Muse

Ah, jeez. Luanne, sometimes life throws you a curve ball. Now there's two ways you can deal with it. You can cry, and that's the path you've chosen. Or you can not cry.

How do you not cry?

Well, instead of letting it out, try holding it in. Every time you have a feeling, just stick it into a little pit a little pit inside your stomach and never let it out are you supposed to have a pain under your rib yes that's natural the body doesn't want to swallow its emotions but now you go ahead and put that pain inside your stomach too I think it's working uncle Hank I feel sick but not sad there There you go. TBTL!

A lot of times in a meme war, it's all about speed. You've got to get to your memes quick. If you can't get to them quick, you're useless. They'll just keep blasting you with memes and you can't fire back. You have to know where your memes are.

Hi TBTL, it's me, Langley. I have one joke for you. Here it goes. What did the water balloon say to the kid? Squirt. Bye-bye.

You shout like that, they put you in jail. Right away. You're stealing, right to jail. You're playing music too loud, right to jail. Right away. You're driving too fast, jail. Slow, jail. You're charging too high prices for sweaters, glasses. You're right to jail. You undercook fish, believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken, also jail. Well, I've said a lot of things in my time. Not all of it's worth listening to.

But let's just say this time round, it is. All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL. The show just might be too beautiful to live.

Isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheets?

My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

Welcome to my show.

Oh, I'm thrilled to be here.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the frigid Columbia today. It is chilly out, but I am captivated by something in my field of vision, which is an incredibly large but incredibly beautiful midnight black feral cat. It's just standing on the edge of my yard, staring down at the river as the wind blows through its fur. that cat would eat my cat Bubbles as soon as look at her, but from here I have to say it's a beautiful cat I love this cat, we have a beautiful episode for you, mostly because I'm now back on the correct numbering system I believe it's episode 4356 in a collector

series, let the fun begin

I apologize for going off the script the last couple of days, I know that is deeply annoying for some of you who are logging these sort of things. We're back on track, though, which is good. As I'm, of course, staring at this beautiful feral cat, mostly doing it out of my right eye because my left eye is still kind of bandaged up because of this whole stye situation, which is so much worse looking than it was before I got it allegedly fixed yesterday.

You're a gross person.

We can get into that coming up also. uh there's a guy from new zealand who just won the spanish language scrabble championship and the interesting thing about that is the guy does not speak spanish the words mean nothing there is a guy who has just been quietly putting up like otani level stats in the world of scrabble and we're going to talk about him and we're going to talk to this guy He is the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. When people come at me on the Internet, when the haters are clapping at me and I'm starting to feel like I'm getting cyber-bullied, he always gasses me up. He's got my back.

You and I are showmates, dude. I got your back. I'll make sure nobody f***s with you.

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

Good morning. I just thought of something to tell you. Okay. Isn't that exciting? I have something to say. Really exciting. I have something to say, which is, um, in the words of Jerry Blank, I have something to say. I've got something to say.

Now that was fast, by the way. What? That was a fast audio retrieval by yours, True. Yeah, sure. I've been thinking about this lately because, and we will get to your thought in a moment because. No, no, slap yourself on the back heartily first. No, no, take your time. Linger. A lot of the Howard Stern show lately. Go ahead. And.

Um, and you know, there, that's a show that also uses tons of audio drops and the audio drops are a highlight of the program, but they also have a person who is assigned to just do that Fred Norris. And there are times, and I'm actually, I'm sure that the TV tell listeners have the same experience. There are times when I, as a listener to that show, here's somebody say something. And then I just start saying the appropriate audio drop in my head and it takes him what feels like an eternity to get to it. And my thought is bro, this is your only job. Meanwhile, I'm over here co-bro-ing with you. I got all kinds of things going on, and I found Jerry Blank that quickly. I'm proud of myself. I've got something to say. I've got something to say, and it's that I'm amazing.

Well, again, congratulations, Luke. I mean, it's just a Wook Wins Wednesday. It's a Wook Wins Wednesday is what it is. It sure is. I just coined that. Speaking of quick on one's feet, agile is how I've been described.

If you want to talk, I've got two ears, and they're tuned to the listening station.

So the thing I was going to tell you, what was it? The thought you had. It was the thought I had. Oh, this was something that I discovered last week. I was on another podcast last week, Luke. Don't tell anybody. Oh, yeah. You were on the KUOW one, right? Exactly. And one of the things, it's like kind of a weekly roundup of like kind of usually somewhat lighter news stories, although not always. A little bit of city council mixed in with some Spotify wrapped conversation on the podcast last week. And I do not really go in for the Spotify rapification of things, as you know, we've talked about it on the show.

Yeah, I was I was wondering if we would end up talking about that this year because I sort of accidented. That's not the word I happened upon my rap, my Spotify rap without really trying to. And I don't put a lot of stock in it, but it was I actually found it mildly interesting. Are you the president of rap to music? And I need to speak with you right now. That's pretty good. That was a good story.

We both are, man. And it's just like there's too much winning on this Wook Wins Wednesday.

Something about the steroidal eye drops I'm on that are giving me extra podcasting strength.

Oh, man. I'm off my steroids. I wish I had just secreted a couple of those away. I'll give you the leftovers and you can just drink it.

Oh, it's topical. It's an eye drop. But I feel like you could just mainline that shit if you needed to just get real strong. I have now made, oh, God, Andrew, because I was on two courses of antibiotics. and now i'm on a a thing an eye drop for this eye situation i guess to help it heal and whatever else but i have now gone from i don't think i've been to a pharmacy one time in the last five years to like four times in the last five days like i have worn a path to the kaiser permanente pharmacy by the way great people doing great work it's so convenient like you walk in there you get a number your your number comes up they tell you you they look me up by my name they go oh yeah okay give us a minute and then they go get it and they give it to you and you're on your i've never waited more than five minutes at this place nice so full marks on that but it is just a weird feeling that like i am now a frequent flyer with this shit yeah no me too i mean again you know that feeling

right yeah for me just like how many times am i going to say my birthday today date of birth yeah date of birth date of birth so anyway i i'm um so i'm not huge into spotify wrapped i kind of you know it's one of those things where i don't want to i don't want to stop other people from having fun with it people love Spotify rap go to it do it to it my dudes I'm not particularly interested in mine I think I use Spotify in a weird way uh for work stuff and Genevieve and I share an account it doesn't say anything for me and I just generally do not care I do think it's we could get deeper on it it's a little bit tied up in this idea of I at a certain point in my adulthood probably young adulthood maybe older adulthood got over this idea of music kind of defining who I am sort of I think that's a very key thing of growing up and it's a cool thing of growing up is you discover music and you sort of are discovering yourself and you're discovering your friends and that's all tied up you know are you know kind of I'm kind of into goth right so therefore it's going to kind of change how I present and who I who I'm with and you know like that's all really fun but then you get to a certain age you're like I don't you know I don't think that the music I listen to defines who I am and I don't want to be judged by it either good or bad like it's just i'm not in that game so anyway that's how i generally feel about spotify wrapped not super interesting but what was interesting was the show notes for that podcast i was on said but have you heard about the king county my orca wrapped now my orca is the uh the system we use to pay for bus orca card your orca card so i have an orca card that's That's where I used to get on the train to get on the buses.

It's also funny that the Mallorca is also a place in Spain.

Yeah, as I was saying, I don't think I've ever said Mallorca like that before. So that's not part of the joke? No, you know what it is. And this gets on a whole nother rant of mine, which I tried to explain to you one time on the show.

And I couldn't think of an example. And now this is the perfect example is I have a real issue, although I guess it's just a practical matter, with apps who can't name themselves what they want to name themselves. They have to name themselves something else. And then you can't find it when you're scrolling through all of your many apps in alphabetical order. Like if I want to find my Orca app, I should look.

It never occurred to me to alphabetize my app.

