Muse

his name is crew hey good looking BMX is his world rad is his way of life this is a very important race he's got the style there's something about the way you ride so naturally and he's going to prove it I've never seen this raw determination and talent one kid against the factory hot shots looks like the local yokel's gonna race after all it's gonna to take a miracle to beat this guy. Against the big money fixers. All you have to do is take out that kid. Against impossible odds. This guy doesn't even stand a chance. Yeah, yeah. He's going for it all. Rad.

When you knock us down, we're going to get up, and on the way up, we're going to bite a kneecap off, all right, and we're going to stand up, and then it's going to take two more shots to knock us down.

I've never felt this way about anybody before, not even Bobby Sherman, who I completely and totally adored, but now I realize that that was just puppy love, and that this is the real thing.

So I thought that maybe you could think about next Thursday night, if that's good for you. I can get tickets to nonsense, because I really want to see that before I die. It's their nuns and they sing, and there's a lot of improv. What happened?

He was telling me how he's the Jesse James of rock and roll. And then, right in the middle of a sentence, bump, a coconut fell on his head.

No, you're going to tell a story. I don't believe that I can bear to listen to another one of your stories right now!

we are I am nervous folks on this Tuesday morning I am nervous about what is predicted to be a bomb cyclone of wind and rain hitting the region what

do you got here a thunder hurricane going on a thunder blizzard hurricane I

I don't know if this is just my age I was never a person who worried about the weather. And now I'm looking around, I'm analyzing things in the yard, wondering if I should be taking down anything and everything that isn't like, you know, nailed down and taken into the basement. We are supposed to be getting a big weather event here on the West Coast, particularly up here in the Northwest, and this might be the final episode of TBTL, so let's make it a good one. It's episode 4340 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

I have some good news, finally. Single Christians, good news. You know, in these turbulent times, anytime there's any good news, I like to highlight it. And this involves a person who seems to be a pretty bad person and also a very bad rapper.

I'm the president of rap music, and I need to work with you right away.

Getting their comeuppance. We'll tell you the latest on RazzleCon, the crocodile of Wall Street, and a bunch of other stuff that we've got on the list today. It's going to be a busy, busy show. Speaking of creative types and people who really understand what art is and art isn't, let me introduce you to the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships and his complete comfort in the spaces between the talking here on TBTL.

An artist respects the silence. It serves as the foundation of creativity.

He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

There's a funny line from a movie, Luke. Good morning. And it's a Whit Stillman film. I can't remember the name of it, but Whit Stillman made it. I feel like it might have been Barthelona. He's got a movie called Barthelona, right? And I say it that way because it matters. Put some respect on its name. Where somebody is talking. You know, it's like these kind of... Last Days of Disco, that's what I was trying to think of. Yeah, it's not. It's one of the earlier ones.

Damsel in Distress, Barthelona, Metropolitan, I think I'm naming a lot of them.

Yeah, I think that's most of them. We play some tape from Your Friends and Neighbors, by the way. That's a newer one that came out in the past 10 years that is based on one of Austin's unpublished works, I believe. Your Friends and Neighbors? Yeah, we play a clip. You made that one? I'm sorry, not Your Friends and Neighbors.

I'm sorry no I thought that was like Todd Haynes Not your friends and neighbors What's the one you said about love Yeah it's definitely not your friends and neighbors That is a very different vibe Love and friendship Love and friendship is the one Love and friendship Huge difference there That's the one with Al Bundy in it right That is the one with Al Bundy He flushes a toilet And then sticks half of his hand down the front of his pants Are you familiar?

Unfortunately I'm very familiar Both with the character and the lifestyle

A lot of people don't realize that's a Whit Stillman vibe

He was the one who came up with the idea of the crowd going crazy every time Christina Applegate walks onto the set. That was Whit Stillman.

Yes, and the Heisman pose. That was an Al Bundy movie.

By the way, your friends and neighbors was Neil Labute. I knew it was one of those guys that likes to make movies that leave you feeling less good about the world.

Your friends and neighbors is... I haven't seen that since, I didn't see it in the theater, but I saw it when it was relatively new.

I'd wait four years.

I don't know if I could come back and watch that one. Yeah, that's about some really, really awful people doing awful things, if I recall. But all of that is to say, now I've totally lost the reason I even brought this up, but you mentioned about the spaces in between spaces, and there's a line in Barcelona where one of these college-age kids or post-college-age young people is being sort of high-minded and pseudo-intellectual and talking about, Like, we're always talking about the subtext, the subtext. But nobody ever says what is above the subtext. Like, what is that? Like, we never talk about that. And somebody just says, that's the text. And I think about that line all the time, when you're being a little bit too smart for your own good.

We have never been accused of that on this show. Well, I think I have been accused of. Not smart enough for anyone's good, I think, is more the sort of tone and tenor.

Although there is that thing that one slips into that I can slip into sometimes. This is a little bit different, but, like, going for a larger word than is necessarily meant there or needed there. And it's not even – I'm not even – I can't explain it. All I want to do on this show is not stumble and not, you know, just embarrass myself beyond recognition. Like, I'm not trying to flex. I'm not trying to use big words. But sometimes like in the flow of conversation, you just start grasping for a word. You can probably hear me do it sometimes. I don't know if you're clocking it, Luke, but you'll hear me almost like, is it fog? I almost foghorn leghorn sometimes. Listen for it. Take a drink every time I do this. I'll stumble and I'll look for a word and then I'll just give up on it and say it. A porky pigging. Is it a porky pigging and not a? Well, because he would go like, but I'm not going to do that. Yeah, you're right. It's porky pig.

You'll know when I'm doing the impression. But he would, yeah, he would stumble over a word. I even messed that up. And then pick an entirely different word, I think.

I messed up the Looney Tunes reference.

I can't do anything right. Do you remember the, I just saw this the other day. I'm not nearly as immersed in the world of Kids in the Hall as you are, but do you know the Kids in the Hall ascertain sketch?

I don't know.

Where I think it's Bruce McCullough has recently learned the word ascertain, and he's using it so much at work that they have to call him into the office. Do you want to hear this real quick?

I do.

just that note this Dave Foley is the boss I came as soon as I ascertained you

needed to sit down Williams what is it sir Williams there have been some complaints about your use of language on the docks if this is about yesterday sir Yes, I did use a few blue words, a few cuss words, but as soon as I ascertained it, the mix-up had been corrected. No, Williams, it's not your swearing that I'm getting complaints about. It's the fact that you used the word ascertained too much. Really? Yes, apparently you use it an average of two to three hundred times daily. Well, I do, but so other few words fit. Well, it's driving the men crazy, okay? Who's complaining, sir? is it Sanchez? No, it's not Sanchez. It's the older men, the ones nearing retirement. Sir, I ascertain that these men are just jealous of my command of the English language. Well, perhaps, but I suggest that just to keep things running smoothly down in the docks, you humor me by limiting yourself to these four work-related phrases. Good morning, fellas. Hand me that thing. Boy, this works hard. Guys, breaks over. Sir, I ascertained that it's their problem. They're just jealous. of me. It's my right to ascertain things. You should talk to them about their being upset about my ascertaination.

God, I love them. I can't explain to you what just even hearing that audio does for me. And I don't know that I've seen that one before. I mean, I feel like maybe at some point or another I've seen them all. I don't know. That doesn't ring any bells for me. But like, it's more than just funny to me. It's like my heart, my heart overfloweth with love for these boys. I ascertain that.

Just watching you on Riverside while you were listening to that. But yeah, I mean, I'm sure because it takes you to what part of your life does that take you to?

For me, high school, certainly. And like that sense of discovery, because I feel like let me let me see if I can rewind this a little bit. You grow up, at least for our generation, you grow up knowing about Saturday Night Live. I grew up in a household with pretty strict viewing kind of rules at home. So we knew of Saturday Night Live, but weren't really allowed to watch it until we were kind of older. We watched some of the old ones, like from the 70s that my parents would sort of vet or whatever. But then you get to a certain age and you start discovering stuff on your own. And then The Kids in the Hall was like the first sketch comedy that was like, it just seemed so edgy. Like I didn't even understand some of it. There was like drag going on.

Yes, exactly. You know, I wasn't sure which cast members were gay, but I knew that was a pretty intense situation. Oh, my God.

So Kids in the Hall has been streaming on one of those, like, Fubi, Tubi, Tubal, you know, like, streaming services lately. And so I've just been, like, watching.

