Muse

I have something I need to tell you.

I'm all ears.

Right, I'm not going to beat around the bush. I'm just going to get straight to the point. No around, because that's just annoying, and definitely no procrastinating. That's a good word, isn't it? Procrastinating. Pro-procrastinating. I wonder what the etymology of that word is. Obviously, pro, very good. But crest, crest, I have no idea. Hey, why don't we look it up? Have you got a dictionary?

Not on me. Are you doing OK? I have a beta sequence I've been working on. Would you like to see it?

You have to be it so we don't see it. You have to live it or we won't forgive it. You have to inhabit it or leave it in the cabinet.

I know everything there is to know about computers, okay? All the Twitters, I know them.

That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works.

What's on the website probably isn't going to be what's actually going to be. Okay. A lot of the times we will play like a Home Depot parking lot. There you go. Or a Best Buy parking lot.

All right, so follow the website. TBTL.

Well, all right, hello, good morning, and welcome everybody to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. So explain that. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

That's a tuna, bro.

Coming to you once again from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where the fog was out this morning. Cloud fog. And the ships were using their foghorns. It was very New England and very cinematic and also very loud. I'm going to be honest with you. Very loud. Maybe take that amount of foghorn you're blowing and cut that in half and make it that amount. Ships that are piloting the mighty Columbia. We are at episode 4,300. and 50 in a collector series let the fun begin and we have a lot to talk about today which means we will probably get to very little of it including the oxford dictionary has uh declared

their word of the year i don't think it means what you think it means of course it is just

it's clickbait and talk bait and earned media it's designed to get a podcast like this talking about it and it's working uh also if you have been one of those really sort of purposeful purpose-driven people who reuses maybe plastic forks just kind of rinse them off or a water bottle that you bought like at the airport or something maybe you shouldn't i wish i hadn't done that should be more like me and never reuse anything there's a health reason that you want to be careful about that also if we have time which we won't we'll bring you uh a bunk journalism report i'd like to point out to anybody watching this is really bunk journalism we always have time for this guy he's the longest running co-bro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ship he is andrew walsh and he is joining me right now good morning my friend

good morning luke i i promise you i promise you i am not gonna let it go to my head my newfound online popularity i mentioned to you before the show that i'm kind of a big deal in some spaces right now what happened is i am a brilliant internetter um you know i've mentioned on the show several times i've been spending more time on reddit specifically the um the seattle subreddit it's a good place to kind of see how people react into news it's a little community over there people will post a little appreciation posts about the city and how much they love living here people will post complaining things about the struggles sometimes of living in the city and um I stay out of it all. I'm not somebody who posts to Reddit. I've probably posted to Reddit like three times in my life, maybe slightly more than that, but it's very rare. In fact, I think the only time I've posted to the Seattle Reddit before was when I was looking for a certain kind of salt. I was looking for lavender salt, and I wanted to know if anybody knew of a good salt. I was out of lavender salt. What do you do when you're out of lavender salt? I grow some more. You grow some more lavender.

I grow some lavender, and then I chop it up, And then I go, I dredge I go out to the mouth of the Columbia Where it actually meets the Pacific Ocean Which is called the Graveyard of the Pacific I harvest I go down to Nene Tarts Bay And I harvest some salt And then I combine it with my lavender

No joke, that is funny That's how like everybody online is a little bit annoying Right, unlike me That was the actual recommendation No, I mean, you know, but I go on the Seattle subreddit This is months and months ago, if not a year ago And I'm just like, hey, you know I like to have lavender salt on hand and I'm out of it and the farm I usually get it from is gone. Thought maybe I should buy locally this time. Anybody have any recommendations for like, you know, small locally owned salt shop or something you recommend? Like, could you ask for a more like sort of twee, you know, support?

Supporting the local economy kind of thing. But, of course, you always get somebody who's going to be more Pacific Northwest than you. And, like, I got a couple of people who are just kind of like, you don't buy it. You make it. You get yourself some lavender. You get yourself some. I'm just kind of like, come on, Wallingford. Just calm down. You're the worst. W-U-R-S-T. Okay? Peace and love. But, no, I love Wallingford, of course. It's just like one of those. Anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about. We're talking about my fame. Your internet fame. My internet fame. Yesterday, I was scrolling through the subreddit, and the subreddit is not a super jokey place. It's not the type of place where jokes will get totally out of hand, but people will sort of pick up on a theme for a day, sort of. Let me explain it this way. A few days ago or a week ago, there was somebody who had posted a very specific request for a bar they were looking for. Like, I'm new in town. I'm looking for a really cozy bar where maybe I can get a warm drink and do my work on my laptop and had some other specificities to it. Which, honestly, people were like... It feels like you were born to answer this question, Andrew. You know, no, that's not true. This was more of a cozy, like... Somebody recommended, and I did think of this, like the cozy nuts in Greenwood, which is really not my kind of bar. I'm not the type of place that might have, like, a fireplace in the corner or whatever. So they were looking for that kind of thing, and a bunch of people answered, but then it also spawned some other people to post their own sort of parodies of that post. Like, somebody posted, like, I'm looking for a bar where I can do this, and it was like a picture of Gandalf in a bookshop. lighting his pipe or something like that right or or something the opposite of that like from Blade Runner or something um well yesterday somebody or recently somebody had posted a beautiful photo of the Seattle I believe it was the city skyline was the first one maybe from their apartment window or I don't know where it was from but they just wrote I'm never leaving Seattle and accompanied by this beautiful photo of the city which prompted other people to post very similar appreciation posts somebody posted another one that said I'm never leaving Seattle And it was a picture of their vantage point or maybe it's something that they like seeing in their neighborhood. I can't remember all the details of it. And then you get the complainer. Somebody posted a photo of just like just terrible traffic on the five. And they just said, I'm never leaving Seattle, you know, because they were stuck in traffic and feeling cranky. And I was, as a lot of the great thinkers are, sitting on the toilet when I was sort of scrolling past this stuff yesterday around lunchtime. And I just had a very brief idea. I'm like, I'll just post my own. I don't know why I had this idea. I never post unless it's salt-related. But I was like, I'm going to post. So I went out. I had an idea. Was it your pants around your ankles? No. I'm never leaving this bathroom. I did. I did post. It was an accident, though. I dropped my phone. I had to delete it. Delete, delete, delete. Created a new account. And then I went online. I found a picture of Seattle that I specifically was searching out. And I posted sort of a skyline sort of photo.

