browns fandom has given me sort of a different perspective on football writ large and I almost enjoy it more now in a in a in a because you just root for players and for the teams well sort of or like it just has opened up which teams i can like because they're not my mortal sworn enemies like steelers for instance exactly and specifically i would say the ravens as well i'm very like rob lowing it just rooting for the shield now right making a sex tape with an underage person no i meant wearing a baseball cap that just merely says you meant low carving it i'm just putting on my nfl i root for the shield hat but like i realize like the excitement and this makes me feel bad because i still root for the seahawks and that is the team that i tune in for but i honestly think that the excitement is in the afc it just is like in so much of it

is in my old rooting division of the AFC North like we just talked about the Steelers and their sort of narrative which is really interesting but like you still have Cincinnati I think Cincinnati in the past several years has been a really interesting story with Joe Burrow coming up unfortunately he's dealt with some injuries but an exciting team to watch and now that I don't have to absolutely hate the Ravens because they're the sworn enemy of the Browns like you can really relax and just watch lamar cook and then i don't know if you it was a it was a nationally televised game i don't know if it was a wednesday or a thursday between cincinnati and baltimore last week was so good between those two quarterbacks and like it was just like i didn't have to like think about the implications for the browns they're just out there stinking and i'm glad they are and they're turds out there that's right and hoisted on their own petard and and so you can just like look at these two teams and then of course as lisa says here you got the chiefs in there which that i think that the like kind of modern history of them kind of going up against cincinnati continues to be uh interesting in the playoffs and of course you have buffalo like there's so much cool shit going on in the afc and it's harder with the exception of like the vikings and the lions which i know are at odds it's harder for me to get kind of excited about

the nfc yeah i've been having a it's been a weird season for me i because just from a schedule standpoint there have been so many seahawk games that i just couldn't watch in real time so i i just wasn't and again some of it has to do with like less drinking maybe i'm just not building my life around the seahawks the way i did where it'd be like sunday was just totally blocked out for like all day football consumption and food and alcohol consumption and like also the seahawks were better in those days so it was probably more fun but like i've just had a real kind of like arm's length relationship with them this year which i kind of think has been good for me because it's been a year with some pretty frustrating games and some games like gino throwing three picks is that would have ended me two seasons ago and so because of that i'm just i i don't know i'm i'm just i'm not as tied up in it this year um and i think that's for the better yeah i'm looking

I didn't realize that the Seahawks are literally in the bottom of the division right now. Oh, we are? Tied with the Rams 4-5, but it must be divisional games or something that puts the Seahawks slightly below the Rams. So, yeah, it just seems a little bit less fun where I just feel like there's a lot of exciting stuff going on in the other conference.

All I can root for, because, again, anger is like flatulence. flatulence no anger is the is the dilithium crystal that runs this spaceship that's called luke uh all i want is for joey bosa to have a career ending injury yes like that's the thing it's like it's it's like to see your enemies prosper it's just such a bad bad bad feeling um it's just and so like i just i can't i don't want it to be you know cte related but if we could just see joey bosa just absolutely blow up his acl or something i couldn't happen to a nice for those who don't know he's the guy who decided to put a maga hat on and crash a post-game interview with a fellow san francisco 49er um to bring the point home this is pre-election of how much he supports donald trump just just a sweetheart of a human garbage absolute sweetheart So if I can, you know, if I can, I'll take some, since the Seahawks aren't really that good this year, all I want to see is the destruction of my enemies, i.e. Aaron Rodgers and Joey Bosa.

That's right. And the lamentation of the women. The lamentations of their wide receivers. I don't know what I'm talking about. Yes, exactly. That's all. What is best in life? What is best in life? Wait, is that Conan?

I think it's Conan the Barbarian to hit the lamentation of the women.

Do I say Conan funny? For some reason, I thought you say it opposite of Conan O'Brien. I thought it was Conan. Is it Conan? No, it's Conan the Barbarian, right? Not Conan.

Conan the Barbarian. Conan. Andrew, it's all he's known. It's all he'll ever know. That's what the whole wide world is about, right? The guy that wrote Conan?

That's right, the guy that wrote Conan. Conan? And I have that DVD. A listener sent me the DVD of the whole wide world. I might need it some dark days this winter.

All right. We've got to go, Andrew, because you can see I've got the binocs out. I think there's a police boat that's cruising around in the river, and I'm wondering if I'm in trouble.

Shades of the pilot episode of Arrested Development. You better watch out. Exactly.

I need to see what's going on with that. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We will be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

We'll be right back.

hey thanks for the backup power out