Muse

About nine years ago, I managed to convince myself that I was nine years old. Every day I walk out into the street, I see things as a nine-year-old would see them. Does that make sense? Yes and no. I mean, you're... What are you sat on? A bed? That's not. It's a bouncy bounce. Bouncy bounce. Okay. What are those on your feet? They're shoes. They're not. They're your choo-chos. I mean, how else do you live like a nine-year-old? I mean, you're drinking. You're drinking alcohol. Oh, this isn't alcohol, this is wee-wee. Wee-wee. You can do this, really, stand up. Okay. Okay, come on, shake it off. That's it. I feel silly. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, come on, you're nine years old. It would be nice to not care as much about what other people thought. It's the best.

Well, I am Michelle, I miss, best Michelle. Me too wanna go jump on the bed, I'm the bouncy bounce. Get off there. What?

off there not on daddy's bouncy bounce you know this tbtl the first part of being smart is knowing

what to do we're gonna we're gonna know we're gonna have systems in place that are easier to learn because when we can put that because we when we can learn our system and we can get good at our

system then our talent can take over can i throw something on you see if it feels good sure okay this is what i would do i would start with a joke joke vince vaughn quote obviously swingers or

crashers fred claus can i just stop you real quick and just say what a wonderful atmosphere you have here a lot of energy a lot of motion a lot of fun a lot of high-fiving a lot of smiles you're both

little troublemakers you're both huge in japan you probably have a lot to talk about go keep things

light don't bring up your divorce well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl the show just might be too beautiful to live the enormity of of their flat brain the enormity of their stupidity is just overwhelming my name is luke burbank i am your host it is our turn coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where it is gray and grimy and slimy and rainy and windy. I went on and on last week about something called the Rapid Shelter, which I had set up at my house with a great amount of work going into it. And then I did a whole thing on Thursday at the advice of the guy that's out here working, Bo, which was to keep it from blowing away, I filled up four different five-gallon buckets of water and hung them from the corners of the Rapid Shelter, only to come home to find the entire thing blown over and twisted and destroyed beyond repair. So that's the weather we're dealing with here at the Madrona Hill studio. That's fine, though, because as we like to say, it's warm and dry here inside the studio for episode 4,359 in a collector series.

And let the fun begin.

And that wasn't even nearly the worst thing that happened to me in the last three days since we've spoken. I had a bit of a meltdown in Los Angeles. And things happened that have not happened to me before when I've been taking part in a network television filming project. I wish I hadn't done that. Not feeling great about it. But this is where I guess we process these kinds of things. We'll talk about that. Also, I tried to get my spirits up by making some pizza beans yesterday for football watching. Sometimes you've got to stop and smell the pizza. I ended up at the topic of pizza beans by the most sort of roundabout. It's not even circuitous. It's just weird. And I'll explain that as well. And I'm going to talk to this guy, longest-running Cobra of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Oh, yeah, buddy. He's Andrew Walsh. He's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Luke, I have one important question that I've been wanting to ask you all weekend long. Ever since you texted me on Friday night and said there was a bit of an incident on the shoot that you were working on on Friday.

I was trying to leverage you into talking about your issues at your local grocer.

There's no time for that today. We have too much to talk about because the one question, literally, I've been thinking when we open up the mics on Monday morning, the question I'm going to ask Luke is this. Did you say the phrase And I pray you did Did you say the phrase I think we're done here Did you say I think we're done here And remove your lavalier microphone And storm off the set

I did remove my lavalier microphone I did storm off the set I did not say anything

cinematic like that the thing about having a meltdown andrew is you don't plan it don't usually say the cool thing in the meltdown oh really i do real polite car don't touch me again right it's not right i i wish that i would have had a like a cool speech ready to go but i did not Andrew, I just felt embarrassed and feckless and to some degree impotent. And it all got on top of me, and I behaved very petulantly. I'll just try to give you the five-minute version.

Yeah, if you don't mind, let me tell listeners what I do know. Actually, we have an interesting Hey Dummies question coming up at some point that maybe one of us can answer, but I'll briefly address it here. And somebody wanted to say, like, how much of our show is kayfabe, especially like over a weekend with a story like this?

I saw that email that was like, are you faking it? I was like, how dare you?

I fake my laughs. I fake a lot of things on this show. But I'll have what he's podcasting. But, no, the truth of the matter is, generally speaking, and today, is we don't ever pretend, we don't play dumb about each other's stories. I will say that you texted me on Friday and said, hey, will you tell your embarrassing story of whatever happened at the SARS grocery store if I tell you about my meltdown on the set? And then we texted back and forth a little bit. So that's essentially all I know. I know that you were in L.A., or I think I know that you were in L.A., presumably or primarily to interview the band Metallica, right, about a special event that they were holding with kids.

Yes, in a roundabout way. So we're doing a story about the charitable arm of the band Metallica, which is actually a very robust thing and kind of very cool, actually.

Do you know that Def Leppard only has one charitable arm? Oh, my God. I can't believe I had to. I had to interrupt you. I had to say the worst joke. I couldn't not. You must understand. I couldn't not say that.

Do you know that when I was in, I think, maybe late middle school, early high school, there was a student, a fellow student named Marcy McDougal, whose number one heartthrob in her life was Rick Allen, the one-armed drummer from Def Leppard.

I love that.