and i and i posted it and i just wrote i'm never leaving seattle and i posted this photo and i you know no comment or anything but the the photo i used was a screen cap of a seattle that somebody built in minecraft so it's like this really janky like kind of not i mean it's really good for you know i couldn't do this but you know it's like a kind of a city skyline from above like kind of a fake drone shot of like seattle you see the great wheel i think maybe you see rainier in the background and and um anyway but it's all sort of pixelated but it's all like yeah it's clearly minecraft and that's it i just wrote i'm never leaving seattle and i posted it and i posted that and then i ran out to my doctor's office and i get to my doctor's office i'm in the waiting room and i open it up and it's already got like 200 likes or so i'm like 200 like i never post anything on reddit that gets any kind of reaction that's just not i mean i know some people do things are going to start happening to me now luke i'm i'm waking up this morning i'm looking at this we're up to fort over 1400 they stopped counting the specifics at a certain point we're up to 1400 likes we got people angry at me in the comments saying that this mod this subreddit needs more mods people are voting them down other people are saying they're offended by your minecraft or so i don't know if they i don't know what honestly at first that was one of the first comments i was like oh no did i break a rule because like subreddits do have rules and like they literally have every community has moderators and those moderators make sure that you stay within the line some communities don't want a bunch of goofy spamming jokes or whatever but i was for a moment like oh no did i did i break the rules but no there's just always one of them there was another person who commented make your own lavender salt and i was like how do you know i'm the same guy but uh anyway yeah it was a real it was a real boost i hadn't and again i don't think um well obviously the 1400 likes on on a seattle subreddit is not maybe the fame that my parents saw for me when they sent me through school but it's a start it's better than i did last night when i made my first foray into tiktok posting interesting well your second because i believe you and your nephews maybe collabed on the project?

I think that was Jack.

It was on your account, though. You get an executive producer credit. I have points

on the back end. Sure. So I deleted that, and but, like, last night I was putting on my Christmas tree. I was in the Christmas spirit. Becca got me a beautiful wreath to put on my door, and it just had me feeling real Christmassy. But I thought, it's kind of a fairly involved process to put this aluminum Christmas tree together that I have. And so I thought, and I think I might have even done this last year on Instagram, where I just did like a time lapse of me putting it together. And I thought, oh, this might be kind of entertaining. I put that up on Instagram, and some people seemed to like it. And I thought, you know, this might actually be something on TikTok that people might find entertaining, just in the sense that it's that time lapse thing. Like, I'll kind of watch anything that's time lapsed. It just makes it inherently more interesting. And so I just decided, eh, I'll put this on TikTok and see what the reaction is. And I think I wrote something to the effect of just checking if sped-up aluminum Christmas tree assembly is a thing on here. No problem if not, or something. And it has like 80 views, but they all appear to be sex bots.

You could ask for worse.

I mean I don't think there's

war bots you know

okay sure yeah make love not war exactly but I will probably take it down now because I don't know I had this fantasy that maybe it would like it would catch on and would be the talk of TikTok this morning and it's not it's just something that various bots have smashed the like button

on well the cool thing about bots is they are the like button they don't have to smash it A couple of things here.

You're getting famous online, and I'm becoming even less well-known.

It sounds like you're giving up pretty early. I didn't go back and delete my salt post. Just like I would say that you got to – if you're not somebody who's creating – obviously bringing it up on the show now will direct other people towards it. And then that is one thing that I saw with Reddit, of course, and I've – again, as a non-Reddit poster, never really occurred to me that once something starts to catch a little bit of steam, the algorithm will push it further and further up. you know and so more and more people see it so it becomes like a snowball going downhill i believe tick tock is the same way i think blue sky is like specifically not supposedly like that because they're not trying to fall into some of those like kind of astroturfy traps of popularity i could be wrong about that but um all of that is to say i think i know what mistake you may have made uh you didn't slap it probably with the hashtag mcm you that christmas tree is definitely hashtag mcm that That's going to bring all the boys to the yard.

I didn't do any search optimization or hashtaggery. I was texting Becca as you were talking about that because I was reminded that she, I don't know if I brought this up on the show recently or not, but she just said something on TikTok the other day. It was in the aftermath of the election. And it was like there was this, I don't know if it was a real thing or not, But you know the music producer His stage name is Benny Blanco I don't think so I don't know what his real name is I think that Benny Blanco is a reference to the Carlitos Way character Played by John Leguizamo Benny Blanco from the Bronx Anyway, he seems like a sweet dude I actually like the guy Produces a lot of hit music And is seen as a really good boyfriend to Selena Gomez I think is his partner And so he was I don't know if he was seriously nominated as the sexiest man of the year or he was in the running or something.

I think Krasinski won those top honors from People Magazine.

I do believe Krasinski won, but there was some point at which Benny Blanco was being bandied about.

Benny Blanco was being bandied about, you say? I know that's a lot of bees, dude. Keep up the patter.

So anyway, this was right after the election, and Becca was not somebody who thinks that maybe Benny Blanco is the most... Is the bee's knees? Benny Blanco is the bee's knees? Benny Blanco from the Bronx is not the D's knees, to Becca. Look at that, just keeps rolling, dude.

This is so great, Dave Ross. We get paid by the B sound, right? Is that the new business model? I believe so. The new business model, sir? I believe so. This is real Gilbert and Sullivan territory here.

So she, like, throws up this comment on, like, there's a post that's, like, you know, Benny Blanco is, whatever it is, people's sexiest man or something, or he might be. And Becca just said something very innocuous, like, we can't get any elections right in this country.

