Muse

I always get weaseled into getting donuts with my sister. She says, oh, I'll get donuts for us. I say, that sounds fantastic. I get myself all hungry. I forget that she's really overeducated. So she's not looking for the donuts. She's looking for a strong donut lead. She's looking for artisanal donuts, subtle flavors. So Katie shows up with a box. I'm frothing. I'm so hungry. And she opens it. And I see these unrecognizable knickknacks. Oh, Chris, okay. You're going to want to first try the orange basil. Then we have, this is lamb water. This was made with water they were going to give lambs. This one's the old butter donut. This is mezcal panko. You won't like it and neither will I. We need to split the Montana chocolate. This is sourdough spider plant right here. This is lilac kiwi. This flavor is so insane. It almost killed Fran Leibovitz. She tried it in 91 and had to get airlifted out of Port Authority. T-B-T-L

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

It's Friday, Friday. Gonna get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend. Do you even like this podcast? I have never had less faith in a creative team than I do right now. You don't think his idea of starting with the catchphrases and working backwards is panning out.

Nuts to you, McGillicuddy. Who ordered the wieners? Beep, beep, ribby, ribby. That's not how it works.

That's not how any of this works. Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Feast your ear tongues on these memory pops.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Scat man's world. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia where it's not actively storming. The wind is not currently howling, so we're going to classify that as a beautiful day. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. As we arrive at a Friday edition of the program, it's episode 4338 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

Tonight, Friday night on Netflix, a 58-year-old, Mike Tyson, and a young, fabulously wealthy internet troll, possible Donald Trump sympathizer, Jake Paul, will fight a boxing match.

The word that comes to mind is ludicrous.

I can't help but have too many thoughts and feelings about this event tonight. I mean, if we like this has been thrown around so much, but like it does feel like we're entering the real life version of the movie Idiocracy. It's not a particularly novel observation from me, but right there, right there at the top of the list of things that would indicate we have entered Idiocracy mode is like a borderline elderly Mike Tyson fighting a YouTube creation. And yet, again, I have a lot of thoughts, which I'll share with you and Andrew coming up. Also, I'd like to propose the idea of actually watching television as a form of social activism. I love television. I've got to have that thing on 24-7. I love the patter. I've also got some, you've heard about garbage anxiety, now wait for delivery anxiety. I'm going to ask my friend Andrew how he would handle this situation that's causing me some angst today. Speaking of the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships, he's calling out from Scatland. They just want you to be normal, and clearly you're not. He's calling out from Andrew Walsh's world, and he joins us right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. How are you doing today? I'm really good. Was that your first jog since you were—no, that wasn't your first jog since you took— What would they say in the old term?

Took ill, took to my bed. Took to your bed with illness? With consumption? No, I've been on my jog tip, but I haven't been outside because the weather has been so unbelievably unpleasant. The kind of wind where if you're standing still, it kind of almost feels like it might blow you over. so i've been running here in the madrona hill studio each morning but the problem is i cannot stand to be on the treadmill for more than like five miles it's just so monotonous well what

would you be usually running if you were outside more than five i thought five i'd try to do seven

do you okay well i'm trying to do uh three And I'll see you next time.

uh seven milers a week and then on saturday a 10 miler so tomorrow becca and i are gonna try to do 10 miles and then in between i do like four or five miles on the treadmill at a faster pace than i normally would that's the ideal plan if everything goes uh well but um this week i haven't been going outside because it's been so lousy then this morning actually was a again it's dry it's not windy this would have been a good day for me to to get out to the outdoors um i just i find it somehow there's something about i've seen unverified unscientific data that one of the reasons walking is really good for us like mentally along with physically is because there's something about what your eyes have to do while you're walking in terms of surveying the landscape and that that is actually in some way sort of calming for our brain or good for our brain i think we can all kind of identify with the experience of being in kind of a funk and then going out for a walk and then feeling a sort of different qualitatively kind of different afterwards and i feel like for me if i can jog outside it's a lot better like i'm when i'm on the treadmill i'm literally counting the laps after like lap number two it's a quarter mile loop it shows me on the little thing and after like the first or second loop i'm just going in my mind okay easy 16 easy 15 that's what i tell myself like easy 14 like i'm literally counting every two minutes that i go it's kind of torturous Whereas when I'm outside, I'm lost in my thoughts. I'm judging people as to if they have their dog close enough on the leash or not. I'm avoiding geese, which I do feel like are the, it's really underdescribed how terrifying geese are when you're out jogging near a lake.

Is it an off-leash geese area?

Well, listen, I'm in Red America, Andrew. So all the geese are off-leash, and they say the only answer for a bad geese is a good geese.

That's what they say, yes.

So, but anyway, yeah, so I did get my little jog in today. I'm feeling much better than I was last week. As far as the illness goes, as far as the malaise that we're all feeling and the malaise that just keeps seeming to up it with new revelations about cabinet appointees and things like that, that I'm still kind of stuck in. And can I, I don't want to, did you have something on your heart you wanted to share with me, or can I jump right into my television rant?

I was going to tell you about a time I was menaced by a goose, but I'm thinking about it, and it's not that great of a story. I'll tell you another time. I'm sure goose talk. If we do this show for another 12, 15 years, I'm sure there will be more opportunities.

I would love it if the actual story is you were menaced by the character goose from Top Gun. Was that Anthony Edwards? It wasn't Anthony Edwards.

Dr. Green from ER? But you are close. When I say menaced by a goose, I was menaced by a man dressed up as a goose. at the valley city street fair but again not an interesting story obviously we'll save it for another time it was an axe wielding man dressed up as a goose menacing me at the frog jump at the frog jump competition at the valley city street there are no dazzling details to share we'll

bring it up i hear a lot i'm dazzled by that let me just tell you no that uh boy i really set up

my real goose story for failure with that uh so yeah jump into the jake paul thing can i tell you just where i am on this i've or maybe that's not your tv that's not even the tv oh that's not

where you want to start go ahead it's not television oh okay sorry go ahead you're showing your age yes i know you love television you've got to have it on i love the pattern r.i.p by the way i know every time louie anderson like golly what a national flip and treasure and i've said this before not just because his comedy was pretty great uh if maybe a little 90s in its kind of you know framing but that's fine but also just like a really entertaining actor so great in baskets and then this is what i love a majorly degenerate gambler oh that's right has hilarious stories i mean that's where i feel like i really connected with louis anderson yes i'm trying to

remember do i only know them from you retelling them i think i've retold them on the show i also get them confused a little bit with um norm mcdonald is all he also was less fun this was

like sports betting which i don't know why it's like louie anderson telling the story of he was getting all this money to shoot a 7-eleven commercial yeah he's getting like a hundred thousand dollars to shoot a 7-eleven commercial in la and it's he's in vegas though because he used to perform in vegas all the time and it's the night before the 7-eleven commercial and he stays up all night gambling and he's down a hundred thousand dollars at like seven in the morning and he needs to go get on a flight like I think it's a private flight from Vegas to LA to go shoot the commercial and he goes like all the way down and he's lost all the money he was going to make in the commercial which I kind of identify with occasionally like sometimes I'd be in a town and maybe I'd be doing some sort of hosting event MC event and there's a certain uh you know honorarium they're giving you.

And then my thought would be, well, you know, I've got that in my back pocket, theoretically. And then you just go donk that money off somewhere. And you're just like, well, that was, I just did that thing. Before you even earned it. So, like, you're just. Well, no, I've earned it. Usually it would be, like, post the earning of it. But then you just, you, like, waste it. And then you're like, well, I guess I just did that gig pro bono. Yeah, right. Like, it's kind of, it's not a good financial approach to life. But anyway, he ends up, he takes, like, his last marker from the casino, which is just basically a loan like a high interest loan from the casino and he uh and it's like five thousand and he runs his five thousand all the way back up to a hundred and twenty five thousand he actually gets up over what he had lost and then he literally has them put it in like a gym bag and he takes it to the airport and he flies to the to la and does his 7-eleven commercial oh and that because i

remember there was not a part of that story where he's driving back and forth between la because i I feel like there is some story regarding him and gambling, yeah, where he had to drive a long way. But anyway, you don't want to talk about that. You don't want to talk about the fight yet. You want to talk about Netflix, which is not television.