I mean, you know, he was a very, and he remains, I think, a quite attractive guy. He's down one arm, but he's otherwise, you know, again, quite handsome, quite accomplished. it did strike me as slightly an affectation like of all the people in the world you're going to like have like a picture like in your trapper keeper you're going with Rick Allen

yeah I mean the earlier generation dealt with the people who said they liked Ringo the best I mean there's a long tradition there you go so anyway sorry for the off color joke there

so I was so we're doing this story about the charitable work of Metallica which again is actually an interesting story they have this basically what happens when metallica goes to a city there's the there's like parallel tours going on one tour is the band is going there to play some arena and then they have this woman who runs their charity who is also then like the band decides how much money are we going to like leave behind in this city to like food banks and other organizations like other deserving organizations and they literally like have a number and some of it's generated by a percentage of the ticket sales and some of it's just like out of the largesse of the band and then this this woman goes around just basically like bestowing money on people in whatever town they're in they also have this uh thing that's kind of like called the metallica scholars um uh program and what they've decided to do is go in and fund all of these trade programs like at community colleges so like for people to become you know uh plumbers or welders or you know, particularly women in some of these fields where women are really underrepresented. And folks get really into this because they like being the Metallica scholars, like it's an attractive thing to them. And so we were, I was actually not interviewing the Metallica guys. I did meet them briefly, but I wasn't interviewing them on Friday. I was interviewing the people that work within their organization. And then down the line, we're going to interview Metallica. We're going to like sit down with them and like get into it. Like, why is this so important to them, et cetera. and that's kind of relevant to this story because like basically what you know they were playing this big benefit concert um at the um like at SoFi Stadium in LA but there's now a um there's a theater there called the YouTube Theater and they were playing this charity show there and so in the daytime we were interviewing again people that work with their charity and then there was a red carpet before the concert started. The idea was, and this is where things started to go off the rails for me. I didn't really think this through, how much I hate being on a red carpet, like as a interviewer, right? I've only done it one other time, and I've told the story extensively on the show, but it was some kind of a comedy thing, and there was a red carpet, and I had been hired by Bing, the Microsoft search engine, to go and interview people on this red carpet or something, And there is something about the energy around a red carpet that just causes me to have a fight or flight instinct, like feeling. It's something about the fact that it's so sort of synthetic. And it's also almost like scientifically designed to not have any actual useful conversation generated. You know?

It's one of the most superficial places.

it's it's unbelievable how superficial the red carpet is and i don't i don't understand why it exists i guess you know entertainment tonight and extra or whomever i guess this is how they get content but outside of that it's just it's the it's again it's there's no nutritional value to the event and i looked at the shooting schedule and it was like oh and then we're going to talk to uh you know so and so on the red carpet and i again that's when i should have said hey i don't really want to do that like i don't like that situation it makes me feel embarrassed

i'm bad at it because there were other interviews and other backdrops right you were talking to

people at various places before this yeah we were in like a really cool room inside the theater that our amazing crew uh had lit very artfully and stuff so we had like two nice sit-down interviews this was just like well hey um there's going to be some famous people uh who aren't in metallica Who are going to be on this red carpet And so also you're going to interview them And again what I should have done When I saw that on the schedule Was said like I don't want to do that But I didn't think to say that I just kind of showed Basically after the interviews And after we did all this other stuff I then just like walked over to this thing And right when I got there I was like I don't like this Like bad feeling First of all There's all of these different media organizations there and the people running it first of all this thing was not this like red carpet which by the way it was a black carpet andrew because you know rock and roll rock and roll we don't do we don't do red carpets we do a black carpet because a rock and roll and uh so they did not the first problem was just an issue of geography there was not enough geography for the media organizations on this red carpet slash black carpet in other words we were all like clustered together in a way that meant that nobody had enough room so we had there was like a printout that said cbs sunday morning and next to it said was a printout that was these were like taped down to the carpet and the next right next to it is a different you know normal sheet of paper that says kcal nine And then on the other side of us was, like, the official Metallica podcast. And this was not enough room for three human beings to be standing on the other side of this. Like, there was, like, a, you know, a velvet rope or something.

And so you're literally standing. I was picturing that. But I also, honestly, when you texted me this week, and I've been picturing you in those foldable, like, director's chairs. I was thinking, like, you might see.

Oh, that's more of a junket.

Yeah, I was, you know what I was picturing? And I don't I don't know why I know that you weren't at the Thanksgiving Day parade or that. I picture like don't they have little sets set up on New Year's Eve, like whatever the big NBC show is or whatever the ball drop. Yeah. You can picture like, oh, it's it's us in two of these extra chairs for special guests who are going to sit down quickly. But no, you're standing there. Yeah. Literally shoulder to shoulder. Two directors' chairs. Yeah, okay.

And not shoulder-to-shoulder, Andrew, behind this, like, reporter for KCAL9 who shows up. First of all, the camera guy from the local LA affiliate busts in, like, at the last possible second and sets up his tripod and his huge camera, and it's right where we need to be standing so that we can get access to these stars, right? And then the reporter from KCAL9 shows up and immediately plants herself in the spot that we're supposed to be at. So now there I don't have any access to this thing and if this was Something that I cared about I think I would have advocated for myself a little more actively But I was I didn't want to be there anyway And so it just be it was this kind of it was this kind of a Slow speed crash where it was like I couldn't really get to the walkway What I what was happening was when there would be somebody coming who I thought we were going to talk to I would have to step over this rope and then I'm I'm on the red carpet now the black carpet because rock and roll I had to step over this rope and step around the getty image photographer who's getting annoyed because i'm blocking him like everyone who's there except me this is their meal ticket and they're all very sensitive about somebody blocking their photo of joe satriani can i just jump in here and say this does remind me while i've never

been in an official red carpet event or any of the have you ever been to a black carpet look at me i'm rock and roll of course absolutely all the carpets in my house are black they weren't

when i moved in weirdly a lot of bong sir i believe that's mold and you need to have that