I'm being serious. On an Android, you can kind of choose which ones are kind of mainstreamed on your front-facing screens, but then you can click to see them all, and they're automatically arranged, at least on my phone, alphabetically. You add a new one. It slots in wherever it belongs in the alphabet, and you look for Orca. Is it under O for Orca? Is it B for bus, T for train? No, it's under M for my Orca because chances are there was already an app somewhere else in the world called Orca. maybe to look at orcas or so you know god knows why but the same with um my trash app i have a trash app to remind me like what goes out on what day of the week and you know whatever and uh it's under it's not under trash it's not under public utilities it's and it's under like i think it's under i think it's called recycle it it's like yeah but it's just like i can never this is more than recycling that's going yeah anyway it's all confusing i'm an old man and this technology it confuses me however i was very excited now talk about technology this orca thing is not a smooth little like spotified button you can press because obviously it's deeply deeply nerdy but i guess somebody on reddit create you know somebody who knows computers and spreadsheets and whatever else goes into this figured out a way that if you go to the your orca page and log in and then download the csv file or whatever those files are called you know the spreadsheet file then upload it into their little system it will tell you what your top five routes were that you took and it'll tell right without a doubt for you that's where things get shocking luke i'm so glad i'm so glad that you're here with me right no my top and also by the way it tells you top five stops as well as top five routes and it says i rode only eight different routes during 2024 i would have guessed i guess that feels right like i'm not like taking tons and tons of new buses i usually take the same ones over and over so i guess eight in 2024 it says i tapped my card 107 times kind of surprised by that that seems low really that seems low to me because that's 107 times more than i did well if you divide it by two in my life if you think that most of these trips or round trip that means I only took like a bus or train like about 50 sometimes over the course

of a year that seems lower yeah but that's more than twice a month I mean there's 12 months it's with three is that three times four times it's like four times a month yeah I guess yeah I guess

so I'm impressed oh and then also here's this it says my busiest day by the way I know everybody's on the edge of their seat if it's not the e-line what is Andrew's number one route of 2024 we'll get to it everybody calm down but first it is saying my busiest day was august 2nd 2024 should we mariners six stops does it say how many stops yes six trips i took six trips on uh the second of august so i'm going back on my calendar now i have not done this yet i want to see what happened I promise you the Mariners were involved. I mean, it would be the right time frame. August 2nd was a Friday. No, this is really strange. Oh, you know what it was? I see here that, first of all, I did do KUOW. Actually, I had to go into KUOW that day to do a radio thing. So you took the bus down there. So I took the bus to a train. So that's four right there. And then I see later on it says Rodan Lakehouse Party. And I'm like, well, I wouldn't have taken the train out there. But then I remembered I didn't go to the road and lake house party. I probably went on some sort of private andy. You were just riding the rails. I was just riding the rails with a bindle and a bottle that has a crop that has three X's on it. Exactly.

Oh, I know what you do when everyone, every social connection you have leaves town and goes to the same place where you're not at. It's like you're in the wind, bro.

I'll bet you. Let me try to think. If four of those taps were for the work stuff earlier in the day, I'm going to guess at least two of them were probably to get to Goldie's. Did you go pull some tabs at Goldie's? I'll bet you E-Line to Goldie's, but then did I get... Sounds like a pretty good Friday, honestly. Yeah, and then I might have gotten squirrely and gone to the Eagles or something. Who knows? Anyway, so that was that. But everybody, now I am just gilding the lily here. Sorry, everybody's excited to hear. If it wasn't the E-Line, and by the way, the E-Line, Aurora Village Transit Center heading downtown. that is my number two trip of the year Aurora Village that's a fancy name for that's what they yeah wait where's that at oh i see this list because aurora village mall when i grew up that's across the street from the arby's that i'd say is culturally right not edmunds that was called aurora that's where i saw i think the first film i ever saw in a theater certainly without my parents and it was the movie octopussy oh yeah the james bond film i still can't believe you can say that on the radio donald whitehouse and his sisters we took a but andrew it's all coming full circle well it wasn't they didn't call it the e-line back then but maybe they did and i just didn't know we took that bus up aurora to aurora village yeah which is up around like i don't know what is that a hundred and it's it's up there a ways and we and we saw the movie octopussy and i was i've never felt so alive and also so terrified i felt like i was like i was an astronaut that was on a spacewalk and i'd

become untethered until did you actually get into the theater and you're like wow this movie's boring That was my experience of those movies as a kid. I was like, oh, my God, 007. Everybody loves 007, spies and intrigue.

I couldn't believe I was allowed to see a movie that had P-U-S-S-Y in the title.

Well, you weren't allowed, were you? You snuck it in?

I can't remember. I mean, I was little. I must have been like, I don't know, seven or eight. Talk about free-range parenting. This was not something I cleared with Walt and Susie, just so you know. I remember walking into the theater, and we actually got there late, And there was a scene in that movie Memory is so strange Because there are so many things I can't remember But I remember There was a scene in Octopussy Where someone is chasing someone In kind of a stand of trees Or a grove of trees And I feel like they have a knife And they throw the knife at someone And it sticks in a tree And I feel like this was the first thing I observed in that movie As we entered the theater at Aurora Village

So you were there You did not get to see the 20 You were there a little you you rolled in the movie was already it was already happening when we were kids we probably

were bad with you know planning and and also yeah i remember walking in the movie was already underway and i was just like i'm ready to see some nudity and i don't think there was no i don't

think that that is a big thing in those in those films no the suggestion of nudity you'll see possibly like the the bare back of a woman you know uh 1983 andrew is when octopussy came out

And so I was born in 76. I was seven years old. Yeah. That's young to be riding the rails.

To get to Octopussy, certainly.

To get to Octopussy at Aurora Village.

But Aurora Village is still there. So anyway, so that's the point. So I'm now realizing that these routes, it's listing whether, it doesn't specify whether I was traveling north or south. So if you get on the E-Line, it goes all the way north to Aurora Village. So if I'm downtown and I'm heading home, I get on an E-Line bus that says it's heading to Aurora Village.

You don't have to go all the way to that stop. in order to get that stamp.

That's the line, right? So it goes from Aurora Village down to downtown, basically. That's the E line. And so that was my number two. My number one, and now realizing that this counts like kind of east or west or north or south, this makes a little bit more sense. The number one, no drum roll on this because it's just too serious. I feel like it's implied. It's the implication. The 40. Oh, I ruined it. You did have it there. Sorry, you weren't as quick as you were with the Amy Sedaris.

I thought you didn't want me to.

I don't know what I'm talking about. The 40. The 40. The 40. I think I don't know if they left it in. I have no idea what stays in that podcast. But on KOW, I'm just like, I know. I hope everybody's sitting down. My number one bus was the 40. That's the one that goes. Where does the 40 go? Well, the 40 is a hell of a bus, Luke. Thank you for asking. So practically speaking, if I don't feel like walking or taking a scooter or what have you all the way to the train station, which is about 1.1 miles away from me, I can grab a 40 right outside my house. Yes, you can. A few blocks from here, you wait for the 40. Only half of it consumed. That's right. The 40 will take me right to the train station, and then I can go on my business from there. But the 40, this is what I discovered, I don't know, maybe six months ago or something. I unlocked a whole new world of access to Ballard via the 40. The 40 takes me almost directly from my house. Not quite from my house. It doesn't stop right outside my house. But basically from my house to anywhere I want to go in Ballard, it is I can stop at the water wheel on the way there. The Tin Fish or whatever the hell that place is called. It's not called the Tin Fish, but I can go into the heart of Ballard. I can go to record stores there. There are bars there. There's I mean, there's a bad Albert's concern. I've heard that you might be familiar with. So that's the 40. That was my number one trip. The E line was number two. the train was number three took 24 trips on the on the train this year where do you take the train to well i used to take the train to the ballpark i would like walk to the train station and take the train to the ballpark and before I realized that the E-Line also takes me there. The E-Line is actually an easier trip to the ballpark, but sometimes you just want to stretch your legs, take a nice walk, pull an apple off of a tree on the way to the train station. And so I do like, and then also anytime I'm going to, again, the university district to go to KOW or grab lunch or whatever, that's the one line for me. I took four trips on something called One City Center, which I have no idea what that is. I have zero idea what one city center is. And then rounding out the top five lists that everybody is on the edge of their seat about, the 67, which kind of goes from kind of Northgate over to like, I'm going to say the sort of Maple. Is it Maple Valley? Where's the Eagles Club technically located? It's not Lake City. Maple Leaf. Maple Leaf.