No, I don't. The fight's on Netflix. Oh, okay. That's why I'm saying we have not yet entered the TV discourse. Excuse me, we are entering the TV discourse. We have not yet entered the Netflix discourse. Of all the alarming stories that I've been seeing and that many of us have been seeing, one in the New York Times today had me feeling very alarmed and slightly responsible. And it was. Television viewers are apparently not tuning in to MSNBC right now, and in fact, MSNBC's primetime ratings are down something like 53% from their recent highs, and Fox News' primetime ratings are up something like 21%, which is just devastating news for me as somebody who watches a lot of MSNBC, has some actual friends who work there, And thinks that it is important for MSNBC to exist as some sort of pushback and watchdog on things like Fox News. And I realized it's very much like sports radio or even sports television. When your team is losing and your team is down, there is a sense of wanting to withdraw. And I've talked about this. We've been in a running conversation, you and I, Andrew, since the day after the election about media consumption and self-care. here's what i'm proposing put msnbc on a tv in a room you're not in and or mute it if you need to and then when you see a story that you can engage with turn the volume on and then when you can't engage with the content just mute it but leave it on we do not need the msnbc executives thinking that the answer is to tack right or to move to the center or to shake things up we need this is a vital backstop and bookend to the right-wing media empire and if we don't all do our part by turning it on in a room we're not in and leaving it on for 24 hours a day we may lose this vital

resource would that i'm just asking for the people out there this would apply to would this also apply to people who when they do want to watch msnbc have to go to a really weird website called live news mag now to find in the kind of a gray market stream of it uh i don't know but let's

just on error on the side of caution so yes do it log into the dark web and watch our damn channel like i don't know why this hit me so hard this morning again part of it is because i i feel like i've been i've been pretty pretty public on this show about the fact that i'm really struggling with how much bad news i can kind of take in a given day so um but i also it just it feels like yet another indication that the bad guys are winning like they're winning and then we the good people of america are feeling so sad that we can't even interact with the content that's being made by the other good people of america i um have thoughts on this i think it

was just last night that i was wondering to myself maybe i was scrolling and choosing a podcast but I've been pretty much like listening to a lot of Levitard lately, so I'm just sort of, there's something so easy about it. Like even if you have a, you know, this sort of parasocial relationship with a podcast or almost an addictive relationship with a podcast that releases tons of content like we do, but like Levitard does as well. Like I could complain about Levitard or think like this segment kind of sucks. I'm also in the subreddit sometimes and see everybody complain about what there's plenty to complain about, especially when you listen to the show so much, you know. but the thing is it's just so easy to lock into your habits and like yeah i can turn on levitard show and then fast forward i know exactly how many taps to fast forward through all the commercials and blah blah and then you might hear a segment be like oh come on that could be better but it's like well do i want to scroll and this is just maybe me and my age and my my habits do i want to just like scroll through all of the different podcasts on my podcast app and choose which one

I want to jump into cold and like no it's just easier to stick with what you with what you know but anyway all that is to say I was maybe scrolling yesterday or for some reason I thought about the pod save America guys and I thought oh my god oh yeah numbers must be tanking not forever they'll come I'm sure and same with MSNBC right when things normalize a little bit and we're like not all like kind of licking our wounds a little bit a little shell-shocked I'm sure that things will bounce up to a degree i i'm gonna take issue i love this this is great this is actually no offense or yeah maybe just take it as a compliment but um i feel like this is a sort of burbankian take i'm gonna have here i have not read this i have not read this article that you just told me about but i've already looked it up and i already disagree with the headline even though i have not read the article which is what does the headline say viewers flee msnbc and flock to fox news in wake of election that makes i agree it's a terrible headline because it makes it sound like yes i think we're going to say the same thing it makes it sound like there are a bunch of people who are either going to go to msnbc or fox and they all have like like a magnet being turned on have all gone to fox no the people who are already predisposed to watch fox are now more in the mood to watch it like you said it's exactly like sports like when the seahawks are bad the local sports ratings go down you know and if and when they're great not fun to hear about your team yeah losing and it's fun to hear about your team winning exactly and so um and so i was thinking about like pod save america like i haven't listened i literally have not listened to that show since the election and actually that's not a good idea for me not to i think those guys are very reasonable they they have a calming presence i think a lot they are very reasonable they are very strategic you're a great listen but like i just haven't been as you say engaging with the discourse it's easier for me to i mean veves and i probably watched three hours of strangers with candy season one last night and because it just like it felt like 1999 and i could just like hide under that blanket for a while um i don't think it'll last forever but it has been on my mind lately and it's funny that somebody was looking at the at the ratings of msnbc and yeah we need

to keep let's keep our friends employed we got to keep we got to keep that place going we don't need to give those tv executives the wrong idea that like because you're right i mean this is very predictable and very cyclical my sense is all of us are struggling right now to figure out how much information to consume to know what's going on versus what's going to give us like all day uh anxiety and and and as things stabilize and as we get a clearer picture of what things look like and if we get a w here or there maybe matt's matt gates doesn't get confirmed there feels like there's four republicans that haven't completely sold their soul or whatever and then and i know this sounds insane to say on november 15th andrew 2024 but the midterms are two years away and that's what i think that will be the drumbeat it will start to build we will start to because at the midterms my sense is democrats will have a massive massive comeback because i think this i think there's going to be so much bad stuff that happens between now and the midterms that the party in power i don't think that the price of eggs is going to go down as uh the as Dana Gould, the very funny comedian and sometimes TBTL guest, said in a recent stand-up performance, how many eggs are people eating? The price of eggs. Like, are there parts of America where people are eating hundreds of eggs a day? How is this the most critical issue to most people? The price of eggs. But the price of eggs, Andrew.

This is such a dark place to take it. But you know how memes are, Luke. Like, you don't often even know what the original image is from, but especially when you're on Reddit. Did I ever mention there's some real dank memes on Reddit? Yeah. On Reddit, rather. But there was one. This is pretty dark, but I don't know what the original source material was, but it looked like a freeze frame, maybe. But it was like some white kid, and he had some dark, I don't know if it was a fake mustache or something that just looked like a fake mustache that was Hitler-esque underneath his nose-like. and the and the caption said something like i'm hitler or something like that i don't know what

it came from dan henschel who's a very edgy uh like twitter comedian oh really that's not a kid

the original picture oh really and i don't think he's a nazi i don't know he's not but the funny the what what how the how it was memefied in the version that i saw was somebody just wrote above it what americans say when eggs go up by 12 cents or and or i support him because eggs just went up But, uh, so, uh, anyway, I feel like, I feel like what is going to happen and, and this, unfortunately, the problem is I think that the Republicans are going to suffer a really, really, really bad midterm election because that is going to be the result of how really, really, really bad it gets in America. And it sucks that we have to go through it In order to get to that outcome But a year from now As Trump's approval ratings are spectacularly low As he's pushed every norm possible As hopefully he's somehow fighting with Republicans I mean, there's a few Republicans with backbones That's another thing that we assume I'm sorry, I don't want to try to get into X's and O's here And my theories, because again One of my theories was Kamala Harris was going to win in a landslide But like, I feel like there there is a possibility that we have totally and completely discounted, which is that Republicans actually decide that they don't like Donald Trump while he's the president. Like I'm talking about Republicans in the House and Senate. I know that seems like a totally, completely impossible thing because he has totally taken over that party. but i'm just i'm just i'm just i'm in a hypothetical sense here what would happen if he actually somehow manages to overstep if it becomes the case that there are a couple of republicans who go you know someone accused of like child sex trafficking that can't be the highest law enforcement officer in america and then they say no he we don't put matt gates and then trump is mad at them and then trump scorches the earth and says they're all going to be i'm going to term you know i'm going to turf them out or whatever i'm going to run people against them and then they go yeah but you're not even be president in three years dude and then all of a sudden like my thought is when you have a bunch of really bad people that get together on the same project the idea that they will actually be able to stay cohesive and coherent and that their general selfishness and badness and horribleness won't at some point turn them on each other is i just don't think that we can discount that concept or that sort of thing like we we assume that these stormtroopers, and I use that term advisedly, will just move in lockstep for the rest of this movie. But you've got to remember the time that Darth Vader threw the Emperor down that lightning hole. Like, it could happen. So, anyway, I think the midterms are going to be bad, and I think that a year from the midterms...

Good. The midterms are going to be good, but bad for...

Well, bad for them, good for us. And I think there's going to be this energy around candidates and issues and people running for office. You know what I mean? And once there is that energy against, once there is that hope that at the very least we could have Congress as at least one branch of government that is able to push back on this agenda and maybe change some things, that will invigorate people. The thing is, we've got to make sure that all of the outlets that we like and use, such as Pod Save America, such as MSNBC, are not dark a year from now when we're ready to re-engage with them.