remediated wait it's not toxic though is it um uh but i was gonna say you know in the very limited and much smaller scale uh events that i've had to mic up or something as a producer you're reminding me or i guess maybe a little bit too even though i was mostly doing it for fun like there have been a couple of um like concerts that i've gone to where i've had a photo pass and so you get like the first three songs usually i think a standard three or four songs you get to go in this little area right in front of the stage where all the other photographers are and it's just click click click click click but then also i'm thinking of like a press conference probably more of a journalistic kind of endeavor and less celebrity based but like just like the trying to use the mold box and trying to use the mold box or if you show up late you can't get to the mold box you just have to be bold and like clip your mic up onto the podium or whatever and this is you're reminding me of an aspect of these things that i had totally forgotten about since i retired to my basement which is that you're took to your bed since i took to my bed you're not a big part of the job isn't just like getting the sound or asking the right questions or doing this like there is a built-in especially for i think for the technical people more like camera people and sound people like they have one job and that job is not to make friends with the other people there from representing other media competitive environment it is competitive and they will and you literally have to be you have to be ready to fight for the spot even the spot that was given to you or assigned to you like that camera person from ktla does not give a shit and i guarantee you was it a man or a woman whoever it was a man i i guarantee you that he's gone toe to toe with people who've wanted it that morning he probably went toe to toe with somebody who wanted it more than you it is part of the job and people like you and i well maybe like you say maybe you would if you felt it were important but for something like this you're not fighting for that

shit no i was already like i already didn't want to be doing this so my level of like defending my turf or my my sense of defending my turf was extremely extremely uh under impressive i just i didn't feel like fighting with these people so that i could talk to the uh wife of the bassist from metallica who is listed as a fashion designer slash philanthropist like I just didn't want to yeah I didn't want to like

where do you begin like how can you get all the good content out of just like a quick interaction

and so there was three people that I was thinking okay well we'll try to talk to these people and I was going to try to come up with some way to make the conversation with them slightly relevant to the larger story we're doing and the people were like Jimmy Kimmel was the host of this event at the theater so Jimmy Kimmel shows up by the way taller than I expected in real life he's got to be my height if not a little taller and i was like wow i guess i always perceived him to be a you know maybe a guy who's in the in in the 5'8 5'9 range no tall nice looking guy uh shows up and i'm going to ask him like okay because he hosted this thing last year and my question was going to be like uh you know you've hosted this a couple of times and you know you get asked to do a lot of things why does this matter to you what is you know what do you know about the sort of charity aspect of Metallica like what do you make of that I don't know I also by the way really like Jimmy Kimmel like I'm a big fan and I had a whole plan when he got to me which was I was a hey I'm with CBS Sunday morning and I was going to say the favorite television show of Fla Fla Flo High now that's uh Gary Delabate on the Stern show they he in particular but most of the producers like are weirdly obsessed with CBS Sunday morning and Jimmy Kimmel is weirdly obsessed with the Howard Stern show so I thought I would I would bond with him over my deep knowledge of the stern universe and ask him my question uh now the other thing that happens uh on these red carpets or black carpets is the person so the the guy from rage against the machine tom morello is hosting the red carpet so he's standing at the far left of this thing which is where the people are arriving and his job is to like kind of interview these people he has a teleprompter and stuff and he's interviewing these people it's being filmed for something

So he's the first person everybody stops at. So Kimmel gets out. Is Kimmel getting out of a limousine?

We were really far away from where the cars were. I assume yes, by the way.

Okay, so people are getting out. I didn't see that. It's almost like a gauntlet of press, and the first person is the... Boy, he's really raging against the machine there.

red carpet sorry black carpet black carpet andrew who's a red carpet machines would not be raged against but this is a black carpet right right i mean i mean what part of black carpet don't

you understand nothing says raging against the machine more than interviewing a late night host on a red carpet event but anyway having said all of that um so like presumably he's at the beginning

of this press gauntlet he is the beginning of the gauntlet exactly and he interviews everyone and then they continue their way down and in front of anyone who is going to be walking this carpet are a number of like young-ish women women in their 20s who are part of some pr operation and what they're doing is walking down in front of the person because you've got your jimmy's kimmel but there's a lot of people that are less well known that are also on this carpet and so the these young people are walking with a headshot of the person who is just to their right who's coming down the gauntlet and then a in like size 29 font the person's name and maybe one biographical detail and they're showing it to all of us like here's who's coming don't make a fool of yourself this is what their association is right and is there an expectation that you have

to say something to every person or can you like like a sushi conveyor belt can you just wave some people by i did although it was awkward because they come by and they go do you want to talk to

so-and-so and I was like oh we're good and then I talked to them at the office thanks yeah I mean it is awkward actually because there was you know there was only a few people that I thought we might get anything that we could use in the story and again I didn't even think I didn't think there was a good chance that anything we got there would be useful for the story and also we're like going to James Hetfield's house in Vail in a couple of weeks like I'm not trying to be too cool for school But I feel like the nice thing about this show that I work on is we're privileged enough to get pretty good access to most of the folks we're interviewing. And that's the way that I would like to talk to them, like in a long form, get to know them a little bit, ask them some questions and not like, you know, yelling over 50 other paparazzi, some sort of a question, you know, about whatever.

So, Luke Burbank from Pretzel Bites TV, Bagel Bites TV, what's your favorite thing to eat when you're jamming out?

Sorry.

Eggs, Andrew, there's a reason why that's one of my very favorite pieces of audio that we play on the show, because it is so true to the vibe.

That is from the show The Other Two. The Other Ones? The Other Two, I believe. And if I can call it up here, just so that we can bring other people into this conversation.

If you told me this was a documentary, if you told me this was a nonfiction recording, I would say this completely checks out.

The story is about the other two referenced in the title are the siblings of a young pop star who's actually a really, really nice kid. But he's like a Justin Bieber age kid when Justin Bieber was younger.

Is his name Chase Dreams?

