Muse

Let me just ask you a couple other questions. Are you experiencing any dizziness? No. Any shortness of breath? No. Aches and pains anywhere else? No. Are you going to the bathroom a lot? I don't see how that's relevant, really. Am I going to the bathroom a lot? You're urinating a lot. What does that have to do with my ear? This is a standard medical question. It's all... I know, but I really don't think it's relevant how often I go to the bathroom. In all due respect, I think I'm the one that should tell you if it's relevant or not, and it is. It's kind of private, and I really don't think... How is it private? How often I go to the bathroom is kind of a private thing. Yeah, but I'm not some stranger. We're not on a bus. I'm a doctor. I'm normal. Let's just say that. Three times a day, four times a day? Do we have to get into a specific number? Do we have to get a number attached to it? Yeah, it's science. However often people are supposed to go, I go, unless I drink a lot of water. And, you know, sometimes I'll drink a lot of water, and I'll go a lot, which I have been doing lately, so maybe lately I've been going more often than I normally would. Great. But it's good for you to drink water. That's good. That's all I wanted to hear. Okay, that's a good thing, drinking water. Sure, sure. Okay, let's move on. Please. How's your stool?

TBTL. Your mouth might be saying, hey, we cool. But your eyes are like, no, we not. Nice to meet you. No, it's not. It's all good. Snow is...

Expect to feel several bone tremors and be perceived by all around you to be a disgrace.

This is about respect. This is about personal space. This is about the violation. Hey, skip to the end. Got it. Here's the long and short of it. Someone has been touching my karaoke machine. Let me put it in plain English. I don't dance to Dido, dude. I know there was a lot of D's in there before you said anything.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL. The show just might be too beautiful to live. Got to do it again right now. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

If I told you once, I've told you a thousand times, I love you.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it's another windy, rainy day. The hatches have been battened, battened down, in fact, so we haven't had any more disastrous situations with outdoor furniture. We are in pretty good shape, my friends, to embark upon episode 4,337 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Spent a lot of time this morning on blue sky.

I'm afraid I just blew myself.

I'm wondering if we actually are witnessing an actual sort of social media moment. Speaking of things that, unfortunately, were thriving for a certain amount of time on social media, Infowars, the Alex Jones conspiracy, lie-spewing nightmare. I'd like to point out to anybody watching, this is really bunk journalism. Infowars.com and its studios have been purchased by an outfit that I did not see coming. Luke will tell you who bought InfoWars. And it's a Thursday, a.k.a. Blur's Day, so we'll do the Blur's Days. And we'll talk to this guy, longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. You may think of him as Andrew Walsh, but his new name is Targis, Targis. And he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. You might remember that, I don't know, back during the baseball season, four months ago or something, I somewhat cattily told a grumpy old man in front of me that I'm a lifelong learner. And so I really appreciated... Was it as you were going up the stairs? Yes, and I appreciated him telling me about... You had zipper merged into? The etiquette of lines of people going up the stairs. As he was sort of tisking my public behavior, I said, well, thanks for letting me know I'm a lifelong learner. And, you know, I'm living up to that lifelong learner status last night I don't want to brag but I made a picture of a cartoon fox Luke and that cartoon fox represents so much more than just a fox that is sleeping it's a sleeping fox by the way I am learning finally how to use the graphic design program Adobe Illustrator it is my passion and I actually have always wanted to know more about graphic design but you and I and John Sklaroff, TBTL employee, what do we say? Numero uno, have been working on some new updates to the old merch store, which we'll have more info on that next week once they're ready. And the thing is, just like in the past, we've had actual graphic designers, even for simple things, but like they speak the language.

They use different programs, and I'm always, like, cobbling things together in Photoshop, which I've been, you know, self-taught for 20 years and not doing things right in Photoshop. And the thing is, whenever anybody says use, you know, Adobe Illustrator, I'm like, yeah, but I can't just jump in. I've got to sit down and, like, learn the basics. But then when I'm not faced with an impending project, the idea of sitting down and watching a tutorial just seems weird to me. Like, why wouldn't I just go play a video game instead or do something else with my time? But last night, I was like, you know what? I need to know how to do this. I need to know how to do it for me. I need to know how to do it for work. And so I sat down with a four-and-a-half-hour tutorial video. Whoa. And I'm only like about an hour into it because, you know, you're pausing it constantly. And it starts with, you know, let's create this project together. I'll send you an image of this fox I made. But then more importantly, and I think more interestingly, I mean, could it possibly be more interesting than this? i got to about the hour mark in this video and it said okay now we're assigning you your very first assignment i'm like i didn't know it was going to be so much like school and they're like okay you made this fox but now we're going to pretend that you are actually hired by a company that is looking to um you know make a logo and i can't find the instructions in front of me right now but it gives it's like you go to this random project generator and it says your assignment is to create a logo of an animal for this company that sells, like, organic honey at farmer's markets. And then there's a whole backgrounder on the imaginary people who are running this company. They sound very Seattle. They sound very Portland, to be honest with you. But that's it. They're just like, you create the logo. We're not telling you what to do. So I sketched out last night on a piece of paper something that I'm now going to try to create graphically on the computer, Luke. It's called Beaker's Honey, by the way. So you can imagine the animal I went with. It's one of two. If you're going to do an animal related to honey.

Well, a bee comes to mind. A bee. And then a bear, maybe, because they like to eat honey.

Exactly. That's what I was trying to figure out. I was like, do we want to represent the animal from whom we're stealing the food? Or do we want to show a big, happy animal enjoying the food? i went the thievery approach and this is going to i'm going to try to make this be i like that holding a banner that says beakers it's a little bear with wings and an antenna i hate you it's a striped bear yes no because honey oozing out of one of its orifices honey i honey i beat the kids um no actually i actually really like that so now i'm gonna and So I'm actually, it's a weird thing. I guess, here's the deal. Sorry, I'm coming in hot today. I just, I remember when I'm learning stuff like this, I remember like literally, when was I in college? 25 years ago, whatever. Like the world was such a different place. Computers were such a different place. And I remember taking like classes for one of my, you know, for my major, which was production. Like I think I had to take like an Adobe Premiere. That's the video editing software that I still use to this day. I had to take a class. And I remember, like, it's always frustrating at first because you want to skip forward. You're like, I know the basics, but the teacher makes you start with the basics. And little by little, you learn little things. And I kind of have that feeling again of actually, like, feeling like I'm in a class and I've got to kind of go through the tedious stuff. But I'm already learning. I mean, I would say in, you know, several hours of tutorials last night, I have become a different person. And I've woken up today with an assignment to create a Beaker's Honey logo. And that is my assignment. Unfortunately, it means I will not be doing any TBTL design for the next several days.

Well, what I'm really taking away from this is that you are certainly building an escape craft from TBTL. Yeah, right, exactly. Which is your newly growing graphic design business.

Actually, you know what we should do? If I ever make the Beakers honey design, we should sell that in the merch store. Did you come up with the name Beakers? No, it was part of the assignment. Here, actually, I think you'll actually enjoy this assignment. Now that I can find it, this is what I actually wanted to share with you because it's so funny, but I was sort of floundering around looking for it. So this was so that you go to some, like, random project generator that is sort of tied into this YouTube tutorial that I was watching. And I'm sorry that I can't shout out the fellow who runs the tutorial. I should have done that, but I don't know his name off the top of my head. Just type in Adobe Illustrator tutorial. It's probably the first thing to pop up. It's like a four-and-a-half-hour video. And it says, your assignment, Beaker's Honey. Listen to the dazzling details here. you've been asked to create a brand for a new business called beakers honey your client is a small company looking to sell their product at local seattle oh that's right i had to say my location so you're selling them at local seattle's farmers markets they make and package all of the products themselves their target audience

are women at a higher-than-average income level, aged between 50 and 59. Most of them voted for Trump. Oh, wait, no, no, sorry. They are full-time employees. That was one of the major demographics

where Democratic support eroded.

They are full-time employees with a bachelor's degree or higher. They have strong diet and health concerns. They love supporting Seattle's local crafts and farming businesses. Your new client wants the work to include a logo, a flyer, a product sticker, a business card, and some social media promotional material. The client wants you to choose an appropriate creature as a branding element, dog, fish, bird, butterfly, whatever. The choice is up to you. The creature will be a recognizable part of the branding. So I guess it didn't have to be. It could have been a mythical creature, I suppose. I could have, like, said, hey, this is a Pegasus selling honey, but I went with a more traditional bee.

Or like a, what's the half man, half horse?