I feel like everything went downhill when John Roderick lost his campaign to become a city counselor here in Seattle. Was that the inflection point? That was. I don't know why that popped in my head.

When Bean Dad lost his...

I have no idea why that popped in my head. Can I change the subject to something that has literally nothing to do with any of this? I applaud your optimism. I've said my piece. I do think that things will swing back a little bit from midterms. I don't know I don't know that I can go with you on suddenly the Republican Party like I feel like if anything it's just I don't think it would be sudden but I just I think the principle of just imagine that you put a hundred of the worst people you can imagine in a pit together or a palace together you put a hundred of the worst people you can think about in a palace together. Oh, yeah, MTV has done that show, I think, right?

You don't think they're going to – some people are going to stab some people in the back, and there might be a coup of certain types. I am hopeful that just the absolute depravity of these people and their narcissistic tendencies and their desire for power and everything – I'm hoping that the center, the molten shit center of it will not hold in some way.

Here's how I'm changing the conversation. And this, again, this is not because I just don't have anything else to add to that. And so, and there is something that is on my mind. Luke is holding up a piece of paper that says, please leave.

Let's not forget to talk about this printout that I just made for the mail people.

Okay, yeah. I thought you were sending me a, I thought you were giving me some sort of a note. That's a new thing, right? You just held up a sheet. Luke held up. I won't say what it says because Luke wants to get to it in a second. But he just held up to the camera a white piece of paper, eight and a half by 11, but in huge print. It was like a hostage tape. Like you were giving me, like, it was like a card. Like you would give me, what do you call it when you're on the TV? A cue card? It was like a cue card. I thought you were, like, giving me cues.

I thought it was more like a please send help. But I can't say it to you because it'll be recorded. it on the tape so it's more of just a visual message for you why are you holding up today's

newspaper no i just did want to say that um i feel like about a year and a half ago maybe my timeline could be wrong about a year and a half ago somebody heard me talk into this microphone about one of my prized possessions which is a kicksy am radio window cling that i have up in my window here in my old basement window and somebody wrote into me to say could you get me one of them and I'm like yeah I think I can I got somebody who I have a friend who works who works for the company that owns Kixi I think I can hook you up and then I forgot about it and then yesterday Genevieve came home uh from a little get-together and said oh here Katie has this window cling for you for the listener who wanted it and which is very very sweet but like I have a different email system now i have no idea who that person is and so this is a true true test of the tens community because i know a lot of people are listening telegram a lot of people are listening right now they're like oh well i could just say i'm the person who wanted it and then i can get myself a free kicksy window cling and you could i would never know if you were lying but this is the

honor system i think there's a lower danger of that happening than maybe you think uh this is

I'm sorry, I don't, maybe my microphone, let's see, is this my phone working? Okay, okay, so this is a three-and-a-half-by-five-inch Kixi AM Radio Klig. Oh, now that you mention the dimensions, I see, yes. Radio Klig, like, there are not tons of these around. This was made back when they were still playing, like, sock hop music, Luke. This is, like, this is at least three or four years old. Like, this is a classic at this point. and so obviously there's going to be a lot of people who are kind of like well Andrew won't know I'll just say I'm the guy who wants this thing and I'm telling you I only want the original requester to reach out to me and I don't know if that person is listening anymore I don't remember who it was but we will see if the community can hold back it's like telling a bunch of rats that

some did who left this cheese yes exactly can you um let's let me know if this was your cheese that you left behind you think that there's a danger that other listeners might might try to move that cheese as it were well i guess we'll all find out uh together i'm just more afraid that that person doesn't listen to the show that's actually like that's when you said this is a true test and i call it the muckluck telegram it's a muckluck telegraph which used to be this kind of project in i think places like alaska and maybe even parts of canada where they would just be these like radio shows where you just get on and say like because because you know there was no phone communication in a lot of places you would just it was basically like prairie home companion those little cards that garrison keeler would read like hey from a gym to the family in um juno uh i'm on my way i should be there about 11 p.m on friday night if the roads hold i love that so much so i thought you were just basically going like i'm going to use the power of tbtl to try to reach out to the person who asked for this a long time ago yes can you get to me and i thought the danger was we may have to find out the hard way that they're not listening anymore yeah no i do think

that that is and you know i'm now that i tell this story i swear katie our friend who brought me this sticker i swear she gave me one earlier too to get to the listener and now i'm starting to wonder has this listener already received one and we all forgot about it now i have an extra one well either way if you were the listener um fill in the details here i am happy i've been going to the post office a lot lately to a lot of uh oh by the way i got that thing you sent me oh Oh, nice. Sounds good. I've been going to the post office a lot because a lot of the, you know, John Sklaroff, numero uno employee TBTL, that's the order we say things in now. Absolutely, Yoda. How can I ever get that right? Ships thank you gifts he does. He's been shipping out all kinds of, you know, TBTL bracelets and hats and all kinds of thank you gifts from the recent TBTL-a-thon. but sometimes because people move or there's a mistake with the address they bounce back and they bounce back to me baby they bounce back to our PO box and so a couple of days a week I go there and I find the ones that have bounced back and then I'm resending them to people and so anyway point is I'm happy to go back to the post office I'll be there anyway I'm happy to throw this kickseek window cling into an envelope for the right person

all right let's thank some donors these uh folks are making this episode of tbtl possible and much like pod save america and the new york times and msnbc i think of tbtl as a vital vital resource in these turbulent times. I mean, I'm obviously being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I will say, Andrew, oddly enough, and this is not how we want to be adding listeners and reconnecting with listeners, but I have heard from more people of late saying, I had checked out of TVTL for a while, and I just needed something to listen to that might be sort of adjacent to the news, but not obsessed with the news. And I'm back, baby! We and we welcome everyone back who was not listening for a while, but now is once again. We appreciate you again. Not how we want to build our numbers, but we'll take it.

Yeah, I've been here again. I've been trying to respond to a lot of people. And now I'm kind of more than a week behind on some emails that came in directly after the election. And if I haven't written back to you, I apologize. But a true I mean, truly an outpouring of people saying either like I, you know, I've been listening and I need you now more than ever. or I'm returning to the pod, or I was always on the, I was sort of like on the fence, but now I'm pretty much locked in or whatever. So everybody who's been writing in, thank you so much. And it really does mean a lot. A lot of really kind words for us that I feel humbled by.

Yeah. Again, the irony that we're only growing as other important news and opinion sites are having trouble. Maybe that's where everyone's going. Maybe listeners are flocking to TBTL, Andrew. That's right. I mean, sorry, I don't want to get hung up on it, but, man, you're so right. That headline is so dumb in The New York Times.

Flocking, yeah.

They're not leaving MSNBC to go to Fox. They need to use the word viewers twice in the headline. They need to say MSNBC loses viewers while Fox viewers flock to Fox. Viewership up.

Yeah, ratings down, ratings up. It doesn't have to be. I don't know.

I'm not saying I'm a better headline writer, but I'm saying that's a shitty headline, and I appreciate you pointing that out. Also, I think Mike Bram appreciates that. Mike is our first donor we're thanking today. Mike's in Turlock, California. Thank you, Mike. Thanks, Mike. Thanks also to Carl Norembuena of Issaquah, Washington. Carl, we appreciate you. I don't want to brag on myself, Andrew, but I will point out that this, because of the vagaries of our information intake system, we lost the L on Carl's name, and it just appears to me to be Car Norembuena, but I know Carl Norembuena. And Carl's been supporting the show forever. And I just, I was able to just, I called an audible at the line. I was like, I was like Russell Wilson with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Omaha, Omaha.

We tried to draw you off. No, no, I think we tried to draw you off sides with a typo. You held your ground. You were not like the Commanders.

No free play for you.

That's right.