And his name is Chase Dreams. And you'll hear that in there. And you'll hear Chase Dreams here. And again, he's a sweet kid. But he's on a red carpet. And there's somebody calling him out. And again, his name is Chase Dreams. This is like a reporter of some kind right here.

Chase, what's your favorite thing to snack on when you're jamming out to music? I don't know. Everything's good. Okay, well, we're streaming live on Bagel Bites TV, so can you say Bagel Bites? Yeah, Bagel Bites. Okay, great. But can you say it in a sentence? Like, I'm Chase Dreams, and when I'm jamming out to music, I love to eat Bagel Bites. I'm Chase Dreams, and when I'm jamming out to music, I love to eat Bagel Bites. Okay, great. Congrats on whatever it is you do. Thanks.

i mean andrew when i say that is so spot on the other one of these things that i went to and i know that i told this story back when it happened years ago but there was a guy next to me who was from bagel bites tv or whatever and his thing was he was from like reels reels reels films dot net or something you know like hey hey tim from reels films dot net uh and as these people were walking by he was you know getting his sort of pull quotes from them or whatever and this thing i was at this is not friday but many years ago it was honoring uh seth mcfarland it was a comedy event like a comedy awards thing and uh seth mcfarland came up to this guy and he was like hey from you know so and so from whatever and he goes can you talk about um the release of like family guy like season five dvd and then seth mcfarland like says yeah you know um you know really proud of the show or whatever he says and then the guy goes like now can you say it like it was released today and the guy was like yeah Seth MacFarlane was like yeah yeah today you know he does like a Bagel Bites thing and then the guy's like okay now can you and I forget what the third thing was but it was another like weird time stamp that he wanted on the comment about the DVD release right so that he could use this at various points and I was proud of this because then when Seth MacFarlane got to me I said hey could you talk about it like there's been a nuclear holocaust and we're the last two people on planet earth

Okay.

This is where my energy goes at these things is like I just immediately check out because it it crushes it It kills some small spark that still resides inside of me. Mm-hmm. So James Kimmel shows up and he's He's he's talking to Tom Morello, and then he's done and then one of these young PR people They're walking by with a photo of him in a description And it's like, we know who Jimmy Kimmel is. And now it's time for me to elbow out the KCAL9 person. And I'm getting my first big scoop, Andrew, with Jimmy Kimmel of The Man Show. And I go to the press person. I'm like, hey, we need to talk to Jimmy. And they go, Jimmy's not doing any interviews. I'm like, okay. So strike one.

So you're pretty far down the line, it sounds like. and the Rage Against the Machine guy did talk to him because that's kind of agreed upon. Now, Jimmy Kimmel, is he stopping? Are you seeing him stop and chat with other press? No, he's not chatting with anyone. Well, then why have the, why have, well, this is probably your question.

Photo op, my boy. So he gets done with Tom Morello. He rages against various machines and then he steps one foot over and stands in front of what's called a step and repeat, which has a bunch of things about Metallica and charities and sponsors, by the way, behind. bagel bites is on there of course yeah and then all of these photographers i will say this they we actually had a we had a good spot in that we were the first allegedly like supposedly we were actually the first like moving picture if you will like outlet after the photographer so there's this whole area that's just still photography and that's where the person stands and they go jimmy hey jimmy jimmy over here jimmy and then like they kind of look and then it's like you know and then if he were doing interviews which he wasn't we would have been kind of the first people he would have had to talk to but instead after he poses for his pictures he just he also by the way was hosting the event and the event was starting in like five minutes yeah so like it's not my issue is not with any of the people in this story who weren't doing interviews it's with this how this whole thing was working and by the way the questions are generally so inane i don't blame people for not wanting to do these interviews it's this kind of it's this uh sort of you know like self-fulfilling or what's the word i'm looking for it's basically like the problem is the interviews suck so people don't want to do the interviews and i don't blame them for that you

know and like you say i mean you have i believe a little bit of experience hosting events like the idea of like you're you're thinking about what you're and again i'm sure jimmy kimmel has you You know, he doesn't have the same jitters that that maybe I might have where I'd be interviewing Chris Hayes on stage, which I still never got the invite for. But, you know, obviously, by the way, they booked Kimmel for that. Obviously, he's an old hand at these things, but it's still a performance and you're still a famous person. And anything that you do during this during this presentation or during this event is still going to be, you know, in the public eye. And you have, you know, so there's you just know that there's a lot going on in his head right there. and he doesn't want to answer questions about Bagel Bites.

Right, and I don't blame him for that at all. But it's like, okay, one of the three people that we wanted to talk to is now off the list. Okay, so then the next guy that I'm thinking, well, we'll talk to this guy because I thought, oh, I have a relevant question. And it's like he's one of the dudes from Pearl Jam. He's actually a guy that I know and actively dislike from playing basketball with at Sound Mind and Body in Fremont. He called so many ticky-tacky fells. His name is Jeff Ahmet. He's like the bass player. He used to wear a hat like a pumpkin.

Kamara Kev, if you're listening to this, you were right.

He theorized that's who I was going to be talking to?

I watched the game with him and Genevieve last night, and I gave him a little preview of our text messages, and I said, I can't wait to hear Luke's story on Monday. And I said, I know that it involves some guy from Pearl Jam. I think I just showed him your text messages or something. He's like, the guy from Pearl Jam? Who would he not like from Pearl Jam? And he's like, oh, the guy. Yeah, yeah, Jeff Hamath. the guy he used to play basketball with. He got a lot of ticky-tacky fouls.