Yeah. Kind of the Maple Leaf area. Don't get on a bus going to Maple Valley. It'll be days of your life. Yeah. What's Maple Valley? Maple Valley is where Brandy Carlisle is from, and it's kind of south, I think, and east. well south and well east of siesta in washington state yeah very much so but it's just just don't

mix those two up because you'll no i will be in for a ride exactly i'll be that episode of the simpsons where lisa ends up on the bus far too long and then ends up in a very very scary part of town where russian men are playing chess um anyway there you go i just want to let you know about the orca wrapped you can find a link to this on uh reddit somewhere andrew i was i was

on the edge of my seat that whole that's good content thank you appreciate it now my spotify wrapped my spotify wrapped andrew i feel like here's what i will say about it i'm not growing as a person like it's the same as last year and now one of the things is spotify is not the exclusive it's not the exclusive place where i listen to audio content be it music or podcasting i kind of bounce between some different services for podcasting as well out of curiosity weirdly I still use the Apple podcast app because I just have shows bookmarked there.

Oh, yeah, that's what I mean. But you're not usually listening to podcasts on various apps, right? You're not bound. You're not like, oh, you are. OK, sorry. Go ahead.

Yeah. So like if I'm listening to Chris Hayes's podcast, which, by the way, is always great, but is especially great this week. Why is this happening? He's talking to a college professor who's studied sort of democracies and when they start to slide out of democracy and what's happening in America and the idea of something called presidentialism, which I had never really considered.

Why are they talking about that? What's that? Why are they talking about that?

That doesn't sound like anything to me. But that I listened to for some reason in the Apple podcasting app because it's listed under shows. So if I want to listen to This American Life, which is crazy because I also have the New York Times audio app. I just have these pathways in my brain. Like, Pod Save America, I listen to on Spotify. Chris's show, I listen to through the podcasting app. There's no good reason for this. It's just muscle memory. But all that is to say, number one artist I listen to once again this year on Spotify, MF Doom. And it's one record. It's mmm food. I couldn't tell you any song by MF Doom that's not on the record Mmm Food, but I apparently listened to that record so much that he is once again my number one artist, second year in a row, followed by Time Cop 1983, who I listened to that Time Cop 1983 album, I mean, probably once every other day. anytime i'm on an airplane anytime i'm on a jog and i want to be meditative versus taking in information i'll switch to time cop 90 1983 um and then uh you know waxahatchie and mj lenderman but it's just the fact that m like mf doom this one record from mf doom is now going on its second year of being the main thing i listen to it's like i don't know it's it doesn't speak to a A person who's out there living their best life, exploring all there is to learn about music and culture and life. It's a guy who's hunkered down with his MF Doom record, just listening to it over and over again in a nearly obsessive way.

I'm going to see if I can call mine up here. I actually literally did not ever look at my—I'm trying to figure out how to look at my Spotify wrapped right now. Because whenever it was offered up to me, I just skipped past it. I was like, no, I axed out of it. i am surprised though to go back to yours i am surprised that there is no mac miller on there i thought for sure in the top five i thought you're for sure that would be like number two or three you know i think i mean actually i should cycle back in i have i have that was oh this is my this is my spotify rep it's very activated it's very multimedia oh yeah this is um not What is her name? This is Bunny, I think. Anyway, it's just telling me that life moves fast.

How do you feel about the... I know you're on the record just saying you don't care about Spotify rap. How do you feel about the presentation of it? I'm looking...

at it now for the first time it's um going it's just like so far this is all i'm on slide three and it's telling me nothing it's just a bunch of bullshit it's saying i've changed so as you're okay so it sounds like it's winning you over yeah okay you hate you actively hate it i actively

hate this i i really do yeah i don't know why really because now first of all andrew hey um hand colon feeds us see reference biting yeah i know most of our social media right now is folks who are proudly proclaiming that TBTL is their number one podcast via the Spotify rap app. Oh, of course. No, I love that. Why don't we go easy on the rapping, sir?

And I did make that very clear on the other podcasts. Like, obviously, that's the only proper use of it, is to tell me how much you listen to TBTL this year. That's right. Of course, see, I thought that the algorithm was going to be really messed up because Vives and I share this and whatever. But this is very clearly true. dead d-e-h-d oh yeah dead number one um by far in a way i guess my number one what else got played a lot this year just give me the numbers stop animating my life here we go um dead old man saxon as number two wow that shocks me that's why this doesn't seem right to me the hard quartet which is a record that just came out like three months ago but i did listen to it like crazy and when he said that that shocked me buddy defranco i mentioned him yesterday he's the clarinetist i mentioned yesterday oh yeah right i knew that was familiar and then five is beyonce so that must be genevieve because i don't listen to much beyonce not that i have anything against beyonce but better not yeah and i see so there it is those are my top five i guess my top four because beyonce is genevieve's but uh i i mean those are all things i listened to a lot certainly buddy defranco is number four i i there's something off about this something's on his grandfather i don't think so i don't think so but um yeah okay well i'm somewhere in the

middle i'm i'm not somebody who who uh you know i'm not like waiting all year to see what my spotify wrapped is and also it's because it's not particularly interesting just the same thing over and over again um but i'm also not like i don't actively dislike it the way that you uh seem to somewhere in the middle I don't know why it riles me you know another thing that it told me because again I listened to Pod Save when I was in my just obsessed news consumption mode and politics news consumption mode leading up to the election I was listening to so much Pod Save America that I forget what the stat it gave me but it was like you're in the top you know 5% of American of like Spotify customers in terms of the amount of like political talk you listen to there was some there was some data point that i was like i felt weirdly proud of which i guess means it's working whatever the like psychology is whatever yeah yeah you know what i mean whatever like whatever whatever psychological warfare they're doing on me to try to enmesh me further into spotify by way of me having associating good feelings with their product i guess it kind of worked with that yeah exactly

that maybe that's why it's like it's so it just seems so calculated to me and also like and again it's like it's like oh look what you achieved it's like sort of like literally wrapped in this sort of language of achievement it's like i didn't achieve anything i listened to other people's stuff i i don't know i i again the more i talk about it i want to tell people if you listen to a ton of tb chill you achieved a hell of a lot that's right well you deserve some sort of a some sort of a military medal in the shape you should be able to board the airplane first

yes and i will clap i will and there should be at least one nfl sunday that's in your honor

where everyone has to wear some weird shit what would they wear they would wear a tvtl hat

well first of all what would they call it what would the kind of like because you know it's like the dummies we're the dummies not like color rush but you know oh yeah like that's more of a that's not related to the military but you know there'll be that yeah there will be that weekend where it's like every coach is wearing some sort of bullshit vaguely camo version of their team's like colors

on their hat you know it's all yeah everybody will be wearing that shirt that you bought with the knives and guns all over it for halloween yes yeah that'll be that'll be everybody has to have

airpods in everybody's everyone has headphones in in honor of tbt salute to tbtl sunday yeah

instead of having those big headsets that the coaches have they talk into they just have to talk into their earbuds and it's a it's a really shitty game because like instead of throwing their

clipboards they throw their phones when they're frustrated they do or instead of throwing a

challenge flag yes throw your phone right on the field a red phone on the field i tried to guess

at uh you know some some kind of fact that i got wildly wrong that would be we should ask uh tbtl employee numero uno john sklaroff if that's in the budget we recently learned that a billboard's Probably not in our budget. Yeah. Which is a bummer because this was a good idea. Can we talk? Wait, am I going to? No, no, I think we should talk. I think it's more interesting if we talk about it because maybe something will grow out of this.