I know what's up. I know it's Carl. Thanks, Carl. I know also it's Stephanie King in Kansas City, M.O. I knew it was going to be Missouri. you just had a feeling now that's you know what that's okay because you mean as opposed to kansas yes not the can other than kansas city kansas and kansas city missouri i wonder if there are any other kansas cities like in other words is there a kansas city texas is there a kansas city california that would be way too cruel wouldn't that be insane but like there are so many i mean there are so many cities that are have duplicate names but they're just the real small version

somewhere and yet what about new kansas city if we ever started new kansas city maine if we ever yeah right if we ever start a new community let's call it new kansas city i and you know what

stephanie you and yours are allowed to move there you're welcome also mo star is in mill creek utah mo thank you for the donation you're also welcome in new kansas city if we do have to form some kind of a sort of you know the last of us-esque what was the name of that show was that video game they turned into the pedro pascal show i think you're right though i think the last

of us that sounds right to me i have a question for you we have kansas city missouri mill creek utah would both of those be considered the mountain west i could i don't know if kansas no not that's quite makes it to the mountain west no it does i just like saying the mountain west

I know it does sound it sounds like the crisp clean air yeah a lot of like complicated soda pop orders do you know about dirty sodas are you up on this whole situation no it's a lot of folks that live in the Mountain West happen to be of the Mormon faith and so they don't drink alcohol and in fact there are I don't know if maybe that the church relaxed the rules on soda at some point but it's like the major maybe I think coffee might still be taboo depending on a person's particular embrace of that sort of religion if you will like i mean there's different versions of how how observant people might be but there are all of these spots i actually think it'd be kind of an interesting sunday morning piece they're just these little like imagine a coffee shop but what they do is wild soda flavor combinations and there's all of these folks particularly a lot of these like mormon moms that just like hit the hit the soda shop at nine in the morning as they're taking their kids to school a la a starbucks situation what do you mean by wild oh they're just not like a i'll take a coca-cola it's like a uh you know just a combination of flavors that we've never

even considered let me see this sounds i mean this sounds warm and so right up my alley you know i'm a i mean when i go to a mariners game and if i'm drinking soda i will always do a combo like i i have a whole recipe that i try to follow in my head i love messing around with soda flavors this sounds this is a very compelling reason for me to move how about this have you try this on for size

a diet coke heavy cream a coconut flavored syrup and lime okay for you here's a whole bon appetit page why is everyone suddenly obsessed with dirty sodas a mainstay in utah for over a decade dirty soda is going mainstream thanks to the recent premiere of hulu's the secret lives of mormon wives oh okay yeah yeah uh let me see if i can find some other uh like flavors for you uh let's see uh the let's they've got one italian sodas no we already know about those they're just listing according to the swig the og dirty soda shop the basic formula started out as diet coke lime coconut syrup and coconut cream over ice okay so there was there was sort of a stand it

wasn't just a random name for like messing around with soda that was kind of a recipe sort of i see

Okay. Okay, so the drink's popularity in Utah stems from the state's large concentration of Mormons. Most Mormons don't drink alcohol, coffee, or other hot drinks. I forgot there's a temperature clause.

I didn't know there was a temperature clause.

I'd forgotten, according to their religious council. So many of them turn to soda instead. Some Mormons avoid caffeine and soda altogether, but the guidance is fuzzy, and some younger generations are even incorporating coffee into their routine, Andrew. and so anyway all that is to say a lot of dirty soda in the mountain west although we have established that kansas city is not part of the mountain west we definitely know for a fact that grand rapids michigan is far away from the mountain west but it is where christy elburn is checking in thank you thanks christy appreciate it love those love those rapids out there big rapids grand rapids all of them marcus haynes is in manassas virginia that's fun to say sure is Real fun. There was a battle at Manassas, wasn't there? Is that why I know that name?

There had to be a Civil War situation. I want Marcus to write into the show more so I can say Marcus from Manassas.

But I want Marcus to do it in that Ken Burns style. My dearest TBTL, I hope this morn finds you well. We are down to our last dirty soda. The men recently ran out of coconut cream and were an ill temper about it. The Battle of Manassas, also the first bull run, Andrew. Come on. When I'm right, I'm right. The first bull run? I guess there was a couple of battles of bull run. Oh, I see. The Battle of First Manassas, parenthetically, first bull run.

Oh, okay. All right.

Cheers rang out on the streets of Washington July 16, 1861, as General Irvin McDowell's Federal Army, 35,000 strong, marched out to begin the long-awaited campaign to capture Richmond and end the war. oh god I'm putting myself to sleep anyway thank you to all of our donors thanks for making TBTL possible today hello and welcome to Top Story just quickly this printout that I held up to you Andrew is my solution to a problem that for some reason it made me I felt I want to say this with peace and love I want to say this without sounding like Like I'm nagging you or saying that your reaction to things is oversized or outsized. But I have observed with you that there can be, and I think for good reason, by the way, a little bit of like the cousin of garbage anxiety for you, which is maybe are people throwing stuff in my pristine garbage bins, is delivery anxiety. Like is something going to be sitting out for too long? Is something going to be either misdelivered or sitting out for a long time or in danger in some way?

can i actually i i would like to disabuse you of that i think you're thinking that because there was one example last week or two weeks ago where i get this really expensive medication delivered and so i'm protective of that but aside from that like i will always tell people we've lived in this house for two and a half years we have never had any issues with deliveries sitting out there mail delivery we have a really good mailbox that is i don't unless you can think of other examples other than my medication last week.

I feel like there was something else that I was like, you were talking about, but I can't remember it. So I will back down from that, but I still want your advice on this. Basically, I have to go, after we're done today, I'm going down to Portland, and I have like, something that I rarely do, but I like have plans to get coffee with my friend Marshall down there. And I just... got an update from some company that i've ordered some like big photography like printed out like framed photographs from and then i'll be putting up in my new little bedroom and i'm very excited about these but they seem very like not something that could be left out in the rain and the problem is because of the way that this is set up now my my place the madrona hill studio which used to be garage now kind of looks like a little house because i guess that is essentially what i've tried to make it it's an adu and so i don't know if it's confusion or to be honest with you i don't want to use the word laziness but just kind of like there sometimes when stuff gets delivered they just lean it up against the door of the studio now there's not an address on the studio but it you do have to go down some steep stairs to get to the house and again either just because folks think this is the house or because they kind of don't want to carry the thing down the stairs it is sometimes the case that stuff gets left in front of the studio now that would be terrifying to me because i'm going down to portland and then beck and i are gonna hang out for the weekend i might not be back up here till like sunday afternoon or sunday night and i cannot handle the idea of these pretty expensive large framed photographs what it is is it's a triptych of a cloud so it's like a really beautiful photograph of a cloud but then it's three different large format photos of the you know and you i'm going to put it up over the headboard of my bed the idea of those things sitting out for the whole weekend is terrifying to me like that it just seems like absolutely a bad idea but i don't know what to do because i've already canceled coffee with my friend marshall before and i feel like he i'll just the short story on that is he's actually a he's a guy that I met when I was shooting in LA he's a film producer he actually works with the guy Ed Zwick he they've produced all of the movies The Last Samurai and these like a bunch of movies I can't remember all of them A Glory things like that anyway he moved up to Portland and I was like oh we're both in Portland we should hang out so we've hung out a couple of times but like he's new to Portland I'm trying to kind of be like a guide and a friend but I keep canceling because I'm bad at keeping my word and have a lot going on so i feel like i can't cancel to wait for these photos so my solution now is i like size 35 million font printed this thing out i'm going to tape it to the door of the studio facing out and i'm just hoping that when this oh because by the way this uh stuff is not supposed to show up till 4 30 today at the earliest that's the other part of the story so i will be long gone by then

and i'm just i have so much riding on them reading this note and going down and placing this very very sensitive very delicate stuff in the doorway of my house where there's a little bit of rain protection as opposed to in front of the madrona hill studio i wonder do you have an because you're

going to be gone more than a day you said right like all weekend so do you have a neighbor that you could just like what about your guy who uh gets upset about the raspberry or whatever the razzle berries no i'm i think i nailed it with razzle berries um but um like can he come could you just say like hey i see this thing was delivered could you just make sure that it's kind

of like not out in the rain maybe i should i don't know if brian and i have that relationship yet i could probably ask also they're gone a lot they're retired they've got an airstream they're like man they live a more exciting life than i do i've got bob the other guy but he's also got a place up on lake mayfield that he goes to a lot i don't know if i can and also i feel like every time i reach out to bob it's to ask him to put a package inside like the last time you've done this before okay well the last time this kind of same thing happened i was literally had a bed delivered from like wayfair so it was in boxes but it was so heavy and i didn't realize how heavy it was going to be and it was another thing where i was going to be out of town it was going to be rainy and i think i saw on the cameras that the again they had brought the stuff but they had leaned it up against the studio instead of taking it down to the alcove and i like literally immediately was like texting bob like hey man can you um just put that inside the studio please that's like really because it was like a mattress and stuff you know and he was like no problem and then when i got here and i tried to carry it out of the studio down to the house i was like this is heavy as shit so i feel kind of bad like i basically said hey could you throw your back out for me for a minute bob would you mind that so a mattress in the rain i don't even know i don't

even want to tell this story as you know you know i i love where we live it could be described as a somewhat scruffy part of town i mean let's let's face it when seattle is in the news for cracking down on crime they will focus on several different areas in the city and like north aurora is one of them like literally our neighborhood i don't like to i don't you know like i never feel unsafe here I love our little neighborhood, and I think it's getting better all the time, so I don't love to, like, sort of amplify. I think that some people, like, sort of misamplify that message, but, you know, it's definitely not.