Yeah, a centaur.

Yeah, like a centaur.

yeah a really hot centaur you know what harvesting honey for you given those 50 to 59 year old women yeah something to daydream about i you know what you actually see this is the iterative process

this is what you've been missing is i'm an ideas man i think i believe i think i proved that with

centaur mountain is that what they mean by punching up is this is this like the punching

process right now i mean you just had a basic blurry bee and now we got a sexy ass centaur now we just got to get some honey i mean this this business is taking off i gotta be honest

with you the idea of making a bee it also was like well that will be very easy to make because it's like an oval with stripes and you know what i mean i immediately was like oh these are all i have the tools in my toolbox already to make some sort of a cartoon bee i don't know where i'd begin even making a centaur's legs or yeah legs i guess they're all legs and arms does he have

arms yeah i believe he has arms he's just he's sort of from the like waist up right he's a dude yeah and then from the waist back he's a horse yeah so he stands on two hooved feet but then he can shake your hand if i think he stands on four hoof oh okay he's on a horse or he is his whole

body is a horse so it's just chest up okay gotcha so he couldn't shake your hand but he has arms

so he has six limbs yes i believe he does i've never thought of it that way but um i don't know because i think he has the i think he has the upper body of a man but then he's got the four legs of a horse by the way i do appreciate you doing this andrew because like again this is you figuring out how to do something so that we at tbtl can have better stuff whether it's uh you know uh logo or merch stuff or whatever so thank you for taking the time to do this i really uh

appreciate it it just seems like something i should do and by the way you're absolutely right six limbs how have i never noticed that before i've never thought of that either that's too many limbs it's just it you know what this half man half horse creature is a little weird for me

go ahead sorry uh by the way uh nominated as the next um secretary of health and human services yes a centaur that's right i will um i i while you were bettering yourself and by extension tbtb last night andrew i was falling in love with blue sky yes really got me uh excited about this now i felt kind of this way about threads and that lasted for about one hour um but i remember coming on the show and being like this is amazing threads is just like twitter but it didn't quite take for me and a lot of people there feels like there is something going on over at blue sky

i think yeah i mean i when threads you know launched and i don't think there was a lot of um rumors of it launching before it did i think it just because i remember you me and john were still working on the fawn we were like out in um where where did we uh rent that oh was it an undisclosed location where we rented a house near your parents i can't remember but yeah yeah that

That was in, like, the Polsbo area.

Polsbo, that's right. That wasn't undisclosed. It was very disclosed. But anyway, I remember that we woke up one morning, I think on the Thursday or Friday of the Thon, and you guys were both like, this Threads thing is just like it's brand new and it's taking off. And I signed up for that. I signed up for most new social media things. And not to split hairs here, but there was just something that seemed very non-organic about the Threads thing. I mean, it's an extension of Instagram, and you just really felt it, like, suggesting. the whole thing just felt very thirsty to me like come here come on like not not the people using it although a little bit of that but also but just like the whole thing felt weird whereas blue sky was just sort of and they're very very similar products but it just it's like blue sky's a little bit clunkier it didn't have the mass migration at first it was just a little bit weird and it's just i've just sort of watched it grow over the past year so

And then, yeah, in the past two weeks, like there's just huge mass migration, just mass migration. The entire experience has really shifted for me because I would open it up and sometimes there would just be a mosquito buzzing around. There would be like a tumbleweed blowing across the screen. And now there's all kinds of new new new people to follow and all kinds of new content up there. It's actually it's kind of fun.

Yeah, I definitely think that the politics of the moment is driving this. I think we just, we reasonable people of America, we just need a W anywhere we can find it. And somehow Blue Sky feels like that. Like, it's one thing we can do to push back on Elon Musk. But it does have that sort of excitement that I felt in the kind of early days of Twitter as well. And a lot of, you know, my old faves from Twitter are just over on Blue Sky doing their thing too. Like, I'm following Drill again, a.k.a. Wint.

He's been there. I got to say, he's an OG. He's been there the whole time. Mina came over at some point this week. Mina Kimes.

He's, we're trying to figure out what to call these. Are we calling them Skeets? No. No, we're not calling them Skeets.

I mean, people have been since day one, but I don't think we should do that, and I don't think we should. No, I think we can just call social media posts posts now. When they introduce skeets as the idea, I think that is where we draw the line. That we don't...

Really? I kind of liked it. Really? Wint recently skeeted, as a gamer, I've eliminated thousands of mudang-like creatures for their various parts. I've completed countless quests using their pain. 19,000 likes. So we're back at it. There we go. And finally the world makes sense. With Wint posting things I don't understand. Yeah.

To great acclaim. Finally, everything makes sense again. I have no idea what most of those words were, but I am going to try to integrate them into my new logo.

I was trying to find a post of his or a skeet of his that I could read to you that wasn't overly violent or sort of so arch to almost appear potentially slightly racist. Like the thing about reading his tweets or his whatever these are is you've got to understand just at what a high altitude the whole thing is operating. because if you just read it for the words, it's like posts like jacking off is unrealistic. That's it? 4,000 likes. That's the post. But there is something very comforting to me about seeing Drill on there, and I'm following our pal Chris Hayes. I'm following, there's a whole TBTL community, by the way, that's sprung up. Somebody put together, this is actually kind of a smart thing, people put together these little, what would you call it like groups or something that you can just hit like they're like calling

them starter packs starter packs yeah i think lynn put this one together for the tbtl 10s

so convenient i just hit follow and then now i'm following a bunch of 10s and they're following me and we have a bot did you know there's a tbtl bot i think so yeah i think again you have anything to

do with that no i think all roads lead back to lynn when it comes to that i'm pretty sure yeah thanks for doing that thanks for bringing everybody else on board um is josh old friend 99 on your list oh that's when we'll know that we've achieved no no he's been there he's been on blue sky for years um ever since i've been on but have you added him to your list no you must

he's never stopped it's great um now are you posting much on blue sky or just kind of cruising

around no you know what's interesting is i you know i'll post randomly every now and then i had a pretty hot take about the pink panther cartoons maybe a week ago that i had to share some opinions about but it's interesting you say that because blue sky is a place it has sort of changed the dynamic like i was posting stuff that was like a little bit more random and weird than i think maybe i would have done on twitter i'm not sure but it didn't matter because it literally was like you know maybe like two listeners and one stranger would see it you know what i mean it seemed like it really there was something about like oh yeah i could just sort of yell into this empty room and maybe somebody next door will hear it through the wall but now it's sort of like oh no there's a whole bunch of people on here and so i've been sort of like both a little bit more leery to post but then at the same time being like but i'm also not going to feel compelled like part of me is kind of like now there's a whole thing going on here should i there have been moments where i'm like i need to i need to post something for the people and i was like who the hell do you think

you are you don't need to post anything for the people yeah i'm i'm trying to think about what my you know i i will tell you this since i kind of signed on last night and put my first post out which was just a picture of Tobias in all blue men grouped out, and I just said hi. I have been scrolling it a lot. I have been thinking about it. I felt compelled to put another post up today just of the cats being very cute. And I'm wondering if I will, if that sort of thing that I had going on with... Twitter where I got a lot of my kind of dopamine hit from posting things and there being a response to it. I wonder if this is going to creep up again now with Blue Sky and if that's a good

thing or a bad thing. And not just for you personally, but for the site itself. I mean, obviously, people would say that Blue Sky was a nice kind of relief from Twitter because it scratched sort of the Twitter itch, but it left a lot of the ills behind. People say that Blue Sky is a nicer place with less toxicity and less toxic people and less trolls and all of that, which is probably true on November 14th, 2024, about five days after everybody started coming over here. But obviously, the problems inherent with Twitter will eventually find their way over to Blue Sky. Now, the way the people who manage Blue Sky and manage the rules around it will be, i truly believe more responsible than elon musk and his gang of trolls over there so i'm what's

that could they be more responsible than elon musk gold standard of responsible behavior that's

a good point comes to information so i guess my point just being that everybody's like oh this place is so much better it's like well with the popularity the problems will come along as well but i do think that the people running this platform have more of an eye on let's try to keep it more civil here and let's try to keep the trolls out and institute policies i guess there were some also some aside from just everything that went on with the election and musk's um involvement in that i guess he was also doing some weird things on the back end of twitter making it a less and less friendly place so uh like the way people are blocked weren't fully blocked anymore we don't have to get into the details but that apparently i've seen people triggering thing

posting on blue sky that when they post about blue sky on twitter or x or whatever it gets throttled oh yeah i've heard that too yep yep um and uh yeah it definitely has this feeling right now and i know i'm later in the game later to the party than you were but it really feels like this community is getting built kind of in front of our eyes and people are trying to figure out what is the sort of constitution you know that's gonna you know operate like help this place operate A lot of people are making a lot of statements about what they want Blue Sky to be and what they don't want it to be right now.