It was so expensive. I think anyway, we had landed on this idea of trying to do a TBTL knockoff of the Spiro's pizza billboard that you're obsessed with. That was just going to be basically the same billboard. It was going to say TBTL. Like in a relationship with TBTL. And then what does it say on the Spiros?

Always, always. And it's like very small. There's no there's no photos or inclination or indication that they serve pizza and subs.

And I was, by the way, going to advocate that we have a pizza on ours. And it's further just totally make it make no sense and be weird.

But it says in a relationship with and then it has the Spiros logo and then in the same smallish font but in a light in a lighter color so it's almost like a whisper it just says always

and we were going to do that well not we weren't going to do it we were going to do that in the way that i was going to buy a bowling alley once in eagle rock we had the idea we john did a bunch of research and um you know forget what you've heard about the decline of the outdoor media industry it's really expensive like it's a grip they're not giving it away six grand or something

No, more than that, I think. Eight grand? I think it was between seven and eight. I wanted to buy that exact billboard and do a parody of it. By the way, I have a new data point on that Spiro's thing. I don't know if you're interested in this. I'm so interested. I almost sent you this this weekend. There was a car parked in the park and ride area underneath the highway in Roosevelt where we hand out food on weekends. And there was a car park there. It had nothing to do with our organization. and um it had it was not it the car if i recall was not in bad shape or anything but it was somebody who was definitely enthused about stickers so the whole back of the i feel like it was sort of like either a hatchback or an suv sort of um back window if you can picture it um covered with various stickers a lot of them kind of having i think kind of like local vibes i don't think any of them said like keep ballard weird but it was sort of that vibe one of them luke is a big sticker that just in big font says love l-o-v-e but the o is the spiro's logo and it's in the same colors as that billboard this was part of a whole campaign they had i'm sending you this right now so this whole spiro's love campaign was a thing i guess i mean again i gotta give

them credit the amount of earned media they're getting on this show yeah and i have no shirts over there is amazing it's almost worth the eight thousand dollars i mean that's what blows my mind about this is think of you know there are obviously like you know very large national companies that will use those billboards but then there's a lot of you know local restaurants and things and i'm like they're shelling out eight grand a month for that like right they would

really hope it works that's a really good point and also you bring up a good point i thought you were going here with that we've talked about spiros so much don't you think that they should buy us one month of that billboard like sort of gift it to us first of all it's the holiday season so that's something to consider there it's the holiday season because i'm um not you know i'm not exaggerating when i say i have eaten there i do recommend it if you if you're looking for like kind of a a nice um kind of simple uh greek style pizza shop can't go wrong with spiros give them a thumbs up and then tell them to loan us their billboard for free use the promo code tbtl

to see them confused yes do it just start right walk in there on the tip line you know you just what you just did to me andrew uh in the words of benicio del toro in the movie fear and loathing in las vegas look what god just did to us now i am really craving that style of pizza i've done for dinner tonight and i've recently i've recently sworn off things like pizza and overly especially processed and sodium filled foods i've been trying to uh cook more and eat more like eat less processed stuff i'm one week into the project and i'm i would absolutely kill for some spiros right now i would also love to be friends with whoever's car this is that you photographed based on i mean this is a description of an entire life yeah on this billboard this person is a deadhead they've got the the grateful dead little dancing bears going on i thought you meant the band dead not like the way you're a deadhead sir this person's spotify raft is all casey jones you better look out it's all sugar magnolia that's what i'm talking about it's also they've also you're absolutely right interest

This is a deeply Northwest person. They've got a JP Patches bumper sticker.

Yes, I know that one really got me.

They are a seaplane enthusiast. They would appear a member of the Seaplane Pilots Association, which I absolutely love that for them. Like, I don't think there's anything that is cooler than a seaplane. In fact, there's a yellow seaplane that flies along the river, I don't know, once a week or something. And it fills me with such joy Andrew, whatever I'm doing I stop and I go out on the deck And I just stare at this yellow seaplane I just, I don't know why It makes me so, so happy They've also got the Spiros bumper sticker Which you pointed out They're also an enthusiast around the topic of the Dave Matthews band Where are you getting that? The little, that dancing figure

Is that Dave Matthews, really?

That's the Dave Matthews logo

It looks like it's a ballet pose or something i mean listen no no i'm not saying i don't just reporting the facts i i know because i was like well we'll never know what that one is but you don't know what that one is that's the dave what google the dave matthews band why is that the low and i'm not trying to that's a really good point why is that the logo yeah that's very that's interesting to me but i'm learning so that's

cool this person may have gone to carnegie mellon university that's another sticker on there is that

Hawaii, too, I see, this archipelago.

Yeah, the islands, that looks like Hawaii to me. Like, I don't know if they flew a seaplane to Hawaii. That's a long way. But there's also an actual seaplane, like, sticker, which is real cool looking. Seahawks fan, we love that for them. And then this is also, again, the things that they're promoting are so funny to me. They're promoting Sticker Mule, which is just a company that makes stickers.

Well, I mean, clearly this person is into stickers.

They really are, but that's meta At the point where you've got all of these It's like saying It's like having a million bumper stickers And then having a bumper sticker for Al's bumper stickers

But what if this person is What if they are associated What if they invented Sticker Mule I hope they didn't because that guy's a Trump dude Oh really? Oh I didn't know that

It was a story Actually I have a weird amount of knowledge About Sticker Mule now because I forget what the precipitating event was, but leading up to the election, something had happened. I wonder if it was the attempted assassination or something else where basically the CEO of Sticker Mule went public with the fact that he was a MAGA dude or a Trump supporter. And then there was a big pushback from other people that were like, stop buying your stickers from Sticker Mule, people that disagree with Trump. And then it spurred a whole conversation about business owners and CEOs and their political beliefs and if they should talk about them and if we should respond to them, etc. So, I have a lot of thoughts about Sticker Mule. Yeah, I guess

I'd never heard of it before. I thought it was another local company that just prints stickers for maybe kids. I think they're in upstate New York or something. I see. What do you make of the, by the way, I just, so this Fire Dancer logo of the Dave Matthews band. Is that a Fire Dancer? I guess so. It was the cover of the band's 2005 LP, Stand Up, and then I guess it just sort of like it just sort of became their logo um i'm i'm just i'm really glad that you recognize that i had no idea now i'll always know what do you make of this weird i was under the table in dreaming in college my friend i was under the table in drinking what is this um what is this sticker that just says so it looks like an official like seal of some sort and it and it says oh it's the atf logo and it says warning theft of explosives is a federal crime export uh no report thefts or losses immediately to and then it has an 888 number that's a strange sticker to have on your car they'd like they absconded with that maybe and stuck it on their car yeah that seems like some

sort of uh like uh i don't want to say joke but like you know what i mean kind of like a i doubt that that's related to an actual incident involving explosives or their desire to keep people from stealing explosives from their vehicle i'm guessing that they just thought it was kind of a it was kind of an intense sticker or something to put on there but where'd they get it what is

Is this a fraternity sticker up top there? Or did you already identify that one?

I didn't mention it. I don't know what that one – I don't know what – it's, like, Beta Omega. I don't know what the two is. It looks like a fraternity sticker. But that is a world that I know precious little about, the Greek system, because I was not invited, Andrew. Me too.

But I'll bet you this is one that is, like, kind of – like based on these other stickers it's probably not your typical like fraternity right it's probably like a smarty pants one like the i don't know science learners of america is that a black

fraternity a historically black fraternity oh dude frat logo? So is it beta, omega,

omega? I don't know, man.

I'm out of mind. The B is a beta, the O is an omega, but then I don't know what the 2 is. It also looks vaguely like the boys to men logo, but I don't think it's associated with

the work.

