Muse

Maybe you can clarify something for me. Since I've been, you know, waiting for the fleet to show up, I've read a lot. Really? And one of the things that keeps popping up is this about subtext. Plays, novels, songs, they all have a subtext, which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. So subtext, we know. But what do you call the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what's above the subtext? The text Okay, that's right But they never talk about that TBTL

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

Calamine, calamine, calamine lotion Oh, no, no, no, not the lotion Yeah, this generation is all hacky sack and video games

Ain't that the truth? Okay, this is a rumor that's out there on the internet And you think it's nothing Tell you what, I'm gonna look into it This could be very interesting indeed Okay, quick question The internet, that's the one with email, right? Yes Got it? I want it

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a friday edition of tbtl the show it just might be too beautiful to live my name is luke burbank i'm your host as jay would say he's got flow coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where another wind and rainstorm moving in you gotta be kidding me i feel like we had about six hours yesterday where it wasn't just actively trying to huff and puff and blow my little house down and now we're back at it but uh so far the power and internet they're holding so we are ready to bring you episode 4343 in a collector series let the fun begin the uh folks that make a Tropicana orange juice are sideways with their fan base, their customer base. I love juice. Turns out people have a lot of very strong feelings about Tropicana juice, and they do not like it when the company messes with the packaging of their juice. So we will talk about that, plus an update on my eye situation as well. And we're going to talk to this guy, Longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ship. Call it friendo. He's also a close and personal friendo of mine. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Are you familiar with the saying, what blows in the south affects the north?

I don't know if I am, actually. Did you just make that up?

Yeah, I think I just made that up, honestly. It's not even that well-crafted, to be honest with you. But I was thinking about you this morning as I was reading the news, and I saw that we have more sort of, let's call it, exciting weather on the way. But I did see that it's coming up through the south, and then it will hit us. So you're my, is bellwether the right word? I think so. Yeah, yeah. I'm a leading indicator. Exactly. You need to let me know. I'm thought of that often by many people. You're my own personal Waffle House. If you close down, I know that things are bad.

So anyway, you can also ask Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard about it because I was cruising this. Did you see this clip on the Seattle Times website? No, it is so random. It's like Death Cab for Cutie singer calls Storm like one of a kind or something. And I was like, please explain. And then I go to the video and clearly what happened was somebody from like the Seattle Times news team was probably dispatched to an area. I think over near, like, is it Tiger Mountain? I get confused now because you've got a Tigard, Oregon down here. But I think it's Tiger Mountain, right?

I'm actually not sure. I hear it in passing every now and then.

I think that's where the Cairo transmitter was.

Oh, okay.

Or the KUOW transmitter. I think there are some transmitters up on Tiger Mountain. But anyway, you know, Ben Gibbard from Death Cab is a well-known runner now. He's been running for a long time, actually. He's very healthy. He's sober. He runs. Everything's going great for Ben Gibbard. and he clearly was just out trying to go for a run in an area that happened to have a lot of downed trees and so somebody from the Seattle Times I think from their video team just started interviewing him and probably brought the tape back and then someone said you know that's the guy from Death Cab so the whole thing became Death Cab for Cutie Singer weighs in on the storm as opposed to man on the street says boy there's a lot of blown down trees here

I'm not I'm looking I'm

Thank you.

searching the archives by Seattle Times. I'm not seeing, it's not coming up. It definitely wasn't one of the local TV stations. You're probably not cruising the Como website in the morning.

Hold on, Jake from State Farm was there. Okay. And I was trying to park in between two downed trees. But we have an update on that.

Yeah, let's do that later. Yeah, interesting. But anyway, I can't find it.

Maybe it wasn't the Seattle Times. It came somehow into my news feed. It might have been a local station. But I can say with some confidence that this was just one of those happenstance things where the person they interviewed happens to be the lead singer of a very popular band based out of Seattle. So they decided, probably wisely so, to lead with that aspect of it. But they're sort of unrelated things. The fact that he wrote, I will possess your heart, and that there are a lot of downed trees are not related concepts.

That's so Seattle, though, too. I sort of feel like, oh, why could I never remember his name? But, you know, Babies Got Back might also be giving a traffic update later today as well. Having said that, and I don't know if this is a misguided or if you'll go along with me here, Luke, but I'm going to give a little, speaking of Death Cab, a little shout out to Gary and Sue, who sent us a nice little handwritten note and a little donation to TBTL. Oh, speaking of Death Cabers, the Wallahs. Exactly. This is Chris Wallah's parents. They were, you know, I knew that they were longtime listeners. We used to email, Sue and I used to email back and forth back in the day, but I don't know if they're returning to the fold or what have we got a nice little note from them the other day, and I really appreciate it. It was great to hear from you guys. Thank you for thanking us. We love the Wallace. We truly, truly do.

I found it. It was actually an AP story that I think I saw republished, or somehow it came through the Seattle Times, but it's a, let's see, I'm playing the video now. Of course, it's going to make us watch a commercial. I mean, you've got to support the media somehow. Oh, I heard the rain. I thought that was... This is like a Ford Bronco commercial that you have to watch before you see the video called Death Cab Singer, Seattle Area Storm Damage, quote, a sight to behold.

I'm looking forward to this. I'm glad that there's audio. Oh, yeah, I'm seeing this, too.

I cannot skip this Bronco ad, by the way. It's apparently four hours long. The love of cripes. We actually need to talk about range.

Well, I came out for kind of a typical weekday run up to the top of Tiger 3, and I park here all the time, and yeah, just kind of pulled into this crazy situation, and I tried to kind of get up on the trail system kind of by a different route, but the number of blowdowns up there is just unbelievable. I've never seen anything like that. I've been running here for a decade plus, and I'm used to kind of dealing with blowdowns, but this is on another level. Obviously, you feel the most for people who had their homes partially destroyed by this. So, I mean, my ability to run or not run on the trails pales in comparison to that.

Good perspective. Tunnels to gates of white. Just our hands clasped so tight. I was going to go with, I want to live in a place where trees don't blow down.

I just grabbed one. I did not think I would be able to get through my YouTube commercial and get that playing in time to actually run it underneath yours. I grabbed the first song I could possibly find. I need to keep my powder dry a little bit on this for after these messages, but I know that you like to talk about commercials, too.

I do, and in fact, I've got two commercials I'd like to discuss with you. Okay, good.

And the funny thing is, and if you are not familiar with the commercials I'm about to describe, we will just leave it there and I will encourage listeners to tune in maybe to the next after these messages where I'll discuss them with Genevieve and play them for her. But I told you I've been watching a lot of Sopranos. I've been watching a lot of The Sopranos. Do you use the article there? Yeah, I've been watching a lot of the television show The Sopranos, but it's not really television. It's HBO. I might be in my head a little bit on this sentence.

I wish I could make that sound effect of the static.