like a tidy little suburban neighborhood it's um you know whatever so it's not totally uncommon for somebody to leave some shit on the corner like we we have a pretty sweet situation where our house is kind of like there's an alleyway behind us and then we live in the corner of two roads so we only have like kind of one set of neighbors and we absolutely love them but that alleyway gets some sort of weird traffic sometimes and sometimes people just like dump a bunch of shit and it's like that type of thing where it's kind of like hey i'll put a free sign on this thing yeah right but it's like nobody wants i mean it's just disgusting and then it's winter in seattle and it gets rained upon right and i'm going to tell you about a moment that i had just earlier this week that it was not my proudest moment and i literally thought several times over the week like somebody somewhere has a security cam where they caught me doing this thing but i was just so pissed off i um i if you can sort of picture we're again we're we have street parking we have ample street parking and our house is on the corner and so we park our car on you know on one street and then i was leaving to grab lunch the other day and so i take a left onto the other streets so this is now i'm seeing our house from sort of the other corner right yeah and i see along our big wooden fence somebody just took a freaking mattress oh no just leaned it up against our fence and like sometimes people will do this This is why you need to get cameras. This is why I need cameras. This is why I need to move to the east side. But anyway, so I was just like, I pulled over in my car. You want to talk about garbage anxiety or whatever. I was so triggered by this. Somebody just taking a mattress. And it was raining, dude. I mean, somebody just taking their nasty mattress. And it wasn't visibly a nasty mattress. But it's any mattress.

Any mattress that someone else has been sleeping on that you don't know that is now in the

public space it nasty yes that is leaned up against my goddamn fence kind of near you know at the corner of this alleyway and i just i pulled over my car so i'm this is on the left hand side of the street if you can picture my house is now i'm passing on the left so i come around the corner i've just gotten in my car i'm driving around the corner i pull completely over and just park headfirst in front of this mattress and just without even thinking just get out of my car as fast as possible i just throw it kind of like i tried to throw it towards the other side of the of the alleyway and it just lands in a big ass muddy puddle and just starts like soaking up this mud now listen nobody was going like nobody was going to use this mattress somebody just didn't know how to dispose of it on it it didn't have free but it was like leaned up against our fence in this way that was kind of like look i i am i am a generous i'm available who has come into a new mattress of my own but i don't want to keep my largesse to myself so please somebody else use my gently used mattress like come on nobody nobody needs this mattress and now it's literally raining and so like i must have looked like a madman and i pray there are no security cameras that still have the footage of me like parking my car like almost like nose first like a cop arriving on a scene towards the mattress and it was a very light mattress too and I just like kind of like I tried to throw it to the other side of the alleyway but it just like landed right in and I mean a mud puddle this alleyway is basically all mud now and it just immediately like a sponge started soaking it up and I just get in my car again I keep driving now I will say when I came home and this was always sort of my plan i just didn't want to be caught red-handed throwing this mattress but when i came home there's a great service here in seattle called i think it's not click it or ticket it's like it's like uh find it and fix it i think and there's an app called find it and fix it so when i got home i opened up the app took a photo of it said specifically where it is and reported it as illegal dumping and within three days two or three days they Wrote back like we're taking care of this now And it is now gone but I was Just so pissed off I was so pissed

What I was trying to understand is because this it's so Not fair to you but the problem Is if you just throw it Into your neighbors like where your neighbors Garbage cans go or leaning up against Your neighbor's fence it's like now it's their problem Now you knew about this You know find it and fix it thing so that's a whole Other level to it it's funny I understand the impulse it's funny to me that like you knew you were going to call to find it and fix it people you knew this was going to get resolved but in the moment you were just so mad you were just like you freaking samson that thing

all the way over to the other side of the alley well that and also i didn't if anybody had happened to see the scene of me hurriedly like kind of parking my car and then like kind of throwing this thing i didn't want to then stand out there for like two minutes opening up my app taking a photo of it. I just wanted to get the hell out of there. But you wanted it off of your property. But I wanted it off of my property right away, and it's kind of hard to explain. I wasn't throwing it into a neighbor's yard. Not that this is any better, by the way, but...

the way we look at things is on the other side of the alley is more of a like kind of a an apartment building like a very small kind of apartment building with like some um like what would you call it sort of like scrub brush or something and then like kind of a little parking area so i just basically threw it on the other corner which isn't like a person's house it's just sort of this no man and but i mean it looks like shit i mean it looks terrible when you throw a mattress into this what into these like basically these dying bushes next to a tree or whatever next to a big i'm not trying to make it sound like i did the right thing it looked absolutely trashy but at least it wasn't like i threw it in ed's yard and also i think that

there's an actually an important you were doing something very important in that moment which was you were getting that thing away from your fence before anyone else gets any ideas

because like if you sure yeah garbage attracts garbage right if you leave it there for three

days until the fix it and ticket people get there how many people see that and go i guess that's where we're throwing shit now right right you do not want to be fighting that battle all year so you've got to get it out of there just so that it does not become it's not modeling for anyone to

like for any behaviors now imagine this though so i was leaving my house to go to the post office as i mentioned before and then go grab some lunch but now i've touched a wet ass mattress that was

outside so like i assume you didn't have gloves no i didn't have gloves i did it quickly but then

like i'm driving the car and i'm thinking the whole time like i did not stop for lunch and i went to the post office and i was like when i was not holding a package i was like holding my hands in front of me like a doctor the whole time it's kind of like like you're like hey siri can bed bugs get under your skin i was literally just thinking like bed bugs at the very worst but just anything and it's like oh i just like touch this wet strange mattress i was gonna say though So this is sort of a Genevieve is a type of person who's very much into like, you know, to her credit, by the way, like if we get a new piece of furniture or whatever, like finding a home for the old one and not just throwing it into the dump, into the landfill or whatever. and we had a couple of um they're like three shelf metal um sort of rack shelving if you can sort of picture it you know like kind of not perforated like basically made of like wire probably strong wire but like um then dipped in that plastic do you have any idea what i'm talking about can you picture this at all it's like rubber yeah it's like rubberized like a white rubber rubber out outer coating and in this case they were black but like we had them in our basement and like we had a bunch of games on there and just various kind of rumpus room bric-a-brac right and then about a month ago uh we found a nicer piece of furniture that i can actually put out there then store my records on and little by little we're just kind of making it a little bit uh nicer down here and so we got a real piece of furniture and then we had these two extra you know very utilitarian very useful not particularly nice looking but not beat up like they're just like these these metal shelving you know rack shelving sort of and um Genevieve's like yeah okay I'll take a photo of those and I'll get rid of them on buy nothing she's like we could probably just put them out in the in the street and I'm always against doing that like we've done it a couple of times here an old metal desk I think somebody did end up taking but like I'm just like at what at what point does it just looks shitty if something is out there for a long time like it just starts to look really crappy but i was like you know what i'll just try putting these out and i put it by the way at the end of our driveway and i put a sign on it that said free and there was something about like not putting it in sort of the tree lawn area or in this no man's land of you know it was like our driveway very clearly this is us the homeowner saying you can have these shelves luke they didn't make it 20 minutes before somebody grabbed those things just like that they were they were gone and you know they're they're the perfect thing if you need like shelving for your garage or basement or something like that you know i almost bought some of those

uh the other day because i told you i've been like getting my bedroom organization on and by the way i did do that golly does it feel good i got all of my clothes now like you know first of made a good will run oh yeah that always feels good amazing but you haven't talked about i'm

getting you off track here but every time you bring up like the fact that you now have this you know bedroom and you're you're putting everything away after all this time it's been a couple of years and you're finally getting the but what about is there any joy in also reclaiming another room the room that you were sleeping in is no longer like your temporary bedroom that must

also be fun what are you doing in that space well that's a whole kind of annoying project honestly What I've done with that space is I cut, I ripped all the carpet out. I've spent an entire evening on my hands and knees pulling up carpet staples so that I can sand the floor and then repaint it. It's hardwood, but they, for some reason, there was a bunch of, they painted part of it. It's just kind of a, it's a mess. And unless I wanted to like rent a sander and try to. revive it i'm just gonna paint it and put out a big area rug but that it has this terrible i call it holly hobby but i don't know some just nightmare wallpaper in there which i'm now painting white