My Fubi, Tubi, Tubal trial period is about to run out, so I might have to borrow your password.

Yeah, mine is swollen, and the doctor says I need to take some more medicine, keep that under control. But yeah, and so I've been like, yeah, Buddy, that character where he plays the really, really fake gay bartender. I mean, Genevieve has got together with a bunch of friends and watched that for her TV club one time. And some people who didn't understand the context for it, and I don't even remember who they were. I wasn't there for it. And I don't know, we're pretty offended because some of the language that he uses is like, you know, but I mean, Scott Thompson is a gay man. And I think that, you know, it's like it's it was a little complicated in 2022 or whatever the year was to sort of explain the context, because it was like really, really, really edgy stuff. But also I can't explain it like the reason I have the feelings I feel when you play that isn't just because of my memories of falling in love with the show, but because of the good spiritedness of that show as well. Like they're just well, it's so Canadian, it's deeply Canadian and so they're so lovable. I feel like I have a personal relationship

with every one of them I feel kind of like my personal relationship with Saturday Night Live may have sort of ended yours ended a long time ago but I was still up until pretty recently like you know if they had a guest star on or a host I should say who I was kind of excited about I'd make sure to watch how the sketches were I'm not watching it on Saturday night but I would definitely jump on the internet on Monday and kind of see what were the best sketches and things like that but I just think I just think I've aged out and uh which is you know which I probably should have aged out a long time ago but like there's this one sketch that it's like their sensational sketch of the season so far and it seems so so middling to me it's uh this character named Domingo and basically the way it plays out the first the first iteration of this or whatever the first presentation of it was it's um a wedding it's the reception and the kind of bridal party so the brides you know friends and you know bridesmaids i guess are kind of singing like a they're singing a song and it's a cover i think of like a sabrina carpenter song so they're kind of singing a pop song but they've changed the lyrics to be about their friend the bride and the wild times they've had including the bachelorette party and what becomes apparent is that she definitely hooked up with a guy named domingo at the at the bridal you know not the bridal shower but the bachelorette party and then like the her husband is sort of horrified that this is all being presented in song and then like domingo shows up at the end and and it's like i mean it's i just explained to you the entire concept of only it keeps going and going well it just it's it's had this whole afterlife on the internet of like and i wish i knew the name of the of the the the uh performer the saturday night live cast member who plays this domingo guy because it's now a thing where he's like showing like it's so popular with people in their 20s and this is again where i just realized i'm just not i'm not the right age for that show anymore that it's just like popping up everywhere like he's showing up at like the world series as domingo and they're cutting to him they already have put

out a new another version of it and i want to say it's like the bride's baby shower um so you know we're staying with these characters and again it's her baby shower friends are singing a song that's a different pop song and of course guess what it leads to domingo being there and i just yeah i just didn't i i don't know i can't it's it's just one of the it's one of the first times where the most popular sketch in the world of snl because in the previous times it's like whether it's Melissa McCarthy talking about that cash can get really get her out of a couple of jams and she's just like chugging ranch dressing and I was like that is the that's the sketch everyone's talking about and it's also very funny to me that's generally been my experience with SNL and obviously like it's a whole parlor game to go like what was the good cast and now there's no one good left and then you know new people become uh popular and then it's like now this is the good cast I mean so people have been doing that for a long time but for me the constant was usually when something became really in the sort of zeitgeist when something really caught the updraft of pop culture i was kind of on board with the thing and that is just this is the first time that something is very much in the updraft culturally and i'm just like i don't really it seems like a pretty thin joke to me i saw somebody on like probably tiktok um putting forward a theory why snl has really changed over the last few years and i don't know if this is true or not this is one person by the way great episode of why is this happening today with our friend televisions chris hayes talking about like the media at large and kind of like where does the media go from here but what i'll say is nice about the episode is it's it's not like a media strategy for dismantling donald trump's you know presidency it's just a like let's check in on what's just going on with how information moves around so it's not like a super depressing conversation well it is a little depressing because of how information moves around but one of the things that they mentioned on the episode today was talking about how in the early days of the internet you used to this is to the side of what i was starting to say about snl in the early days of the internet you used to follow people let's say on twitter because you thought their tweets were interesting or funny or whatever and you they had maybe that a blue check mark you had some sort of like relationship with the idea of this person you had sort of selected them you were like i like their content I want to get more of their content with the algorithms now so much of the content that we're getting is not content we asked for and is not people that we specifically followed it's just a random person for instance a guy analyzing why SNL sucks now now I don't know what this guy knows about that he's not someone I chose to follow on TikTok I don't know if he knows what he's talking about but I did think his theory was interesting which was there are sort of two I guess major schools of improv one is the Groundlings and one is Second City and I may be getting the specifics wrong but this guy's point was the initial sort of the SNL that we think of is largely based on

I'm going to say Groundlings which is kind of a guess where what is really happening is characters is oddball characters show up in a situation and they act odd so it's built around the idea of characters but what the rise in the SNL cast now has been around the other big improv movement, which is based on games, which is based on improv games and a certain kind of, you might say, ensemble presentation that is something that is less successful comedically in the context of SNL. And when he said that, I was like, I kind of can see that because like when I think of the SNL stuff that I'll go back to Melissa McCarthy, that Melissa McCarthy sketch is just, she's a real oddball who shows up in different situations and makes it weird for everyone um and by the way i don't know which school she might have come out of second city she might have come out of groundlings i don't really know but the point was that there's been a kind of a like a shift in the kind of folks that are getting hired by snl and the kind of improv world they came up in we're starting to kind of see the evidence of that i don't know if it's that if i'm just old but i'm just the domingo thing is not it's not

hitting for me so one quick thing on the the media conversation that you brought up with chris hayes about how stuff is kind of fed to us just for the record like that's exactly that is exactly one of the and probably the biggest reason why i didn't like threads so much it just felt like they were just it was constantly like your feed always had something in there even if you'd seen everything by the people that you follow and if you didn't follow anybody you just open up threads and it was like pre-packaged all this stuff that you know zuckerberg's people wanted you to see because they wanted it to go via you know what i mean it was like so zuckerberg's favorite tweet it was just so pre-packaged and and instagram which is you know the same product essentially does the same thing which is um which is like they're constantly they make you constantly turn off the feature where it's like i don't want to see things from strangers and you can't just turn it off constantly we've talked about on the show you have to keep doing that every month and it's like that's what drives me crazy and while we've been talking about blue sky that's one of the refreshing things about it it goes back to the early days a little bit you're still going to see retweets and you're still going to see a lot of stuff and you're going to have to manage your stuff but it's not as like and i always use the word thirsty that threads just had this like look at me now look over here look flashy flashy it just drove me bananas as far as snl is concerned i wanted to say that um for the record like i i haven't watched snl like you know literally probably since i guess high school or maybe college on the regular um but that isn't to say that like i want to be like you know i'm the guy who doesn't like snl because i one of my favorite things on this show is when you're tickled by an snl sketch either something that you missed from 10 years ago or something that is current right now and you play it for me and i just giggle like there's some i love it when there's something i want it to be funny and i'm gonna go on a limb here and say i like to laugh so i'm not like trying to be like not liking snl as a personality type it just i watched i think maybe i thought we were going to talk about it on tbtl or something so in the lead up to the election i watched one of those big cold opens and this has been the case since the very beginning right like the cold opens especially the politically the ones that are based on political narratives um in the mainstream culture they're always just like we're going to get people to do an imitation of all these things that happened but like the verisimilitude is so good that they're basically just recreating events that aren't really that funny you know what i mean there aren't like the joke is in the impression not in the writing exactly and like there was a long one one that i think a lot of people were talking about i'm going to say maybe a month ago or something that um you know had uh Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris and like I Maya Rudolph much like the kids in the hall like just a beloved comedian you know what I mean like I have such good

yes I mean she just walks on the screen and and and and you fall in love all over again so I have nothing bad to say about her or her impression but there just weren't jokes it was I mean there were sort of jokes but it was mostly her just being there and everybody loving the fact that she was there and that she does a good impression of somebody but it wasn't funny i will say when they tossed it over to to james austin johnson's trump like there's a little bit more there there like him just literally mispronouncing kamala's first name was like that i gotta admit like that there's just something about his particular impression that is like we've been following