Oh.

86,000 likes, like millions of impressions, 380 replies, mostly MAGA trolls threatening her, physical harm, like commenting on a comment.

Wait, oh wow, okay, so that wasn't even her original post, that was her comment underneath. And why are MAGA trolls protecting? benny blanco they were mad about her saying we can't get any of the election oh right of course

sorry you know what i hear it now sorry no no but no of course of course but it's it it's just

crazy because like we'll just be sitting around and like every when you know after she had posted this thing every you know five minutes there would be literally a thousand notifications on her phone from this one thing and i believe i forget what the other one was there was something else like this where she commented on something and it just became this like internet sensation i was like how is can you make that your job not even posting on things but just commenting on things if you

seem to have a skill for it yes i'm sorry you said this was this was in no this was not instagram

where was this comment made are you protecting i think it might no no not at all um i think it was

on tiktok okay wow yeah i didn't know that comments yeah that's right people can react to comments on tiktok i don't spend a lot of i don't spend a lot of time there well the thing too is like imagine

this is what we kept talking about imagine that you won the election handily so you know imagine kamala harris uh won and uh and and that we also took congress and we had the supreme court in her back pocket and everything was coming up millhouse how much time would you spend going on to tiktok comments where somebody was sad about the outcome of the election and trying to roast them Wouldn't you be on to other bigger and better things like it's the weirdest thing for someone who's in this very moment really really gotten the W politically to then after the election be going around and trying to like threaten my girlfriend in the comments because she made a snide remark about the election.

Well, this is going to sound obvious, but I truly don't understand that world anymore. There were times as we saw the progression of online trolling sort of, you know, evolve over the years. There were times where I felt like I had a grasp on it because you would see this stuff. You know, when was Lindy's thing about her? She wrote not a book, but like an article and was kind of outspoken about all the trolling that she received online. That was like at least 10 years ago, I think. Right.

I think she did a big This American Life piece about it as well. Yes, that's right.

Thank you. I couldn't quite remember what the standout outlet was.

Well, if I remember the beginning of it, I mean, I think Lindy has unfortunately dealt with trolls her whole career, but I wonder if the specifics of that were when she had the temerity to say she didn't find rape jokes funny, and a certain section of the stand-up comedy world was so threatened by that, by someone having an opinion, that then she was out battling you know stand-up comics in the public space and then the trolls really came for it yeah

and you know but again my point just being that that was a long time ago and people like lindy and others were talking and trying to like sort of understand the mentality the internet mentality the the the um kind of group mentality of that um the brain rot andrew yeah the brain rot more on that soon but also like then like sort of the robots took over then on facebook you know during the elections in 2016 there was like well a lot of these commenters that are kind of like really pro-maga aren't real they're like russian bots that are just supposed to not change the election just confuse everybody i was always confused you know what i mean so now that we're in 2024 i literally don't understand which ones are real meaning actually humans and not bots which ones are really upset as opposed to saying just like yes i am a human leaving this but i'm a human with like 1700 accounts and i have some sort of agenda like i just don't feel like a lot of these people are real and then some of them are just real angry people you know what i mean who feel a certain way but i'm just very very confused how that breaks down these days and how much it like you said you have some sex by the way if you send me that list of sex box box and i'll uh i'll do

some research on that later but yeah um but like it's like do incognito for that you know what is

the um that is my online name on reddit yes incognito andrew um so anyway like yeah i don't understand what the point of a lot of the stuff that isn't sincere is well the ones that she was

reading me and she was just cherry picking some of the most insane sounded like they were from real people oh yeah oh okay because it you know it had sort of it's not exactly reddit but still i think that they're with the algorithms is something where if something gets caught in an updraft all of a sudden a bunch of people are seeing it who would have not otherwise not seen it and so then yeah just kind of it becomes part of the conversation and for you know a day or two it was a big part of the conversation on tiktok about the uh about the election well let me ask

you about this what is what i've never been threatened online before i mean i've been scolded for not making my own lavender salt and that took me a few days to get over gently chided

what you said in the police report

I'm also looking for chive salt if anybody has that um but uh how does becca react to that uh just laughter yeah because i mean that can be

i mean in this case bully within an inch of my life last night you know even though people are

making personal attacks on her her comment wasn't necessarily something super personal but i mean obviously being being threatened online by people who are um you know really into guns or whatever

is not always you know i may have also i may have overstated it when i say threatened i don't know how much of it was real threats it was mostly just like you should die is that a threat or is

that just a comment on what they're hoping for i don't know i have more of a comment than a question you should die thank you i'll take my answer off the air i would i'll uh i would love to see you

do that at a q a go down to elliot bay books or something and just wait around or a film at the seattle film festival more of a comment than a question uh you should die that more of a comment

than a question what that phrase haunted me so much when i first moved to seattle and i was going around to places like town hall oh where chris hayes will be on what do you remember the date february february 4th uh yeah it's a wednesday i know that something that i should definitely guess at yes exactly people can look it up they can use that internet that the safe side of the

internet but um what if i'm not in conversation with chris hayes for that what if well i'm here I'm curious what's going to happen to you. I shamelessly threw my hat in the ring. Right, if it's somebody else. He said, I'll get the PR people working on that. But that's not a hard yes. No, it's not. It could be setting me up for a soft, you know, letting me down. Like the way they'd let Benny Blanco down when he found out he wasn't actually people's sexiest man.

Benny Blanco's the bee's knees. I don't know if you heard that or not. But, yeah, I am wondering if it ends up being somebody else. It's like I, it would be, obviously it would be a disaster, but it would be, I would never accept the gig because I'd be so bad at it, but I would respect Chris so much if he asked me to do it just to troll you. I would love that. Just to troll you.

I would totally, by the way, I would love that. I would not be good at that.

You know I wouldn't be good at that, and that's fine. I don't have to be good at everything.

Well, wait a sec. Why do you think you would do that?