Wait, that might have been Kit from Knight Rider. I'm not sure what I just did. But anyway, clearly they think the people who are watching, I would even say binging reruns, if that's what you would call a streaming service, of The Sopranos are people who are well off. I'm seeing ads for high luxury items. A lot of avant-garde perfume ads, which, by the way, I'm kind of into. And then like a slate of three or four Range Rover ads, something specific for the Range Rover Defender. Now, one's been running for a long time where it almost looks like D-Day, where some sort of a kind of ship comes up to the shore, a big kind of ramp.

drops down some intense music plays and these these range rovers come running off the ramp that's been airing for like a year or something but now there's a couple more one you saw the second season of um god damn it i wish the one thing i wish is that i had a goddamn brain what is i'm glad nobody's pulling clips from the show anymore what is the someone should write a song about that oh i'm you even helped me stall and i can't think of it what was the hbo show that was an absolute phenomenon two seasons had jennifer coolidge in it about the hotel the white lotus okay yeah did you watch the second season of white lotus i did okay i know there's a lot of attractive people in that show but do you remember the impossibly handsome white man who is one of the main characters that that second season follows a two couples kind of a foursome and one of them is just like this guy who is incredibly sexy and cool can you picture him

well uh yes i i think i can there's the two couples aubrey plaza is in one of the couples

and he is the husband her husband no her husband is more like a tech guy who's not unattractive in his own way but clearly the other couple are just like this incredibly rich like audrey plaza and her husband had to like kind of work for where they are where these other two are just astronomically wealthy and they don't have to worry about anything and this one guy is just like he's he's like it's oh yeah it's hard to get a beat on them because in some way they're despicable the way they just don't care about the world right but also he's just so casually beautiful and cool and and everything so anyway i had not seen him or thought about him well i thought about him sometimes theo james all that much you're thinking yeah that is probably yeah that that rings a bell maybe from the credits anyway he's in this range rover ad now that is almost like a perfume commercial you see him driving i don't even know if you see him until the end of the commercial when he gets out of the range rover but you see this range rover driving in like um i don't know i think maybe it starts off some rough terrain but then it starts driving closer and closer to some sort of mansion somewhere and then like in the mansion is a giant chess board where he's driving the range rover around like a rook and a knight that are like oh boy huge and it's like surreal then he drives the Range Rover up the steps of this impossibly gorgeous mansion somewhere in Europe and then he it turns out this whole time he was just like retrieving their dog and it's like some sort of like really expensive breed a dog and he's just retrieving the dog's toy or something while his wife or partner is waiting for him to return by watching him through a spyglass or like some sort of a magnet you know yeah I'm watching this have you seen this thing before it's i hadn't seen it before but i just watched it while you were describing how was my

description of it pretty pretty accurate it's got sort of bizarre almost alice in wonderland kind of vibes like it's like you said surreal is the right way to put it because what's happening is surreal the something about the color of the commercial like it's it's it's it's slightly uncanny like it doesn't it doesn't seem like it's trying to tell you this is a real universe that

exists it's fantastical in some ways so there's that one there's the one where they're all coming off the ship d-day style then there's another one that has some dj and i don't know if there's i don't know look this up if you don't mind luke not to tell you what to do but um look it up uh there's another one in the same campaign that it just shows like beautiful shots of the range rover defender but then like this dj just sort of standing out in his carport just sort of like i guess just mixing it up just djing for himself and his car while we see beauty shots of the car And it's not a DJ I have heard of, but what DJs have I heard of?

Defender X Cola, K-O-L-A, Cola Bello? It's definitely a Defender. Yeah, I think I'm looking at it. So, yeah, I'm watching it now. I think the DJ is named Cola Bello. Oh, okay, yes, yes, okay. And the Range Rover is driving through the desert. It looks like it could be like Joshua Tree or something. Yeah, and this is the soundtrack.

This is Cola Bello. And he's just sort of like tapping the, I don't even know what you call the mixers. The ones and twos, Andrew. He's tapping the ones and twos. The wheels of steel. But he's just sort of out there while his car self-parks in the garage. And it's just such a weird thing. He's like, I don't know, if it was a guy by himself with a guitar, would I think it's odd? Is it odd because it's like an electronic music rig and am I being biased? There's something so weird about these commercials. And again, I don't know exactly who they're appealing to, but probably people who are richer and have more taste than me. they're just a vibe I guess. I guess so. And you're like, I want to live in that vibe,

and the way I can do that is by getting this car, I guess. I mean, the ultimate example of that, which you've already referenced, are those perfume commercials. Those fragrance commercials which are historically and consistently bonkers. They're just, like, heaven forbid

a fragrance commercial where somebody puts on the fragrance and someone goes hey that smells nice hey that smells party huh hey what you wearing like it has to be like natalie portman uh you know

like falling backwards into a pool that ends up exactly filled with maybe she's on a hot air

balloon with a man but then she looks at him but then she says it was all a dream and then she turns to ash and she tumbles backwards off of the hot air out of the hot air balloon basket or or something they're also i feel like a lot of these perfume commercials are like eight seconds long oh that i don't think i've ever seen a minute long perfume commercial it's always like johnny depp for savage digging a hole in the desert but it's 15 seconds long digging johnny that's what i say keep digging okay the commercial that i want to talk to you about is for i think some kind of a like a prescription medication well for your eyes andrew which is a Subject near and dear to my heart this week. It's called My Bow. And to me, it is an example of really, really trying too hard to make something work as a kind of a play on word or a sound alike. I mean, the number one thing you have to hope for if you're a musician, if you're in a band, is the number one thing you have to hope for is you will be interviewed by the Associated Press regarding a storm dance. Yes, obviously. The second thing you have to hope for is that you have written a song that somehow sort of references some sort of physical issues that people may have someday that can be addressed through a, you know, a prescription drug. Because I feel like the ad companies for these weird-ass prescription drugs, that's their one go-to, is like, oh, oh, oh, oh, Zampik. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, I mean, the list is long of just like, well, that's a song that kind of sounds like a different thing that we're actually trying to promote. That's like that's always their go to. And the Mybo drug company is no different. Let me play this for you. I just I haven't actually listened to this. I'm hoping it's the commercial that I'm thinking of.

Do your dry eyes still feel gritty, rough or tired? With Mybo, eyes can feel Mybo. My Bo is the only prescription dry eye drop that forms a protective layer for the number one cause of dry eye. Too much tear evaporation. For relief, that's my Bo, oh yeah.

It doesn't make any sense. They wanted to capitalize on the oh yeah. But it's not my Bo, yeah. It's my Bo, new thought, oh yeah. Like, it is such a stretch to use that song in this commercial.

Trying to figure out who that is. Are they yellow? This song was famously used in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Did you say that? Yeah. No, I didn't.

And then in, like, those Twix commercials or something. Oh, a Twix commercial. This song has already been used in a big commercial campaign.

And I think, iconically, although I don't know who might remember this. I think it might be generational, but this song was, to my eyes, famously used in a Volkswagen commercial that might have been one of the earliest commercials where two characters were not specifically but possibly coded as gay because there's two young men driving around. I mean, they could just be roommates. But I remember at the time being like, oh, this could be like open to interpretation. But it's two young men driving around in a car while the song is playing. And they're sort of having a day. And then they see a couch on the side of the road. Remember this one? And they pick like it's an old couch because they're probably like college age or post college age. And so they grab it and they put it in the back of their car like they're going to take it home together. But then they're driving around. That wasn't the Da Da Da commercial? Oh, shit. I get those songs confused, don't I? Da Da Da and Chicka Chicka. Oh, yeah. are two different songs. What a week for me. Oh, come on now. What a week. No, people are going to be talking. The Seattle Times is going to get a quote from Ben Gibbard about what an idiot I am that I confused, oh, yeah, with da, da, da. Ben Gibbard describes Andrew's memory as one of a kind. And porous. Porous comes to mind.

Now, I saw a commercial last night that I think is actually really good, And unfortunately, it is for a, I would say, a company that's run by a person who I no longer hold in high regard. And I speak of the company Amazon. I'm sure we have lots of listeners that work for Amazon. And so I don't want to, you know, I don't want to punish the people that are just going to work and having a job. But, you know, Jeff Bezos certainly seems to have taken a turn for the worse. But I believe, I now can't find this commercial. I'm wondering, Andrew, if you have seen this or if you can help me locate it.

Let me see here.