him for years as he just was like wander down sunset riffing as trump and it was the next level

impression yeah and and that you know i was at the i think i maybe i didn't mention this to you on the show but i was at a record show at the uh shoreline elks club this weekend and you did not mention it yeah it was great i loved it oh my god oh shoot now what's a record show like they're selling records yeah like a lot of record stores or record collectors whatever all come and set up kind of booths in this area at the at this elks club which i'd never been to before it's very nice

inside there as a fellow eagle should the eagles take some notes i will tip my hats to my fellow

elks um and uh yeah and so i went with a few buddies and um they they sat in the bar and drank while i went and i kept on checking in i'm like i'm sorry i'm looking at all the records are like you're fine we're eating our we're eating our fisherman's platter go go go play with your record somewhere and so anyway i was flipping through a bit of records and there was a conversation that i overheard now i'm getting really off course but i think you're gonna like this between a guy who i'm gonna say was maybe around my age although i gotta remember that i'm getting kind of old i'm gonna put this guy maybe in his somewhere in his 40s and he's like sitting behind a table he's a vendor like and he's talking to a woman who i'm gonna describe as a young woman because i'm old i'm gonna put her maybe in her i'm gonna put her maybe in her old maybe in the later 20s early 30s or something but came off as a pretty young person to me i'm gonna put her in her 20s and they're chatting and first of all one thing i overhear them talking about is some song and that how kicksy radio plays it too much and then my ears like a dog my ears were across the auditorium i was actually at the eagles and i heard this from the health exactly and you floated up like a cartoon skunk yeah like john mulaney's pig character in the Spider-Man Across the Universe movie. I know it's not called that. I can't, what's it called? Do you remember John Mulaney's character? Oh, Enter the Spider-Verse? Enter the Spider-Verse, one of my favorite jokes in that. I forgot about that. His nose just like takes him off his feet and he follows it. John Mulaney's spider pig, I think it was. Anyway, all of that is to say I'm standing next to these people and I really try not to insert myself into other people's conversations.

Is it possible you're...

going to places where you think there's a likelihood they'll bring up Kixi? Well, this is a first. Because this seems like a real hot zip for that. I bet the Elks in like Bothell or wherever you were.

Maybe going forward, I should put myself in more Kixi-rich situations. And the thing is... I'm familiar with hospice care. Anyway, so I hear them and I hear them talking about Kixi and they said something else. They're like, yeah, that and the Donovan song. They always play these two songs on Kixi. I'm like, you're talking about Kixi and Donovan. Is this a trap? am i being catfished here like this feels like alert alert and i i just have to i'm just like and i'm kind of at the next table over but they're standing very close to me and i just look i'm just like are you guys talking about kicksy radio they're like yeah and it was an awkward conversation because i didn't really know where to take it from there i'm like yeah i'm a big kicksy listener but the truth is i actually haven't listened in a while because the playlists have changed and they play kind of more modern music like you'll hear 70s and 80s stuff on there and you know me luke i was a kicksy purist but anyway then they they're i'm like oh you're talking about the new playlist you have no time for that like yeah the playlist changed a lot huh they're like yeah but it's really the commercials and and the young woman is saying uh something like yeah you know i'm not their demographic i'll bet you she was probably closer to like maybe her 20s and she's like yeah i'm just not their demographic and i'm hearing all these commercials i'm like yeah i'm thinking to myself like you are definitely yeah people in their 20s are not the kicksy demographic this is of course a radio station on the am dial that plays oldies or certainly used to play stuff mostly from the 50s and 60s um and i even and then i couldn't help it i'm like you know i know the person who sells all of those commercials on kicksy radio i'm like anything you want me to pass along they're like yeah less supplement commercials they don't really apply to me the reason i bring all of this up is because then i disengage from the conversation like i realize i'm not going anywhere with this kicksy conversation we're not exactly on the same path i'm flipping through my records and these two continue to talk and they clearly know each other right and um this the guy says to the woman what do you what are your plans for the saturday night and she said oh you know me just i'm going home um to watch snl and and then she even said she's like yeah they're really they have to kind of eat crow now you know kind of after the election and then they get into she's you know she they start talking about their own you know insecure feelings after the election as well so she wasn't like she wasn't like um running a victory lap or doing the trump dance looking forward to them eating crow no no no and she was even you know so they were on the right side of history or whatever but my point in all of this is that feeling of her saying like yeah i'm going home like i'm gonna go home and i'm gonna make myself some soup or whatever it is she listens to kicks i'm gonna assume it's soup um she's gonna go home and make some soup something soft and tune in for the snl and like i loved that for her yeah and i want that for myself you know what i mean like i don't i don't think it's i miss those days to not like snl i love that i love that people get enjoyment out of it so anything critical i say is not is not to diminish the people who do see that as appointment viewing and i will be sad if

I am alive and SNL goes off the air, even if I haven't watched it in 20 years.

Yeah, speaking of their first show post-election, I didn't even watch it. I saw some description of where they went with it, their angle on it, and I have to say, I mean, first of all, to this day, but particularly in the three to four days right after the election, The nerves, my nerves Which are usually subcutaneous Were outside of my skin I mean that's how sensitive I was To everything If a light breeze Blew across my arm it was like So I was extra sensitive But I did not like their take Which was their joke was Oh we actually love Trump all along And like you're the best dude And they have Austin What's his name James Austin Johnson He is portraying a crazy buff Trump like a cool idealized version of Trump and so the whole joke is like ha ha we were kidding we actually really like you you're like the coolest my problem with that is that Trump does not possess the ability to understand irony and so I don't think he interprets that as like oh this is a meta joke about how like you know they just don't want me to literally like pull the license from NBC and they're just sucking up to me in a way that the joke is still on me he just sees it as like look at buff me on television and it's just like i just don't understand how i mean i maybe that's not how you that's not how you program that show you don't think what's trump's actual feeling going to be sitting at mar-a-lago when he watches this or sees a clip of it but that's how i interpret it and i don't like him he's just such a unbelievably simplistic crow magnum that i just him james austin johnson being like the cool version of trump just reads to trump as i'm the cool guy now yeah i was just like

It really bothered me, honestly. It really pissed me off.

Yeah, and you'd wish that they would. And I know, I mean, it's such a, what's the word I'm looking for? It's not an irony. It's not a conundrum. This is me looking for words again, like I like to do on the show. Is it an ascertainment? If I'm ascertaining your description of this properly. I'm an ascertain man, by the way. I've always been. I thought you were a breastertain man. um i uh you just wish that they would somehow stand up for what's right or you know like and the reason i was stumbling before saying like obviously they work for nbc you know what i mean like how how counterculture or how you know like how much power do they even have or how much do i expect out of like one of the the three you know legacy network shows being able to go hard into are they still owned by general electric i don't think so because i think nbc is owned by like comcast remember like comcast cable town yeah exactly so i i don't know the whole tree of it but either way it's the big you know it's the sure it's the most corporatey of corporate

america right and so how much not an outside outsider theater group somewhere in the valley

yeah so I don't know how much pressure is on them but you just wish that they would speak truth to power a little bit more or or not just like oh yeah yeah I'm with you that and again it's because of my leanings but like that that's that sounds like weak tea to me man yeah and I

agree with you that I think the cold open has been I don't know if I think this guy's name is Jim Downey I don't know if Jim Downey still writes the cold open but I know for like literally 20 to 25 years there was one guy at SNL who was kind of like the cold open guy and those cold opens are almost always just like about whatever was in the news this week particularly politics and I always thought like this guy should be writing for Bill Maher like that was the energy the energy was like 58 year old white guy writing what he thought was sort of slightly trenchant political satire um but which is you know one click up from the guy on public television who would like stand up while he played the piano right mark whatever his name is it just felt kind of like it just did in the in snl's best days it always felt tonally off it felt like why are we why are we having the like the oldest people in the room write this opening thing and then it shifts into something else that's kind of funny and edgy and and bizarre but why is this the why is this the part that feels like it could have been written by the bill marr staff are you talking

about this ladies and gentlemen let us welcome washington's fearless political satirist the court jester on the poop deck of the ship of state uh mark that's the only mark russell tape

that i have i think you and i like a decade ago went through a mini mark russell face where we're looking up that in the capital steps i remember oh i remember lord of the fries i remember being so into public radio when i first discovered it but it was only the capital steps that made me