Dude, this guy never missed a shot of his own volition in his life. He was just apparently getting fouled at the rack constantly. But here's the thing. I'm like, all right, look, I'm going to ask him, because Pearl Jam is a very charitable band as well. It's a very active part of their thing, which, again, I admire all this. I think it's a good thing. so i was going to ask him hey um do you uh like is there a kind of a friendly rivalry between you and metallica around this charity stuff like do you guys sort of compare notes or did you pick up ideas from them or did they pick up ideas from you or whatever i'm like there's a there's a relevant there's a germane question to ask this guy so i just fucking elbow sorry i elbow out kcal9 again i get back up to the rope i step over by the way i'm almost tripping every time i have to step over this velvet rope. onto the black carpet and you are allowed to so yeah when you said when you said that you're going to step over the rope i was thinking uh-oh i don't know if you're supposed to do that but okay you're supposed to step over the rope momentarily then go back i mean the irony is

we're getting as much access as anyone is getting there we're getting like we're like the we're the like we're being very privileged in this scenario in fact in the sense of i'm allowed to step over the rope i can do whatever i want like part of the problem is we're our camera guys are not shooting this like uh like the typical local news people shoot it they set up their tripod and they just camp out our guys are being artful they're running around they're running and gunning they're using something called a gimbal they're using this little thing called um osmo which is like a cool camera that's on a little gimbal that gets really great stuff they're like shooting this very artfully but what they're not doing is standing right next to me and throwing elbows at the other camera people they're off like getting b-roll and things and so i'm like this whole thing is just kind of going downhill fast because even if i manage to lasso jeff ahmet from pearl jam i don't even know if my camera guy if the camera guy is going to be where he's like this he's actually this very handsome australian guy named luke which hurts my heart that i'm not even in the top four luke's in this event as far as luke's yeah not even i'm number five if at best let me ask you

this if you don't have a camera person there to capture this are you still rolling on some sort

of audio device because yes we also have a sound guy who's a very cool dude who i really like and he's there dustin is there dustin has locked it down but that's not what i need is and and and luke is like i'll find you like like he was like it was like some real last of the mohicans for some real lala mohi you'll know yeah i'll find you he's like you know get just just step over the rope i'll find you i'll find you that's it you'll know when i'm doing the accent well and that's not it so anyway uh now it's jeff ahmet the guy never met a ridiculous hat he didn't want to wear he's got some kind of a tall brimmed like there will be blood situation going on it's like what is going on with this guy in hats i don't understand perry woke up on friday and said where are all my hats it's literally from the linda perry collection i promise you and it's like so what you can tell what you can hear in my voice andrew is how much i didn't want to do any of this and yet i was swallowing hard to do it and then guess what i step over the velvet rope i almost fall down the guy from getty looks at me like you're blocking my shot of sister strings which was the opening band a sister duo that plays string music and uh i go to one of these press people they're carrying a freaking printout of jeff omit and i go uh we need to talk to him and they go he's not doing interviews and i'm just like something inside of me just dies at that point you know just like what are we doing here people what is happening okay so now i'm just wandering around because the the next run of people is actually it's two of the guys from Metallica it's Kirk Hemet the guitar player and uh what's his name Trujillo the bass player by the way both super nice dudes like incredibly cool guys that I had talked to backstage and really enjoyed chatting with them I got to talk to Lars and and James the main guy like it's like they're great dudes but I don't think this is how I want to talk to them about their charity like in front of a step and repeat um with somebody yelling about bagel bites in the background like so they go down and and uh and i'm not talking to them and then uh sammy hagar the red rocker um michael anthony the uh bass player from van halen and joe satriani i guess they're in a band together these guys are in some kind of a band and they show up and now they're talking to tom morello and uh and and i am at this point i've kind of like given up on this whole thing like i'm like we're not going to get anything useful the two of the three people i even thought we should talk to are both like not doing interviews i'm really kind of shutting down now who's the third i'm sorry is the third third is going was going to be jason momoa oh cal drago okay famously known for his insightful takes on

charity operations i mean there isn't anything about a 501c3 this guy can't tell you why is he circled on your list then because he's famous i don't know i didn't circle him on my list he was

circled on the list that was given to me you know what i mean i don't know if i'm getting ahead of the story here what was your question going to be for him or will it be for him it wasn't for him

it would have been but it wasn't it was going to be some general bullshit like um like you know why did you decide to come out to this thing and also like what's your awareness of the

charitability of the band metallica like that's the only thing you could ask him is like you know do you know what these guys do with like metallica uh you know university and stuff the metallica scholars and what do you think about that and my guess is he would say like i think it's really cool man i think it's really cool that they like are charitable like he was he was arguably the most famous non-musician that was going to be on this thing and so it was just like yeah you can talk to Jason Momoa. Okay. So, I'm now like, I'm not even standing in my little area anymore because I'm once again getting elbowed out by the 24-year-old reporter for KCAL9 who's like head to toe in leather, including like a leather duster. She looks like the man from Snowy River. I don't know what is going on with this. Her cameraman, you said he doesn't give a crap, he actually looked at me at one point and went, I'm sorry, she's new. Okay, okay, so I was a little... Camera guy was actually pretty chill. Okay. Because what he realized was this this young person again good for them they were excited about this job they were excited to be doing their thing they were pumped about talking to a philanthropist slash fashion designer who's roughly 40 years younger than her husband who's in metallica um and and so she was you know she was she was really she's really posting up in the paint there and i was uh didn't feel like

fighting her for it and in her defense she is going up against somebody who has so far referred to them as moving pictures and dropped a the man from snowy river reference which i don't even