I think it was for Amazon. And what I thought It's a pretty Actually a pretty funny concept It's basically like Two kind of You know Suburban And I'll see you next time.

parents are sitting out in their backyard and their kids are putting on a performance and it's some hip-hop song i think it's a pretty iconic hip-hop song and it's just like a vibe they're just vibing so hard and then you realize it cuts to the what the kids are actually playing which is the same song but they're playing it on like kazoo very badly okay i have i definitely have not seen this i'm frantically um i did amazon kazoo commercial and all i'm finding are kazoo's that are for sale on Amazon. But I thought it was actually, I didn't really see it coming, and I thought it was kind of a funny reveal. I feel like there's so many.

It might be Instacart. I'm seeing something here. Maybe it's Instacart. Kazoo Song by DMX on Kazoo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Should I play this? I have not seen this before. So I was also wrong. Yeah, so these kids are all dressed up. They're performing. They're actually dancing really, really well. I guess the kids are dressed up like from different eras, sort of. One looks sort of like maybe not a pirate, but like some sort of a seafaring chap from the 1800s. We have somebody who looks like maybe she's from Middle Earth. I'm not exactly sure. They're dancing around. yeah when you cut to the parents you finally cut to the parents and you're just like yeah this is pretty good kids give them the thumbs up and it just sounds awful actually

that i like that that's charming yeah i didn't see that coming and i would i feel like uh there are so many commercials now that play related to nfl content or in and around nfl games that lean on hip hop and lean on vibes and like whether it's just like you know buy these team apparel things and like I feel like it's used as a way to sort of signify coolness or something or edginess sometimes and so I thought that's what they were doing for Instacart and then when they switched to the kazoo track that surprised me I'll give you that

nice nice

alright update on my eye I did not get eye surgery yesterday uh you were absolutely right by the way the doctor uh after he took a look at it said well first of all he said you have what we call and then he literally quoted the exact thing i read yesterday from the internet which whatever the complicated name was for this little gland in my eyelid that's uh you know not draining or something uh and then he said also known as a stye so you were absolutely right about that yesterday and he said so what we normally will recommend, well actually I gotta give Kaiser Permanente some credit Andrew

I'm so glad you said Permanente not so say I'm sick of you platforming Kaiser Kaiser Wilhelm

those are the Kaisers I've gotta give the King of Prussia some real credit But I've got to give Franz Ferdinand some real credit here. It was Wednesday when I thought, okay, this eye situation has gone far enough. And then I got on the Internet. I got on the website of Kaiser Permanente. And I made an appointment for the next day, which I actually was able to get one, in a town near me. And then I went down there yesterday. And they were ready to go right at the agreed-upon time. The nurse took my vitals. And then the doctor came in and took a look. and very professional and said let me take a couple pictures of this and he goes and then I'm going to send them to our on-call eye specialist who's going to look at the photos and then tell me what to do and so he did that and the advice was give him some antibiotics and just see if that kind of knocks it down. What he thinks happened is I had this little sty thing develop in my eyelid and then maybe that has become infected. So you have the, like, first thing, which was the gland getting kind of plugged up, but then because it's been plugged up for too long and has not remedied itself, there may be an infection, which hopefully the antibiotic will handle. But it was all very, like, the whole thing took 20 minutes, and, like, within 20 minutes, the doctor had seen me. He had sent photos of my eyeballs to somebody whose whole expertise is eyeballs, and then I got the prescription on my phone while the doctor was actually, the doctor had sent the photos and had, like, gone down the hall for something. Hadn't even come back to tell me I was getting an antibiotic, but my phone goes, chirp, and there it is, Kaiser saying, your prescription for whatever the hell it's called will be ready to go at the pharmacy or something. So when he came back in, I go, let me guess, antibiotics? And he goes, yes. I got it right here. Went out, there's the pharmacy. I take a number. They...

You know, it takes them, I don't know, two minutes. They give me the prescription and I'm on my way.

Now, when you were on your way, did you start with a limp and then slowly straighten? I'm sorry, I'm really stuck on the Kaiser So-say thing.

I did. Oh, speaking, I'm sorry I keep bringing up Key and Peele sketches. But, like, have you seen the Key and Peele sketch where Jordan Peele is like a Kaiser So-say type of mastermind, except he's really bad at coming up with pretend things and there's like a hang in there kitty poster in the room behind keegan michael key and and jordan peele's character is like yeah my name is hang hang in there kitty and he just keeps i want to find this it's yeah it's like just imagine a really really uncreative kaiser so say okay you i am gonna play this but i want you to finish

your story and then i'll play this key and peel sketch i mean that's the end of the story is i

have to say yesterday the much maligned american health care system really came through for me it really worked as designed for me uh-huh um other than i wish that they would have done eye surgery because you had a better story i just wanted to be gone well it would be a better story and also i wouldn't still have this like lump in my eyelid which i don't which is kind of a little uncomfortable and also a little unsightly i would i'd rather have like like a little you know butterfly bandage on there and know that this thing is gone forever like i mean i'm sure the antibiotic will probably just knock it down but it's it's a little less fun and your warm compress i saw your hay

dummies video i know you're putting a warm compress on there but like there isn't there something like well maybe not i because i know that you're a you're you're a results oriented blank um i'm just remembering my blue sky profile that i do not remember but um you know you're a result results oriented man you just want it taken care of but sometimes when you have something like that And you're like, well, all we have is time and warm compresses. And you just get yourself a really warm rag or whatever. And you sit down and you put on key and peel and you put that over your eye. And you're like, get to it, warmth of the earth.

Well, I've been – see, the thing is, you saw this in the Hey Dummies video. I, of course, because there isn't any problem that can't be fixed through some sort of consumerism for me. So it's not enough that I just run some hot water over a rag and then wring it out. i literally bought this bizarro bean bag it's like it's like sunglasses but instead of lenses they had they're filled with little you know plastic something or others that absorb heat you microwave it and you put it on your eyes but i've been doing that on the regular for four weeks

with no noticeable results i assume that that was something that you walked away from the doctor's

I've had that since I got this thing a month plus ago and it has not you know it actually feels pretty good I have to say but it doesn't really do anything so them just saying and it's like literally on the instructions it's like keep applying the hot compress and take this antibiotic I'm also like I never take antibiotics I've you know been pretty fortunate that it's just not something I've had to do a lot so I'm a little I'm also a little nervous like doesn't that you know Am I going to get, like, a super virus now? Am I going to become antibiotic resistant? You are. Okay, well, that sucks. I'm a doctor. But, okay, do you want to play the Key and Peele thing? Oh, yeah, sure, yeah. The only bad part of my day and the going to the doctor.

Oh, yeah, you put something on the show sheet that I'm very intrigued by that actually made me nervous for a second. Then I realized, no, it couldn't have been me. But here, I'm going to cut into the sketch a little bit just to make sense.

I don't send you back to jail.

Oh, I should just mention that we have, like, a cop. We have Key playing sort of a cop, a detective-looking guy with the gun strapped over his collared shirt or whatever. And you have Jordan Peele, and he's sitting down. He's clearly the suspect, I guess he's being questioned. But he's dressed kind of nerdily, sort of. He's got like a receding hairline.

I think he's supposed to be like kind of a weird, psychotic criminal, but who has like strange kind of, you know, affectation.

The guy's name is Cat Branchman. I met him downtown at a club called The Clutching Kitten. You may have heard of him. It's down on the corner of Hang and Fur Street.

Cat Branchman. So what's a guy like you and a guy named Cat?

He's just noticing the Just Hang In There poster behind his head.

Okay. I know what you're doing, Finley.

Should I keep going on this? Are there more...

Sure. See you in my poster. I'm not detective. I'm telling the truth.

We'll see how much truth you tell after a few weeks in solitary confinement.

Fine, detective. You've twisted my arm. That's better. The guy's name wasn't Cat Bra...