think her like what's going on here i assumed i i i you and i had such a similar journey like we didn't grow up listening to or thinking about public radio and then right as we were starting to spread our own little kind of wings as young adults we found ourselves in the world of public radio and we became a pretty obsessed with it i think or just like experiencing it in this different way as opposed to a kid who grew up with morning edition and you know whatever and and kind of had a sense of it and so trying to make kind of make meaning out of the whole thing and what is i thought all of it was good but then there were some parts i was like i just don't understand this yet i just don't understand the comedy of a a parody cd by the capital steps with a drawing of bill clinton on the cover but he's called lord of the fries i just i i know this is funny it's not funny for me but that's my failing because i'm not ready for the capital steps i love

that so much i want i mean that kind of someday i'll get there brings me and someday you might um it still brings me back to the um to the snl cold open because i'll you said that the the to your understanding one person has sort of been responsible for driving those for a long time and I almost wonder if it goes back to the the earliest days or certainly this person would have would have kind of picked up what they were doing in the earliest days like I was so young when I was watching reruns of SNL like I said my family didn't let us watch like new SNLs it was too fresh then you didn't know what was going to happen also it was late at night but like we would have like you know the best of steve martin or whatever and you know like steve martin is a

is a beloved household name or whatever. So we would watch those and laugh. And then every now and then there would be one where my parents would make us fast forward it or whatever. I remember one that, well, I don't even want to get into it. There was one that was really gross. And I look back, I'm like, how did they ever, I'll tell you off air. Anyway, but if you look back at those early ones, they were still doing the same thing. The cold open was like, what, Chevy Chase standing out there doing, was he doing four? Gerald Ford. Right, and he was clumsy. Yeah. So at least I was adding a little bit of something to it. But I still think that like chances are it's still in the tradition. It always was. I feel like I change more than SNL and like you kind of like the there's a long tradition of the cold open just mocking or representing what has happened in the political news this week. And I wasn't annoyed by the ones that happened before I was born because I was more intrigued by it. I didn't know what was going on and I was piecing it.

It was like me and the Capitol Steps. Yeah, and I was learning. Someday you would understand the humor.

And also, I mean, literally, this is embarrassing, but I was learning history from there. You know, like there was a time in my life where if you asked me to – actually, this is the time of my life where you were to ask me anything about Gerald Ford, I would say, oh, clumsy guy, right? Yeah. Like that's the first thing I think of.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm looking up – the guy – by the way, I want to be – I want to clarify. This guy, Jim Downey, who I mentioned, who I'm sure is an absolute sweetheart of a person and, again, is very respected in the world of SNL writing. He did write there for, like, 30 years, but it looks like he stopped in, like, 2013. So I can't really, like, he's credited with coining the term strategery.

Oh, that was Bush, right?

You know, which would be, like, a George W. Bush-delivered line or whatever. So, you know, it's been a decade since those cold opens were written by him Just so if you haven't liked them, it's not his fault He isn't there anymore But it's mostly still kind of checks out with my general sense of that It's also just, and we can certainly move on Because we have two exciting announcements, Andrew In fact, I am going to move on for once I'm going to tell you that we do have new merch over at tbtl.net The tbtl merch store has been refreshed just in time for the holidays On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me an ish water bottle, an 11 hoodie sweatshirt. Five TBTL five t-shirts. I wasn't sure if we were doing that together. I didn't know either.

We never riffed together. I wasn't really sure what my role was there. And we never will again.

uh so yeah there's there's new merch over there and uh and we would love it if you went over and and got yourself a a cool tall ships t-shirt or hoodie or got one for somebody you love who's into tbtl as we mentioned yesterday this is this is really not a big money maker for us it's just fun for there to be weird tbtl shit out in the world so we and john uh sklaroff tbtl employee numero uno has worked really hard on this as have you and you're on the design side so thank you to

both of you john worked through the weekend on this too by the way just only give him credit

thank you john we really appreciate you buddy um and then also the tbtl card exchange run by our good friend melisande out there in new york is active it's live there's a link i think the plan is to put a link up at tbtl.net eventually i don't know when that will be there i'm guessing there's some stuff already circulating on the stens page and stuff like that but if you've taken part in this uh in years past you know what it is but if you're new to this whole thing it's this really it's like one of the things about tbtl that i kind of am the most proud of and of course i've had absolutely nothing to do with it but it's just this amazing thing i want to say jen started it years ago and then melly and a couple other people kind of picked up the torch which is you know it's nice to get cards around the holidays and not everybody does. Part of it is because we don't do that anymore. Part of it's because you don't know what someone's social kind of sort of situation is. But this is just a way that you can send a card to someone who's a TBTL listener and you'll get a card from someone. And the stories that I hear from people about just the way that this brightens their day and their week and just how great it is to feel connected to people now more than ever. So yeah, the TBTL card exchange is ramping up again. Can I tell you a couple of

things on this point meli melisande melisande h-n-e-k by the way is how you pronounce her last name we messed it up during the donors and it was a it was a bummer because because it's the letter h-n-e-k she totally did not bust our chops on it but did uh either text us or uh or called in and mentioned that yeah there's literally think of the letters h-n-e-k and i think i'm putting the

right i may be emphasizing the wrong syllable that was the that was the that was the like I don't know if that's technically a mnemonic or not, but that was the device that we used recently, and it worked great, and then I forgot about it in the intervening tool.

Yeah, as did I. I'm not trying to throw you under the bus, but I did want to clear that up because, again, Melisande has not just been a listener and friend and supporter of this show for so, so long now, but also has been organizing this TBTL card exchange, which is honestly, and again, probably because we're not running it, one of the most kind of successful things that TBTL has done. especially as far as kind of curing global loneliness and bringing smiles to faces. And Melly, I think, texted me. I'm sorry that I can't find the text in front of me right now, but I thought it was interesting. There was a backstory to this that I didn't realize. I think maybe Jen had started the card exchange a while back, as you mentioned, and then it might have gone dormant. And I think Melly told me that it was actually maybe after the 2016 election that she was feeling it was after something that made her you know in the world of global politics that made her feel like really low and everybody was really bumming out and she was just like watching or re-watching an episode of I want to say Mad Men or some tv show like that and in the background of some scene in somebody's apartment or home was a string of holiday cards you know classic string of holiday cards hanging in the background and she thought like sure what a like what a little ray of sunshine that would be to have a bunch of cards in my house right now and so she had the idea well the tens might want to get in on this and that's why she sort of resurrected the the and i know that's the wrong season resurrection is more of a spring sort of thing she waited three days after watching madman and then the stone was i understand that she rolled a stone away and all the holiday cards were in there now uh but anyway i i really i did not know or maybe I just didn't remember that backstory and it was really touching to me and the fact that Mellie has been running this for so long ever since really I just appreciate it so much and I appreciate it maybe even more now knowing that backstory and so I will by the time this podcast posts today there will be a link right at the top of tbtl.net and then you click on that and you can fill out a form and you can take part in the tbtl card exchange and just one more time from the bottom of my heart. Thanks, Mellie, for setting this up. Yeah, for reals.

Thank you for being a 10. And I'll tell you, Andrew, when these 10s, when they're not sending each other cards and lifting each other's spirits, they're sending TBTL donations and lifting our payroll up to a place where it can exist. That's right. Keep the show going.

TBTL payroll, we exist. That's right. Oh, that could be our next TBTL-a-thon. Help us exist. Please.

You know what? I actually think that's pretty good. That's pretty good. It's simple. It's pathetic.

It's somewhat existential, literally.

It's motivating. It's got a lot going for it. TBTL, help us exist. TBTL-a-thon, whatever. Help us exist. Lindsay Slaker of Madison, Wisconsin has been helping us exist. Thank you, Lindsay. With Lindsay's donation, thank you so much. Thanks also to Abigail Sherlock, who's in Los Angeles, California. nice nice to live there gosh i need to get back to that place i need to get to a place uh where the i mean i know we're just we're just getting started with this whole dark stuff uh but um boy it's uh it's weighing heavy on my heart this year again the uh sort of external circumstances of politics i think just makes everything that's not great a little less great but uh i've got uh i I think it's December 21st, Circle. That is, I believe, the shortest day of the year. The least sunlight, the least daylight day of the year. But you've got to get there. But in the meantime, Abigail, can we come stay with you in Los Angeles, California? We'll just stay in the basement. You won't even know we're there.