One thing that I think is sort of interesting, again, from my very narrow perspective on this, but as somebody who jumped on this, like, you know, however long ago and kind of maintained a, you know, a somewhat casual interest. How's your Mastodon account doing? Yeah, exactly. Like, I jumped on that, too. And that, it was just like, it was very. I started a Dinosaur Jr. account. So complicated. but um it's interesting you might think that you would have an attitude of like i was here first or like either bragging rights or even like a cantankerous sort of i you know when i was in college i lived just off campus i mean just like literally a road separated me from campus but it was off campus housing and i would spend summers there in my little tiny junky studio So I am going somewhere with this.

This was the apartment that you were using a bench from your minivan as a seat.

Of course. Underneath my elevated bunk bed. Yes, exactly. That at one point I was sitting on that bench and trying to open a bottle of ketchup, and it slipped out from between my legs.

I was not going to bring that up.

And it shot ketchup directly up to hit the underside of the bed. So if you were later on sitting in that seat, let's say you're a guest of mine, and you were to look up, you would see some really, really disturbing red and brown marks.

If you had someone over and you were pitching woo. Yes, exactly. Who'd have thunk, Andrew, that that feral young man would one day be co-hosting a cleaning podcast?

Yeah, good point. It was tidy, just very cramped. But anyway, I was just going to say that there is a sort of, there is a sense, a misguided sense of sort of ownership when you're in a place like a college town during the summer when hardly anybody is there and you know by you know month two of the summer it's just become normal and you go to get your burrito at the burrito shop you don't have to wait long and whatever and then when all the other students and i remember i was also a student these weren't like i hadn't like these damn college kids damn college kids coming which i am part of the cohort ruining everything it was so nice here in july you know uh i it's like the opposite with blue sky because blue sky was fine but having a social media site where there is not a lot of society doesn't do you a lot of good either you know exactly the people and so i would still find myself sometimes going over to twitter to see what the people were saying about the mariners like during and i hated myself for doing and i wasn't engaging there but during a mariners game when you're just feeling like really frustrated or having your feelings about your whatever you're a fan of and then you would like you you go to these social media sites to see other people maybe kind of grousing about it or being funny about it you know and and you find your community

And like early, early on, I remember kind of being, you know, me and a few other Mariners fans on Blue Sky trying to band together. But the conversation was often it was often where are the other Mariners fans? There is a Simpsons joke where I believe it's a flashback and you just see somebody using a ham radio and all they're doing is tapping out. I have a ham radio. And I think about that all the time. It was like Blue Sky Mariners. Hey, the only conversation about the Mariners on Blue Sky is where are all the other Mariners fans on Blue Sky? And now people are, again, creating these starter packs with which I have or into which I've been swept up. And so now there's just like this huge Mariners community. And so already there's more hot stove league talk than there was during the regular season on here. So anyway, it's kind of the opposite of being like, what are all these college students doing back here at this college? It's like, oh, it's nice. We have people to talk to now.

Would you say that you're true to the blue sky?

Is that? I would. You can't say that while I'm drinking coffee, but yes, I would say that. An accurate description? I would. True to the blue sky.

I have many thoughts about my relationship with the Seattle Mariners baseball team, Andrew. yesterday before we had a tbtb meeting i was on my typical kind of grievance tour regarding the teams in baseball that do well that have these enormous payrolls and then the teams that don't do as well like the mariners and etc etc but i i would have said to you and it would have been you know hasty and and and rash of me but like at the end of last season when the mariners once again i felt like their owners didn't want to spend money to make a good team because they make money regardless and there's as much money to be made in having a mediocre team and splitting up the revenue of the league and the tv money as there is in spending a bunch of money and trying to win i would have just said like i just don't i just don't think i can do it anymore with these mariners and again i don't know if it's a reaction to the election or the weather like maybe i just want it to be may all of a sudden i want it to be may 2029 it's really what i want it to be but like i'm the first few stories i saw in the seattle times about like are the mariners in the running for such and such player out of japan or whatever and i was just like enough already but now i'm kind of like well are they in the running like i feel i it's just it's such a dysfunctional relationship because it generally ends with me being like i hate the ownership of this team i'm done with baseball and then it just i don't know if it's like you know having a baby where your body releases a bunch of like uh you know uh i think it's oxytocin or these good feeling sort of hormones so that you forget how bad it was so then you will have another baby potentially that's like me with the with these mariners i feel myself already kind of intrigued about next season then there's absolutely no reason for me to feel that way well yeah and again everything

that i i told you when we dialed up today i told you i was just sort of in a very grousey mood because of all of the just the the barrage of bad news related yeah by the way i'm really sorry like

what a tone-deaf thing you we got on the line i said how you doing you were like i'm okay and i was like just okay and you were like well yeah the i mean you didn't say it in a oh i wasn't trying to be snarky i just know you weren't being snarky but it's like of course you're just okay we all just okay is an amazing accomplishment considering the circumstances but it's like i was like why would you be just okay on this fine thursday my friend i just uh i have 200 followers

on blue sky have you seen that well i can't come in to every show or every day and this is what and again like i can't have a conversation about the mariners without talking about the president elect right like it's just it's all intertwined and so i don't want to go too far down this road But yeah, like I things have sucked since election night. But like I was just kind of I was like, there's going to be this time when there's going to be a barrage of just like every 30 to 60 to 90 minutes. I'm going to have another update from The New York Times and The Washington Post on my phone and I'm going to hesitate before I read it. And then I'm going to look down and I'm going to read it and it's going to make me sick to my stomach and I'm going to start fighting with all these hypocrites in my head about. And then I'm going to spiral for the rest of the day, just shadowboxing, arguing with people who I believe probably voted against their own interests and against the country's interests and the hypocrisy therein of the choices by this administration based on the things people say who pretend to have values yet voted these people in the office. So I can't do that for another four years. And when I think back to the first administration, it was like, and I know I always use this analogy of just like a computer that is somewhat on the fritz and the fan is never shutting off, whether it's because the computer's too hot or the sensors are off and the fan is confused, whatever it is, it's just whirring, whirring, whirring away until eventually it starts to sound like it's getting. rickety in there and dust is getting in there maybe even an old pebble like I don't know like and by the time you know 2020 came along there was not much left in my computer fan and I have just been thinking like I don't I don't know how I I don't know how I emotionally get through the next four years without like totally just I know we always do this and some people don't like it but you have to acknowledge our privilege like it is not it is not a barrage of things that are actually coming into my life and my home directly it's me knowing about things that will untangle future you know untangle um benefits for future generations and you know people who are in more vulnerable communities than me right now and it's like but having said that it is just exhausting it's going to be an exhausting four years and finally like the The last, I think, week I've been able to just like maybe drink enough and listen to sports podcasts and like turn away and say eventually the dam is going to break on this stuff and I'm going to have to start like shadow boxing again. But like I'm just trying I was just I was just in this weird avoidance mode for the past several days. And there was just something about waking up today to like just like all of the headlines that broke yesterday. And who knows how this stuff I don't want to get into the appointments and whether or not they'll actually take root or what have you. It's just it's just today was the first day where I almost couldn't get out of bed. I was like, for what? Like, for fucking what? You know, so back to the Mariners. Maybe I need that more than ever. Like, like, I don't know either.

I'm going to take all of my bad energy and it's going to make me anger follow the Mariners. And and I do think we have a friend who a lot of the the negative things he feels about sports actually are stemming from more broader concerns in the world. And that's an interesting psychological thing to look at as well. But like, I don't know. Are the Mariners here to save us with their buffoonery or to drive us even bad here? I'm not exactly sure, but I think I need a lot of baseball content. I think I need a lot of football content. I'm still not into hockey, but maybe this administration will make it happen.