Oh, is it beta, theta, pi? A North American social fraternity founded at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, Andrew. These are your people. Are you confirming this?

I can confirm.

I can officially confirm.

This is beta, theta, pi. I'm looking. Okay, what's their deal? Are they science-y people? They're men of principle, it says. Okay, that's good. That's a good start.

Oh, they're all principles. Here are the five core values. Intellect, responsible conduct, mutual assistance, integrity, trust, and Dave Matthews Band. And the Dave Matthews Band. See, you know what? It does all come together in a certain way. Founded by John Riley Knox in 1886, who was cosplaying as Abraham Lincoln, according to the charcoal drawing I'm seeing of him on the Wikipedia page.

Can you imagine? I don't think this is going to happen. But can you imagine if the person who owns this car is a listener of TBTL?

I think it's likely it will happen. This is going to get back to it. We have given so many contacts. Somebody out there knows this person, Andrew.

We can find this person. They're probably in a McDonald's right now eating a hash brown.

Now, that right there is over the line. Sorry. I do think, Andrew, that – well, two things. I actually have big thoughts on that. Have you seen the photo of – let me just try to compose myself here, compose my thoughts. One, if you know someone who is floating, who's like a seaplane, a certified seaplane pilot, Dave Matthews Bandhead, a former member of Beta Theta Pi, and also a Spiro's Pizza enthusiast, I think this is that person.

Although, are you always, once a Beta Theta Pi, are you always a Beta Theta Pi?

Good point. Okay. And is A, is actively a Beta Theta Pi? If you know anyone who fits all of those criteria, that's the person who owns this car.

I'm going to go around, are you a pal of patches? Are you a pal of patches?

I'm going to go around singing DMB. Oh, the little ants go marching. Okay, the second thing is, I'm actually, like, you know, we've been talking a lot about the story of the Luigi Mangione, the guy who's been arrested for that shooting and stuff. i was quite shocked by the actual photo of him at the mcdonald's because i'm i am surprised that the person who called the police on him even recognized him he has this hat pulled way down you can't see his eyebrows he's got a medical mask on it was i mean there was not a lot to go on for this guy like i'm i i sort of pictured it in my mind as you know somebody called the police because he was just like he looked like the guy in all of the pictures. But he had clearly realized that like his eyebrows were pretty distinct and other things. And he had this sort of large like, you know, knit cap going obscuring almost all of his features.

I'm wondering if we're talking about different photos because I'm now keep in mind, I am a face blind fella over here, a face blind fella. FBFs, we call ourselves. We formed our community in Miami of Ohio, in Oxford, Ohio. But the one I'm looking at right now, like his mask, you don't even really see it. It's pulled all the way. If he's wearing it, it's pulled all the way down around his neck or something. He is wearing a wool hat, but I can see his entire face from the top of his eyebrows down to his chin. He's holding a hash brown up to his face. I'm wondering if you saw a different photo.

I did. You know what? I hadn't seen this. Now I'm looking at it. Oh, yeah. He's absolutely. You can see his whole face. I had seen a different photo where he had his mask on still. I mean, I guess you have to. seeing them both here yes I guess you have to take your mask up to eat a hash brown literally I

see he pulled it down and hung it off of one ear while he takes a bite of a hash brown so he was

trying to keep it up there most of the time again how about you just I mean a hash brown is actually perfectly designed for this it's a puck you just slide it up under the mask while the mask is still on and you just kind of gingerly fold it into your mouth that's how you do that without taking your mask down like i mean i think that just again gets to the sort of how both calculating and haphazard this whole thing was for this guy you know i think this the cinematic aspect of it or the you know the oceans 11 of it was like oh criminal mastermind he's one step ahead of everyone and it's like not really kind of got lucky with some of this stuff kind of got unlucky with other things was hungry for hash browns does apparently like mcdonald's a lot and uh, you know, uh, although even the, I'll say this, the photo of him in this McDonald's with the mask down, if I looked at that right, I don't know if I would have matched that up with the guy in the hostel with the mask down. Like they look a little different to me. So I'm, I'm still, I'm, you know, surprised that, uh, that, that somebody had the wherewithal to, did you see the, um, there's no way it's real, but the thing that was going around the internet yesterday, which was, It looked like it was from the official Burger King Instagram account that said, we don't snitch.

No, but I saw a Wendy's one, and it had sort of a young, come-hithering-looking, but also sort of punk-rocky girl dressed up like Wendy, and it said, Wendy's, we don't snitch, and the girl's giving two middle fingers to the camera or something along the lines of that.

Yeah, I think that there were a lot of people that were having fun with that. I did, I mean, I think that would be corporate suicide to be seen as joking about something that's as serious as this. But whoever came up with that idea as a comedic premise, pretty decent.

I am going to change the subject here quickly. This show has been a little bit all over the place and I blame myself for that, certainly. Or at least partially. I give myself 55% of the blame for that. But because we are a little bit all over the place on today's show, I would like to continue that and ask you a question that will hopefully no i'm not writing the ship here i'm just steering into the no no i'm steering into the skid you're embracing the suck yes exactly you're like this

show is already a disaster why fix it now that's right so uh before we do thank the donors i have

a question for you that hopefully will be a relatively quick thing we can address but if i know us it won't be i think i realized something this morning regarding text messages on my phone and it could affect you and and the boys because you know there's been a lot of talk recently in the news and i don't think we've brought it over here to this podcast but like the way androids and apples apple i'm sorry iphones apples the way you can tell i'm not an iphone user the way iphones and androids talk to each other especially via text has always been a little bit rocky like sending videos across the platform we've talked about it's weird and then you iphone users have a whole bunch of like ways of like sort of like grouping things together and creating text chains that don't really work well with androids and we as android users don't really experience that because it all seems smooth on our end but i guess certain functionality goes away when you invite one of us low lives into your text chains but yeah there's plenty of ribbing that has gone on over the years about that but i think things have been changing because um apple changed something so that um it's like something i know there are people in our audience who know way more about this and i don't want to get caught in the in the weeds anyway but have sort of switched their systems so that from end to end the it's a little bit more of a smooth process to talk about these things it also has led to some um i guess vulnerabilities in text messaging and unencrypted stuff i've been seeing some stories about that having said all of that i have been noticing as an android user several things sort of changing just a little bit on my end the other day i opened up my phone and every text chain that i had with you and somebody else on an iphone was marked as like uh off limits to me like it said like this is no longer secure i was like what the heck i restarted my phone and everything was fine um but i think people are just doing some messing around on the back end of things and all of that is to say this morning i woke up and i i have always had a wordle group with my friends who we exchange wordle scores and other other happenings around town and i at some point we added a new person to our world group it wasn't you um you're still in the um you're still in sort of a trial mode yeah yeah um but when we added somebody new i changed it on my phone to all caps new wordle group now as an android user that means only i see that in fact when you change it you'd always get a note that says only you can see this chain change right only you see the name of this it's not universal the way we were talking about you people who use iphones the way that's not a condescending yet like one person changes the name of the group and that is the official group name for everybody well this morning i woke up and i just see that the name of my wordle group has changed and it says genevieve has has changed

the name of the group to wordle group and i'm like what in the hell is going on she is the she's a android user as well and the other day you sent something to the uh sports text chain that we call fun loving criminals which i have labeled fun loving criminals on my end but for some reason the name was gone it was just like a list of like all 10 people on that text chain or whatever i'm like what the f what the f and so i changed the name back to criminal

in all caps on my phone my question for you is did that change the name of the group for everybody have they switched it now so that we android people when we change the name of a group is it changed for everybody what is the name of your sports text chain right now and is it criminals

and all caps and did i do that criminals all caps oh my god and do you have a message from early

sunday that said andrew changed the name of this group that is amazing uh i don't think let me go back to sunday yeah there's that's actually a big ask because that was a very busy no no i'm