think i'm old enough to follow it was big in the christian community it was like the one movie that didn't have anything fresh in it okay it wasn't it wasn't like explicitly a christian movie but it was christian coded okay all right in the 80s if you grew up like fundamentalist like i did you were for some reason allowed to watch the man from snowy river and just to be clear it was a talkie Right? It was a talkie. It was one of those. It was a Harold Lloyd That he hangs from a clock. It's really it's a impressive stunt. He did all his own stunts So by the way this story does not have a great power out it what happens is I am now milling about not even I'm not even in the area I'm supposed to be I'm just like walking around the parking lot of SoFi Because I'm just like I'm so over this. I'm so mad about it. You're like I used to place bets here back in the day or do i have the wrong andrew i probably like nobody was safe from me telling them about what used to happen there nobody what was it that's what i should have talked to jason momoa about hey do you know this used to be called hollywood park casino and i used to bet on the horses here

yeah yeah i mean that's one of the most famous race tracks like right ever historic race tracks

before they tore it down kind of i mean i would say santa anita is actually um a little bit more famous out near Pasadena but it definitely I mean it it was a vibe back in the day Hollywood Park Casino and I loved it I loved it so very much did we ever go there together no no I've never been

and maybe it's somewhat skewed but I'm pretty sure that's like where a lot of Bukowski stories

happen possibly oh I could totally see that okay so I'm I'm just kind of wandering now and all of a sudden it becomes clear that Sammy Hagar the Red Rocker is the one person he is happy to do interviews he does he's he and his crew have talked to Tom Morello and now they're walking the red carpet and they're actually stopping to chat with people

Kevin mentioned he said you know he's got a reputation for being like a really nice guy and I'm like somehow I intuited that or had heard that somewhere as well

and what happened was the producer on the story who was also getting b-roll sees that sami hagar is doing interviews and does this thing involuntarily of like going like gesturing kind of very sternly go talk to him not like hey do you want to talk to him or do you think we should talk to sami hagar it's like go do it and as you might imagine with all of the sort of preamble to this i'm not in the mood to be ordered to go talk to sami hagar who again by all accounts wonderful human being really solid dude does a lot of good in the world but at that point i just i hand i'm because i'm carrying a wand microphone to like interview these people by the way i have not interviewed one person that i am oh for everything

at this event oh for everything could be a show title boy i really had everything wrong about this i had the camera person being really aggressive i had you wearing a lavalier mic you know you can't i did i had a lav and i did have a laugh oh thank god and we were booming it

andrew okay i had a love handheld and dustin was booming i mean they're they spare no expense for these things great i i hand our very nice sound guy dustin i hand him my handheld mic and i take the lav off and i take because by the way this is his equipment he's a freelancer

and they have to buy all this stuff so I'm not about to walk out with this stuff I hand him the stuff and I think maybe the saving grace of this is that it was very loud there so I hope nobody heard me say I yelled at the producer do your fucking job don't put me in situations where there's no upside and it's very humiliating and I walked into the night in Inglewood you said that

to the person who was giving you the stern like point and go get that I yelled that and again

And I hope my hope is that it was it was it was lost in the din of the black carpet.

You don't know if it was or not. You haven't had any communications with this person since.

Well, what I did was I walked down to Century Boulevard. I called a lift. I in the lift, I texted everyone, the crew and the producer. And I said, I can actually just probably find the exact text.

But while you're looking for that, let me ask you some more questions. So when you say you texted everybody, like the crew, you're talking about at least one sound person. You mentioned a couple of camera people, including handsome one camera guy, one sound guy and one producer. So you texted three people. OK, I just want to give kind of a sense of how many people you felt like might have been affected by this.

My I mean, I regretted the whole thing, even, you know, I still felt and I still feel a certain righteous indignation about how poorly thought through this was. but I felt I felt bad that I that I was unprofessional and I but I felt really bad for the crew because those guys work so hard like they are there hours before I show up and the lighting and they have to break all this gear down and like they're just they're trying to do their job and it doesn't help them when the the guy who the cameras pointed at is storming off because no one would talk about bagel bites with him so I can't find the text right now but basically my text was I'm sorry for that meltdown this was really not my finest hour, I said, there was something about the inanity of that black carpet slash red carpet that really got on top of me, but still, that was unprofessional. And I said something like, I do think we got some really good stuff earlier today, which is true, and I really appreciate your hard work on this. That's what I said, and then the response from the producer was a picture of him interviewing Jason Momoa.

Okay, okay, so the person that you sort of dressed down, if they heard you, did respond to the text, and

in kind of a funny way well i don't know if it was funny it was it was a photo and then i responded if me being a baby created this photo op i regret nothing uh-huh and no response uh-huh so i don't know where things are with that one the i think the cute luke the australian camera guy sent some kind of funny message back so i think i'm good with the crew i don't know where i stand with the producer i know where i stand on uh i would give red carpets about a medium yeah how about

black carpets rock and roll i'd give them even less um so i understand that you might be in a position where you don't want to drill down on some of these questions i have i'll allow you to evade them as necessary but what is your relationship with this producer up until this point this is somebody you've worked with a lot or a little someday i work with a lot somebody you work with a lot and generally speaking have have had smooth experiences with well i've never

Yeah, I've never walked off a shoot.

Clearly, right.

Yes, this is not, I don't think, we don't have an overly tense relationship, generally speaking.

Yes, and this is where, again, I understand you might not want to dig into details, but I feel like on this show, you have sort of talked about some people who, you know, maybe will share your vision going into a shoot like this, maybe more than others or whatever. Like, you've never bad-mouthed anybody, obviously, but I'm just wondering, is this somebody who, when you go onto a shoot with them, you're maybe a little bit more on guard, or it's not somebody that you can just totally trust as much as maybe some other folks?