I'm sorry, Chris. I don't want the job. Thank you for, can I just clear the air right now, Chris? Thank you so much for considering me. But I don't think I can take the job right now I have a lot on my plate I'm kind of a big deal on Reddit

See, this is the thing You're half joking But I think you would be great at that I think when you read something You have interesting thoughts And I think you would be able to formulate those into questions I don't think that it's a given

Here's the deal If that was something that I And I don't mean just Chris' thing I just mean generally speaking If earlier in my life I was like That is a real goal of mine I want to do a lot of the things that you do like that, and I want to be the type of person who, when they come to town, you are on the list of people that maybe somebody would turn to. Maybe if that was a true goal of mine and it was something I enjoyed and I worked towards, maybe I could be there at age 48, but it's not something that I necessarily want. It goes back a little bit to – and I'm just trying to learn what my boundaries are, and there's nothing wrong with also just sort of saying, yeah, that's not my wheelhouse. And I think that I'm not, first of all, for stuff like that, you have to be able to just devour content. And I'm a slow reader. It would take me, I would have had to start preparing before Chris was done writing the book, probably. I would be super, super nervous. And I would sound nervous. I would come, my questions would sound stilted because I'd be so in my head about it. Again, if I had started doing this on a lower level at a, you know, I mean, you know, with less eyeballs at a younger age, maybe I could have worked towards it.

But like, I don't I don't feel like I just learned a lot in Burien, Luke, like never was never forget Burien that I would love to actually get ears on that thing, because I bet you it was so much better than you remember it being and that and so much better than you felt it was going in the moment. For those who are just joining us, this was a debate, a local political debate, right, that you hosted? Or it was a roundtable?

Yeah, it was technically not a debate. I can't remember. I think they called it a – what would you call it? It was, yeah, more of a forum or whatever, but it was with a bunch of candidates who were running for Burien, I believe, city council. It was a long time ago. It's funny how little I remember about that.

Except that it scarred you for life.

I mean, it's also amazing how much my brain doesn't remember, but my heart and my scars do. The body keeps the score. The body does keep the score.

As this one book in my therapist's office in Bellingham said to me for years and years as I stared at it behind the therapist. But first of all, that is a very hard gig. I would not want to try to go host.

a forum related to the politics of a city that I wasn't super informed on with a number of people who are probably not themselves just, you know, charisma in a can, trying to make that whole thing kind of sizzle a little bit. That's a very, very tough lift. That's much harder than like talking to professional writer and thinker and commentator television's Chris Hayes. Like, you know what I mean like that's he knows exactly what he's doing i if i if i do get the gig fingers crossed i'll just be kind of you know teeing it up for him to do his thing that is so much easier than

the burion city council election i do think though before we got serious about my skills and potentially the lack thereof i do think it would be a really funny troll if we hadn't already had all of these conversations and it wasn't really like if we weren't here in the dialogue right now but if instead you had reached out to chris and said hey just if you're looking for somebody i'm around would love to do this with you buddy and he's like yeah i'm gonna you know let me ask who's doing that and then you and i never comment on it but maybe i don't know four weeks later i just say hey did you hear that chris asked me to do the um to do the uh the the town hall event with him like what would your reaction be that would be you want to talk about trolling that would be just so wonderful he would say you should die i more of a comment than a question

I honestly think I would love it so much First of all, I would totally want to come attend And I think I would absolutely love it Like, I don't know, I mean, you know, I'm the guy who was all butthurt about Chris Fleming's very funny stand-up bit about Wait, wait, don't tell me last week So I guess I'd have to experience it to really know But I do think I'm getting to the point in my job life Where if something If I end up not doing something The relief of not having to do something Is pretty intense To the point where So for instance I for the last good number of years Have been the The face of the cyber security training Of a large software concern On the east side And I don't know if they're rehiring me To do it or not I would like to point out if they're listening I got recognized two times in Seattle as Microsoft guy, and it was without a doubt the most excited anyone's ever been to recognize me.

Except for someone who recognized you as Pancake Dad in 2009, right? Okay, that also

was a big moment for all of us.

I have that right, right? You were the Pancake...

Yes, I was Pancake Dad for Hotmail. I was trying to explain that to Becca the other day.

How do you explain Pancake Dad for Hotmail to anybody?

How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?

Yes.

like it makes no I was like yeah I did this um I don't know if it was an ad I don't even know what it was I just stood in a kitchen and I pretended to make pancakes for like days on end and then later they filmed someone actually making the pancakes that somehow was promoting

hotmail wasn't it somewhat I thought it was somewhat interactive I might be confusing you

yes you could go you could log on and you could say make a dinosaur okay or you could make and And if you said something naughty, I would say something like, all right, that's a little adult for what we're doing here. Like I'd recorded every possible response and every like hundreds of things that someone might ask to, uh, you know, a shape of a pancake to be made in. And so I, there was all this recorded stuff of me. And then they would cut to somebody came in afterwards and made these pancakes and they filmed all of it.

I don't know. It is very subservient chicken.

I said angry chicken. I think that was, must've been the kind of the motivation. unfortunately it wasn't enough to save hotmail we had a lot riding on it but here's the point i don't know if this this is about the time of year when i'm usually filming those things and and and you know there's always big shakeups at the corporate level and it's unclear to me if they're going to have me back to do it and i'll you know i'll tell you that it's uh the remuneration of it is pretty good for me turns out microsoft you know they're doing okay um but the relief that i will feel of not having to do it even though it's really fun and everyone is super nice to me the the being the central character of this thing for like three intense days of filming where it's every single bit of it revolves around me and you know if i'm doing it okay or not or whatever it is it's something that gives me a pit in my stomach and i'm you would think i'd be like Like, oh, dear God, I hope they rehire me for this because I could use the dough. But I really feel like if they don't, I don't have to do it. And I'm, like, massively relieved about that. That's where I'm at in my career. So what I'm saying is I think I would genuinely, first of all, I would just absolutely love the theatricality of it. Like you said, the trolling of it. Actually, really the best way to handle it is I say, hey, Chris, man, if you need someone to, like, you know, sit on stage with, he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me run that up the flagpole.