scrolling i'm scrolling i'm scrolling let's see the day started with me saying charbonnet hero game which by the way i've been hot lately with some of my takes i call i predicted the big cat interception i predicted a charbonnet hero game which did happen but that's the first thing i see on here and then i see uh our friend john goodwin testing pictures of cougar gold cheese for some reason so yeah the game yep those early um and then you know on and on from there but i don't have an indicator it is called criminals all caps though so that's i'm seeing the evidence of your

work this is now yeah and now it only goes back to sunday in fact i can't find any old text messages on our chain prior to sunday at 1 p.m this is bananas now andrew this is actually i have to

be honest with you it's very it's actually sort of serendipitous that you bring this up because i think i scared some of the listeners on uh some of the listeners who also maybe interact with me on blue sky last night because i wrote a a slightly snarky post just a joke about how and this is i wouldn't say that this is actually driving my level of communication with people i mean it was presented as a joke but basically like when i'm texting with addy or becca or any number of people who are on ios i i am very addicted to the process of editing my texts to them not for content but just for like typos and i i really love the ability to go in and just clean something up um a little bit and if i can't clean it up now because i'm texting with someone who doesn't have an iphone it i feel i really feel the loss of that having that you know ability And so I wrote some joke like I'm not mad at you. It's just that I can't edit my text you anymore So we're not friends. That's all and I think people thought that was like shots fired at you People were like people were saying things like this is a tough way for me to hear my favorite podcast is over or things like that I want to let people know that was not aimed at you Andrew and also somebody Slid into my comments and said the supposedly there is a way with the new the update to my what do you call it? iOS that I could, I'm trying to find the exact response. There might be a way, Andrew, that I can actually edit my text to you if I go in and do a certain setting. I do

feel like they're making a lot of changes to kind of make this more universal.

Colby, who may be a 10 or may just be somebody who's enjoying my fire posts on Blue Sky, says, install iOS 18, then go to settings, apps, messages, RCS messaging, then all of your iMessage features will, with with android will work so i should be able to edit my texts lightly for clarity when i'm texting you

which i'm really excited about that's good yeah and i would have seen this too if i hadn't muted you on blue sky so thank you for letting me know about this you're just jealous because i'm

rocketing up the charts too yeah but i have 600 followers i feel like my chuck mangione post should have really i mean it got some love from our friend bean baxter i feel like that's right yeah i feel like that one should have done some better numbers but you know what can you do thank you for being a 10 hey let's thank some donors who are supporting tbtl with their finances well it's not their finances but they're financially supporting us and uh it's the uh it's the life it's the the financial lifeblood of this show i'll tell you that much andrew i mean is it enough that we can get eight thousand dollar billboards no we do not have the money to do an eight thousand dollar inside joke but we do have the money for this to be your job and my job and john sklaroff's job and we are so grateful for that grateful to folks like alexa raider of everett washington everett yes okay good this is i love ever you know yeah alexa wonder how um how life's been treating you the last few years i feel like did we have we has the wave crested because there was a while we were a while we weren't saying that name on the air because it was setting devices off oh my goodness okay gotcha

uh i didn't know what we were talking about for a second right right right yes of course it is

it's confusing i'm still using one actually it's funny i was at my parents house and my i think i told this story but last year we did Thank you. white elephant kind of christmas thing at my sister hannah's house and adelaide my daughter you know it's supposed to be like under 20 bucks she actually brought an alexa as one of the white elephant gifts which are i mean look it's a listening to you're bugging your own house for jeff super villain bezos like it should be free they should pay you if anything right like these things are very very very cheap now because again it's just a portal to buy more of their shit but my mom was deeply jealous that someone else had had nicked the alexa and my mom never probably heard of an alexa before this but then she saw it and then she wanted it and then someone else had it and then she seemed a little bit steamed so like to prove a point i bought her one right then and there oh right like to just as a flex i guess and i don't want to be you've already said

it on the show so i think it's okay for me to say this but it was also sort of mixed up in the fact that she was sort of like not just jealous of the Amazon Echo or whatever they're called, but also at the sort of expense of the fact that she got kind of a cute handmade gift from one of the younger people at the holiday party. I believe it was a painting from one of her grandchildren.

Yes, exactly. Which I now have here, and it's displayed handsomely in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It was a good painting, too. Anyway, I was surprised when I was over at my folks. I'd forgotten about this whole thing, And then when I was there for Thanksgiving, at some point, my dad goes, Alexa, like set a timer for something. I was like, oh, this actually like worked. It's in their house. He's using it. I mean, for me, really what it is, is just a hands-free kitchen timer. And I use it constantly for that. What I should really do is get a hands-free kitchen timer that is not sending too much. That's not sending, it's not recording me 24 hours a day in my own home. Like, if what I need to do is set a timer without having to touch anything because my hands are covered in, you know, some sort of ingredients, there's a better way to do it probably than that device.

Do you know, Genevieve and I, we bought a new oven and stove. I mean, you know, it's one unit. This weekend, it has not been installed yet. It's going to be coming next week. Ooh, la la. And I was looking at it, and I saw that one of the details on, like, you know, in the description was that it has some sort of Wi-Fi capability for your smart home.

Oh, yeah. Who's the maker of this product?

Is it LG? We went with LG, I believe. That's what I've got. Yeah, the kind. Life's good. You got the blue inside. I bet you have the exact same stove now, or we will. Maybe.

It's kind of an enamel. It's a blue enamel interior.

Yeah, I think they all I think LG is doing that to stand out, which, by the way, I applaud if I had like a brand like, why not do something like that? Right. Well, it's like the I know I always mess this up, but is it Nola Blancos? What are those shoes that have the red bottom? Manolo Blonics. Manolo Blonics. I knew I was going to mess that up. I could never get it straight. But, you know, I mean, like, why not do something that stands out from the crowd if you're designing an oven? Right. But all that is to say, like, I was like, oh, cool. this you know now i have my smart home on my you know my thermostat is tied into this stuff now i can control the the heat in my home from anywhere in the home i love that but then i was like oh yeah now i can i can tie my oven into that system then i was like how am i going to tie my oven into a smart home system i asked the guy at albert lee appliance i'm like what does that even do he's like you know you can see the timer from the other room like it sounds like that's basically i mean

do you ever use it in no i actually have not been successful yeah all of these things are quote-unquote smart and I haven't uh been able to I did get the app when it you know I first got them and I was like you know spend an afternoon trying to dial it all in I have heard that the thing with the stove that could be helpful is if you need to start preheating this is not really can this is not something that I think your lifestyle necessitates and by that I mean let's just say that you and Veeves had you know multiple kids and they've got soccer practice and you're trying to you know like make dinner but you're running around and getting grabbing the kids and all of that and you're on your way home and you know you're gonna need to throw some totino's pizza rolls in the oven i think you can tell the oven to start warming up from the phone that's

good that's good i have a cool idea absolutely i could i could see myself like no joke i could see myself down here like folding clothes especially on like a friday or saturday which is like often like on a friday or saturday if i'm up to my own up to my own designs i'll like go to the store and buy a frozen pizza you know and i might have that upstairs but i could see myself being downstairs and be like you know what yeah i do want to get that oven preheating for 40 minutes the thing that we should get back to the donors but like the thing that i'm interested in seeing is like how does an air fryer work when it's a whole oven like mine is also an air fryer which i always think of an air fryer something that sits atop the counter so is it essentially like a very quick efficient way like can i air fry full-ass pizzas now you know like i i've always like my air fryer. Cause I have a,

I have a standalone air fryer that Beck.

yeah and we have like something called a ninja foodie or something like that i don't even like saying the name of it um but it's just like it's this ugly son of a gun you don't want to channel your inner sofia vergara oh that's a ninja i forgot about that no i don't but i'm glad you do uh but anyway yeah so apparently this whole thing in a relationship always with sofia vergara always so yeah this whole thing is like one big air fryer as well as being a convection oven so I'm interested in seeing like kind of how that plays into all of this as well but I'm yeah I'm

genuinely still a little foggy on what even the air fryer does yeah like it fries things in air I guess but I I have one I will use it occasionally you know what the problem for me with the air fryer is the actual cooking surface if you can call it that the you know the the sort of drawer that you slide in and out I'm sure this is similar to your ninja ours has a top opening lid but go ahead oh okay well maybe that's better because the problem is let's say that i'm trying to like waltz over and i'm making a grilled a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches for a couple of hard working dudes you there's not enough room like it's hard to describe but basically like this is like a almost like a box a metal box that doesn't have a top and you slide it into the air fryer and you pull it out like halfway through you want to flip these sandwiches over oh sure okay you can't do it you can't access them because they're in the bottom of this box with these raised sides it's a very impractical design so if you if you pause it or stop it for

a second you pull the drawer out you can't access the sandwiches well enough to flip them

yeah there i feel like half at least half of the time i have a disaster in trying to flip food in the air fryer because there's not enough room to operate and then it gets like it falls apart or i lose some part of it it's just i see never an easy process to deal with it And also, and I've literally, like, I've never felt like more of a cooking neophyte than, like, when I've Googled how to air fry things, because it just seems like it's the most, it should be the most intuitive thing.