I mean, I'm going to probably need three squares. Probably coffee in the morning, too.

You won't know I'm there. If you are up at about 11 p.m., Andrew will be puttering in your kitchen listening to Levitard on his Bluetooth headphones.

oblivious to the world i told you my friend when we were in croatia that's literally how a friend who found me like i had my headphones and she startled the hell out of me and she's probably the friend that i knew the least going into the trip and uh she was not expecting to find a puttering andrew like totally blocking out the world with his uh with his headphones listen to lebitard just like just i don't know polishing cups in the kitchen in the middle of the night

I love that kind of move for you. Like when we've done the TBTL-a-thon weeks at a kind of a, you know, single location where we've been staying in a house together. That's like, it's comforting to me. It's like the ice maker in the refrigerator late at night after the dishes are done. Like I'm, you know, I'm getting ready to turn in and there you are just kind of like doing your thing in the kitchen. You got your headphones on. I feel like you're kind of going to decompress.

from the day everything feels right in the world do you know i have this memory that i don't think you would have been privy to because you were still out but when we rented that airbnb in denver and we did our tb telethon in denver and then we capped it off with a trivia night there in denver with a bunch of tens and then i headed back to the airbnb and i think you and john i don't know where john was but yeah i think you and john maybe together went out with a bunch of tens when drinking because we were all staying in that place together i think either way we did i think you mean the final after trivia after trivia you and john went off somewhere and i came back with all the equipment uh no you know what i think i i dropped off john with uh he had a relative in town or something he was catching a flight the next morning i think i was the one that was out carousing you went carousing and so i had the place to myself and i came back and i packed my bags whatever and then i think i wanted to you know like do all the dishes in the in the kitchen and what i put on i don't know this is such a comforting memory for me i just put on the mariners game that i missed while we were doing trivia like on the app you can go back and listen to it and keep in mind when this was this is it was like what early july right or late june like sure i can guarantee you it was what they call a meaningless game are there any meaningless but i just have this feeling of just being like we just did the tbtl-a-thon we just did the you know the live event or whatever there's all that and then like i just came back and was able just to again just sort of polish the mugs and re-listen to a meaningless game in the middle of summer

just the relief of being like it went okay people decided to support the show again we had the event it was great turnout really awesome to see everyone and now it's like it's pretty much all done and now you can just kind of like finally like you know relax although you also still had to drive a rental car with a cracked windshield across the country yes well i think it started

i think it ended up being cracked on that trip although that is right because we did have to record i think you and i had to also record another podcast the next morning from the road as i took you to the airport and returned a bunch of rental equipment anyway it's funny how those times that feel so stressful you know once you get through them and now i'm looking back on it as such a um kind of a special time that week was what was that three fundraisers ago maybe three tv telephones yeah we were still with apm yeah and i remember having almost a panic attack when you showed up at the airbnb because i couldn't get my computer to work and i was having other technical issues and it's like it's a good reminder that like this stuff this stuff works out i don't

have to panic attack before every one of them well it's it's i mean first of all like anxiety is what it is right it's not logical and it's just unfortunately it has a life of its own um but also there is this other element which is the fact that you take it all very seriously is why it all works like i don't i'm not saying i want you to have to have a panic attack every time we do something technical like even our show at the quaker center in in philly like there was you know some technical like kind of hoops to jump through and you were there you know the day before and just, like, really, really, like, you know, working an incredibly long, tiring day to get everything so that it would work so that we'd end up with a really good, you know, product and a good recording of the show, which was, by the way, the reviews were that it was actually a really good live show from, you know, from the folks who were there and the folks who got to hear it later. So you, again, I don't want you to have to have a panic attack every time, but don't get too comfortable.

Don't get too comfortable. Now, all right, that's all I'm saying. Understood, understood.

That's all Rachel Johnson is saying of Auburn, Washington. Thank you, Rachel. She's just saying, I'm going to keep donating as long as you promise not to get too comfortable. That's right. I don't know what a Linda Doyle in Baronia, Victoria, Australia's rules are about your level of comfort, Andrew, but I know that this donation is coming from about as far away as it can on the planet Earth.

Power out. That's your Linda right there, famous.

That's right. As if being the voice of the end of every episode of the show isn't enough, Linda's also donating her hard-earned, what do they use over there? Loonies.

I think they're called balloonies. I almost said loonies. They're called skeets. They're called skeets. Here's one thing that listeners, I don't think we've talked about this before. A lot of listeners probably don't realize that we do play Linda's voice at the end of every single show saying power out and have since 2015. Power out. People don't know. the australian dollar andrew they really went for it she charges us residuals every single time we play that and they are not fair yeah i mean it's a it's a you know it's a recognizable part of the show now it's branding i understand that we are tied to it but it is expensive it is very

very screwed up because basically like linda was ready to accept basically a flat fee which i think was going to be 80.

dollars for us to have unlimited use of it but i said no we want to pay you eighty dollars every time well we just didn't think we were going to use it as much as we've ended up doing it and so that was you know that was a lesson learned yeah us and that's actually what took down the apm podcasting network it wasn't the mismanagement it wasn't uh the fact that they stopped making podcasts except for ours it was that we got into a really tough financial

arrangement with linda doyle of victoria australia it wasn't it wasn't somebody standing on the banks of the Mississippi in the winter in St. Paul talking to the vibrations of the universe. That was just an inside joke for you, Luke. We can move on.

It was less that and more our business relationship with Linda. Our business relationship with Emily Mann of Tucson, Arizona remains uncomplicated. Here's how it works. Emily donates money to the show and then we keep doing the show. That's right. And we very much appreciate you, Emily. And then Ann Vu is in Portland, Oregon. Hey, Ann. What a town. What a place. What an A.N. Thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL happen today. We could not do this without you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. A little update, Andrew, on a story that we talked about a while ago, maybe even a year or two ago, about a woman named Heather Morgan who was under suspicion, along with her husband, a guy named Ilya Lichtenstein, that they had stolen a bunch of Bitcoin. They had stolen 120,000 Bitcoin worth $71 million at the time. By the way, that's up to $11 billion right now as of this writing. But the reason that Heather Morgan kind of landed on our radar was because along with allegedly helping her husband with various parts of this scheme she also fancies herself a rapper she goes by the name razzle con luke would

you believe me if i told you i totally blanked the story out i don't feel like that happens to me usually i usually have some like oh yeah really so this is not ringing any bells for you like literally zero as i read this this morning i had questions for you and i'm just learning now that we've already talked about this. I could probably go back in the archives.

Well, I don't think we got deep into the details of the case back in the day. I think what jumped out at us was, and the way this kind of landed on my radar was basically a person suspected of dirty dealings involving crypto also has a very, very regrettable rap career going. So we were mostly focusing on the razzle con part of it and less on the con, I guess you might say.

Yeah, it was right there the whole time. I guess my question for you is, and it sounds like maybe this will start to, like, kind of dawn on me more as we talk about it. And I don't know if you have clips of tape of the wrapping because maybe I'll remember that. I had a feeling you did. I know you. But I guess the thing in this article that I had an immediate question about this morning was it said that, like, she was, you know, a blogger for, like, four. Like, she was, like, living a somewhat respectable life in the, you know, kind of crypto finance world. But then somebody, quote unquote, discovered that she was also rapping as Razzle Khan. Like, was she rapping as Razzle Khan, like thinking that she was pulling something off that nobody knew it was her? Was she wearing masks?

I don't I'd miss that part of the story. If there if there was a secretive element of it, I guess I didn't really pick that part up. i just thought my read on the situation was like too many of these folks who uh find themselves in this kind of world of of sort of crypto and like these vast sums of money but they're maybe not the most socially adjusted person going in i don't know there's a couple guys come to mind uh it's sort of like you apply a bunch of money to a situation with a person who's already not really let's just say great at reading the room and you can find them doing some things that are pretty cringe and like that's the sense that I had of the Razzlecon thing was not that she was trying to be like secretively this rapper she's somebody who just is so disconnected from reality that she thought she was also a good rapper like she was somebody who was kind of involved in the world of crypto and again I just think something happens where because we value money so much in this society and because we think that like well if you can make money you're some kind of special person you've you've got a gift you've earned this money and then therefore you also are probably good at things like running the elections or the department of efficiency etc like i feel like to me this and again i started off talking about how my nerves were on the outside of my body last week i feel like to some degree this woman heather morgan both and she's going to do 18 months in in prison by

Thank you.

the way so i think we can say she pled guilty to some part of this so i think we can say uh it's not allegations anymore it's now been proved or agreed to but something about her both being like sketchy in the world of crypto and thinking she's a good rapper it feels like part of an overall mind virus that's going on with a certain kind of crypto person and it feels like it's it's it's part of what's really wrong with this place that we live in right now although

So could you make the argument, I'm going to cast a pretty wide net here, and it's going to group in some people that some might feel it's unfair to group them in with the crypto crazies, which is actually the name of my band. It's kind of in the spirit of the crown tossing.