And then it's just the day after and you're like, I'm moving a little slow today. I was kind of out late last night, you know, after I did the Chris thing. Then we went and, you know, we got a couple of drinks or whatever. That would be the most, the biggest flex of all.

If you found out afterwards, because I didn't even mention it.

If I found out after the event that you had been in conversation with, that would be an immense flex. And probably something that would hurt my fragile ego.

You know, speaking of that feeling of, like, saying yes to something and then realizing that all you want to do is get past it, you're not even looking. I mean, unfortunately, there are too many things in my life like this.

That's called every single thing in my life.

Yeah, unfortunately, like, there are sometimes even, like, quote, unquote, fun things. I'm like, let's just get through it. I'm just here so I won't get fined. And then you do it, and it's fine. But as far as I kind of work things or sort of obligations, there was one. I need to be a little bit careful here because I don't think this event has happened yet. It was sort of on the down low, sort of a fun thing that a former colleague, somebody that I used to work with, asked me if I would emcee a little, like, kind of awards ceremony that he was thinking about holding for some other people in the industry. And that's all I can kind of say about that because I don't want to give away too much because I don't think this thing has happened. But he had asked me, like, you know, and this would be, I don't, you know, this would not be a paying gig or whatever. would actually be a very when I say MC we're talking about like in the back of some sort of bar somewhere or something just sort of a silly little thing and asked me uh if I would be the MC for this thing and I just said no and I just said listen no let me help you interesting let me help you brainstorm and this is somebody that I like a lot this is somebody who I don't like saying no to um and uh but it didn't even I didn't even struggle with that one and I'm not trying to be a jerk about it but like i what i said was you know i'm not the right person for this um but let's brainstorm it and let me see if i can help you know and i don't i don't think my brainstorming really helped much but i didn't want to just say that and just like then forget about it but like i said i'm not the right person he said you are the right person but that's okay but i i was like in my own head i'm just like all this will do is put this date on my calendar that will be a pit in my stomach and it shouldn't be that way if i were a different person it would put something on my calendar that i would look forward to an opportunity to get together with some old colleagues meet some new people who i haven't met in the industry probably meet some younger people in the industry like if i was a different person this would be a great fun thing to do in the city i love and also it's really flattering that somebody would invite me to do something like that but i'm me and i i was sitting there again probably on the toilet having this text conversation and just thinking to myself, if I say yes to this because I feel kind of bad saying no right now, it's going to kind of screw up the next several months because it's going to live in my head and it's going to get more and more pronounced and I'm going to get more and more nervous as it happens and I'm going to be mad at myself for not sort of just saying no to this thing. So I don't know. I was going to say I'm trying to be better at that, but maybe I've always been good at that. Maybe I've always been good at saying no, but I'm kind of happy with that decision.

now that you've tasted the white hot light of fame that is noted seattle reddit commenter has that changed your opinion now that you've gotten a taste for it my problem is i think that

more people are going to be coming at me with requests you know what i mean i told you in fact i did i gotta i got a request to be on the kow podcast later this week it's happening and i'm pretty i know for a fact that vaughn jones the person who produces that show is often spending time in that seattle subreddit they probably saw my post thought this guy's going somewhere and yeah vaughn would be wrong to think otherwise i am going somewhere going to bed immediately after

the show dalton trumbo style

Andrew, the way that I'm able to be so sanguine

about maybe not booking the cyber security gig for a large software concern is because I'm able to do this for my job. I'm able to butter my bread over here as a co-host and one of the three employees of Too Beautiful to Biz. Do you think that Benny Blanco,

is it Benny Blanco or Benny?

Benny Blanco from the Bronx.

Do you think that Benny Blanco from the Bronx butters his bread?

You're going to be doing this all day. Every bee stands out there. Long after the show has ended, you're going to be puttering tonight. I think you're going to be dart-botting it up and thinking of bees. I love it. We are able to do this as a job because of the support of our donors. It's an incredible thing. Incredible people like Lara O'Neill Dunn of Durham, North Carolina. I feel like we had a Winston-Salem, North Carolina, maybe yesterday. We did.

In fact, only fate broke up these two North Carolinians. North Carolinians? North Carolinians? carolinians thank you um i'm gonna be so bad on stage with chris um but uh yeah because we stay off the topic of the state that's above south carolina i'm not gonna mention any states yeah south carolinians i have no problem with the north though uh yeah no we had a winston-salem is our last thank you yesterday and then the first thank you today look at this the tarheel

state showing up and showing out here for tbtl as is the evergreen state where burley mcintyre is in seattle washington thank you burley yes we love you we appreciate you we also appreciate mike sylvester he's just a little bit north up there in everett washington oh yes definitely really great you want to talk about hashtag mcm some really great mcm happening up there in

everett washington can i tell you something that was hurtful um somebody posted one of those funny maps of seattle that like broke it down this was not on reddit by the way this was on instagram so it had a little bit more integrity to it it was one of those maps that sort of breaks down all the different areas and it gives it sort of a a funny name like you know instead of like lower queen anne it's like where your friends have babies or in strollers or whatever like that kind of thing and you know what our neighborhood said nope our neighborhood was called nope it was right it was right above car thievery stan i believe where what neighborhood was declared car thievery stand just further south on aurora i think or i may be in car thievery stand and um and and maybe nope is right north of me i'm not exactly sure but everett definitely avoided uh

catching any strays there because i don't like that i don't like them putting a nope on any neighborhood in seattle i think it's an this andrew and genevieve erasure will not stand it was very rude i have been to your lovely home and enjoyed time with you there and i did not feel like i was in a nope zone although i did steal your car well yeah i was in i needed cash fast our relationship is still yet to recover from that uh thanks to dana hoyle who's in portland or again dana thank you very much doug rademaker is in st louis missouri someday i'm gonna visit

there and me and doug are gonna cut it up go look at the arch it's incredible i really do i i it's St. Louis is one of those cities I really – St. Louis and Baltimore are two, like, cities that I really want to spend some quality time in. I don't know why I said quality time like that, but I did.