No, it's not, because you can't use the same settings as an oven. like you get like i have so many if you go into my search history which for the love of god don't but if you go into my search history you'll see a lot of stuff like totino i mean this is just an example like totino's pizza rolls air fryer instructions because a lot of these foods that work well in an air fryer they don't necessarily have special instructions on the bags you know like totino's might and i picked the wrong example but like you can totally do it in the air fryer but the instructions are not explicit and if it says like 400 for convection oven that's what we call them right if it says 400 you that is not a one-to-one you do not want to do it at 400 on an air fryer so i actually think that googling air fryer recipes i think is probably pretty common i think that you're amongst the common man but what happens is then i do the recipe the air fryer

like i i have it on the the the temperature setting and the time that the air the internet has told me i want to use and then like three minutes in i pull the drawer out and it's like the thing is burned or whatever like it doesn't even it's like it's like i'm somehow i don't know i feel like i have very bad luck with this air fryer with anything that's more complicated than maybe throwing some like frozen french fries in so all that is to say i don't know how that applies to your actual oven and i don't know i don't think my oven is an air fryer so i don't oh you know what else wait do you guys have gas yet yeah this is i was sort of tiptoeing around that this is a gas this is a gas nice so do you guys have to have a line run well we already have gas coming

into the house but we have to have a line run from because we have our heat is you know our hot water heater is a gas heater and um well i'm very happy for you all i know this has been a life goal for genevieve and probably to some degree for you yes so now i will have a million emails telling me that i should have gotten one of those what is the stove what is the induction the induction but uh just didn't want it no just didn't want it yeah i'm not listen i'm as the

as the number one enemy i'm literally probably the most hated person by the natural gas association of america because of that cbs story i did oh yeah about gas stoves and how the data on them is that they're probably not super great for you if you're in a place that's not properly ventilated look the story is just this if you have a gas stove it's probably smart to make sure you've got a pretty good ventilation hood or you open a window when you're using it because there's a lot of stuff that escapes from the the the the stove top that's like chemicals that aren't like super great to have in your kitchen that's all but i'm not i'm not anti people cooking with gas i don't you know i don't care what people do i have electric here just because i don't have two things one there i don't have gas out here so i'd have to get like a huge propane tank like one of those big giant guys that they come out in service that hank hill comes out to work on um and also i am not a look like i know what a jpeg is Um, we started with Hank Hill today, by the way, how apropos, but like, um, and the other thing is I am not a good enough cook to where I need the, whatever the, like the cooking advantages that are, that are, you know, that you can get with gas. If you're just like a really, really good chef and you really know the specifics of how you want the pan to be heated in different parts, et cetera. I just don't, I'm just not operating at that level anyway, because, you know, when I, when i put this kitchen together in my house i was like there was something that felt declassé about buying new electric a new electric stovetop because i've also been so enculturated into this idea of like uh natural gases that's the cool ass thing to have and that's if you're a real remember my that crazy viking stove i had in my old house it was viking the brand name it was like

i think i don't even know if it was stove right it was an industrial kitchen stove that i couldn't

even get anyone to fix it because it wasn't legally supposed to be in a house oh it was like It was there when I bought the place, but it was supposed to be – I think it was from a restaurant. I don't know what – but anyway, what I realized was it looked cool, but to be honest with you, I'm getting the same lackluster results from my electric stove that I would be getting from a gas stove because I had a gas stove at my apartment in Portland.

Anyway, congratulations on your new acquisition. Thank you. It's going to be installed sometime next week. I will say this. I am not somebody who is super well-versed in the kitchen either, and I don't mean to make it sound that way, but there are definitely things that I have not been able to cook because of our stove right now. It's a particularly cheap one. It's one of those glass top stove where the burners are sort of like everything is smooth. there's no coils or anything and um like i just something as simple as stir fry which i'm sure like a better cook could be able to like navigate our stove maybe better than us but it's so crappy that any wok walks that i've been using for most of my adult life you've put it down on top on a wok by the way um i don't even notice i didn't say television because television is no friend of mine i don't know why you had sort of had that tone but uh anyway like the way that it heats it I literally have not made – I made stir-fry once or twice since we moved in here, and then I just gave up on it because the wok does not heat right because it's sitting on – it's just that tiny little bottom is sitting on the shitty heating element, and then it's not cooking all the way through. Like, I cannot wait to get some flames licking up the sides of that wok, and we're going to be eating stir-fry again. I'm going to get – I'm going to start eating healthier. I'm going to get into shape. I'm going to have to be – I mean, I'm going to have to get my own security detail. Can you stir-fry a Spiro's pizza? I think so. I come over to the walk and I look at it

it's just a deep dish pizza that you're putting around in the walk

I got a few mozzarella sticks that I'm kind of tossing around I want mozzarella sticks alright we gotta think

oh we were thanking Annette Sakab Tan of Livonia, Michigan

I've spent some memorable time

in Livonia, Michigan it comes up often on the show that was where i was that was where i was stationed when uh that was covering the super bowl those many years ago stealer seahawks stealer seahawks i was really hurt recently i saw there was a list of like best it was like best throws in the nfl by non-quarterbacks like most oh that's cool and it's a fun stat except it for it re-traumatized me because antoine randall l threw a touchdown in that game for the Steelers. He was a receiver who they pitched it to, and then he threw it to another guy, and it was a beautiful play. Now, I think it's cheating, because I believe Antoine Randall-El was a quarterback in college. So I feel like that, what I want to see is like, you know what else was on the list? Our Seahawks punter. Yes, John Ryan, I was going to say. John Ryan with the world's derpiest throw in the NFC Championship game. Now, that to me, you got a Canadian. I don't know why that matters. you got a canadian punter throwing it now that's interesting now that's interesting now that's interesting a guy who was an elite level quarterback who just was so kind of also athletic that they converted him into being a receiver throwing the ball to me feels kind of like that's not really to me the spirit of this list of like coolest throws by someone who wasn't

the quarterback i wasn't paying attention to this game at all um and of course it's a disappointment to us as Seahawks fans but I guess that and I'm sure you were very well read up on this but that Bill's Rams game was apparently quite the thing this weekend and I was shocked because I saw that like the Bills who had an almost undefeated record end up losing to the Rams Josh Allen had something like 51 51 or 55 fantasy points and then I saw a stat that I don't remember how many touchdowns He threw four. He rushed for one, and he also received one. Did you see that? I believe.