Crypto and crazies are spelled with a K.

Exactly. It's kind of a side project of the ICP. But, you know, there's something about wealth, generally speaking. You know, it doesn't even have to be the crypto stuff. I think of Paul Allen shredding a guitar because he could pay like classic rock legends. I hosted many of those events. Right, exactly. And we haven't even heard the rap yet. But reading this article today, my takeaway was not about cryptocurrency. And it wasn't about the art of hip hop. It was about, and I wasn't even tying it to the confidence that wealth brings, but just confidence, generally speaking, because in the article was a photo of her dressed up as her rap persona, Razzlecon.

Are you going to Razzlecon this year? You skipped last year, right, on the playa?

Well, last year I went to Dazzlecon. Why would they hold them on the same date?

That's terrible counter-programming. Same weekend.

Because when they split apart, clearly there's still bad feelings between the two camps. But anyway, I was just sort of thinking, even just leaving the wealth side out of it, I admire musicians so much, right? And anybody who gets on stage and performs, and to varying levels of talent and varying levels of success. It's something that I don't really do with the exception of doing TBTLs with you live sometimes. Well, you sang one of the days of Christmas. I did almost sing One of the Days of Christmas, sort of. And I didn't even fully commit to that. That's what I mean. And I think one of the reasons why, I mean, aside from the fact that I'm not musically talented or necessarily comedically talented, it's also a lack of confidence. And when I see people who are totally blind to their lack of talent but can still dress up like an absolute fool and open up a microphone and do something that unless I'm missing the joke and she was doing it because she knows it was bad, which I don't think is the case here, it's like that is my worst nightmare and that is what has always kept me from trying certain things. You know what I mean? Like, this is the point. The wrong people get. Right. Well, maybe I'm the wrong person is wasted on the wrong. Well, then maybe I maybe I'm one of the rare people who's kind of like, yeah, I can't rap. And so therefore I'm not going to dress up like Razzlecon or Dazzlecon.

Well, I mean, I want to say this. If if this person, Heather Morgan, if she just was simply a person who, like, had a dream in her heart of rapping and wasn't particularly great at it. I don't think we'd be taking time out of our busy busy day to point out how bad she is I would say that when you throw in the sort of the theft of over a billion dollars that's where I think she becomes sort of fair game um because I don't you know like like you said I don't want us to be the show where it's like because we kind of were the show that did that a long time ago and I I regret that like of just basically dunking on things because they aren't good like if somebody's not hurting anyone and they're just trying their thing i don't really know what the point of dunking on them is if someone is like i'm the baddest bee out there and they're also stealing a billion dollars and they're dressing like razzle con and they're putting out music like this that i'm about to play for you i do feel like they move into the category of i think fair game for tbtl to do some gentle roasting of here is from i believe this song is versace bedouin and the video for this song from razzle con i also i just weep for her friends who get roped into this shit because it's all shot on wall street because she's the self-styled crocodile of wall street um and uh here's some of razzle i think there are some swears in here so just uh be

mothers cover your children's ears spirit of a revolutionary power of a dictator love to be contrary but i'm fly like a gator i've got pilot blood i'm a real risk taker pirate riding the Badass money maker, grandmother crocodile, weirder than an ex-file, brief fire, so sexy when I slither, sparkle on my little finger, hell of arousal ear to your-

Poised to throw a dinger, playing on their worst beat WrestleCon, the first time you better win Come real far, but don't know where I'm heading Motherfucking crocodile of Wall Street Silver on my fingers and boots on my feet Always be a goat, not a goddamn sheep Email me, fuck your message at the beep Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep

Just as a case that went by too fast Always be a goat, not a mother effing sheep email me, leave a message at the beep.

Yeah, does she say F your message at the beep, I think?

Yeah, F your message at the beep, I think. It's not good. It's not great.

It's not good lyrics that are performed poorly, and it's not bad lyrics that are performed well. It's bad on both. There's just nothing good here.

Which led me to the next thing, which was, I thought, I'm kind of surprised it's this bad in 2024 before because of the technology because of the production yes because of like all of the things we can do now to the human voice between auto-tune and stretching out the pacing and all of it like and this is a person who is familiar with tech and money and money and people who like who understand software like it's remarkable that after everything that this went through it remains this bad like there are so many things that could fix this which made me wonder andrew what would ai do if i threw in female rapper who calls herself the crocodile of wall street and within five tenths of a second i had two versions of a song called crocodile of wall street that are both i'm not going to say that they're going to win uh any grammys but they are vastly better than what Razzlecon did. This literally took AI a second to make.

But they call me master Hold inside, ain't no sweeter Mark, it's my swamp I'm the Queensland reader Stocks in my clutch Stronger than cheetah Call me Carp, Wall Street repeater

Like I said, not the tightest Like, not the best bars But better than Razzlecon And it took one second I actually think this song number two Is actually semi-decent?

Snapping Jaws, Wall Street terror, green scales, glistening under city glare, cash on thicker, teeth in the ledger, brooker boy shiver in my lair, high heels click, cold bloody swagger portfolio fatter crocodile dagger shooting my veins finance no bragger swimming with sharks but they call me master cold as ice ain't no sweeter markets my swamp i'm the queen

i mean like it's insane to me again i would not be bumping that song voluntarily in the world but like the fact that the program wrote that that fast and it's like the market's my swamp like it very much figured out the idea of this person being the crocodile of wall street also andrew maybe most importantly i really like the thumbnail that the computer came up with for the crocodile of wall street what it comes up with art too it comes up with art my dude i'm I'm going to send this to you if I can get back to—I emailed it to myself. It's actually a pretty cool-looking crocodile of Wall Street, which I'll send you.

Yeah, make sure you email that to me, and I'll make it the show pic.

That's what I thought. I know you're always on the lookout for a show pic. But anyway, point is, Razzle Khan is going to get 18 months in prison over this, and her husband is getting five years. I guess they got relatively light sentences because they cooperated immediately with authorities i don't know if that means that the bitcoins have been returned or not i mean look i don't want to be how do i say this because i'm just so incredibly not knowledgeable about the world of of of crypto still to this day despite all the conversation around i don't really understand it still that like it's easy for me and because you really only hear about crypto as it relates to like people like this Thank you.

So it's easy for me to just kind of be like, if I'm being honest, I hate everyone involved. Like, I kind of don't care who they stole a thousand crypto coins from, because I bet you those were also bad people. Yeah. But on the other hand, it's like we have friends who do crypto and there are normal people doing it. And, you know, like there are probably some hardworking, you know, salt of the earth folks who identify crypto as a growing thing and they've put their hard earned money into it. So I don't want to just, like, write the whole thing off. But I have to be honest with you. It is hard for me to feel a huge amount of empathy for anyone involved at any level in any of this crypto bullshit.

Put it on the poll, Guillermo. Sure. Do salt of the earth people own crypto? Because I don't know. I honestly would argue you can literally. Well, we have a friend who I love very much who's very big in crypto. I love her to death. Salt of the earth? What does salt of the earth mean? Maybe I'm going too rural. Maybe I'm going too literal with my salt of the earth.

You're going too American with your gothic?

Maybe I'm going too American with my gothic. I mean, I wouldn't even call myself salt of the earth. So maybe I'm wrong about it.

I wouldn't call either of us salt of the earth. Yeah, I use salt of the earth there, I guess, as a way of just saying not a bad person. But you're right. That has a kind of a specific connotation.