Thank you. It was a Chinese guy named Mr. Meow. He's the real gang boss. Story went, he hung guys from trees and took pictures of them. Finley? Used to run a club downtown, a front, of course. Called it the Paw and Poster. Finley! Ran it with a guy named Hong Indar. Okay. Let's try this one more time.

more time he's trying to look around him at the poster well the and then the the reveal at the

end is that keegan michael keith is also reading off of a poster behind jordan peele he is also quite some time he is also unimaginative and is just feeding it's just yelling things eventually

at at jordan peele's character that he's seeing in the room beautiful anywhere so geniuses the

The only part of my dance with Kaiser Permanente yesterday that didn't go well was actually unrelated to them and related to driving down to town. Going from my house, it's kind of this windy road down this hill, and then you get on this other slightly larger, like arterial, I guess, or maybe you actually, you know, I guess it's a highway technically. But the thing is, there is a school down there, and they are not joking around with the speed limit near this school. It's like 20 miles an hour And there are often cops posted up It's like this school Where you have this parking lot across the street On the other side of the highway And that's where all of the parents wait to pick up their kids And again It's a very You do not want to be speeding there And it always makes me so anxious When people are behind me on this road Who do not want to observe The speed limit Around the school Because it's like On the one hand, I want to just go faster so they're not riding my tail, but I also don't want to get in trouble with the law man. Or hit kids, like screw them. It's a school zone.

Honestly, slow down.

Well, I mean, part of the thing that's weird is I've literally never seen a child, like I've actually never seen a child related to this school. Because it's like the school is kind of a weird setup. It's up on this hill off of the freeway. There's no, like, playground that I can tell, and every kid is getting into some massive SUV. Like, a parent drives their massive SUV across the road up through the pickup area, and then the kids get in the mood. Through a chessboard. Exactly. Yeah. Into a massive SUV, and then the massive SUV goes down and joins us all on the highway. It's like, there's no, like, no kids are actually crossing the road, so it is a little odd that they're that hardcore about it. But, yeah, I don't want to get in trouble. I don't want to hit a kid, but I also don't like getting tailgated. And in fact, from basically where this school is all the way down to like where you sort of get on the freeway, let's say, it's probably maybe two miles of a country highway where the speed limit varies between 40 and 35 miles an hour, depending. And I tend to follow the speed limit and nobody else, it seems, on that road wants to follow the speed limit. I always have people tailgating me on that road And yesterday was no difference This person was tailgating me through the school zone Which I was like, look, you're just going to have to deal with it But then we get out past that And I was tempted almost just to pull over and let them go by me But I don't know It was really frustrating I don't understand why does it create so much anxiety for me When somebody is behind me and wants to go around me Because A, they could go around me or B, they could just deal with it. Why does that create, like, an almost physical sense of discomfort for me? It is a bad feeling.

Now, this is where I should not admit this, and, you know, I try not to be this person anymore, but, like, that's where if somebody was doing that to me, that's where I would, like, keep a very close, and I've done this a lot in my life. Break check them? Oh, yeah. Like, I'm really good at that. Like, I'll keep a very close eye on them in my rearview mirror, and then just, like, at the right moment, just, like, break! And then, you know, and then make sure, like, I'm keeping an eye on them, so I'll make sure that they're not actually going to hit me, but to put the fear of God in them for a second.

I sort of was tempted to do that, and then I didn't. It's a dangerous game.

You've got to be careful. You've got to know what you're doing.

Yeah, and it was like, I'll be honest with you also, it has a lot to do probably with the kind of vehicle, which makes me so also just mad and impotent feeling, which is like, if it was some big MAGA truck, I'm probably not going to brake check them because I don't want them to try to shoot me. Yeah, right. So I hate that that works, But this was like some kind of just sort of I don't know, standard, like let's say You know, mid-size SUV or whatever But it was just tailgating me so close And I'm like, okay And I couldn't quite make out the person in the car So eventually I get to the freeway I get on the freeway And this person gets on And they just immediately I'm in the right lane they jump over in the lane next to me they're still tearing past me yeah and i'm like all right let's see this foolio and i look over ben and it is it is it is sir mix a lot it is it is a couple i presume a man and wife who are conservatively in their late 80s uh-huh it was like the guy was so old he looked like a cartoon character like he was so small and so old He could barely see over the steering wheel. I was saying Boo-Werns. I mean, it was like Hans, serious Hans Molman vibes, but old. And I just was like, I want to know this guy's life. This guy is Benjamin Buttoning somehow. He has found, he has tapped into something that the rest of us, like I'm the one who's driving like I'm 90, and this 90-year-old man is just late for something and is just hauling out.

He doesn't have as much time left as you do, I guess.

I mean, he is absolutely unaffected by what I assume is diminished vision, diminished reflexes. Like, I think the reason that, you know, traditionally the stereotype is that older people drive very slow is because obviously, like, a lot of your reaction time is going down. You're just you can't see as well. There's a bunch of stuff that's making the natural response to that is to become more cautious. This guy has totally managed to avoid that impulse.

mm-hmm yeah i when i saw on your show sheet uh this morning you're like uh i was tailgated with an inch of my life last night or whatever you wrote and the the person who was doing it was surprised me i can't remember that that's not how you put it but um anyway i was just like oh shit was this me and i was like no i don't even think i got in the car yesterday and secondly i

wasn't driving anywhere near where you're driving around seattle baiting you into being a an asshole

driver but it is one of those things where seattle's a very small town and you know for all of the many reasons why i should not why i should personally not be an a-hole driver one of the reasons is there's like a one in ten chance that i know the person in the other car you know what i mean it's like somebody's sister or cousin or something it isn't it like there are so many there are so many i feel like intersections in this town of like you know oh you know so and so i know so and so or whatever it's like i i just don't want to be the person like oh when we finally get into a road rage incident and i realize it's somebody i volunteer with i um yeah i think that

i might actually be too slow of a driver because like i said something in passing to becca one of those things that you kind of say like not fishing for a compliment but fishing for a certain response and uh i was telling about some something that happened while i was driving i go and you know me i'm like a cautious driver she goes yeah you really are she sort of said something casually that was like indicated that like okay it's it's a little it can be a little trying to be in the car with me because i'm just so like i really am um i'm i'm a very very cautious driver um and a kind of a slow driver i don't know what's going to happen when i'm 90 unless i tap into whatever

fountain of youth that guy maybe you're not driving then or we have more like self-driving

cars and better trans i did talk about that with the nurse as she was taking my blood pressure we were commiserating about getting older and she was talking about how she can't drive at night anymore she's younger than me too she's like 46 she's like i hate driving at night and i was like i know i don't love it and then i was like but i'm just i'm banking on self-driving cars by the time that i'm you know not not up for driving anymore you know this might be incongruous with

the picture i'm painting of myself of being like sort of this maniac on the roads which i truly am not like i have this issue when somebody like cuts me off or or or drives in a way that i think is like basically unfair or rude than i do like kind of get triggered like in this little intersection in green lake you know it's a four-way stop just this last sunday and it was very obvious the one person stopped before me then it would have been my turn then this other guy just pulled up right away and this other guy just did not feel like waiting for me so he just like blasted through he like basically did a quick rolling stop and blasted through the stop sign basically taking my turn didn't matter like it it didn't take it didn't shave any time off of my commute you know like literally one second did I lay on the horn absolutely I laid on the horn that guy was in the parlance of the day a flaming asshole but um I think that's the parlance of the day having said so I am easily triggered in that way having said that on these roads I'm talking about like around Green Lake I am especially as I get older but I would say probably since my like my late 30s and And here I am in my kind of my late 40s now, like I drive. I don't drive under the limit, but I am so conscientious. I first of all, I don't really I hate the highway where I live up north. The highway is always congested now. It is ridiculous.

When you say the highway, you mean Interstate five.