just so it's neutral what i should really you're not painting over top of the wallpaper i'm painting

over the top you can do that i don't know it's a good question um we'll see how it turns out this is sort of a stop gap because what's going to happen eventually upstairs is i'm going to remodel the bedroom there's two bedrooms upstairs i'm gonna like tear down the most of the drywall replace it move some things around so what i'm doing right now is just making it a little less gross upstairs so that when like maybe around christmas time if i'm having you know family over and when addy comes over and stuff there's better guest room options so that room that i was using is going to be turned into when i was sleeping in there it had this carpet that came with the house that's the whole upstairs area and it's very like you were talking about just much like a mattress moving into somebody else's old ass carpet in your house is never the greatest feeling you just like you're like man this thing's got memories you know um i was happy that when i pulled it up and pulled up all the foam in this room that i had been sleeping in there wasn't any like weird staining that would indicate like you know cats going to the bathroom in the corner of the room like it there wasn't like there was no evidence of a murder yeah like there wasn't like it actually seemed like okay this you know they didn't mistreat this room uh in too bad of a way but but anyway it it will be nice having that room um available for other people but it's not a room that i'm going to be using on a day-to-day basis and it's also i'm i'm kind of investing some time in it for the next six months to a year which is a little counterintuitive i still find myself in that dilemma with certain parts of this house which is if it's an area that i have long-term plans for how much work do i put into the short term of that place of that area it's like i kind of don't want to but also if i just take like two or three days of my life to like for instance the room boy you're sorry you really got me on one now there's a there's a guest room that my dad sleeps in when he's here and that room was also really sucky for a long time because it also had like weird wallpaper and like wood paneling that was buckled and then I just finally took out the carpet took down the paneling painted over the wallpaper and got a new bed and a new rug in there and it's like so much better now like and that was a couple days of work so that's kind of what my intention is for the room that i had been previously sleeping in is like make it kind of nice or but then at some point go in and really like go to town on it like it's going to get a new window which is a whole tearing basically tearing a huge section of this wall out i've already purchased the window because i want it to have a nicer window that's not fogged out and that has you know increases the views and things like that so that's why i'm a little bit like i'm kind of i'm slightly torn about the project of the room that i have recently decamped from because I don't know how much work is too much work to put into something that long-term I want to actually really just tear apart.

Oh, that makes sense then, yeah, because I was a little confused about the painting. If it's just a temporary thing, the idea of pulling off all of that wallpaper and then to paint it, then just to knock that wall down. Yeah, exactly. Six months to a year later.

Yeah, and also, yeah, I don't want to like, whatever. Like, I try to take the wallpaper off in the other room that my dad sleeps in, and it's way, I got a steamer for it and everything. It's a hassle. I don't know if you've ever removed wallpaper I can imagine though I 100% believe you it sounds terrible so anyway but I'm very I'm quite enjoying my new life in my new bedroom which now has a semi working place for my clothes I hung every I've hung up all my other stuff I've taken a bunch of stuff to goodwill a bunch of stuff that I was like holding on to for some reason and then I looked at and I was like it was useful for me to move rooms because it made me really take a take stock of like do i even care about this or do i wear this ever or why am i saving this even you know no offense to us but like old tbtl t-shirts that are not even wearable anymore like one where it's like our faces but it's made out of like tbtl letters or something like just stuff like that that i was holding on to i was like i don't know this is memorabilia for me but i was like i've also jogged in this shirt a thousand times it's kind of ruined like it can go to goodwill so um anyway uh but um let's see where was i going with all of that well you were

sort of interested in those shelves that i had oh i almost bought i almost bought one of those

those shelves that you described except i felt like it would be stylistically clashing with what else is going on in that room so instead i bought some wood shelving that i uh cut and put brackets up that goes above where all the clothes are hanging. Yeah. My point is I was standing in the aisle where that kind of wire rubberized shelving was in the Home Depot. And I was like, this is so effective. Like, this is exactly this will totally serve the purpose. But I was like, aesthetically, I can't do it. Yeah. Again, in the words of Kamala Harris, we're not going back. I'm not going back to that.

Great for a garage. Great for like, you know, putting your tools on like totally utilitarian. And again, the ones we put out were in fine shape. Like, honestly, probably not different than the ones you were looking at in the store. um but uh yeah same for us we wanted something sort of sort of uh nicer out there I'm just so glad you knew what I was talking about because it never occurred to me how hard it is to describe that shelving if you don't know what I mean I know that yeah there are people in our audience who know what the words are for that kind of shelving but I did not realize until I had started that sentence that I have no idea how to describe what the hell I'm talking about here

it's the major way that it's the major interior closet system for every single starter apartment in america sure yeah you know so that's probably how people know it um but again yeah i was and i'm again my impatience is just so rampant unfortunately that so i went to the shelving area of home depot and then that's what was in the shelving area and i was like like i really really wanted to get this thing put in that day whatever the solution was so that i could then start stacking stuff up there so i could figure out how much actual usable space i had and but and i was like i don't really want this but i was also like who's gonna ever look in the closet whatever it has doors on it it doesn't matter i was talking myself in and out of it and i thought i bet you if i go over to the lumber area they have long straight boards that work great for shelving if you just measure correctly you know and like i went over there sure enough they did and then you installed brackets yeah i put up two brackets there are already kind of it's hard to explain, but basically like, yeah, I put some brackets up, put the shelving up. It's great. It works. It's, it looks nice. Didn't take that long. It was not at that expensive, but I was so close to just walking out of that Home Depot with this wire ass shelving because I just wanted, again, I do think it might be a slightly ADHD thing where I will get locked in on a series of things that need to happen in a specific order. First of all, I feel overwhelmed by trying to decide what the order of events should be. And then once I decide what they should be, then I'm locked into that order of events to a very almost paralyzing degree. That sounds like

the opposite of ADHD. I thought ADHD is you're sort of like bouncing from one thing to another to another. I always think of OCD, like me being like an ass. Maybe I've got both.

Maybe I have ADH OCD. Because it does. It starts with... I was talking about this the other day. It starts with me being overwhelmed by the possibilities. Me being overwhelmed with like, well, how am I going to organize this closet what is going to go where is it socks on top or underwear well i know that i need to always i'm always changing my socks every day and i'm usually changing my underwear but what if i change what if i took a shower at three in the afternoon and i put on underwear and now it's the next day but i still haven't gone for a run yet i might need the underwear could be second drawer like this is just like the constant noise in my brain and then but once i decide on what the plan is then i get super locked into the plan so i decided the plan was the next thing i need to do is put this shelf in above where the the railing is that all the clothes hang on there were some like extra three feet of space that was usable space yep this is literally what i did in my closet only i'm sure you did a nicer job i doubt it my brain was like okay uh i once i put this shelf up then i can purchase like some plastic you know storage stuff or some kind of storage stuff that can go on that shelf and now i have a sense of what my real maximum storage possibility is with this space and then once i know that then i can start deciding what goes where because if i try to decide what goes where before i put the shelf up i'm working with

incomplete information so i know you did it better so i have this little closet downstairs so which is our closet talk this week has just been maybe not on point but certainly bountiful bountiful um but if you can picture just like a small closet again mine is not the kind with sliding doors it's like you open the door you pull it out or you open the door yeah i thought you did a nice job with it right so i have all my clothes hanging from you know like a standard height pole that all the clothes hang from but then above it there was no shelving It was just all this dead, empty space, but there was like molding. I don't know if molding is the right word, but basically molding along the sides of the closet that it was so clear that if I went to Home Depot or Lowe's and got a piece of wood cut perfectly, I could just set it on top of the point of that molding is to hold a shelf that just wasn't there. but and i did that and i was sort of proud of myself also because there's some ducting up there and i was like i'm not 100 sure if i get this cut to spec if i'll be able to like wedge it up there in a sort of

of geometrical way like could do this work and it did work but then that's where i stopped and this is where i'm more encouraged by the things you're talking about because that then i i was like okay look at me i just built a shelf and then i just started like i just shoved a bunch of shit up there you know what and it's like not very usable but you bought little plastic drawers it sounds like not yet sort of organizing thing you're going to well then maybe i can say i'm going to as well or maybe you can pick some up for me at the organizing store i'll keep you and