he scored three touchdowns and is it possible that there were six touchdowns scored by the

bills and they lost is that it was some huge gaudy number but they end up losing but yeah not only did he oh so he rushed for one he threw for one and he received one i mean that would have been

the sickest parlay oh my god if you could put that together that would be i mean that would that'd be plus plus 3 500 or something i mean that's just absolute craziness just um anyway um it's absolute craziness how long we've been waiting to thank cecilia hanley of atlanta ga thank you cecilia long long long time friend absolutely friend of the show and uh supporter of the program an all-around great person thanks cecilia thanks also to joseph shin who's in boston massachusetts thank you joseph i almost had to fly to boston massachusetts saturday but again andrew me i'm back with the work-life balance baby nice they wanted me to go to burlington vermont because that's where the comedian nikki glazer who i'm doing a story about is going to be performing and we already did a series of interviews in la we got a lot of really great stuff from her and i just knew that this was going to be maybe 20 seconds in the story like and i just i just said i'm i'm sorry i'm not gonna fly i'm not gonna get up at like two in the morning or something in la on saturday fly to boston a fly to burlington vermont to get 20 seconds of footage i just don't i just i just can't did you tell that you're you're alive and

unwell wait i don't i don't follow i wasn't sure if this had come up in the interview but there is a um she's apparently coming to town to do like you know probably a show i can't remember exactly where wait to seattle i'm guessing because i'm hearing it on sports radio stations i'm hearing one but it's like you know how we always make fun of those kinds of radio commercials for comedians and it's kind of like nikki glazer she's alive and unwell it's just so funny i've been

hearing it a lot lately actually this is great though because it means i what if she's coming like this is amazing that this is what happens on the air but like yeah i'm trying to oh you know the problem is there are no shows happening near us before the golden globes which is just so in other words i can't just wait until nikki glazer is in a town near me to get this footage it would either have to happen this weekend in burlington or we're gonna have to just make it work without and I think we can but again I was proud of myself Andrew I I said I said no and the answer was okay no big deal yeah there you go it was great that's I think it's that kind of bravery that Sarah Reinthaler of Brooklyn New York really identifies with I wonder if any comedians ever come to New York like the Brooklyn area not even in not Brooklyn it's not no it's not a comedic place yeah very serious it's not a place that that fosters any kind of

independent comedy scene and also could you fill are there enough people to even like kind of fill the room you know what I mean yeah right it's kind of sparse you know land doesn't vote that's what I always say you do always say that in weird places too yeah exactly that's my argument when

they show the electoral map and they're like look at all the places that are red I'm like Wyoming yeah like you know like look at this map look how red America is I'm like those um yeah okay you got the state of Wyoming but that's mostly tumbleweeds it is and I say that with peace and love to our

listeners in Wyoming please please please let the next donor be from Wyoming please well it's Bellevue Washington oh okay the Wyoming of Washington that's where Kerry Deutsch is thank

you Kerry appreciate the support thank you to all of our donors for making today's episode of TBTL and this thing just sort of as an entity possible we couldn't do this without you 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

yes uh the email sounder is playing when normally the top story sounder would be but we went over the river today so uh we're gonna jump right to the email segment and we'll talk about uh this scrabble master uh tomorrow on the show um andrew i started the show by saying i'll give i can give you a little update on my eye um the update is it bad yeah like it's so i have a black

eye now oh i would that's what i wondered yesterday now you're still wearing the um band-aids i'm wearing a band-aid just because i know you're squeamish but it's weird because

it was it was definitely less noticeable before but it's now in a phase that you you would you would identify as a healing phase if that makes any sense like before it was actually much less pronounced but it was

red which kind of sort of connoted uh an infection and now it's like black which connotes like it's dying and it's going to regenerate like it's weird it looks worse but it's somehow less gross i don't even know how exactly to say that in a different way but um it is definitely not going to be like low-key tomorrow night when we're doing live wire at the at revolution hall in portland Which was, again, my totally silly dream was that they were going to remove this thing. By the way, thank you for the disclaimer yesterday. I thought that was the best part of the show. I really liked your disclaimer.

Yeah, that was an interesting note. I just, thanks. I just, it's so funny. I told you I should just do things without overthinking them more often. I just recorded that. And by the way, I did get a lot of feedback. I'm still getting feedback from people saying, not like they're not going to listen to yesterday's show, but just like I really appreciate the heads up that we get into some like talk of eye surgery. Because it turns out that people can get a little squeamish about that, myself included.

So I foolishly thought that basically like I was going to get this thing fixed and by, you know, tomorrow night you would have never been any the wiser that something was going on. That is absolutely not going to be the case. I'll probably have to have this band-aid on, because I think it's the least, I think it's the sort of least distracting way for me to be on stage with these guests, and then I guess on Friday when I'm interviewing people at this Metallica event that's happening in L.A. So, yeah, it's always darkest before the dawn, and this thing is pretty dark right now.

Yeah, but is it pretty unsettling? Does it hurt?

No, it doesn't hurt, and it is, it's weird. it's now back to the size that it was before the guy did the incision if that makes any sense so yesterday afterwards it was way bigger than it was before now it's gotten back to the size that it was before the intervention and i'm assuming that means it will keep getting smaller and smaller again it's it's really gross but it somehow feels like it's going in the right direction yeah it makes sense um uh and uh it caused listener mariah friend of the show and friend of mine mariah to uh send in a message about eye infections she says when my son edward was around 14 months old he had an infected tear duct see below and this is a picture of a certifiably adorable human child i mean just i just want to smell this kid's head okay it's fine parents get it number one reason you get into the parenting game is because their heads smell really good when they're little that's the truth this is a just an i mean an unbelievably cute little child uh here's what mariah says uh he had an infected tear ducts see below it was one of the most foul things i've ever seen and it was truly hard to look at him we love honest parenting uh it went away with hot compresses but it took weeks disgusting and then i'm looking at the picture more closely and brya says The bloody nose in this picture is a separate issue, LOL. What is going on over there?

I don't know.

But, Mariah, thank you. I love a parent who can admit when they are mildly disgusted by something happening with their kid. Yes, certainly. I respect that level of honesty. Yeah. You know, we don't have to pretend that every single thing associated with these small humans is perfection. Sometimes it's not.

But are you saying that I should go up to Aurora Village today and start smelling kids' heads because I'm missing out? That is exactly what you're saying, right? Yeah.

I mean, I'd start on the bus if you see any children on the bus. Okay, good. You know what?

I'd approach them. I love smelling people's heads on the E-Line. It's one of my favorite things to do. Is that on your Mallorca wrap? Yeah, how many heads did you smell on the E-Line? Tell you what, you sniff enough heads on the E-Line, you will never get sick again a day in your life.

have you ever smelled a baby's head um i'm sure i have yeah i mean man it's a it is there's they're just so much less dead than us andrew it's just it's it's just an amazing to be around a life form that is that is just just getting started yeah as opposed to just getting ended the way that i feel some days particularly as i as i've already said this on the show today Particularly as I continue to wear a path to the pharmacy at my local medical facility. Yeah, yeah. Anyway.

I'm taking medications to offset my medications now. I'm not even joking. I was thinking about that this morning. I was taking my folic acid. It's like, well, what's going on with you that you need folic acid? Well, it's because I'm taking this other medication that supposedly isn't great for my stomach or whatever. I'm not exactly sure what it is. So you take the folic acid to offset the other stuff. It's like, when you're taking medicine to offset your other medicine, you've entered a new phase of life.

I've told you. My – stomach is a battlefield wherein the forces of pro and antibiotics it's like friggin gettysburg i

still think that's that's where you the blue and the gray i still feel like that's where you went wrong too much probiotics you were on antibiotics you shouldn't have listened to dr becca i want i

want what the probiotics to write a letter home my dearest elizabeth uh insert ken burns music Okay, that's it. That's the show. Weird show, though. Weird show. But fun. And we didn't need a disclaimer. I mean, it needs a disclaimer for not being interesting, but it doesn't need a disclaimer for being disgusting.

What if I do it at a disclaimer at the beginning of today's show? I would quit while you're ahead. I really liked your disclaimer yesterday. I didn't do anything. I just talked. I said, be careful.

I felt like you struck the exact right tone. All right, good.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

All right, weird show, fun show. We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday and take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Power out.