Yeah, the five. Like I live kind of near the five, but like where I am up here, especially.

heading south it is literally always a red line on the map it is congested even if you have to go just a couple of exits like the map always says to go that way but i'm like if this adds one minute to my time but i can slowly drive down kind of like roosevelt or 15th or whatever i like i like looking at the neighborhood i like checking out the houses but like and then i'm not like i'm not like just like you know i'm going the speed limit or maybe five you know maybe 30 and a 25 or something i'm not like driving like a maniac and i'm not driving under the speed limit like hans mollman um but like the older i get burbank or luke burbank but i i applaud the fact that you're a cautious driver i think we should be i think we should always remember that these things and this is why in my in my lesser moments when i am aggravated and and maybe somebody has offended me in some way on the highway i got to really keep myself in check because these are driving machines but these are killing machines you know what i mean like these things are very they're very

dangerous click it or ticket click it or ticket like when are they bringing back the crash test dummies i don't mean the band i mean the dudes you don't mean well what about both it's both once there was a guy who didn't buckle his seat that song was hard to turn off right like i'm not

saying that i had like an album or anything by the crash test dummies but when that song came on But I let it roll.

Absolutely. I would still let it roll to this day. Yeah, especially now.

I haven't heard it in forever. Thank you for being a 10.

All right, let's thank some donors who are voluntarily, I can't stress this enough, they are out of the goodness of their heart and out of their, I guess, love of TBTL. They are voluntarily donating money to this program so that it can happen. And some of these are even folks, Andrew, we used to work with, along with my actual family members, some of them donating. People that we have worked with who are donating to the show is quite humbling and quite appreciated. I'm talking about Annie Hayward, Seattle, Washington.

Annie! Now, I am chagrined here. Annie is our former colleague at APM and a friend. And I have not seen or been in contact with Annie in a while. And now here we are thanking her for donating her hard-earned cash to this show. So I am going to text her right now.

This is what Annie has to do to get your attention, Andrew. It's a cry for help, honestly.

If anybody wants to grab lunch with me, just donate.

Yeah, if anybody else wants to act out by donating to TVTL. I love how it's gone from being like generosity to Annie is acting out. Thank you, Annie. We really appreciate it. Claire Walsh is in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I assume this is a long-lost relative of your answer.

Absolutely. Claire and I have been in touch about this. She is my long-lost cousin from another muzzin.

Sure. I don't actually know if Eric Miles of Brooklyn, New York is related to any of us, even distantly, but he is an absolute mensch for supporting TBTL. Thank you, Eric. And Kelly Welch is in Sherwood, Oregon. Hey. Now, that's a distant relative. They actually changed the spelling of the last name, right, at some point? Was that a Dallas Island?

Yeah, we have a Walsh.

Walsh was a little Jewish, right? So they changed it to Welch. That's my understanding of the history, yes. Yeah. I bought this deck that I'm looking at that's attached to my little house. It's clad in wood that I purchased in Sherwood, Oregon. Oh, it sounds like a woody place. It is a place where there is a very cheap hardwood. Like, there's a warehouse that some guy's got a bunch of hardwood that fell off a truck, it would appear. And that's where I went for it.

Sherwood Forest is what I'm thinking of, right?

Well, yeah, you know, it does seem like it'd be a very forested area, and maybe it was at some point. Kelly, thank you. Thanks to Christopher Morrow, who's in Seattle, Washington.

Thank you, Christopher.

Also a very wooded place at one time. Becca and I, we were on a run, and she said something about Skid Row, and she said, I forget. Oh, by the way. The band? Yeah. Nice. 18 and Life, you've got it. 18 and Life, you know. Is that the Skid Row song?

I don't know. I'm not sure. There's one Skid Row song I noticed because it was featured very, very briefly in Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Remember when Pee Wee, isn't that Skid Row? Pee Wee is, he's, you know, chasing his bicycle and he ends up on like a Hollywood studio lot and he keeps on like running across various people filming various things. I'm pretty sure Skid Row is filming a music video.

Anyway, we, oh, I wanted to say that she had me watch this incredible documentary. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's called The Skid Row Marathon, and it is about a guy in L.A. who's actually a judge who is a very active runner and basically started leading this running group from a mission in L.A. called The Midnight Mission. which is by the way the same mission that i stayed in one time and did a story from and he takes these folks out um for they're all training for a marathon and these are a lot of people who maybe haven't you know they have had you know drug and alcohol issues they've experienced homelessness they've had you know all kinds of challenges in their life and to watch these folks really blossom and just like embrace this project of running and stuff it's a beautiful uh film it's the skid row marathon i would highly recommend it but we were talking about skid row and and becca said something like i wonder where that term came from and i was like well you've asked the right person because that's one of my favorite facts of course is that is from seattle and that when seattle was more forested they would uh cut down uh trees and they would roll them down i think it was like yesler maybe and uh this was during the hoover administration and then there'd be people down at the base of the hill uh who were living in like hoovervilles that were trying to get jobs uh in the lumber industry and they called that skid row oh

interesting and the skid being the literal skidding the log down the hill from like what i

don't know exactly like maybe if it was wasn't quite first hill back then but anyway that is the origin of skid row and i love that story and i was like i was i was so happy when becca asked me that question because i was like i have just the answer for you anyway hey can i offer an

another apology oh i feel terrible about this it was not um skid row it was and i do i swear i do this all the time it was twisted sister oh sure this is the video now here comes peewee oh he's spraying oil out the back of his bicycle it's almost over i can't end this early Okay, Pee-wee is now totally disrupting. Is it Dee Snider? It is Dee Snider. Oh, look, I got something right for once. Yeah, he is not. He's not having it. He's angry at Pee-wee as Pee-wee just totally blows the chute. Jeez, Louise.

I am wondering if we were to look this up, if whoever it is that distributed that movie was also the same media company that had whatever label Twisted Sister was on yeah and this is an attempt to get twisted sister's latest single out into the consciousness because that's not a good song like if you're gonna run onto a set and it's twisted sister they need to be playing their hit right that's a good point yeah what was the synergy here right right there's something they are trying to subtly uh incept us with a twisted sister song that we

don't care about now let's see here it does say that so i just typed in why was twisted sister in peewee's big adventure and according to the ultimate classic rock website it says it stemmed from an earlier connection frontman d snyder made with paul rubens they ran into each other a party an mtv party on new year's eve can you imagine being at an mtv party on new year's eve in the late 80s i wonder if there's any cocaine there um anyway so it seems like it might have stemmed from well who knows maybe it was organic maybe it was organic who knows god i am looking at a publicity

photo of twisted sister uh-huh it'd have to be from the mid-80s i was looking up their top songs and uh i think uh i want to rock is kind of oh yeah that's the biggie right that's the number one but burn in hell which i think we were just listening to uh is comes in at number seven so it's not uh you know it's not not one of their hits but this photo like not even i mean d snyder looks ridiculous but that was d snyder's whole thing but the other guys in the band can this be a show pick today yes it's like it's like first of all three of them have on effectively the exact same pair of sunglasses like kind of like almost like joe biden aviators and it's like you know that when they showed up they were all like no i was gonna wear the sunglasses no i was gonna wear the sunglasses fine we're all wearing the sunglasses okay and like they're also i guess this actually this part is probably on purpose i'm realizing they're all wearing denim vests with no sleeves it's just the weirdest it's just the weirdest photo of all time i'm going to

screen cap it and send it to okay andrew but i'm gonna go on a um this don't forget zach jones in Conroe, Texas, Andrew. No, let's do this. Before we do this, yes. Thank you, Zach Jones in Conroe.

Zach Jones! Did you do that joke last year? Probably.