No, that's not the dynamic at all. This person is very, very professional, very thorough, very hardworking, really hardworking. We always get good stuff at the end of the day because this is a person who really, really dots their I's and crosses their T's. And again, this was just this thing where the PR people that were setting this up, Um, were, they'd, you know, they were just listing, here are the things, you can talk to these people, there's going to be a red carpet, you can be on the red carpet, you know, like, well, why wouldn't you, you know, why wouldn't we go stand on the red carpet and try to get some stuff? Like, it all kind of theoretically made sense, but what I should have done is identified it as something I didn't want to do, and just said, like, I'm sorry, I know this is kind of weird, but I just don't like doing that stuff, it makes me feel a very sad feeling when I do it. And I didn't do that, I didn't get in front of it And so then, and this is where I really failed everyone At that point, once we were doing it I should have just like sucked it up And just kind of, you know, dealt with it But the other problem was Again, I'm not trying to blame anyone else But nobody associated with our project Does that kind of stuff In other words like i said we didn't have like a tripod that was kind of actually like you need it physically to block the other people you know like we didn't we didn't establish a beachhead we didn't like because none of us do this we're like honestly we all have cooler jobs than this you know we get we get to go to james hetfield's house in vale that's what we do we don't stand around talking about bagel bites so it was because at one point i went to the camera guy go like what do i even do here And he goes, I don't know. I was like, oh, cool. Well, I guess nobody's in charge of this, you know, because that's we don't this is not our, you know, five day a week thing is being involved in these kinds of, you know, events.

so um i have one wish for this holiday season and that is for this story to come out and it is primarily an interview with jason momoa i mean never see the interviewer but it is just like the centerpiece the absolute centerpiece of the feature it could happen andrew i don't know what

i have i don't know what jason momoa said i've only seen a still photograph of it and i want it

to break so much news i want it to be so i want it to be so insightful i want like it to be like the headline of momoa opens up about pushes luigi mangioni off of the front page and it's like

like you know jason momoa discuss finally discusses what he likes to eat when he's jamming out

he finally reveals the secret charity he's been running for 20 years yeah uh so that was yeah

that was my friday and and i don't yeah i don't there's not a particularly uh interesting power out to it and also yeah i don't really know i don't know i don't know where everything stands

but but yeah that's what i'm obviously most curious about is the next time because i mean you're still working with this exact crew i was sort of in the back of my head thinking well I wonder what happens the next time you guys are all teamed up together. But, no, you're remaining teamed up together. You haven't even gotten to the big part of the job yet, which is going to Metallica.

Well, they're probably not. They're based in L.A., so they probably won't be the people doing the next thing in Colorado.

So there will be some local crew that we get.

But I work with these guys all the time when I'm down there. So I know these dudes. Again, that's why I felt the need to apologize. I mean, I felt the need to apologize because it was unprofessional. and whatever my little fragile ego tells me to do and whatever I didn't like about the scenario there was a way for me to handle it and I didn't handle it in the right way I just let my embarrassment and insecurity just flare up in a way that I just saw red I'm sorry, I just saw black

Alright, listen Do you, and that's such a good place to go to a break I was going to say, so you sent me and this was Friday that this all happened And I think the text message came in to me around, because I was looking at it.

It was in the lift.

6.30 p.m. is, I think, when you texted me about that. And so I've had a few days to think about it. And like I said, I was telling Camaro, Kevin, Vives, I was like, I don't really know what went down. But I received, like, this photo. And I showed the photo that you had sent me of some of these rockers, only one of whom I recognized. And then Kevin explained who the other ones were, although I think there was even one that eluded his expertise on the matter.

Other blue man?

You know, I didn't quite get that joke. You think that – so I thought the guys –

There's two guys, Joe Satriani and another guy, look like if you hosed down members of the blue man group.

Because they're tall and bald. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're tall and bald, and they have no noticeable hair anywhere on their bodies at the scene.

Okay, good, good. I thought you were talking about them, but the way it was worded, I thought you were talking about the guys in the middle. I'm like, the guys in the middle don't look blue. Okay, anyway, all of that is to say I was not familiar with who those people were. But I don't know. Are you interested in hearing what I thought went down? Yes. How I pictured it? Which doesn't make any sense now that now that we talk about it. But you had sent me like just saying, hey, I stormed off the set. I'll tell you about a Monday. I'm embarrassed, blah, blah, blah. And then you sent me you told me that you kind of texted the producers and you were waiting to hear back or something. And you had sent me a photo of these rock and roll dudes, which you and I kind of joked about a little bit via text, because you and I you and I are not like big rock and roll men. And, like, the idea of the aesthetic of rock and roll is not something that, you know, you and I lean into, right? People are surprised to hear that when they meet me. They're like, wow, I thought you were going to be way more rock and roll. I'm not. I'm not. So, as I told you, I knew it was a red-slash-black carpet event, but I was picturing you for some reason with your own little cutout of this area. Like, you know, like I was saying, like, if you can picture the ball dropping on New Year's Eve. I'm picturing you on one of those directors' chairs with, like, two directors' chairs next to you, and you're interviewing one guy from Metallica, and for some reason, Sammy Hagar is there as well, and then these other rockers are around, and for some reason, in my head, I was just... them being like yeah rock and roll and like kind of teasing you in ways that you were not down with sort of but they were like really into the event and like I mean obviously what I'm describing here is like that would be amazing access compared to what you just described and your story obviously makes so much more sense because it's rooted in real life but for some reason I was

like what happened did these you thought I was getting cyber bullied you thought I was getting rock and rolled to within an inch of my life by these guys I thought these rock and rollers were