Have you considered downloading Infinite Jest minus the footnotes? How are you doing on that? We've slowed down. Our progress has been somewhat stalled I've re-engaged with the Howard Stern universe It is Coctober Well, it was The part that I'm listening to Yes, a blessed to all who celebrate And so I've been listening to that a lot While I've been sort of working around the house And a little bit of infinite jest But somebody reached out to me I think it might have been listener Charles Who said that there is a version of the audiobook That does have the footnotes like presented while you're listening to and he goes goes because otherwise the year of the depends undergarments will make no sense and i was like way ahead of you brother i have no idea what is going on in the year of the depends undergarments so uh i may try that version and see if it helps somebody else recommended the count of monte cristo that which i know you've

been reading that's funny i am this is something that i always want to talk to you about but i'm embarrassed to bring up because i've never been more in a slog of a book i i mean if somebody tracks this podcast they could tell you to the date when i started reading that book and it was a long time ago luke and i am still not to the 50 mark i'm at 43 are you enjoying it that is a really interesting question i i am in a way but it's a difficult read and i know it sounds like It wouldn't be because it's just like this, you know, swashbuckling, bunkling, this swashbuckling adventure.

Carbunkling revenge fantasy. Do I say swashbunkling funny?

But and so like I loved I really like the beginning of it. It was easy to see sort of, you know, who the characters were and what the plot dynamic was going to be and what the tension was going to be. But it is so long. And it was written, you know, I think in the mid to late 1800s, like kind of after the Napoleonic Wars. And but they're sort of those Napoleonic Wars are still kind of contemporary at the time it was written. And so it forced me to like kind of go back and kind of learn. I was Googling constantly like, well, where are we like, what are these people referring to? And it was written as, I believe, a serialized thing. I don't know if it was in newspapers or what, but like big chunks of the book are written in. they'll just suddenly take a left turn you're like who are all of these who are all these new people and what are their roles in government and why am i googling this and it's like what am i doing but then eventually you start to see how it all pieces together again and then it'll pick up some momentum and you're like yes this is good and then suddenly the scene will shift again and you're like wade now you're making me but i am at a point in the book where it is ticking along and there's been some pretty high drama in a weird, antiquated way. And so I am enjoying it.

He hasn't gone to prison yet?

No, he's gone to prison. He's... he's he's out of prison at this point i mean are we doing spoilers he's um he's uh he's found the treasure and he has now become the count of monte cristo and uh and and now he's seeking vengeance on everybody who put him in prison in the first place which i believe will be uh the the rest of

the the rest of the adventure doesn't he like he sews himself into the shroud of his like cellmate and is thrown into the water and cuts himself out or something? Isn't that what happens?

Yeah, and of course, keep in mind that it wasn't, you know, it was written in French, and so there are, you know, I actually...

I read it in the original French. I know. You're not reading it in French?

Didn't you translate it into Latin? Wasn't that you? For funsies. Yeah, for funsies. You had a free Saturday, I believe, and you were just like...

Yeah.

Yeah, so I was just going to say that the, so like kind of the way things are translated might be slightly different in the book I was reading. I don't know that it was necessarily a shroud. It might have been. But yeah, that's essentially it. He meets an abbey in prison who everybody thinks is crazy because he keeps on rattling on about some hidden treasure somewhere. And then somehow this abbey is trying to break out of prison. He's an older guy and he's tunneling, but his tunnel goes in the wrong direction and ends up going into... I can't remember the name of the character that the Count of Monte Cristo is before he becomes the Count, but whatever. It's on the tip of my tongue, but I'll destroy the podcast if I try to think of it on the fly. I think it's Nicole Kidman, potentially.

Somehow tunneling feels good in a place like this.

Or I was going to say, God, now I can't think of his name. Who was I so proud of the other day? Not Harvey Danger. What was Anthony Weiner's nom de plume? Oh, Carlos Danger. It was Carlos Danger. Anyway, he accidentally meets this abbey because the tunnel ends up connecting their two cells. And so they become friends. And then he learns about the treasure. And then when the abbey does that. By the way, Edmund Dante. Dante, yes. It was Dante. Thank you. And so, yes. And then when this old guy dies and has told Dante about the prison, or I'm sorry, about the hidden treasure on this island of Monte Cristo, he does. he replaces the body with himself and then he's thrown off of a cliff by the um by the the jailers and into the ocean and then he does somehow escape from that well somebody recommended that to me by

the way i'm realizing i must have read an abridged version in like middle school or high school because there's no way i would have put up with that like obscure french governmental sections i'm i think i the stuff that i read as a kid was just random stuff we had around the house which was just kind of like books that my mom had you know picked up at a fill the bag sale or whatever so there's a lot of um large print readers digest and just random here and there abridged books i must i must have read it an easier version of that because i have no memory of the like complicated uh characters and french government stuff and yeah you know i gotta say you live in

my head a little because sometimes i i mean i read this one sentence to genevieve that literally spanned across a couple of pages it was it was like it was one sentence um and you know it just kept going and going and it's like you just lost the thread of it the whole book isn't like that but i gotta say at times i'm just like i just don't think luke read this version i just like i know that you were very precocious as a reader but like i wasn't that precocious i'm just like and i'm sure that because there is like you can sizzle this down to just the action scenes and And, you know, I had books like that that were probably, yeah, because the prison thing lasts forever, but it's still just the very beginning of the book.

Yeah, I'm now thinking, I might have read a comic book version.

I read a comic book version of the Bible. You had some of those, too, growing up, didn't you? Oh, dude, yeah.

In fact, it's funny because I am, as I'm broadcasting to you, I'm not very far from the town of Longview, Washington, where there was a Christian school. It may still be there. I think it was called Columbia Heights Christian School. and when I was in middle school at a different Christian school in Seattle there was this thing that was like sort of a get together of all of the local Christian schools for basically two days of competition in various ways. One of them was there was a monologue contest which I performed Casey at the Bat. Oh yeah. There's a lot of me reciting poetry there's a lot of me remembering poetry I recited as a child in front of people on the show this week.

Yeah, it started a whole thing on this 10 Slack, by the way. People are really enjoying it. They're sharing the things that they had to memorize in school as kids, the preamble to the Constitution, stuff like that.

So I did a monologue. There was a race, like a two-mile race. There was all these different weird little competitions that you could participate in, and one of them was Bible Bowl.

which was just basically bible trivia and when i tell you andrew that i we won the entire thing and no one on my team answered any questions other than me because i had just finished the cartoon bible which was the perfect way to study for this because i knew all of the broad strokes all the stuff they were asking about you know, Zacchaeus or whatnot like I just, it was the best way for me to get all this information into my brain in pictures, I mean it was some real like memory palace shit going on so I just had I had what, they must have thought that I was like the rain man of the bible but I was just a kid who had just recently read the comic

book bible. What if I told you Luke, that I am on a website called Bible Jeopardy right now. And do you have any Jeopardy music on your end? Always. I would like to, let's see here. So here are your categories, and I know that you can't see them in front of you right now, so it might be hard to keep this all in your brain, but here are your categories that you can choose from. Old Testament, geography in general, complete the verse, Old Testament, who, what, when, why, Old Testament, laws, or people. Those are your categories. Oof. Those all sound tough.

The Old Testament is a toughie. What was the first one?

Let's see. Old Testament 2 is just the first one. I don't know why it's called Old Testament 2. You know, there's people and laws in general geography. I would go with one of those.

I would be terrible with the geography. Let's just try Old Testament.

Let's just trade up Old Testament for 200. Do you want to start at the beginning of the column?

Yeah, I want to be clear. I have not read the cartoon Bible in 40 years.

Old Testament for 200 Who dreamed that the sun and the moon And eleven stars bowed down to him Was it Abraham Isaac Jacob Or Joseph I think it was Joseph You think it was Joseph You are correct The Bible Bowl Hero continues To rack up the point

Joey and that Technicolor dream coat, baby. Would you like

to stick with Old Testament or try another category? Let's try

another category. I think I got out of that one by the skin of my teeth. That's another, by the way, Joseph, that's some real Count of Monte Cristo shit. Oh, is it? Yeah, so Joseph is, I forget exactly why, but he's like cast out. He's thrown in a pit. He goes from being like, for some reason his family, they turn their backs on him. His brothers all really resent him and hate him. And he's in a pit at some point And then he comes back Badder, bigger, badder than ever

Do you want to stick with this category? Yes I don't think you're going to get any wrong But sorry I didn't respond to you there I was looking for my buzzer sound In case I need the buzzer sound I don't think I'm going to need it But I just wanted to have it on standby Let's see here Laws, people What are you looking at here? Sure, let's try that Try laws Oh no, let's try people Let's go with people People for 200. According to Paul, who is the mediator between God and men? The priest, the elder, the deacon, or Jesus Christ? I think Jesus Christ, right? I will tell you. You are correct, my friend. Why did I even... I'm getting back into heaven, Andrew. Why did I even look for that buzzer? That was such a... It was like a false idol I was looking for over there. Yes. I'm going to melt that down. Let's try one more. Let's do people. You're getting nervous? I am. What story in the New Testament features all three persons of the Trinity? Whoa.