Speaking of boundaries, they wanted me – I'm doing this TV profile of the stand-up comedy performer Nikki Glaser. And she's hosting the Golden Globes. She's your old roaster, right? she's yes it's kind of i think one of the one of the things that really rocketed her to prominence was her extremely dark uh style of roasting people at those roasts but also she's a very successful stand-up comic and uh they were like well we have availability but it's in st louis and it's the week of thanksgiving and i was like i just can't make that happen because it's thanksgiving and i'm doing things and it was because she's from st louis and i think you know she was going to be there with her family and they you know there was various pr people were kind of sort of in the in the further negotiation around the when we were going to film and this and that it was noted that i wasn't available to go to st louis last week and i was like come on like you know can't tell me one day before thanksgiving like it you know this wasn't on

the calendar for six months in other words you feel like people were sort of dragging your name around in these emails as if you were being a prima donna yes or as if i had made things

unnecessarily difficult for everyone by not dropping everything in my life literally the week of thanksgiving to fly to st louis and back which sounds like an i mean nothing against the city of st louis which you've already established you're going to visit but that's not like a living nightmare thanksgiving week unless i was going home to visit you know my actual family or something so anyway doug point is we missed each other last week i'm sorry i couldn't make it to st louis but just know that the PR people for the Golden Globes and Nikki Glaser are more mad at me than you could ever be.

I can't believe you got through that whole thing without saying Lewis in a high-pitched voice. That, my friend, is growth. Or regression. Or regression, I'm not sure.

Or forgetting. Or forgetting. Or forgetfulness. Forget-me shot. You know, what I haven't forgotten is that Sean Moss is in Seattle, Washington, and is our final donor that we are thanking today. Thank you, Sean. Thank you. Thanks to all of our donors for making TBTL possible.

uh... we could not do this without you

hello and welcome to top story so we've got these stories that we could talk about although i have to have to be honest i was very upfront about the fact that we're probably not getting to the stories today really what i could tell you andrew is we're on a slightly tight timeline here today because i need to dash out of here and go to Kaiser per.

Dominante, to have a different doctor look at my bulging eye disc. Hey, keep it for the sex bots, my friend. My bulging eyelid that has some kind of infected duct. Like it got clogged and then it became infected. And now it is very, very red and irritated, even though I took the entire course of antibiotics and the entire course of probiotics. It made no impact. And I have to be honest with you, I kind of knew it would make no impact. Like when the doctor said, well, we'll start you with these antibiotics, I kind of thought, well, I'll see you in a week. You know, like I just didn't have any hope that it was going to magically cure whatever's going on with my eye. But the problem is I have to go this week, I have to go film stuff in Los Angeles. And it's very unsightly. I don't think it's going to get fixed by then. And I don't know what to do about it. I have, I did go buy some special concealer at the Walgreens that I'm wearing right now. So you could probably, it's probably not super noticeable on the connection that we are on. But if you were standing to the side of me and you looked at my lower eyelid on my left, you would say, is that the noted character actor, Philip Baker Hall? And I would say, no, it's not, Andrew. It's me with an eye infection. But you do have the gravitas. I mean and many have said it yeah that I have I've carried many a Paul Thomas Anderson film with my sort of world weariness indeed But anyway, it's it's very embarrassing and in fact last weekend when Beck and I were in Seattle We kept running into tens and I kept having conversations with them and and like for instance We were talking to Amy who sells really cool stuff there in the Pike Place Market And she said something like I'm a little behind on the show And what I wanted to say was I know I have this weird thing on my eye If you were up to date on the show Amy you would know what's going on But you're not so you probably just think that I don't know this is here And I do know it's here

But you didn't do that

I didn't do any of that I'm doing it now

Which Amy will hear in six months Because it feels so I mean honestly I can't see it from here But you know we're on a small screen

I'm in a blinding shaft of sunlight here In the Madrona Hill studio And I'm also blasting myself with not one but two Yellow like you know light boxes I'm doing everything in my power to minimize this and I do think I'm gonna have to have a talk with our camera person in LA and say Can you try to shoot me from? the now here's the thing Andrew and this is what I don't Could you we run a drone and just have I want to be looking up at the drone like Tim Robbins at the shosh in the Shawshank Redemption When he finally busts out of the right out of the sewer line That's what I want the whole shoot to be for me Mm-hmm, but this is the weird part and this is where so I'm going to the doctor today I don't I don't know what they're going to do other than schedule me probably for a procedure Well, they'll have to like cut this thing out Down the road because that's the other thing is I'm sure that the results of that are probably more unsightly than what I'm currently dealing with But this is where my brain is so strange Andrew and wow and so devious for some reason I was already sort of like planning out how I was going to talk about this unsightly eye situation with our camera folks and the producer and anybody else probably Nikki Glaser anybody else in LA who will listen and the first thought I had was I'm going to say that I got poked in the eye playing basketball at the YMCA and then it got infected which for some reason seems like a cooler story and also like less gross than what the reality is which is a duct became blocked and is now infected, is now has a raging infection that cannot be tamed by anti or probiotics.

Given my silly mood, for some reason, I pictured you playing basketball with a duck and then the duck accidentally stuck its bill in your eye. How long did you, every now and then I will have a notion that is so fleeting that you couldn't even measure it in time. But then I'll kind of tell you about it as if it was something I considered a little bit more because it's interesting to think about that way. How long did you consider this?

Well, I'm still considering it

Okay, good Well, nobody will know Well, my thought was

What are the chances that anybody involved in this conversation Will listen to TBTL? The chances are pretty low

I just don't think anybody's going to believe it Because it doesn't look like that kind of thing If I said to you, hey, I'm sorry

I got poked in the eye playing basketball And it's just gotten weird on me So I apologize Maybe you guys could try to film me from this side or something. That would be awesome. Doesn't that feel like a low-key, chill, not gross thing versus, oh, hey, I'm sorry that my eyelid is infected and possibly full of pus. We can never know because it's such a large lesion that I need to leave it to the medical professionals to deal with it.