I guess. Honestly, though, I say this somewhat, you know, I'm busting your chops a little bit. But I actually don't know. I'm trying to figure out if I'm right, because maybe I'm being too literal. I think when you say salt of the earth, I think about, Luke, the earth, right? Like literally like you're spending your day with soil, sort of like you're picking up soil to test it at least once a day, right? But that might not be what it means. There's a phrase used by, oh, well, first of all, salt of the earth is a phrase used by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Did you know that that's the origin of it? No. um but it doesn't it's not giving me kind of a literal definition of it but um yeah so that's

a great question so are there any people who would both be described as salt of the earth which again we're going with a very rural connotation is there anyone out there who's also trading crypto i would say probably not although there are probably a couple of like crypto there are probably a couple of bros like who both work in agriculture or rural america but are also like for instance i actually interviewed this guy once for a tv story who runs this inherited his family operation of a huge like agriculture production like they grow onions and asparagus over on the border in ontario oregon on the border of oregon and idaho and uh he so he's a farmer but he also flies his own plane and has a tick tock feed so does that mean you're not salt of the earth i'm sure that guy's dabbling in crypto he also was the guy who said to me with a straight face this is during the first trump administration i'm with you andrew it hurts to say that first trump administration but it was very funny to me that the whole story we went in was like about how basically trump had stopped so many people at the border that there was no one to come and pick this you know produce of this guy's in fact he had gotten on he had become kind of well known because he had all this asparagus There was no one to pick it. He just went online and said, if you want free asparagus, come have it because it's going to go bad. And when I talked to him about what the issue was, he thought it wasn't Donald Trump's fault. He thought it had nothing to do with Donald Trump stopping people from crossing the border, the people who would eventually be coming to his farm to pick his asparagus. He did not see the connection between that event and no one there to pick his asparagus. And I didn't realize that was his take until the middle of the interview. I have never been more caught off guard in one of those interviews than that it was such an obvious causality if you will there was a cause and an effect you could look at the cause and you could see the effect and this guy chose not to connect those two concepts and so in that moment how much do you push back because I know you're not really I mean this is I mean it sounds some of the stories like if you're interviewing a celebrity or something like I was thinking earlier like you better be careful what you say about the guy who writes the SNL cold opens because I

I know you're going to get an email like this afternoon saying you've got to go to – is Palomino a place? Because I feel like he lives in Palomino. Yeah, he probably lives in Palomino.

There's a roughly 80% chance of that happening before the day is over.

So I know that you want to – I know that you want to be – you don't want everything to be totally fluffy. You want to have earnest conversations with maybe some substance there. But I know also that you're not like 60 minutes in these folks, like when he's saying something and this is an important story, you know, this is about, again, literally, you know, kind of global trade and politics and and, you know, the person in power who made these decisions. How do you push back there?

Well, I mean, I.

kind of didn't and that's sort of that's that's my failing because i just i honestly thought this is a guy who doesn't have anyone to pick his crops at the border right now there's literally a an intense stoppage of anyone getting across the border i foolishly assumed that that was the math he was doing but because he's a trump guy his brain would not let him do that very obvious math And I, again, foolishly, just didn't even think that he, I just didn't even think that there was a world in which he wouldn't see this for obviously what it was. And so I don't think I pushed back as hard as I should have, because for one, this wasn't really a story about his thoughts on immigration. It was a story about, I guess, but on the other hand, let me put it this way. If I had it to do over again, I would have handled it differently. If I went in knowing that this was his perspective, I would have been more ready for that and I think I would have tried to understand how it could be that this is both negatively impacting his entire business and yet he's not attributing it to what is very likely the real reason for it and how that's affecting him. I would have pushed back harder and tried to get him to reconcile these two ideas because that would have been maybe an interesting part of the piece. I just was literally caught flat-footed yeah yeah I couldn't it's like it's like you go to do an interview with a guy who makes kites and then you're like doesn't that look good against that blue sky and he goes I think you mean that polka dot sky and you're just like I was not I didn't even I didn't even plan on that being part of this conversation you know so anyway uh Razzlecon doing 18 months couldn't be happening to a nicer rapper that's what I'm saying 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 emails and female yeah i actually had a couple of things i want to share with you um i'm gonna do a quick little roundup here if possible um do you remember and it's okay if you don't it went by pretty quickly um on the show somewhat recently i mentioned that my father For some reason that I don't fully understand, when he was a kid, he memorized the words that were in the back of toothpaste, and I think they were standard words for any toothpaste, but his always started with, Colgate is a decay preventative dentifrice or something like that. And I remember him, and it would rattle on from there, all this sort of like kind of jargony language, and he would impress me as a kid. He would like rattle that off. He said, yeah, I don't know. I memorized that as a kid. I picture him, this is maybe unfair to my dad, maybe he doesn't want me describing himself this way, I picture him as a kid on the toilet, probably just looking for something to read and flipping over the tube of toothpaste and just deciding he was going to memorize it. I have no idea if there's any truth to that at all, but I got a note from Ivy, who's also in Cleveland, and says, another weird Cleveland coincidence, my mom had the dental statement memorized too. Whoa. She grew up primarily in Lakewood and is 70 years old. around my dad's age it must have been a thing maybe they did it for school uh okay so she says she grew up primarily in lakewood and that's where you know my dad lived there for a while i lived there with my folks there for a while uh and is 70 um guessing around your dad's age i asked her if there was any reason she memorized it and she said no and then she told me this crest has been shown to be an effective decay preventive dentifrice that can be of significant value when used in a conscientiously applied program of oral hygiene and regular professional care and that is exactly what my dad had memorized. In fact, I should send that to him and ask him if he remembers why he had it memorized.

That had to be a thing going around that region of the country in that era because that's just too weird of a

coincidence. It is a very, very interesting coincidence. Also, I wanted to, I'm not trying to take a victory lap here, but honestly, after the face plant I did yesterday when our friend Stubat join the show uh maybe i could maybe i could use a little bit of a yeah some wind beneath my wings

here i feel like this is going to come at my expense but that's okay no no no no certainly

not no no this is from um holly woo mike who says actually the stew bot did hang out with the real norm charles no uh hollywood holly woo mike says um andrew did indeed remember correctly the scene from rad with the mattresses on the jump being removed i don't know if you recall luke but i said i think in that movie there's a scene where the main character is trying to land a hard jump off of a ramp and then uh he meets a girl who's really good at uh again i never know the word is it for i guess freestyle biking bmxing bmxing quite bmx i don't know what it is she's like you're never gonna land the jump if you always have these mattresses down here to protect you you gotta remove it terrible advice no it worked you haven't seen the documentary i'm just telling

like people out there who might be training for them.

their own BMX career, I would keep the foam pit for a little bit longer.

At some point, you've got to remove the foam because you're never going to land it. And if you want to land it, you've got to just land on the asphalt. Anyway, Mike says, I did remember that correctly. And Mike goes on to say, that was one of my favorite movies as a kid because I was very into BMX and freestyle biking, even though I had no skill whatsoever. Oh, Shades of Razzlecon, I would say there. Just going for it. We're going to play a video of Mike's BMX skills tomorrow. We're going to roast it. Roast it. But here's what I thought was interesting. Mike says, fun fact, the woman who tells the biker to remove the mattresses was played by Lori Loughlin, who would go on to star in Full House. How rude, but also go on to star in her own drama scandal. Yeah, right.

Called going to jail.

Called going to jail for falsifying documents to get her kids into a school.

Olivia Jade, her daughter with the designer of Mossimo jeans. That's her husband. okay that was that look that whole thing was that whole thing was ridiculous um it was ridiculous that these wealthy people would go to these lengths to try to get their wealthy kids into these institutions but also interesting that it was all moms that took the fall it seems it was laurie laughlin it was um it was uh felicity huffman and not william h macy i was

gonna say yeah because i knew that william h macy was married to somebody so he's married to Felicity Huffman yeah and he didn't yeah how did he come out on I think the key I think the takeaway

is be less engaged with your children's parents of both gender of any gender because uh when the shit goes down you want to plead ignorance and the only way to do that is to not know much about

your kids lives now I'd be I have one more voice I'm going to play for you here Luke but before I do I want to ask you what was the best thing to come out of that higher ed academic scandal though do you know the best thing uh was it oh i'm really putting it on the spot here this is very much this is very much like a uh a spouse putting another spot because it's personal

it's very personal what was the best thing personal so in other words this is personal to you

this is personal to you and me and the in the world of tbtl what was the amazing thing that essentially came out of the higher ed scandal of what would that have been 2018 something like that

let's see i'm trying to think of some of the what did it have anything to do with so it's is it audio that we play on the show nope is it um some kind of imagery where they superimposed a kid's head onto a somebody rowing crew or whatever wasn't that part of it was these like deeply falsified but not particularly well-made, like, fakes. You're very close. You're very, very close. This kid did, you know, fencing in high school, but they didn't really.