God in three persons, blessed Trinity.

I didn't know that they ever showed. I didn't know that they were ever on screen all at the same time, but here you go. Was it during Jesus' crucifixion?

I thought that God was just Jesus without his glasses on.

I thought God was one of us, like a stranger on the bus. Jesus steps into a phone booth, and all of a sudden, God's here. All right, it was a Jesus' crucifixion, Jesus' appearance to the disciples in the upper room. Oh. Jesus' ascension, or Jesus' baptism. Okay. I don't know what the upper room is. In the upper room... That sounds fun. What are they doing up there?

The upper room is where the whole idea of speaking in tongues got started. Oh. Because they were praying, and after Jesus was crucified, all of these Christians and the apostles and stuff got together in the upper room, and they were just, like, praying and praying and praying, and then the Holy Spirit... Actually, it is probably the upper room. Well, I know the Holy Spirit's there. The Holy Spirit was there because that's... Then everyone started speaking in tongues.

And you know Jesus is there because it's called Jesus is a... appearance yeah but then was god there or had he gone out for a pack of smoke i'm gonna go

upper room i'm gonna go up a room i want you to get this right i need this so bad on this morning we can really use a win here i can really use a win here i'm so sorry luke that is incorrect and when i say i'm sorry i mean i'm sorry for the both of us uh the answer was um Jesus' baptism I don't even remember that happening I don't remember it They probably skipped it in the comic book version

You know The church that I went to It was quite controversial Not the speaking in tongues Everybody was doing it But the question of whether or not Someone should translate The speaking in tongues that had occurred

Translate it like kind of Interpret it

Interpret it, because there is a certain school of thought that when somebody is speaking in tongues, that is a direct line between them and God, and it is not to be understood or deciphered or interpreted by other human men. But then sometimes somebody would stand up and they would be speaking in tongues for a long time, and then somebody else would stand up and they would give a sing-songy kind of thing that was on their heart about God that was what they thought they had heard in the tongues that were being spoken. And then later, my dad would have to take them aside and go, it's not really biblical. Oh, really? Yeah, because a lot of stuff went down in that church. We had a guy, we had a lot of folks that were, I think, struggling with mental health issues.

Can you, before you tell the specific story, can you explain that a little bit more? So you have one person who's speaking in tongues, you said, and that's fine. That was not, nobody was taken aside for that.

Nobody's in trouble for that.

It was somebody who then would sort of respond in a way that didn't, It sounds like I'm judging your dad here. I'm trying to be respectful. I'm trying to be respectful. But the other person also thought they were speaking in tongues, but it just was sort of it didn't hit the ears right. And so...

No, they weren't speaking. The other person would be using, like, the English language to more or less interpret what the other person had said in their jib-jab.

You're trying to be respectful, too. I see. Okay, gotcha.

So one person would get up and do their jib-jab, and then another person would stand up and speak in English, kind of saying, like, this is what the Lord is saying to us. Right. By way of what you just heard, shidiakodia, shidiakodia, shidiakodia, which, by the way, that's Tim Nabokowski. I've mentioned this before. My sisters and I could play Name That Tune with How People Spoke in Tongues. Oh, my God. Because it turns out it's really hard for your brain to make up new and varied syllables. so you just tend to get locked into a particular jib-jab. And so we, you know, from being in church so much with these folks, my sisters and I could kind of do impressions of the ways that people spoke in tongues and we could say, oh, that's Darlene Stevenson or whatever.

Would you believe that I just found on the internet a website where I can quiz you as to which of your fellow congressional, what do you call people who are your fellow churchgoers? Congregants. Congregants, I'm going to play a sound for you here, and you tell me which one of your neighbors was making this sound. No, I actually don't have that. This is just a Star Trek language website I'm on. Type in Shedia Kodia, Shedia Kodia. Now, are you using that as an example because that's specifically what one person in your specific church would always kind of fall back on?

that would be their fallback and and everybody had their kind of particular little you know thing that they would fall back to because again i mean look i don't know where our listeners fall on the sort of we certainly have plenty of people who identify as christian and are people of faith i don't know where they come down on like speaking in tongues but i mean allegedly you have no control over what's going on but realistically you still kind of got to make up the leg make up the sounds right and it's very hard to like just make up but like a totally new and varied and vibrant and ever-changing pattern of sounds you just end up going shidi akoria shidi akoria shidi akoria

well i mean you might remember an era of tbtl when we were very into the art of scatting and like i think there's a pretty good example you know like you and i would sometimes we'd like goof around and we would start to scat or something and you very quickly realize how

hard it is to scat like on the fly unless you're like you say scat man's world would you just say would you say that jesus was just the original scat man i would i well i am i have a new assignment for my adobe illustrator class a t-shirt and lo i am calling out from scatland calling out around the world scat man's world

all right let's thanks donors these wonderful generous folks are keeping tbtl rolling with their i i can't stress this enough completely voluntary financial support um this is uh this is just because these folks are good people and they like the show and they want the show to keep existing and they are donating and they are named kristin corley of wilmington north carolina thank you kristin appreciate you Michael J. Smith in University Place, Washington.

This is interesting. Oh, no, no, we've talked about this before. Because for a second, I always think University Place. I think that's somewhere here in Seattle near the university. But no, no, University Place is in a different part of the state.

It's near Tacoma, and I think it is. I think I might have been wrong about this last time. I think it's near the University of Puget Sound.

Yes, yes, I believe you were correct on that. I'll double check. Beautiful spot. Yeah, yeah, beautiful.

And also, the place, if I remember right, I think it was the University Place Marching Band that won our TBTL Marching Band contest.

Oh, cool. Way back in the day.

Those were many, many years ago. That's cool. Which actually went surprisingly well, considering we had no listeners. But I guess we just had a lot of band leaders.

Maybe that's how you got all your listeners.

That was our demo or something. We put it out there. We were like, have your high school marching band re-record Catch My Disease. And I feel like we got like 10 recordings of high school bands playing Catch My Disease. It was very gratifying. Thanks also to Alice Davey in Seattle, Washington.

Thank you, Alice. It's a different spelling for Alice. It is, yeah. You know, I used to volunteer with a woman who lives in Seattle, Washington, whose name was Alice Davies. But I think Alice was spelled differently. For a split second, I thought, could this be my friend Alice Davey changing her name just a little bit to donate to TVTL but not feeling embarrassed when she sees me in person? But no, I think this might be a different Alice Davey. I mean, both names are different now that I suss it out.

I'd say both names being different leads us down a different road of inquiry. Thanks also to Laurel Humphrey, who's in Burien, Washington. I feel like we've been getting a lot of Burien action lately, Andrew.

We have. Now, I know somebody in Burien whose name is Kate Rosenthal. Do you think that this could be Kate Rosenthal? Yes. This is actually Kate.

Donating under the name Laurel Humphrey. Yes. That one is a slam dunk.

That's a slam dunk. Thank you, Laurel.

Look who it is. It's Casey Anderson from Boise, Idaho.

Hey, Casey.

Casey of the shelf?

The bench? The bench. The bench on the bench. The bench on the bench.

that's right we love we love these folks uh when we when we road tripped through idaho we stayed with them um thanks casey really nice to see your name on the list uh was casey the one with the

with the adorable bulldog yes this whole thing has been very awkward for me because i want to shout out that bulldog so well and casey will write in and give us updates on the bulldog and i fell in love with that dog and i still love that dog but i'm blanking on the dog's name right now and it is absolutely killing me. It's not Edna, although now I want a dog named Edna. I'm not going to lie to you. That's such a good name. Casey, I am so sorry I'm forgetting. It's not Donna. I'm forgetting the dog's name, and I feel terrible about that. I'm sorry, but thank you for donating.

Yeah, thanks, Casey. And then thanks to Lynn Schneider, who's in Olympia, Washington. Again, just up the Interstate 5 from me. Lynn, I'll say hi to you next time I'm swinging through that Arby's in Lacey. Nice. Okay. I've told this story a million times, but when I had what was a truly miserable job for me, which was producing conservative talk radio in the afternoons, we used to do the show live from Olympia during the legislative session. what a different time for content like like this was afternoon drive and we're just like talking about like house bill whatever whatever that you know may or may not even actually get through the like washington state legislature like incredibly boring stuff um but when the week was over i would because we would stay at this really ratty motel in olympia and anyway i'd jump in my car be driving up to go get my kid i'd be playing uh the bends by radiohead on my cd player and i would swing through that arby's and lacy and get a big montana and just sit in traffic for the next two hours going home but feeling just absolutely great great so happy to be done with that place great and

gassy and by the way marge marge the bulldog i gotta get that hey you know edna was not i knew

And it was kind of a woman's name, maybe a woman of a certain age's kind of name.