Every time I hear the word Jones, I do a really bad Mike Jones impression. Thank you, Zach. Thank you all. Really appreciate it. You are not going to appreciate where I'm going to try to take this conversation because I can never remember celebrities' names or the names of TV shows as been demonstrated. I was going to say today, but I guess throughout the course of my tenure here on the show. But you were mentioning Twisted Sister. And what did you say their number one song is? you're gonna rock or whatever and i want to rock i want to rock and that begins i want to rock do you remember the iconic video and the little intro to it in the video it's like a boy yes and

he's like he's plugging it's like a principal right isn't he getting yelled at by a teacher

i believe his father i want to say he's in his own house and the father's like screaming i think i could be wrong this is just my memory you can like kind of fact check me as we go along if you're going to be my man behind the computer but pretty sure his father's like yelling at him saying you're never going to make anything of your life well what do you want to do and then the kid says i want to rock and then the song begins and maybe the kid strums a guitar do you remember which artist did a sort of parody or homage to that in his own music video i'm going to say 15 or 20 years later and featured a young movie star at the time huh does this ring any bells to you and this might be a blind spot for you this was around the time that i that my family finally got mtv i think so i was seeing this a lot and it was go ahead were you going to take a guess well i was going to play you a little bit of this video oh yeah please do oh it's at school you're right that sounds like a school

this is the uh i guess teacher walking in okay very uh he's got a bow tie he seems to have real real disregard for these students School has begun.

The summer is over. I am in command.

Oh.

What was that? For that little outburst, each and every one of you will spend three hours in detention. Today, immediately after school, in the basement. What do you think you're doing? Twisted sister.

Oh, he's written the T.S. of Twisted Sister on his, like, book.

And the teacher recognizes it as being Twisted Sister.

I couldn't mind to slap your fat face. You are destroying your life with that garbage. All right, Mr. Sister. I want you to tell me. Now, better yet, stand up and tell the class. What do you want to do with your life?

Bigger. I want to rock.

And then they turn into Twisted Sister. And then the teacher is shot out of his shoes through the ceiling into the gymnasium that's located above this classroom. And then Twisted Sister throws him in the air and they dunk him through the basketball hoop. Oh, nice. I don't know if that's legal. By the way, also, we're not going to take it. That's got to be. Oh, yeah, that's got to be the biggest.

That's got to be their biggest, probably. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's actually a good song. Okay, so anyway. Okay, so now.

Back to the question of, so somebody, so it's basically a similar thing where an authority figure is yelling at someone?

Yes, and the intro to this other video, which is, I believe, and we'll play this here, and we'll see if I'm right, because I've been wrong about one or two things in my life. I'm pretty sure this is an homage and I just want to say most people our age if they at all think about the Michael Jackson black or white video they think of the end where they were using some early version of a technology where people were singing along with the song it doesn't matter if you're black or white and while they're singing they're sort of shaking their head and morphing into different people do you remember that part of the video?

Yeah, is Macaulay Culkin

also in that video that's what i'm getting at here my friend the black or white video begins with a little story and and this is why i i misremembered the twisted sister taking place in a school because this homage takes place in a home we see at first a globe it's the earth we're in space and then we suddenly zoom in to one single household uh in a suburban looking neighborhood, and we see through the window of the house that Macaulay Calkin is upstairs in his bedroom, and he's, I think, playing air guitar to a song. Oh, good. Now, if you remember this at all, do you by any chance remember who plays his dad, who is downstairs and is sick of this racket? I don't, I'm trying to think of the last time I even saw this video, so no, any hints? Here we go. Well, the hint will maybe be when you hear his voice. Okay, so we're going through the streets of the suburbs. There it is. We see the dad downstairs, and now Macaulay Culkin's in his room.

room. He's playing air guitar. One of the worst looks anybody can do, I think. Okay, the dad and mom are both downstairs. The dad's watching a ball game, a baseball game. He's very famous, but the stereo is blasting. Things are rattling. Here comes the dad upstairs. He's stomping up the stairs.

best part you are wasting your time with this garbage now go by the way but dad this is the

best part in the middle of a meaningless guitar solo is interesting writing it is too late and

it's too loud but dad this is the best part you are wasting your time with this garbage now go to bed

okay he slams the door a michael jackson okay poster falls and crashes now macaulay caulkin is taking out a large guitar he's rolling out huge speakers a huge speaker that is twice the size of macaulay caulkin into the living room the parents are somehow not noticing this he turns it up past 11 to a setting called are you nuts he puts on a pair of sunglasses he's plugged his guitar into this absolute beast of a stack he's putting on a leather glove he strums the guitar like luke burbank in a upcoming hey dummies video thank you and the sound is so explosive that it shoots the dad who is george went out cheers out of the house in his chair he goes shooting not unlike the teacher in the d snyder video out of the house and he's going to land somewhere in the desert and then michael jackson is going to start singing black or white um around him out in this like kind of well i guess not a desert but a sort of like um shrubby place in africa with a bunch of lions and that is the story of michael jackson's black or white um i feel like that i feel like this is an homage to twisted sister maybe i maybe i'm wrong

about that maybe i'm connecting dots where there are no dots it's certainly an homage to rocking and rolling which i feel like was a whole thing for michael jackson weirdly enough last weekend becca and i listened to so much michael jackson which you know complicated legacy obviously but man did that guy have a lot of hits like so many hits you just forget about because you know you can think about the off the wall era i mean you can obviously think about jackson 5 but then you You think about Off the Wall and Thriller, and then you just forget about things like his story. Yeah, right.

That's what had black or white on it, I believe.

And all these things I think of as late-era Michael Jackson, like the Free Willy song and stuff. Oh, right, right, right. They all just heal the world or whatever that song is. I mean, that guy just had so many hits. It's just unbelievable. And we just spent a whole afternoon just kind of going, oh, what about this one? and then playing a different Michael Jackson song. And then I reminded her of my favorite Michael Jackson sort of fact, if you will, adjacent fact, which is Peter Segel, the host of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, was actually cast in a Michael Jackson video. And it was whatever video that I think Eddie Murphy is in it. Eddie Murphy's playing sort of like an Egyptian. A pharaoh, yeah. A pharaoh?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was off of his story too, I believe.

And I believe that was – what is that song again? I'm going to look it up here. Well, so Peter Sagal was – when he was – before his days of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, he was a playwright and I think kind of maybe an actor as well. And so he lived in L.A. and he was cast to be in that Michael Jackson video that, like all Michael Jackson videos, pretty much was this huge cinematic undertaking. And it took – remember the time, right? Remember the time, yeah. I was going to tell you that, but you got there, yep. the video like the i don't know the eddie murphy parts and just like the whole thing directed by john singleton i'm seeing by the way like it was apparently so over the top so behind schedule and so over budget that they basically cut out the last like two days of shooting which was the peter segal part so i wonder what his role was gonna be i i actually could text him and ask if i remember right he was fully in costume and makeup just waiting around for days like he would show up they would get him all set up for whatever his look was and then he would just wait for them to get to his part of the video and then they never got to his part of the video and eventually i don't think they even shot it i think it just was like yeah we we ran out of money

Iman was also in the video. I remember that there was a model in there. And then also Magic Johnson, which I'd forgotten about that. And then somebody named Tommy Tiny Lister, who's for some reason in this Wikipedia article. He's starting for the Giants now, right? He's listed before Magic Johnson, which seems like, I feel like Magic Johnson should get. Top billing? At least, if not top, higher billing than Tommy Tiny Lister.

This is kind of interesting. I was trying to look up who's playing the guitar on black or white, the kind of iconic riff that we just heard Macaulay Culkin air guitaring to. And it is often misattributed to Slash, but it actually is this guy named Bill Bottrell who wrote that riff and also apparently wrote the rap song that is in black or white. Oh, I forgot it goes into a little rap verse. Because it's not about races or spaces or places where your blood comes from. Yeah, your space is. I've seen the break at dollar. I'm not going to spend my life being a color.