Okay, so that was, yes, that was what spurred us to do what? To start fencing.

You don't remember this. By which I mean selling stolen merchandise.

During the show, as you were telling me that dazzling detail of pasting people's heads onto other crew members' bodies, I went into Photoshop and I took your high school photo and my high school photo and I posted them.

Made us tennis players.

Old school black and white tennis players. Which then became bobbleheads. Which then became the TVTL bobbleheads that are behind you right now. Which, by the way, last time I was at your place, I put those next to the toilet and had them staring at you while you were going to the bathroom. I see that you moved them. Yes, they're right there. The bobbleheads. Love it. Yes, those were the result of me during this show.

We have Lori Loughlin of the movie Rad to thank for this.

We Loughlin'd it. All right. So anyway, one more thing here on a totally different topic. I just thought this was really, really interesting. This is from Listener Dennis. You mentioned the Detroit Pistons, the NBA team out of that area. The bad boys. And I'm somebody who, like, I don't follow the NBA. So every now and then when you mention a team, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's such a cool name for a team. Like the Pelicans you mentioned the other day. I forgot that they exist.

They were formerly the Jazz. and then they moved to Utah, home of Jazz. Right. And they remained the Utah Jazz.

I see. Wait, so the Pelicans don't exist anymore?

The Pelicans do.

Oh, okay.

I'm going to, this is now, unfortunately, we've now stumbled into a hobby horse of mine, which is cities that have had multiple failed NBA teams and then a city called Seattle that just had one failed NBA team. So, for instance, the New Orleans Jazz left New Orleans years ago and became the Utah Jazz. And then New Orleans got another team. Oh, OK. The Pelicans.

That makes sense. OK. I didn't know they got a new team. OK.

Well, they got this team called the Hornets. They got the Charlotte Hornets. The Charlotte Hornets left and became New Orleans.

Oh.

If I believe I have that right. And then the Charlotte got the Bobcats. So Charlotte got two teams that they couldn't handle. New Orleans got two teams. Seattle only got one team.

Wait, the Charlotte Hornets don't exist anymore?

I don't believe. I think they're the Charlotte Bobcats now.

Are they back to being the Hornets? There's something called the Charlotte Hornets who are playing the Brooklyn Nets today, but I don't know.

That would be the Hornets.

Is that NBA?

When were they the Charlotte? Okay, so did they change their name back to the Hornets? Maybe.

I'm Wikipedia-ing this as we speak.

Because there was a Bobcats team there for a minute. I know because, like, Adam Morrison was on that team for a minute. I think they lost the Bobcats, and then they, yeah. So, let's see. What is the history? Sorry, everybody.

Here, I found a graph here. Sorry, everybody who's in Charlotte. I'll read it, and you jump in, but it just says here, because I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but it says, as part of an agreement with the NBA, A new team known as the Charlotte Bobcats began competing in the 2004 NBA season. In 2006, Michael Jordan acquired a minority stake in the franchise.

Well, here's the Bobcats era from Wikipedia. Shortly after the relocation of the team to New Orleans, so the Hornets left to New Orleans, as part of a deal with the city of Charlotte as well as to avoid a Cleveland Browns-like lawsuit, The NBA opened itself up to the possibility of adding a replacement team in Charlotte for the 2004-2005 season so that an arena deal could be reached. That team was the Bobcats. So they lost the Hornets. Hornets go to New Orleans. They become the Bobcats. And then the Bobcats had their expansion draft 2004, blah, blah, blah. The Bobcats, da, da, da, front office. And then the Bobcats reached an agreement to – sorry, I'm going very quickly here.

This is very – because I'm trying to read along. It's very complicated.

2014 is the final years of the Bobcats. Okay. Okay. The Bobcats – like, there was a lockout season in 2011, 2012. Let's see. The Bobcats – God, somebody wrote way too much about the history of the Bobcats. On May of 2013, Michael Jordan announced the organization had submitted an application to change the name of the franchise. to the charlotte hornets so that was a really boring way of saying what i kind of suspected which was the hornets left they went to new orleans they uh then the charlotte got another team pretty much right away called the bobcats and then after a decade they decided they wanted to be called the hornets again so now they're back to being called the horn okay yeah that

because i always hear i mean i feel like i've heard the charlotte hornets as a name and that i think that's a good name too and again these all seem they all seem fresh and fun to me because i don't really like kind of hear about basketball all that much i mean a little bit from just listening to sports radio it trickles in but i don't have a lot of context for all that stuff all of that is to say um we're going to get more into talk about teams changing their names and moving around a little bit here um we were talking about the detroit pistons i was like what a great name especially for detroit the detroit pistons it's such a such a good like auto industry rust belty kind of name and dennis swoops in with these dazzling deets hey denis this is uh listener

cory from cambridge i was just listening to you talking why do you think i called that dennis if

his name is cory i'm not sure that was surprising to me does he sound like a dennis to you i have literally no idea why i would have slugged this as dennis other than maybe you're thinking of one-time boston celtic dennis johnson that's exactly it thank you anyway take it away dennis

Hey, Demi. This is listener Corey from Cambridge. I was just listening to you talking about the Detroit Pistons and how their name is so fitting given that they're in Detroit. They actually were started in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and they were first like a company basketball team from this company called the Zollner Piston Company. They were called the Zollner Pistons for a while, or maybe the company was called Zollner Foundry. Anyway, they were called the Zollner Pistons for a while, and the company made pistons for cars and trucks and stuff. And then when the original league that became the NBA started, they played as the Fort Wayne, Indiana Pistons, and then eventually realized Fort Wayne was too small, and they moved to Detroit, and they decided to keep the name because it fit in Detroit.

so there you go um power out i like it even more now absolutely like i love that it was a company team but also just the the thing is there's a lot of different car parts that you could name a team after right like the the the whether you want to go with the joint the cv joints the the carburetors

you know like there's like it's so lucky this company made pistons yeah but pistons like there's

so much action there you know you're jumping

up and down literally drives the entire situation drives the entire situation and what you know i

don't know a lot about basketball but here's what i think basketball players do they jump up and down and up and down and they're just they alternate explosively and they alternate and they set up

small bursts of mystified gasoline under their feet and they sort of have little explosions

which is why they were banned from seattle because they were causing too much damage but anyway i I just love the name the Detroit Pistons, and I love that backstory on how they came to be. So thank you, Dennis. And I don't know why you're going with the nom de plume Corey, but I'll call you Corey for the sake of this show.

It could have been like the Fort Wayne visor. What do you call the thing?

Yeah, right.

Like try to keep the sun out of your eyes? Yeah. Like I'm trying to think of the least, what is the least cool thing on a car that you could make? The floor mats? Yeah.

The Detroit floor mats. The Fort Wayne floor mats. There is a little bit of quasi-alliteration there that isn't too bad.

Yeah, it'd be great. They would not see you coming, too. I mean, that's an interesting kind of, you might really get in their head. Yeah, right. You just go in, and they're like, well, we don't have to. They're all getting drunk the night before. You're just like, what are we doing tomorrow? Oh, we're playing the floor mat?

You know, this might be a trap game, guys. The more I think about it, this could be a trap game.

All right. Well, that was a fun show, he said with some surprise. I don't know what's going on with that. Hey, tomorrow, Andrew, can I tell you the story of Keith Lee and the bewormed sushi in Seattle? Do any of those words I just said to you mean anything?

I mean, bewormed is a new one for me.

I believe it's a new one to the English language.

No, I'm not familiar with that joint, and this is not a story I know about, but ew.

It's a very wild story that involves the world we live in. It's not political. That's the good news. But it involves the internet and food reviews and Seattle and a whole lot of other stuff. So we'll talk about that tomorrow on the program. In the meantime, that's going to do it for today's show. Thank you very much for listening. We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourself. Watch out for bomb cyclones. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Uh, you know, you're letting your body turn your head. And see, if you let your head lead, your body will just follow naturally. Really? Mm-hmm. And besides, if you do make it and those mattresses are there, they're just going to cause you to wipe out. What are you, nuts? No guts, no glory. Luke? take the mattresses out it's your butt pal what's left of it power out