Yes, kind of a classic name from a certain era. Marge. I'm so embarrassed that I forgot that, but I am also glad that I eventually landed there.

Well, thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL happen today. just could not do this without you hello and welcome to top story it's actually very fitting we were talking about marge the bulldog because uh the top story that i almost got to yesterday involves a bulldog named baby dog who belongs to an incoming uh republican senator uh from west virginia named jim justice uh and he has been taking this bulldog around with him everywhere it's like his best little pal by the way also i don't know much about jim justice but i'm seeing west virginia i'm seeing an r after his name i'm not feeling i'm slouching i'm not handling this well like i don't know much about the guy i do love this dog though i do love this baby dog which he apparently would bring on all of his campaign stops and everywhere he showed up at the senate recently and was told you can't bring the dog onto the floor of the Senate unless it's a full-on

service dog. Does this dog have its own little chair? Did I see that photo somewhere or was it

just sitting in a human chair? It's a human chair but I think it's fairly typical for them to set up a human chair for baby dog to just sit in at like you know the debate or something which kind of no offense it seems like a home field advantage if you're allowed to bring an adorable bulldog with you to any debate yeah yeah i agree but what it had me thinking was actually i'm thinking about somebody named kirk herb street this week because kirk herb street is a college football analyst actually he also i think he does the thursday night games on amazon now so he he's not he used to be for a long time i think mostly college football but uh but he's now kind of branching out he had this dog named ben who was just an absolute sweetheart and he brought this dog ben everywhere with him and in fact the teams would make press passes for the dog and he just was inseparable uh with this with this dog he just absolutely loved this dog so much and ben passed away sadly um and it was it was surprisingly emotional for like the world of college football watchers like it was yeah it was like last weekend was sort of like flags at half staff for kirk herb street's dog ben oh man don't you look at pictures of him what a good boy what do you think

of the name baby dog i also you know the name is what is it justice what is the um jim justice you know jim justice has a dog what is that dog's name i'm not going with baby dog you know i actually

like that yeah that's like like a little a little off-brand his name you know it's not like he's got

a german shepherd named tonka you know exactly some shit thank you for yeah that's what i was talking about or or something even maybe even more explicitly about freedom or violence exactly

the dog's name is just an eagle shrieking but uh in in watching the all of the folks that were kind of um honoring the memory of kirk herb Street's dog I actually wasn't I don't watch a ton of college football I wasn't up on the fact that he would bring this dog everywhere but then when the dog passed away I was seeing all of this you know content of like how close he had been with this dog and how everybody loved the dog and these really cute pictures of him just like standing at midfield during warm-ups and the dog is just splayed out on its back and he's just like rubbing the dog's belly like they're in their yard but they're at like the 50 yard line of a Michigan Ohio State game or something and I just loved that everybody was chill about it and it made me for a moment think I don't know could I become a brings his dog everywhere with him guy because I can't be a dog guy right now because I travel too much but if I was a brings his dog with him everywhere guy maybe that could work out I don't know I really I told you we've been kind of intermittently watching Becca's mom's dog Gigi and like it's so fun like i just really like you know usually it's like if you live in an apartment you got a dog and the the act of walking the dog is kind of a pain it's kind of like uh i did it last time can you do it or whatever i just this built-in thing of first of all just having a little buddy and then how excited gg gets when i grab the leash and then we go walking around the neighborhood and you know it's nighttime and everyone's apartments are lit up and there's good smells of people making dinner and stuff and it's just and everyone else is out with their dogs doing the same thing I really like being, you know, a person who has a dog in their life, but it does not work with my schedule unless I become a Jim Justice type or a Kirk Herbstreet guy, a brings dog everywhere dude.

How about this? How about we get you an ant farm that you take everywhere first? See how you do it.

I put it in the overhead of the plane and it shatters and they have to divert the flight because there's thousands of ants.

crawling into the circuitry as you know i've never um really had a dog as a kid there were a couple of dogs that kind of came into our life you would be a very very good dog yeah and one of the reasons i mean it's kind of funny it's like one of the reasons i don't have a dog is because i i would worry about not being a good enough dog meanwhile i've had six dogs none of them speak to me but i wonder i don't know i don't know if i can kind of translate this or or why i'm even bringing it up now but you sort of talk about these moments where a dog is just like you know totally like in the i have so much respect for people who bring um their dogs everywhere with them and the dogs by nature usually are so well behaved because they don't have the separation anxiety because clearly if you're somebody who's doing this in a lot of cases i'm not saying every case i'm sure that people are probably thinking of some pain in the ass dog that their cousin has or something but I just think that in so many cases, the people who have their dogs with them at almost all times have really, really good dogs because those dogs are looked after in a proper way.

And they don't like they're used to being around.

They're used to be around people. And it's just it's and I have so much respect for that. And I always think like if I had a dog, I don't know that I would be as kind of disciplined as a dog owner should be to kind of care for it in the proper way. Who knows? But there is something that I was trying to put my emotions into words the other day because a listener of ours, Taylor, it wasn't her cat, but I believe it was somebody in her family's cat, like maybe her parents or somebody. And she was close to this cat and loved this cat. And this cat loved her. And the cat passed away recently. And I was just, like, texting back and forth on Instagram with her just saying, like, there's something that is so hard to put into words. But the feeling that I get when an animal puts their trust in me. like I don't have any dogs right now but like sometimes like I spend an inordinate amount of time like worrying if if not worrying but either like sometimes worrying but often um maybe appreciating the fact that I have this little bingo cat who actually does trust me like I worry about him getting outside because he'll just roll off a tree limb and expect me to catch him even if I'm not there you know what I mean and like there's something congrats you fully bubble wrapped this pet right no i've no survival he's got he never had any survival skills we got to keep him inside but like i also and i told taylor this too like but i'm also like the wrong person to ask about stuff like this because i fall in love if a dog accidentally stands on my foot for like five seconds i'm like this dog trusts me enough to stand on my foot we are fully fully bonded now and then somebody has to say sir please leave the pet store this is not how this works well i said

yesterday on the show that this could get potentially controversial because there is the whole subject of like service dogs versus therapy dogs versus just a regular dog that you throw some vest on that you got it off of amazon and uh you know there are people who need service dogs um you know there are people who have physical limitations the dogs can really help with there's people that have emotional issues the dogs allegedly help with some of that gets a little harder to pin down in my opinion i think you know i i think that there is a certain segment of the population who just likes having their dog with them and by the way if your dog is chill i love you having your dog with you i don't have a problem with it but like the line between because i was thinking could i make the could i make the argument that i actually need to start bringing a dog around with me for therapeutic reasons and the truthful answer is no I can't make that argument but also I would be probably less sad if I had a dog with me and you could probably

I don't know much about this but like to me I think there's a pretty there's a pretty I think comparable analog between sort of like getting and again I am like you I'm not saying that every dog that is a emotional service dog is some sort of fraud I don't I don't believe that but it's a little bit like the medical marijuana laws of the 2010s or whatever before like recreational marijuana was all over the place like i got a recreation or i got a um i'm sorry i got a medical marijuana card when i was in la because it wasn't recreationally legal there at the time and like i went in and i was like i'm i was really stressed but like did i need it medically did i need a prescription and did it really matter and did this doctor in the back of the shop did she it was so i don't know if i've ever even told you that i feel like i must have told you that story at some point like I'm because I'm so not good at like lying or even gilding the lily that much I was just kind of like and I but I also was going through a tough time in LA but I remember just going like I think I might be having panic attacks and she's like looked at like a character in a in a sitcom she looked over her glasses at me and said you would know if you're having panic attacks and I remember having this moment of being like am I going to be the one guy in America who is denied a medical marijuana card you can't get rubber stamped Because I can't, like in the back of this just like, you know, shitty one story building, I can't even remember what it was not in a necessarily nice.

part of town i'm just like am i gonna be the one mill person who is just gonna be like no i guess she said i should just take some aspirin like anyway i'm sure that if i'm sure that if you go to the right person and i'm not accusing everybody of doing this but i'm sure if you go to the right person and you explain your mental situation almost anybody could probably get a some sort of a service permit i'm guessing therapy therapy which is not service therapy that's right because

that was the thing i started googling around what dogs make the best service dogs and it's like labs are really good because they're just so friendly and i think they're very food motivated like a dog that is very food motivated can be great because you can train them really well that you've got something that they want um german shepherds also apparently very good for that stuff but then of course because i'm me i feel like if i if and when i eventually do get another dog which is probably still going to be way down the road i would like to try to get a dog that doesn't shed a ton because I absolutely adored Rudy. Everybody knows that. Rudy was my little ride-or-die homie, but so much of my life in Bellingham was trying to mitigate Rudy's shedding. So I wouldn't mind having less of that go on. So then I'm Googling, do golden doodles make good therapy dogs? And it turns out, Andrew, there are many golden doodle breeders that would love to tell you that they make just fine therapy dogs.