the listeners posted we can't wait all that is to say when i get into the home depot and i go to the shelving department and all i see is shelving that i don't want yeah that's where my brain starts to really lock up because this one side of my brain is saying we must install this shelf to move forward with our very life like and then the other side of my brain is like yeah but we don't like this rubberized they didn't even have it in black i might have considered black it was just that standard rubberized white wire shelving stuff and i was looking at it and i was like i've had that in so many places i've lived in my life and i it does there's nothing else that goes with that in my in my closet everything is a natural wood it's you know whatever there's a thing happening and i was like this is gonna bother me every single time i look at it but also i really really want to solve this in the next two hours of my life and and i really battled with that until i was like no don't do this just because like don't buy this out of desperation first of all go see what else is available and if nothing is right then wait until you can get the right thing what i'm describing is the way that most adults brains just naturally work but just

not mine unless i really unless i really tell it what to do i understand that i understand that instinct though too because well i think our brains are very different in in in these regards about getting projects done because I will look around the house and have a million things I'd love. I mean, right now, I can just tell you a million things that I don't like the vibe of. I don't like my CD shelves in here, which are Ikea, like just the drop seal. There's a million things I don't like about this, but about the studio, but like I will never fix them because I'm just so deeply lazy when it comes to projects. Like it's just like, and the idea of, and this is my problem when I move into a place, the um sort of uh is uh what's the word i guess apathy i was gonna say entropy i don't know if entropy is the right word but like you throw a bunch of stuff you're like i'll deal with this later but then once you're you know you're like okay this corner isn't great i need some shelving solutions here but for now i'll just sort of stack my my my boxes there whatever it is these plastic storage units and i know they're ugly but i'll leave them there for now and i'll deal with them later but then I never deal with them later because I love just sort of like you know if I'm if I have extra time I don't feel like tearing something apart or even thinking or even like I think about this like with you and Genevieve you're just like well there's a fun aspect to it like you have a blank space above your bed you immediately got your triptych and that's cool there are so many places in this house where I either want to replace art or we need some art and we've known it since day one above the couch right outside my studio here there's a big area where we've been talking and like it will not happen until Genevieve does it and like and it's not like I don't and this is the thing it's not like I don't have opinions about it it's not like I don't walk past that we have a bunch of ugly like um sort of like I don't know face plates that are screwed into walls around here hiding some sort of electrical thing at some point like ugly as shit like I should like just look into patching those areas up because I don't think they're necessary and you know painting there are just a million things but I will never do any of them what i will do like i did last night is start cleaning the house around 11 o'clock and like and then i'll start then i did like last night i spent i just started like i was like well this little area needs vacuuming the next thing you know i have out like some sort of uh mrs meyer's carpet refresher that i'm sprinkling all around the basement carpet and i'm doing a full and then while that's soaking in i'm now doing a i'm cleaning my bathroom and i'm pulling everything out of my bath and then there's like this all started at 11 and i woke up this morning i was like oh that's nice i cleaned last night but like i i can do that but i can't take i don't know i'm just so there's something about a project that i'm so averse to and i don't i don't know what it is but i really hate it about myself because i have opinions about my space but i never fix

any of the stuff that drives me nuts for me the i i'm also the longer that this thing goes on here actually the lazier i'm becoming because i don't know i just feel like i've been at it for a long time and I'm kind of over it but the two things for me one I am and this kind of violates the Maya this is the good part theme that I've tried to embrace which is to say it's not about getting to the end of the thing and then admiring it as much as it is being like hey the the fixing of the thing can also be the good part that being said I do like to sort of like fantasize about the moment where like I keep thinking about so the room that I was sleeping in I keep thinking about the moment when it's all painted and it looks a lot better.

better than it does right now and there's a nice area rug and there's a yet another bed ordered from wayfair and it's all set up and like my uh you know like whoever addy's over uh and someone's staying in that room and they have a nice night's sleep and they come downstairs and we're having coffee in the morning i keep imagining that moment and i'm like well that'll make it all worth it in other words i i or i think about in in getting my my new bedroom together like well when i i'll wake up in fact it kind of happened this morning it's like when i was reorganizing everything and moving stuff and taking stuff to goodwill and painting and screwing shit in and that's all the stuff that's not particularly fun for me i was like yeah but i'm gonna get up in the morning i'm gonna look out at the river i'm gonna go get my running clothes and i'm gonna know what drawer they're in and then i'm gonna be playing oh by the way dude who what's the name of that guitar player you sent me gill oh herb ellis yeah ellis in wonderland i mean dude i am on you got me i'm on the train

i've been listening to so much herb ellis that's good i'm glad to hear it i was gonna say i i actually was thinking about it later after the show i said that i'd sent you the whole album and then said oh don't listen the whole album it's just the one song you'd like i was remembering the details of it the album is good i was re-listening to that record the other day too it's just that i had told you specifically hey listen to this on you at a night i remember you at a specifically like a late night airplane ride and i remember sending you this and saying this will be perfect for your flight back to seattle and then i listened to track one and it's like this pretty athletic guitar solo that it was just i was like do not i was just picturing you like i'm gonna listen to some relaxing jazz i mean like andrew does not understand what people need on a flight at midnight but there's some there's some great tracks on there and also some good

ones for night flights too i've also just kind of started a couple of algorithms based on herb Ellis and then it's it's just a lot of that kind of Django Ryan Hardy kind of jazz guitar stuff which is a a space that I haven't explored much and I'm really enjoying it but anyway I got up this morning I like put on a little Herb Ellis and I'm I'm you know puttering around I get the coffee going and then I I go over to the to the closet and I move the closet door over and I open a drawer that has my uh my my running socks in it and then I grab my shorts from the place where they go, and I grab the kind of shirts I wear for jogging. Anyway, it's just this, I had this moment this morning of a very banal moment of life that I've been looking forward to experiencing in that exact way, so that's kind of rewarding. So all that is to say, I'm with you. I'm not big on projects, but I think I can psych myself up enough. Also, my love of consumption really helps, because like you said, Genevieve and I enjoy shopping for, and we have sort of different ways of doing it. I think Genevieve's way is much better. Deal hunting. She loves deal hunting. carbon footprint reducing um you know maybe buying something uh that's been pre-owned but works well for what you need or even rehabbing something like i really admire genevieve's approach mine is usually just to throw money at the problem with mixed results but there is i do enjoy acquiring stuff i enjoy hunting for something and then acquiring it so that also motivates me if i look at a a blank wall in my bedroom i'm like okay well what would be immediately i start thinking well, what would be a fun thing to acquire to quote-unquote solve this problem? Which kind of, you know, propels me a little bit. Let me just, because I mentioned it and because it won't be relevant after tonight, tell you that I have far too much invested in Mike Tyson beating Jake Paul tonight in a boxing match on Netflix. Now, this is complicated for a few reasons. One, Mike Tyson himself has a complicated past. Yes, I know. That's the irony. i mean mike tyson has been imprisoned for sexual assault he's been you know he's been involved in a lot of stuff and a lot of very violent and and very you know terrible behavior again some of it you know where he's been literally legally found guilty he's also had this kind of really strange sort of third act where he's like a buddhist and raises pigeons and just like smokes weed and is a man of peace and he's been very much rehabilitated I don't know if he's literally been rehabilitated but in terms of the public eye at least the certain part of the public eye he's no one talks about the fact that he went to jail for raping Desiree Washington you know and I think that's we need to keep that in mind you know it's part of his history but I also feel like this guy Jake Paul who he's fighting is such a manifestly evil human and I don't know I don't know if I think his politics are MAGA, I'm pretty sure.