Oh, my God. I forgot about that. That is. By the way, I was never a big Michael Jackson fan anyway. So, you know, as people sort of have to sometimes make the decision, like, do I want to listen to some to somebody, somebody's art when the person, you know, committed horrendous crimes against children? like that was never a decision that I needed to make because like you know I was never a huge I mean you couldn't grow up in the 80s and 90s and not be exposed to Michael Jackson music obviously he was more than just a hit machine I mean he was just a cultural juggernaut obviously so I'm not saying that like I'm unfamiliar with Michael Jackson anyway but it's not like oh dang I can't play this song that I usually would play on the jukebox here because I because Michael Jackson has as you say a complicated legacy um you know but also having said that like this later era like i like michael jackson guitar solos are just terrible not him well they're just like it's just terrible music to me like it's the epitome of guitar rock where we don't need guitars but it's just sort of like i don't know rock and roll man right and that's what that's what i mean he

was always bringing in like slash or eddie van halen or someone to just like wow wow wow where we don't know in the middle of his song and i was like yeah this is not we don't need this michael don't michael it was like he sort of i think he sort of like fetishized a certain like rock and roll guitar dude yeah uh you know that he'd always throw that on the track and it was always like it was this was good this this was good before you did that sir exactly this is the corniest part of like basically white music we don't need to throw we need to sully up a an otherwise good

michael jackson song with us so let me ask you this you do a podcast every day how do you find

things to talk about um you know i just uh i sit here andrew and uh about once a week someone comes in and writes me a check for 38 dollars what is that from that is from in fact i know

that you can't see that that was part that's a little clip of tape that i sometimes play in intro packages on the show when we played it the other day and in fact john sklaroff uno numero employee uno of tbtl um turned it into a little instagram video that he shared yesterday that i really liked and it was just like kind of you and me before the show just sort of like listening in our own little studios to the intro package and i don't think you see me then right you're looking at your screen but you have a script in front of you i want to clarify a couple

of things about that video one if it looks like i'm reacting to anything you're doing that is just coincidence because I'm looking at I'm not looking at a camera feed of you I'm looking at a page that has audio drops on it that's what I'm doing at the beginning of the show now I also if you watch the video when it goes into that little thing that I just misquoted of somebody saying you know you work on the radio and a guy says and someone comes in and writes you a check for whatever he says what is that

from by the way yeah so I was going to tell you so it's I will follow up on this in a second the reason I bring all that up but it is from WKRP in Cincinnati ah okay well here's

if you watch the video you can see a look on my face that says did we just play this intro package fairly recently but then I also thought no because Andrew has a spreadsheet I literally have a spreadsheet you're so up on it and so I think you know what I think it is it's like it's such a weird sensation because sometimes I'll hear something and go man I feel like we just played this but like I know we didn't just play it but my brain is deceiving me so if you watch this instagram video when that part from wkrp in cincinnati is playing you see a look on my face of like kind of confusion and it's it's not because i'm seeing anything it's because my brain is trying to go did we did this intro package did we play this fairly recently but then realizing i know we didn't because you keep very close track

of these things well also so you're so again this is we're talking about an instagram video that i think you can find still in there and you know on our tbtl instagram under

reels um but you will notice and you did not see this live but i was during that clip and this is

the clip here no johnny i just don't know how you do it do what a four-hour show every morning

just uh talking to the mic and your voice goes out through the wires and once a week whether you need it or not, somebody comes in here

and gives you a check for $38. That's from WKRP in Cincinnati, and during the video that you can watch on TBTL of behind the scenes, you and I each listening to this, is I start gesticulating wildly into the camera and saying something. Yeah, what are you saying? I never do that during intro package. I never do that, but I was doing it in that moment forgetting that you couldn't see me, and what I was mouthing was Lonnie Anderson because hadn't we just been

talking about Lonnie Anderson? It's been a Lonnie Anderson week

around here we had just talked about lonnie anderson like i think earlier that week on the show it was a total coincidence that lonnie anderson should have and this is her at the

beginning no johnny i just don't know how you do it and so i was like screaming at you silently

lonnie anderson and that's why i'm that's why i'm gesticulating wildly and that's the guy is it johnny fever or something yeah good good yeah i could that's the guy that was the wasn't

he then the teacher on head of the class or something he had another sitcom i think you're

right not to be confused with drexel's class right you had head of the class you had drexel's class and you had coach and all of those sort of live in the same brain space for me and i can't separate

them out yeah i believe his name is howard hessman okay and he was the teacher on head of the class

wait did i say that no that can't be what did i say he played a different character on head of the class maybe the principal or something because i'm seeing a i'm seeing a promo poster and the guy who's dead center is not him really that's not uh well i've been wrong before i've really got you yeah you're right that is him it's just a weird it's a it's an illustrated when i saw it as a thumbnail it looked like it wasn't him no that is definitely him yeah so he did play the teacher and head of the class but like can you separate out can you tell me anything and we really shouldn't the artist you were howard from the hessman can you separate the art from the less from the can you separate separate the less from the okay i need to write that out but can you separate out for me the um the the differences between drexel's class and head of the class do you remember anything about those without i see you googling without googling off the top of your head like what do you wait i'm not allowed to google drexel's class what do you know or remember

about either one of those i had forgotten that something well head of the class i i might have watched a couple times when i was a kid because i knew that that guy from wkrp was in it and i knew that it was like he was a teacher and he had a class full of cut-ups i think it was probably like um what was the uh what's the warthogs um yeah the sweat hogs uh welcome back cotter welcome back cotter i think it was kind of an updated welcome back cotter maybe drexel's class i couldn't tell you anything about other than when you said it i was like that does sound like a thing that happened yeah it was but you're right it was dabney coleman sorry i did google it yeah yeah yeah yeah there just must have been there must have really been a need for like uh sitcoms where you had a teacher who was dealing with a you know variety of sort of annoying students or whatever like that was a real backdrop for a lot of these shows for some reason yeah i wonder if

they had like different like sort of tone like you know like the the um welcome back cotter is

definitely like sort of like troubled youth right well then you had hanging with mr cooper with mark curry that was sort of the like you might say african-american spin on the same principle of like teacher with students that get on his nerves yeah and i don't know if like all of these shows

if the focus is oh these these students need extra help or maybe do some of them is it the teacher who's going through troubles? Like, I don't know. Are they all basically, you know, cut and pastes of the same damn premise or are there varying degrees? Like maybe in one of them, the teacher's an alcoholic or whatever. I'm totally making that up.

Pretty serious. Pretty serious topic.

I don't know why I went there.

ABC Friday night at 8 p.m. I'm in a dark place. I'll tell you what, Andrew. This sounds like a project for you. Watch all of the different education-based sitcoms of the 90s and report back on Monday. It seems like something you'd actually genuinely enjoy. You're also allowed to digitize them if you care to.

I spent two hours making a GIF for the newsletter that is not even a good GIF last night.

Good GIF. Isn't that what Charlie Brown used to say?