I believe that, though. they are they are notoriously like really like i think i how do i say this easily trained that doesn't sound fair but like a very trainable dog they they don't they have a reputation for just

being very good companions and very yeah i think that the i think the idea of those kind of doodles is you know uh poodles don't shed and poodles are very smart and uh generally speaking uh and then you have the real friendliness of like a golden retriever or a lab but you're getting a less sheddy version of them and maybe a little bit smarter version. But just the names of these breeders are crazy. There was one called Pride and Prejudoodles which I don't even think works conceptually.

Pride and Prejudoodles.

Pride and Prejudoodles.

Why? I don't know.

I do not know. But that jumped out at me. Pride and Prejudoodles.

Oh, my God.

But the good news is I'm not going to do this. You know what? Honestly, mostly, well, two reasons. One, because I know the listeners will judge me so harsh if I go get a dog right now, which would be reasonable. Two, I think Becca would be mad at me because I think if I get a dog, if she or I get a dog, I think she probably would like it to be we get a dog kind of thing. not i you know go continue my kirk herb street parapatetic ways with my with my uh german shepherd named cody or whatever um so uh i'm probably not going to get a dog in the short term but i was heartened to know that if i do need to get a uh a golden doodle of some kind pride and prejudice has me covered i saw something else by the way that made me think of you the other day andrew it's another questionable hair salon pun uh becca and i were driving around we went to the costco over the weekend and we were out i don't even know what part maybe we were in like tiger or something on the outskirts of portland try this one out shears ahead

shears ahead one word ahead one word i don't um here's the deal i can't feign ignorance here i did see this in the show sheet so you know i've been somewhat emotionally prepared for this to come up in the topic but like it just i've been chewing on it like it just doesn't and this is exactly the perfect example of something that like is pun adjacent and it's always hair cutteries whether they're salons or barbers but usually more main event main attraction just like yeah main is spelled like the and that's so i guess but it's also do you have a main are you a horse

Are you a centaur?

No. Do horses have manes? Oh, yeah, yeah. I always think of...

Horses have manes, but centaurs don't, I think, because that part's human.

Lions have manes. That's for danger. So much centaur talk today. More than usual, I would say. Yeah. Six limbs is just so many limbs.

Shears a head, though, is like, I guess it's describing what happens when you go in. Your head is sheared. But that sounds very like what a guy in New Zealand is doing to a flock of sheep shearing them.

But it doesn't translate to anything else either, though. Like, if it was like, if shears ahead was like an expression, then you'd be like, oh, yeah, it's a little bit weird, but we can turn that into like a double meaning. But it doesn't have a double meaning. It has a single meaning, which is we're using shears to cut hair off of your head. But it sounds like you're playing off of some common idiom or expression, but you're not. Like, what are they playing off of? it's confounding

I am happy to announce it is in Tigard, Oregon, Andrew I was correct with that, so that's kind of a W and I was looking for some reviews, doesn't look like there are any Yelp reviews yet for Shears Ahead there are some for other like laser hair removal and wellness places and other things there are some reviews, which I won't read because that's unrelated to this topic but yeah, Shears Ahead is in Tigard, Oregon and it is you're right it's like it's not it's not something it's not like saying what like i don't know up up and away or right right right yeah a thing that we're that we all kind of have heard someone say and now we've modified it to be about a haircut it's it's just kind of a uh and again why why it is that the the hair salons uh are obsessed with these weird there was another one i gotta keep writing these down because there was one that i saw a couple months ago that i literally i gotta tell andrew about this and then i didn't write it down and of course

it whiffed right out of my brain well i will say that like if you had a golden doodle um like breeding area and you wanted to call it pup pup in a way like that would see that would make sense if you want to go up up and away thing and i was looking to see if there are other goofy uh names of golden doodle breeders um and i didn't see any like that are really out there some other things that sort of sound like again pun adjacent but i'm not sure what they're going for but there is one in indiana and maybe i'm being too dark here but it's called sunshine acres and that does not sound like a place that is the beginning of a dog's life right no that sounds like where you told your kids the dog has gone that's exactly what i was going to say right or older dogs that are just like ready to like sort of live out the rest of their days in retirement they can go out to sunshine acres and you know they can be wheeled around in small little doggy chairs or whatever But like it just does not sound like a place where you're raising pups.

We're hoping that Alex Jones ends up at Sunshine Acres. He, of course, the truly unhinged and I would say dangerous provocateur from Info Wars and things like that. I will say that they have an Alex Jones impersonator on the Howard Stern show. Andrew, that is flawless. it's and he can just riff for i think it's this guy named steven nowicki actually who's doing it he can just riff as alex jones and the reptilian lizard people and like just talking all of the crazy cockamamie shit that alex jones says uh-huh like he can just he can just like right off the top of his head just like bring it it's pretty funny what's the what's you you attributed that

to a comedian who i think you've mentioned twice today now although one of them might have been

off air who did you attribute that to oh he's a producer i think it's a guy named steve nowiki who works on the howard stern okay um who's a well one of their producers i see um i don't know why it was important for me to say who i think does the alex jones impression but um but anyway uh obviously alex jones lied about uh the sandy hook uh shooting uh the the horrible massacre there and uh you know said that the didn't happen and that the people that uh said that or the people who lost their children were hired actors or crisis actors or whatever just a bunch of super hurtful stuff and uh these families were actually able to sue him and he's on the hook for like uh it's like 1.5 billion dollars or something which is a truly stunning number um and they finally managed to actually take away info wars from him so he lost the website he lost the studios there was a there was a um like an auction for it and of all people the onion bought it which is really interesting to me like this was the quote from the ceo of the onion the onion is proud to acquire info wars and we look forward to continuing its storied tradition of scaring the site's users with lies until they folk fork over their cold hard cash said onion ceo ben collins in the statement like i don't really understand what the onion wants with info wars.com um but i'm glad they have it now um but but what do you think of that i don't know if you and i were

reading the same source material on this but i saw this headline this morning and i was reading it a little bit and there were a couple of things that stood out to me one the cinematic nature and by the way i don't think i was reading this in like the post or something i think this was a pretty straightforward article describing the situation but it had one or two lines in there about like alex jones broadcasting from the studios today in this cinematic way which of course plays to his strengths and his i guess goals anyway but like saying like they're literally in the building right now and like and it's kind of like this idea that there's almost a physical takeover which maybe maybe i'm playing into his hands by by retelling that part of it but it certainly was sort of like a shocking confusing thing to sort of to imagine hearkening back to like a some sort of a a wild and crazy pirate radio movie from the 90s or something

Something like that, which I think some real pump up the volume. Sure. Yeah, there is that going on. But also I did see not to be a no fun Nick, but I did see something that like there are some of his lawyers or something are going to be trying to stop the sale. I hope they're unsuccessful in doing that because it sounds like what he was trying to do was he was trying to get his wealthy, you know, followers to put together money to like win the bid themselves so that he because he's like, I'm going on. I'm going to, you know, they can they can shut me down, but they can't make me shut up. I'll continue to say ridiculously terrible things. And I would like to do it still under the banner of Infowars. And if somebody who is on my side, my side can buy this, then, you know, we can collaborate or whatever. So I just really hope that that doesn't happen. I hope that the Onion or I really just hope that the Onion is able to hang on to it.