Well, I mean, honestly, when you put it like that, I do wonder if maybe you're giving a little bit more information. You could maybe do it without the pus. You could just say, hey, my eye's messed up. You don't have to get into it. I got a bum eye.

I was playing basketball at the Y. I got poked in the eye, and now it's swollen. So sorry about that. I just feel like that's the most cool, chill way that this could have happened.

Okay. I was playing basketball with Jake from State Farm, and he, you know, sharp elbows on that guy. So could you shoot me from the other direction?

Yeah. I feel like that's a that's a believable story and it makes me sound like not a weird medical oddity who's having infected eyelids but a guy who goes and plays basketball at the Y and has a rich full life but you don't need a story at all nobody is going to there's not going to be a follow-up if you just say hey I have a messed up eye you don't have to say how you're you got your eye messed up but don't you kind of want to know what you kind of want to know don't you feel like the backstory informs your your Hollywood sensation nikki glazer and you're going to meet this reporter they've sent down from cbs who is already on your last nerve because he wouldn't go to st louis during thanksgiving week and now he walks in and he's got philip baker hall eye also by the way i keep meaning to actually do a google image search and see how bad my eyelid is compared to his resting eyelid state his resting bluffer situation look him up here like is it comparable he's no longer i should be

careful here we've done this before on him okay yeah no he did pass somewhat recently in in 2022 yes um let's see here yeah he's got um well you can sort of see him through the ages here he definitely had he definitely had baggy eyes not unlike our boy michael christmas um oh i was listening to that again recently that's dead ass you hi you remember the luke remembers um yeah so i'm trying to think is one of his eyes more uh specific it's just you're referring to the fact that maybe both eyes just are kind of baggy or does he have something distinct in one of his eyes I think he just has heavy he had heavy eyelids yeah exactly

which again I think lent you know they lent themselves or that look lent itself well to these characters that he would play particularly in like you know Magnolia and stuff

sure which is kind of

a world weary is he a is he a TV journalist is he like an anchor in that or is he a game show host

game show host I'm pretty sure in Magnolia it's a game show host yeah that he plays

but I mean you know the idea that he's i think he's he's he doesn't have long to live on the show right that's the

that is i think you're um i could be wrong about this but there's also a famous actor who plays tom cruise's dad and he's literally on his deathbed for most of the movie but you're right jason robarts jason robarts but yeah does philip michael hall's character also he also has philip baker hall or philip baker hall he he's got an infidelity storyline but also yeah health storyline

And I think he's, like, not telling people. He's about to sign off for the last quiz show that he ever hosts or game show. Yeah. But anyway, his look really lent itself to that sort of character. I don't think that the people who want to promote the Golden Globes are like, we hope that the person interviewing Nikki Glaser looks like a half a Philip Baker Hall.

I think your production crew—

I don't think it lends itself to this whole thing.

We couldn't afford a full Philip Baker Hall, so we went with half. I think that your film crew—whatever you tell them. whatever you tell them doesn't matter as far as the final outcome you know what i mean that that's

just that's just your um pride but slow creeping of my um me being high maintenance and being a diva because i will tell you this andrew there is a specific camera person in la who i work with a lot who will very possibly be the camera person for this shoot who i adore this guy i really love working with him but every time i do a story that he lights i feel like i look like death warmed over oh and i kind of want to have a conversation with him and say i don't know what is going on with how i'm being lit but i look extra bad not just my normal amount of bad but extra bad oh i'm

sorry can i back up for a second because i was actually miss i misunderstood i thought you meant it was sort of a coincidence that every time you work with this person you have some malady that is affecting your looks you're saying that like i mean other than my normal person but their final product for some reason when you work with them you're always like oh yikes the lighting on this. There's something about the way they shoot you.

It's the worst that I look in any of these stories. Oh, that's really interesting.

And it's consistent. That's a conundrum. That's really interesting. And I don't want to get

too weird with it, but I wonder if, well, I'm a different ethnicity than this person, and I wonder if there's a I wonder if there's something about in, unfortunately, in the way that you know, the sort of dominant white paradigm has very often left you know, people of color and others out of like, you know, the Kodachrome scale and things like that. there's a lot of stuff around we the default setting is whiteness and what that means for everybody else but i wonder if in this case it's like i wonder if the person is like you know i don't know

Like, if somehow the difference in our skin tone in any way impacts this outcome that I keep seeing, which is that I look, again, I have to clarify extra bad, because there's just a base level of bad that I always look, but these are even worse. And so you throw in that element, you throw in the Philip Baker Hall eye, and it's going to be, I'm hoping that we can just do the entire shoot outside where I can be wearing sunglasses and looking at a drone, looking up towards a drone.

I was going to say, it sounds like somebody's going to go full Slick Rick for this shoot, and I am here to applaud it. Rick the ruler.

I mean, look, here's the thing. If you can lean into an eyepatch, and if you can, you know, make it your thing, like Mr. Fish Odor in Bob's Burgers. Or Mr. Leno in The World. Yeah, I don't, that whole thing was kind of honestly upsetting when I actually saw him. the bruising was so pronounced that it was rough but yeah if you can like become an eye patch guy or eye patch person and really commit to it it's kind of a dope look I think honestly but you've got to like you've got to do it permanently and you can't do one of those flesh toned flesh colored eye patches whoever thought that that was

less upsetting was not right sometimes things need to stand out they don't need to blend in it's the blending in that's the problem yeah precisely there's a problem with those and again we say you know that's sort of fraught too because when you talk about flesh tone not all like kind of medical equipment or or what have you has been you know the things they called flesh tone were only white people's flesh tone for the longest time but i think about um in fact you know we won't get into this now because maybe you'll put it back on the show sheet at some point but i i saw that we were going to maybe talk about sort of the new technology of the the blurring line between air pods not air buds those are dogs air pods and hearing aids because my dad basically has a hearing aid now that is basically an air pod and every time i talk to him you know he's talking to me on that thing and it's both like it he talks on the phone with his hearing aid he uses his hearing aid to aid his hearing he listens to music on it you know what i mean i i think a long time ago i sort of saw that coming with the with the um sort of advancement of these things i think that's really interesting but it got me thinking about the early days of hearing aids and how there was always a stigma around them when I was a kid because I think the technology was somewhat newer but also the technology was bigger and bulkier and I remember I think it was my grandfather somebody in my life had one and he hated wearing it but he could never hear us huh huh so he would have to dad my grandma called him dad dad put on your hearing aid and then like he'd put this thing and be behind his ear and it was like that that that again like that beige color and it's like Why are we making this beige?