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, wrapping up the week with some emails and V-mails. I'm trying to hack into my account here because I had a couple.

that i had highlighted but anything do you have any anything on your heart that you'd like to

share well you know i do i do have a voicemail from listener max about closet organization that i'd like to play for you at some point but i think that can hold until monday if i can filibuster here a little bit and give you a chance to open up your voicemail because i saw or your email rather because i saw that you had several things noted that i think would be a good sort of round up for the week here if you have those in front one is related to commercials we talked i'm giving you more time here bust in when you're ready but we were talking a lot about commercials uh today and maybe this we can start with this one you were talking last week or the week before before about a memory that you had from in real life of seeing jake from state farm trying to parallel park a car

and then my story was i tried to parallel park a car in front of jake from state farm right in

los felis that's how vivid it was and then you realized as you were telling me this story you're just like you stopped yourself and said this isn't true i am telling you something that i saw in a commercial once that i just internalized and thought was something that happened to me yeah

and it's i mean it's really left me pretty shook because i would have you know for the first 15 seconds of that story i would have sworn on my life this happened to me and in fact it didn't it was a tv commercial and then we tried to find it on the fly and we found a different one

Same car company, same campaign Did have Jake from State Farm But listener

Elizabeth was nice enough To send the actual one Which I mean I don't even have to play it for you Because it's just basically The commercial that I thought I was actually living in But it is It's basically like one of these self-parking cars And Jake from State Farm Well I'll just play a little bit of it I guess This is the day we play commercials on the show So the parking attendant comes up going down and sees that jake from state farm's car is parked at a meter that has expired and the meter person is all excited to give jake from state farm a ticket but then of course he is sitting at this outdoor cafe and he can move his car uh remotely and uh is doing that introducing the all-new sonata with remote smart parking assist And the meter person is mystified and Jake from State Farm is laughing all the way to the bank, a.k.a. not getting a parking ticket. So this, Liz, is exactly the commercial I was thinking of. But again, so now I have the commercial that I was thinking of. It doesn't in any way alleviate my concerns about the fact that I thought this was my life.

Well, also you were telling me about this story where you were imprisoned in a sky tower, remember? And there was like a little boy who kept saying, make the bad man fly, mommy. That did happen, though. And you insisted that happened to you in real life, but I was watching some show on HBO recently where I saw a very similar thing, and I'm thinking that maybe you sort of incepted that as well. Well, it's possible that it happened to me and also was in a TV show. This show might have been about you, actually, the more I think about it.

Let's see Listener Eric decided to Kind of break down One of our favorite Things from the Simpsons to play on the show In the sort of way that we Love to Play tape of people breaking down Why no you don't Oprah is like A perfect joke

Eric decided to Can I just play the tape it's only 13 seconds long So this is the Simpsons tape that Eric is referring to here

you call that a knife this is a knife that's not a knife that's a spoon all right all right you in i see you've played knifey spoonie before such a good joke here's what eric says last night i was out with some friends and a question came up why is the knifey spoonie bit from the simpsons funny um first of all i hope that they were asking it like let's scientifically break it down they They weren't literally going, why is that funny, too, Eric? Because if so, you need to get new friends. We wound up breaking it down into several layers, and it made me think of the famously densely packed 30 Rock Oprah Sling Blade joke, the premise of an Oprah Sling Blade being on a date, Jenna, not yes, and-ing. That's Jenna's Sling Blade impression, and that Jenna thinks that that's Liz's impression of Oprah. That one is rightly celebrated, but I thought I'd send this email to also highlight the subtle density of Knifey Spoonie. Okay, see if you think this is legit, Andrew. layer number one referencing crocodile dundee definitely the lowest layer but by itself this would barely be a joke so that's the first layer of the joke layer two knifey spoonie as a name it's ridiculously ridiculous sounding it's perfectly australian having been to australia with you andrew i can i can confirm that knifey spoonie does sound like a city we would have

stayed in i'm pretty sure i played knifey spoonie with somebody but i can't remember that big bonfire night we had somewhere that was up and yeah it was at the pink panther right

I'm pretty sure I played Knifey Spoonie that night. Layer 3. The absurd gameplay. One person holds out a spoon and calls it a knife. The other person wins by identifying it as a spoon. Yeah, no, that is, that

really gets me when you think about it. Where does the game go from there?

Layer 4. Despite how easy it is to win, the Australian guy is surprised and an impressed win part does so. Like the 30 Rock joke, this is all in under 15 seconds. Anyway, I'm not trying to put these in competition with each other, but I thought y'all might appreciate this breakdown. Thank you for all you put into this show. Power out, signed Eric. I agree with you, Eric. It is an incredibly dense and funny joke that never stops being funny to me. Were we talking off-air, Andrew, about a project, maybe for some special program where we were going to try to figure out our favorite Simpsons line or something? Was that on-air? Was that off-air?

I've talked to you about it off air, but, you know, we're always looking for people to send in good questions for us to answer for the Hey Dummies videos, which appear in the weekly newsletter going out later today, by the way. And so somebody and I don't have their name in front of me asked us to maybe list our top five Simpsons jokes. And so I've been thinking about that. I think you and I both want to answer that one. And I know what my number one is. And I'm just sort of fleshing out the full top five list. Or maybe it's like three. I don't know. Top three, top five Simpsons jokes. So coming to a newsletter video near you, we will do that. I want to jump in here, too, because I'm looking at I'm looking at my email. I opened my email when you opened yours to see what we're missing. And do you remember how we opened yesterday's show? I had mentioned to you that there was a in the Seattle subreddit, a thread of people talking about the state of Seattle radio and how they're sort of bemoaning it. And there were a bunch of people who said, boy, TBTL used to be great. And I was like, wow. And then some other people were like, oh, you know, they're still doing a podcast. And I was joking around, talking to all the new listeners we were getting because they discovered that TBTL is still a podcast. I got a note. I'm just seeing this now. It came in, it looks like maybe late last night, from listener Deb in Redmond, Washington. Hi, the Seattle subreddit did, in fact, make me look for your podcast. It's 1.20 a.m. on Friday morning, and I just finished yesterday's episode. I would like to start with episode number one and listen in order, but my God, I only have so many years. Plus, I have not yet watched The Sopranos. Thanks for a podcast that doesn't feed the generalized dread. Deb, welcome aboard. Welcome to the family. This is so sweet. You know, Luke, did the story of the prodigal son bother you as a kid?

Did the story because it seemed unfair in some way?

I realize this is a huge left turn that I just threw at you, but I'm going somewhere with this.

But I bet you I can guess—I'll allow it—I can guess that you probably felt bad for the son who was there the whole time, like, just working, doing what he was supposed to do, right? And now it's like, oh, the prodigal son is home. Let's kill the fatted calf.

Let's kill the fatted calf, right? And I mean, that's how you're supposed to feel, I believe, as the reader. And then the lesson is, yes, actually, I don't even know what the lesson is, but yes, we welcome the sheep that has left the fold. And just because the son, you know, the son who's there and worked hard for his dad the whole time feels underappreciated. But I think the lesson is just because we're showering praise and gifts on somebody else doesn't really affect your lot in life at all. Actually, the more I think about it, I don't know what the lesson is there. But sometimes I think about new listeners or returning listeners a little bit like the prodigal sons, not just that they're returning to the fold or maybe as Deb is here, maybe coming for the first time. Like we are so appreciative as we were just discussing while we were thinking our donors of everybody who's been here with us all along for this journey. The ugly times, the times where I made fools of myself with the stew bot live on the show, like the good times and the bad and still support us no matter what. I don't want them to feel underappreciated when I get really excited when I see that I have one new listener or people come. But I do get excited because I got to say, I've heard myself talk before. I am shocked that new people are jumping on board, no matter how difficult I make it for people to listen to this show. So I get excited.

And Debra gets the vibe.

Yes, exactly.

Gently roasting us for having too many episodes to listen to.

Exactly.

Like, that's exact. Welcome to the family, Debra. You're going to fit right on in. Indeed. So that's cool. Go Seattle subreddit. I love it. All right. I think that's going to do it for today's episode of the program. We did a lot today. We sure did. We did a lot this week. It's an important week of broadcasting. So thanks for hanging out with us, everybody. We are going to be back here on Monday with more imaginary radio for you. So please join us for that. In the meantime, have a great day. weekend uh hope you uh make it through the weather in the pacific northwest okay if you're having trouble just look for any member of a seattle indie rock band they'll know what to do uh anyway we'll see you monday please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

power out