Well, I bet they will. I mean, I think he's, I mean, I think most of what he's done legally is just to delay the inevitable, which is that they need to take all this stuff away. And also, I don't, I'm glad that they're taking, I mean, I want them to take away any way that he could possibly get his, again, very dangerous message out to people. But on the other hand, I do feel like it is kind of like he'll just start something called like information wars and then do the same thing. and you know i'm using i don't know maybe maybe a thousand dollars worth of equipment right now to talk to you and uh could basically be doing that same you know alex jones style of show with this equipment probably so like i don't really know what stops him from just opening up a new shop like right i wonder how many if there's people that go to his stupid info wars who are when he moves somewhere else if they won't figure out how to just go to the new place he's doing

his new show from or his his show from but obviously like you and i just do this and we have not like sort of expanded out into other areas of media very much no offense to the hey dummies videos or whatever but like what we do is pretty self-contained you can see somebody like him with so many different platforms and and also i mean just the the glossiness of the studios or whatever i'm sure is a more professional sort of deal like i just sort of feel like as these things sort of get shut down or even people who are not necessarily scandalous you and i have known people who have had, like, radio shows with them, they have to turn them into podcasts or whatever. It's just sort of, like, it's sort of death by a thousand cuts a little bit, too. You know, he's just, even if he has some crazy people who are listening to him, he is certainly not going to return to that level of power and influence that I think he once had. Right.

I mean, like, again, I was saying how Blue Sky feels like maybe a small W in the world. This feels like another small W in the world. Like, the shrinking of Alex Jones. Because he was trying to get Roger Stone to do something for him, apparently. He had Steve Bannon on his show. And, like, I mean, I would be unsurprised to hear that, like, Trump tries to, like, swoop in and do some bullshit with this, which I guess he hasn't or, you know, hasn't yet. Seriously. FCC or whatever. But, like, just any time, it just has felt, I'm just going back to treading the same territory that we've already done today and this whole week. But like just feels like the worst people are having the best week. And when one of the worst people has a bad week and they take away his stupid website, that feels like at least something good happened. At least something bad happened to a bad person, which is all you can hope for in this world.

Oh, man, I forgot to tell you, Luke, my worst nightmare happened yesterday.

Well, not my worst TBTL nightmare, but adjacent to my worst nightmare. Do you remember what happened at the very end of the show? It's okay if you don't. This isn't the Bible trivia game. But do you remember what happened at the very, very, very end of the show yesterday when I tried to play some extra little tape? Yes. We had made a joke about the Miller Lite. It is both commercials. And so I played one on the fly as a little like kind of Easter egg audio bite at the end of the show. but it cut off early and then i said to you oh shoot i'll find a better one later or whatever apparently i left that little bit of conversation in the show i got a text message yesterday was a weird day anyway because there was some sort of issue going on with our um our our podcast support uh company libs in and so our podcast went out late anyway and then around i don't know eight o'clock nine o'clock at night i got a text message from somebody who said like thanks so much for leaving that in the end of the show that was so cool to hear you guys talking and i was like no and like i ran into my studio and i think a little flame a little flames and smoke shot up under my heels as i came in here but the thing is like once somebody has already heard it it means especially for our listeners who i think like the show probably downloads automatically even before they listen to it on their phones like i think i did i fixed it and i re-uploaded the file but i still think that it's too little too late most people will hear that now my worst nightmare would be you know a hot mic moment where i actually say something that i don't want broadcast like you know some of my just deep-seated deep-seated toxic opinions about people um but uh luckily it was pretty innocuous but just that feeling luke uh and i don't think i think you were protected i don't i think you just laughed or chuckled or something i think i said something like oh

I can't believe it. I was like, oh, it cuts off right before the thing we were specifically referencing. Yeah. Which was Luke Wilson saying, like, thanks for the support or whatever.

And honestly, I think I said that and you just sort of, like, chuckled. So, like, you were very well protected in this case. But, my God, those moments of, like, me running from one room into the other just thinking, what did I leave on? Now, keep in mind, this person did not text me and say, are you sure you want to leave that in the show? That's pretty racy content. You know what I mean? I had a feeling it was innocuous enough, but I did not like that feeling, so we are going to edit carefully today.

It's just so funny to me, also, that this show is so flipping casual already. You and I, just talking to each other, clearly no particular focus on being entertaining, and yet there is an even less entertaining level of conversation that we can have when we're not, quote-unquote, on. Like, this is us being on.

What part of I drew a bead do you not find entertaining? You don't think that was my best entertainment material to start the show? I thought it was good. I'll send you a picture of that fox.

By the way, my dog's new name is.

Oh, that was actually very realistic sounding. What is that? Is that a sound effect or is that you recording a dog?

Yeah, this is the preloaded. I did this last week on the birthdays. These are just like preloaded sound effects on the sound program that I use. It's a goat. That's a loud one. Yeah, sorry.

Levels there. This is a... Meow. Still pretty loud. All right, all right, all right. Calm down. All right, let's fix it in post. Michelle says, happy Blur's Day to my best friend, Aaron. From Tiger Walls to starting parties, life is so much more fun with you in it. Hope this year is the best one yet. Happy Blur's Day, Aaron. That one is tough for me, because I thought I was Michelle's best friend. I guess it's Aaron. Happy Blur's Day, Aaron. Christian in Portland says, rip-dity-lip-dip-dip, happy Blur's Day to listener Brian in Portland, my TBTL daddy. Oh, we know, Brian. We certainly do. His in-person delivery of the, they's trying to say I was drunk drop, got me to start listening to the show in the first place. And although we don't see each other much these days, it's always fun when we do. I recorded two of my own albums with Brian, and he's a pleasure to work with. Musician 10 should jump on the chance to record with him. Also, Brian, let's get lunch.

Brian is the goat, if you will, of Portland music production, pedal steel, you name it. Brian's got you covered. He's done so much cool stuff for our show, too.

To my dear Cuz10 Melissa, I hope your Blur's Day is the best Blur's Day. We should get together soon to celebrate. I wonder if Luke and Andrew might have advice on a good place to go in Ballard, TTFN, Love, Cuz10, Karen, and Kenmore. Hey, Karen. Happy Blur's Day, Melissa.

Well, you've got your place rough and tumble that you always seem to be going through. You know what?

I would highly recommend that. Rough and tumble.

Thank you, Luke. I don't, I'm, you know, I'm out of touch with, oh, you know what? That's not true. I love you. I love the place called Stoneburner.

Oh, yeah.

In Ballard. That's part of the Ballard Hotel. It is, if that restaurant is still there, I really hope it is. That place is phenomenal.

This is not a place to begin, but if your night gets a little bit more grungy, you know what's open again post-pandemic is, And I think it's been open for a little bit, but the Ballard Smoke Shop is open again. It's under new ownership now, so they don't have pull tabs anymore. And there's a lot more. I think you used to have to get food on the diner side, but now they have a lot. It looks like they maybe have, I don't know, updated the menu or something because a lot of people were like kind of sitting at the bar eating some really good looking burgers.

But that's a little bit more of a dive bar experience. But I do love the smokehouse. I'm sorry, the smoke shop. And I'm glad that it's still there in Ballard. And finally, from our pal Corinne to our pal Lydia, her daughter. Corinne says, happy Blur's Day to my amazing firstborn Lydia. Your dad and I were dumb kids who were basically just experimenting on you. Like Krieger. But somehow you turned out.

But somehow. But somehow you turned out to be one of the, in my head, I was trying so hard to think of a Krieger line, and everything that came into my head, I was like, nope, that is not appropriate for the middle of a, for a, for a, absolutely not.

Oh, man. Somehow you turned out to be one of the most multi-talented, brilliant, dynamic, hilarious, and compassionate individuals on the planet. You're also very good at raising wonderful little humans of your own, whom you experiment on. Nah, I added that part. You make life richer and more beautiful for everyone around you, and I'm proud to call you my baby girl. Happy Blur's Day, Lydia. Thank you both for being such tales to the show.

Corinne bought a helicopter. See you later, dummies. See you later, suckers. I'm on my helicopter.

That's right. That's what we got. I don't feel like I turned in my best performance today, Luke. Thank you for putting up with me. I thought it was a great show. Being all over the place.

Especially the stuff that we didn't mean to leave in.

yes exactly we'll highlight that we'll put that on Instagram

alright that's going to do it for today's program but guess what we are going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio so please come spend the time with us now that InfoWars is shut down you gotta listen to something

what if we caught a bunch of InfoWars listeners wow

this is why we're bad at business we didn't even think of that

I did not even consider that we could be selling colloidal silver and other questionable things and making some real dough.

Well, I told you we're working on the merch store, so we'll see.

Yeah, spoiler alert. It's a lot of supplements. All right. Thanks for listening, folks. We'll see you tomorrow. Please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. Bye. Okay, Luke, we got to remember to cut this part out, okay?

I'm just sitting here silently, not getting on the tape. Power out.