That was supposed to make it less noticeable.

Oh, I didn't notice that this thing is behind grandpa's huge cauliflower ear. You know what I mean? Like, oh, that makes it better. Just make it like a swatch watch. Like, let's lean into this shit. Absolutely.

Bright red, maybe, or some other non-natural color not occurring in nature. Now, here's the real question. If I go to this doctor and this doctor says, oh, you know what? If you want, I can shoot that up with some lidocaine and I can cut that thing right off. Do I opt for that? because I really want it off of my face.

Again, it would be probably worse looking for this film shoot. That way you can just say, I had eye surgery. Nobody has to ask you what kind of eye surgery.

After that, I won the basketball game. Pustules for some reason. They were so mad at me because I dunked on them so many times. That was the rules, Boston Celtics.

That's right, Baltimore Celtics.

Those are the rules. Because after I dunked on the Baltimore Celtics so many times at the Y that they couldn't even stand it, then they poked me right in the eye, and then I had to have eye stitches.

And then they said, will you be my boyfriend?

I said, no, because I beat you at basketball, and those were the rules. So it sounds like the decision has already been made. If they offer to resect this, if they offer to cut this thing out of or off of my eyelid today, I should just go for it.

I don't know. I would ask a lot of questions before that you really—when is this shoot for real? You said it's later this week. it is later this week and they might honestly say well you'll have to wear an eye patch for a while and then you really will have to make that decision to wear like a piratey eye patch or like a black because you do you seriously do not want they they you know you can't be on cbs

with like a big bandage over your eye no but what about just some like stitches eyelid stitches i mean that's then it's like i'm sorry i was i saw these street toughs hassling a um some nuns who were getting some orphans to uh the the food bank and uh i had to step in because they were hassling these nuns and orphans and uh you know you got you should have seen the other guy but anyway yeah they did got me a pretty good shiner here well i think that we're making this easier and easier on you for sure i think we You've definitely found a good solution. So your appointment, actually, in fact, I'm going to go ahead and make a decision here, Luke. What if I just start sneaking this up now? Oh, I like it. You have to run out to go to this appointment. I guess we'll find out tomorrow what the doctor says. I don't think, I think you want to be careful going under the knife. It's very tempting. I just hate this thing so much. Yeah, yeah. I understand that.

I'm wearing all this concealer on it right now, but there's a point at which I have to unconceal it. So the doctor's getting the full measure of it. Oh, yeah. Which then means I have to walk through Kaiser. Yes, it means I'm going to go into the bathroom here at the Madrona Hill studio. I'm going to get some warm water. I'm going to wipe off my cosmetic. But then it means as I walk through Kaiser Permanente, I'm going to have this big, like, it looks like a cranberry on my eyelid. It's very unsightly.

You know, I was at the doctor's yesterday, too, and it occurred to me, I want to give you a quick, because I've given you updates on my sort of ongoing saga with getting blood drawn, which is something that I have to do maybe about once every three months now. And I want to tell you what happened in the blood lab yesterday. I was, you know, I advocated for myself, which is never something that is very comfortable for me.

Tomorrow is going to be all medical problems all the time.

Oh, my God, we're so old, Luke. Do you remember when this show was new? You guys were like these young hipsters.

We had push-up contests, Andrew.

Yes, push-up contests and proms and all this stuff. And they were like, tune in tomorrow. We'll find out what's going on with Luke's eye and Andrew's blood work.

He gets his medically prescribed shoes. And Luke asks for the Philip Baker Hall surgery.

To the 20-year-old, I think, Maddie, who wrote in to say, I enjoy the show. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry about all of this.

If you were following Andrew on the Seattle subreddit and you'd come over here, welcome.

Exactly. All right.

Thanks for listening, everybody. We will be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio and many a medical update, I'm sure. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

You took this book out in 1971. Yes, and I returned it in 1971. Yeah, 71. That was my first year on the job. Bad year for libraries. Bad year for Americans. Hippies burning library cards. Abby Huffman telling everybody to steal books. I don't judge a man by the length of his hair, the kind of music he listens to. Rock was never my bag. But you put on a pair of shoes when you walk into the New York Public Library, fella. Look, Mr. Bookman. I return that book. I remember it very specifically. You're a comedian. You make people laugh. I try. You think this is all a big joke, don't you? No, I don't. I saw you on TV once. I remembered your name from my list. I looked it up. Sure enough, it checked out. You think because you're a celebrity that somehow the law doesn't apply to you, that you're above the law? Certainly not. Well, let me tell you something funny, boy. You know that little stamp? The one that says New York Public Library? Well, that may not mean anything to you, but that means a lot to me. One whole hell of a lot. Sure, go ahead and laugh if you want to. I've seen your type before. Flashy, making the scene, flaunting convention. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. What's this guy making such a big stink about old library books? Well, let me give you a hint, you know. maybe we can live without libraries people like you and me maybe sure we're too old to change the world what about that kid sitting down opening a book right now in a branch of the local library and finding drawings of peepees and wee-wees and the cat in the hat and the five Chinese brothers doesn't he deserve better look if you think this is about overdue fines and missing books you better think again this is about that kid's right to read a book without Stop getting his mind warped. Or maybe that turns you on, Seinfeld. Maybe that's how you get your kicks. You and your good-time buddies. Well, I got a flash for you, Joy Boy. Party time is over. Power out.