He's just one of these nihilist bros who thinks nothing matters or only cares that maybe his tax bracket is positively impacted. Just the worst kind of young male who has moved towards Trump because they just, again, they think nothing matters. They don't think about anything.

anybody else. And they don't think about the implications of it. They just go, I don't know, you know, he seems like a bad-ass to me or whatever. And I have gotten really tied up. And I think because, and again, we already just kind of had this conversation at the beginning of the show, but I think because so much feels so awful right now. And there are so many areas in which the quote unquote bad guys seem to be winning and being rewarded for being bad. this Mike this idea of Mike Tyson beating Jake Paul has become consuming to me in the last 24 hours like I need him to beat I need him to mop the floor with this kid but it's like I don't even

know how I feel about feeling that way well I don't know if you want to hear this or not but they're both Trump supporters so I don't know if that's a Trump supporter well here's and I'll read to you directly from this that actually helps me this is USA Today yeah I think they're both kind of garbage people uh this is usa today this was from before the election for that's worth actually it was uh election day this is this was published um maybe the day before election day mike tyson jake paul share ties to donald trump in support of former president uh but now it specifically says this is where the details are maybe you know somewhat relevant although i kind of don't care that much before the 2016 election tyson told the post the huffington post he should be president of the united states hell yeah big time tyson has offered no public endorsement this year but in off-the-cuff remarks has made it clear that he still supports trump so i don't know if

that well mutual mutual knockout you know what it's happened two people punch each other so hard

at the same time they both get knocked out nobody wins hey listen this man has played a lot of literally mike tyson's punch out i think he knows a little bit about boxing everybody i'm talking about you luke um i am fascinated by and i haven't done a lot of reading about this so maybe it's an easy answer and maybe i shouldn't bring it up but i'm fascinated by the um economics of this thing so i believe this is actually and i don't know if this is this used to be common in boxing or the professional fighting world at all but it's like what this thing like netflix i don't think is paying for this thing i think this is actually a jake paul production like he produces his own events and then shops them around so it's always interesting to me like because for netflix and maybe i'm echoing a conversation that i heard another podcast but like do you think that there are like if it's a pay-per-view it's very clear like there's only one way to get this fight and we are going to pay per view right but with netflix their whole model is well we want as many subscribers as possible that's how they make money they also do have some advertising depending on the tier that you pay for so maybe it's a they'll probably heavily advertised during this thing but aside from from that like i don't know how much netflix has had to invest in this but do you think there's anybody out there who doesn't do you think that anybody signs up for netflix for this fight oh i bet yeah yeah maybe they think they're gonna do it temporarily i just maybe this is maybe just my own where i am in in my own class or whatever i just sort of feel like everybody who has net everybody has netflix now it seems like it's one of the most affordable uh streaming services but i guess they're still i guess they're still fighting for eyeballs so there might be some people who are like well i'll just get it for

this fight and then never cancel it i have a feeling that's a part of their calculation and also they're they're big on trying to do live events now because you know somehow that is something i don't really i don't even fully understand that i guess the thought is that if the one thing you can't time shift is like live or the one thing you don't really want to time shift is live sports that draws big audiences still I mean football is football games are regularly the most highly you know sort of watched events in television in a given week and I guess it's because it starts to expire pretty quickly whereas you know whatever the latest show is that's popular you can kind of wait forever to watch it I don't know why that matters because it seems like if somebody if somebody waits three weeks to watch the latest episode of somebody somewhere or they watch Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson. Aren't you getting a watch in either case? Does it matter that the person takes three weeks to watch it? I don't understand why one watch seems to be more valuable than the other to them, but they certainly are hyping a lot of live stuff. That was what that, you know, John Mulaney, everyone's in LA and again, other like sports things are all about.

Yeah, the Tom Brady roast, I think. Yes, the roast of Tom Brady. I think and some other, yeah, live stuff. Oh, and they were messing around with like live. i want to say aziz but it might not have been aziz and sorry but it was some very famous comedian also did like the first oh you know what it might have been chris rock did like a live netflix like almost like an old hbo model only as netflix although i had heard that that like the fact that you and i didn't even talk about that i heard that that it was not very fun it just wasn't good

but whatever you've done me a great service today andrew and i'm being totally serious by by alerting me to Mike Tyson's also horrible political takes so that I now have no opinion on this fight tonight. You've released me from a jail that I was in called Caring About...

this fight and and i appreciate you you you baked a file inside of a cake and brought it to me on visiting days and i have now been able to tunnel my way out are you scanning my various jailbreak

metaphors are you scanning more details because as i'm talking to you i'm scanning more the trump was defending tyson in his rape case publicly uh back in 1992 it looks like i mean they're

it's all garbage i guess i was hoping because mike i mean mike tyson is i honestly think the thing with mike tyson is he absolutely does not consider what he's going to say until he's saying it and there's absolutely no consistency about it ever like he's equally likely to threaten horrible violence towards someone and i'm not talking about someone he's in a fight with like jake paul but just like a random person as he is to basically like start quoting you know gandhi or something like he is a real mess of a person but he has he is he has gone through this this kind of reputational rehab where people don't talk about the time he did in jail i believe in

indiana for a rape case you know yeah and i think that that movie the um hangover had a huge thing to do with that right it wasn't that it seemed like it was such a a whitewashing of his reputation

that kind of always irritated me yeah i i'm being serious when i say i'm so glad to have to give zero shits about this night it no longer represents the last possible saving of our democracy it's just two horrible people being horrible to each other and may they both may they both um concuss each other speaking of me wishing injuries on people andrew maybe we do some emails here and

i can make a clarification here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from

a female no man it's not from a female all right speaking of um me wishing physical degradation upon people whose politics i disagree with uh i was a little wrong yesterday when i was talking about uh who i was calling a player for the san francisco 49ers i was calling joey bosa but in fact i was thinking about his brother nick bosa i forgot there's two of them and uh I'm trying to remember. Somebody very nicely corrected us on this. I think in the e-mails. Why am I having trouble? Or was it a different? Was it maybe in my DMs? Were you on this? No, it was in the e-mail. It was Kate. It was Kate.

Okay, great.

Kate, listener Kate, said, I'm sure I'm not the first one to e-mail you. You were, Kate. So, see you later, suckers.

Oh, this is Dates with Kate, Kate, too.

Yes, our friend Dates with Kate, Kate. Bosa, the Bosa that you want to blow with ACL is Nick Bosa not Joey Bosa Nick is the asshat that wore and got fined for wearing his MAGA hat on the field, I mean they're both trash so blown ACLs to them both but just saying, and then I love, it's signed Peace and Love, from Kate so anyway, I wanted to correct the record I'm guessing that Nick Bosa, I'm guessing his politics are also not great

it'd be a hell of a story, it'd be pretty funny if he was like

a Bernie bro wouldn't that be hilarious yeah if he was like yeah if he was just like they were raised in the same household they both played football their whole life and were molded by the same forces but for some reason Nick pursued the way of inclusivity and peace and Joey pursued

the way of horribleness no I think you got that backwards again Joey is the so Nick is the one who wore the Trump MAGA hat Joey is the one who wore the Shama Sawant t-shirt hope you're happy

shama great job with the jill stein great job with the jill stein rex i know i said we're not throwing anyone out of the boat but i um i shama towards the edge i was gonna do something here

while we're talking about emails and v-mails we had both sort of referenced early on in the show that a lot of people have been kind of reaching out to us and sharing their feelings after the election and a lot of people in some dark places and some you know and just like trying to work out their feelings and trying to figure out how how we all move forward from this without like truly, truly losing our minds. Right. And I got an email from listener Mike, who's who I'm not going to I'm not sure that this whole email was really for public consumption. So I'm not going to read the whole thing. But essentially, you know, after the election, going through some pretty rough stuff and then a few days later watching TV with his partner and laughing and And then kind of feeling like almost this weird like guilt for like for laughing and like not and not being more in the moment as if we can all do that. Right. Like we're all supposed to be like joyless for four years. Nobody thinks that. But this this feeling that I understand Mike having of just like, should I be should I be laughing right now? So then they apparently they talked about that some more. And he said he listened to TBTL, too. And he said, like, I thought about it a little bit differently. it's truly the personal relationships in all of our lives that truly matter and we absolutely should care about the greater outside world as well but in the end small

moments of shared humanity um nobody can take that away from us and uh so anyway inspired by the conversation he wrote a song and since we can't play copyrighted music um on the show anymore but we do have sort of a tradition of playing songs to go out on a friday i thought we could play this um song it's called bittersweet victory from listener mike and uh and we'll go out with this and thank you for sharing thanks for sharing your music and your thoughts with us mike and

Yeah, thanks. And I'll just say, if you are hearing this and there is something that has been kind of helping you just feel like you can get through the day, you know, share that with us. I'm sure we're all kind of all ears on, you know, I don't know, hobbies, frameworks for how you're thinking, wishing Jake Paul and Mike Tyson, Mutual Assured Destruction, whatever is getting you through music, art therapy. let us know and we'll pass those along because I think we're all kind of all ears at this moment as to ways that we're going to kind of get through this looming four years together because we are going to get through it we got no other choice so that is going to do it for our broadcast week and we're going to be all done until Monday morning when we'll be right back here with more imaginary radio so please do join us for that in the meantime have a good weekend take care of each other and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

We'll be right back. We'll be right back. was fate hopes and dreams in a grand parade with every step our path is laid find meaning in this escapade in the garden of our own shade we'll recount memories replay

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