having a really good time and maybe gently teasing you as a non-rock and roller uh-huh and pointing out just how un-rock and roll just like maybe i don't know just i don't know i was literally like almost this is one of those things i use this expression a lot or this kind of analogy a lot i don't know if it really pays out but like for me growing up when i would see a person's face who i heard on the radio for years and then i would see them in real life i'd be like how in the world is that the face of the person I listened to on the Buzzard Morning Zoo or whatever it is. But then if I ask myself, well, how did you picture that person? I never had like, I can't say like, oh, well, I didn't have a very clear vision of this person. I couldn't tell you eye color or hair color or whatever, but it wasn't this. It wasn't whatever I'm looking at right now. I had some idea, but I don't know what it was. And so in my head this weekend, I don't know what it was, but I was almost picturing like, oh, a friendly, wet willy vibe. Not like people, not like Sammy Hagar, was literally entering your ear with his with his fingers but like kind of a kind of a teasing thing and that you were like we're done here and you remove your lavalier microphone and walk off this little set that i had imagined for you so that's why that's what i was so much better and worse

that would be both so much better and so much worse like i would say the good news is other than the people i was working with and now i guess the tens of listeners and you nobody knew this was going down the way it was going down yeah because it was everybody was just busy bagel biting yeah um so it would have been it would have been professionally way worse for me if this would have actually unfolded on the stage so to speak with people like sammy hagar and michael anthony from van halen and joe satriani and other bald guy yeah we don't you we still don't know who

other bald guy is we and we may never know and i'm assuming we cannot use that as a show pick

I mean, sue me. Sue me for what? Okay, great. I mean, I have, listen, I was a licensed, I was an invited media member up until I wasn't.

Yeah, right.

I think I'm allowed to take a picture with my phone.

So give CBS credit for this. Okay, gotcha.

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, no, that, so you're kind of, I don't want to say fantasy, but you're filling in the blanks of how it went down. Again, would have been much more interesting and much more sort of cinematic, but that was not what happened. What happened was I just had a – I threw a temper tantrum that nobody except for the people I was immediately working with were aware it was happening, and then I stormed off.

Well, you know, it sounds like you have enough of a relationship with all of these people, including the producer, that, you know, it's not like this is the first or second time you've worked with them. And the first time was a little bit rocky or something, which is why I kind of brought that up. It sounds like this will be weathered.

I was wondering, and you know this, too, from, like, when you have a moment of, like, very dramatic behavior, it's so weird how, like, so this thing happens, and it's this big rush of, like, probably, like, adrenaline and stuff.

Yeah.

And then you do this thing or you yell this thing or you say this thing or whatever. And then you get like a block away From the YouTube theater And now all that stuff starts to leave your body And you're just like what did I just do And as I was Walking out to Century Boulevard To catch a lift I was like oh that was the other thing that was weird They were like well you know who else you could talk to is Shepard Fairey you know like the Obey Guy remember that dude And I was like okay we'll ask Shepard Fairey I guess about Metallica's charity Whatever as I was now As I've demicrophoned myself And I'm storming out And I'm just walking away I get out almost to the street And there's like a security guard Who's like checking people's passes in their cars And Shepard Ferry rolls up in a Tesla And I was like where do we park And I was like well I guess when we're going to talk to Shepard Ferry My dude isn't even parked yet He's still in his Tesla I don't know why that mattered but I was like Everything about this has been mishandled So as I'm walking towards The main road and as like now the adrenaline is leaving it's being replaced with self-doubt which was always there just underneath some adrenaline for a while and now fully exposed i was like i wonder and i wonder what the most petulant behavior from a cbs sunday morning correspondent has ever been and was that on the like what i just did is that like wildly out of the norm has that ever happened is any other course. on and ever done that and i told myself yes because that's what i hope is the case

you what i'm about to say is not a nice thing for a friend to say in this moment no this and this is not like me it's not it's not like me um weighing in or something it's just me remembering something that you've worried about before which i really honestly i this hesitation is legit but i'll move forward and i know you know i ask it with love yes but are you also thinking about some of the anecdotes that you've heard that you found sort of confusing you've told me before that you heard a rumor that you're somewhat difficult amongst some people i heard

that from rich my neighbor who doesn't even exist right exactly and also doesn't even i don't know

where he got that i don't and you've never had any other inclination other than him saying that Because he thinks that he knows somebody who knows you or something from the set or something.

It was the most bizarre thing. Other than the time he found me passed out on my floor, it was the most bizarre interaction I ever had with Rich, which was we had just started knowing each other because they were our neighbors. And I said, oh, yeah, I work for the show CBS Sunday Morning. And like maybe it was the next time we hung out. He said something like, oh, yeah, my cousin works there. And I was like, who's your cousin? And he couldn't like the I'd never heard of the person. And I don't think the person worked at Sunday Morning or I would have known them and was like, yeah, I heard that. you can be i forget i mean i had said something that had been a lead into this it wasn't like he came over to my house and knocked on my door and just said by the way i've heard you're very difficult over there but he said something i think maybe i was saying to him i don't know what something about work and he said yeah yeah you know my cousin works there and and i heard that you really like stand up for yourself or you're kind of like you know you can you definitely don't take any crap or you're a little difficult or whatever and i even in that moment i remember thinking there's no way that you heard that about me and you know if that person worked at livewire sure absolutely or you know like there's just i don't have a rep i mean i didn't before friday have a rep there of any kind i'm barely on anyone's radar okay so this i guess if i if i was

going to turn my memory of that story into a question it was going to be like does this sort of play into those fears you have but it sounds like there's no other like you haven't had other moments where you're working on an edit or this or that or that and it's been sort of in the back your head. Am I the difficult one? It sounds like we've sort of laid that a bit to rest.

Yeah. And in fact, like, I feel like the producers that I work with often say like, oh, we really like working with you because I will literally do anything except this, I guess. In the words of meatloaf, I guess. But I won't do that. But generally speaking, I'm up for anything. I'll go swim in San Francisco Bay, shirtless on TV. I'll like, you know, I'm really I'm pretty game for most stuff this is literally my only bright line that I now know I will not cross and so and you know we do have correspondents who have been doing it for much longer like for instance and I know this isn't actually related but I've had some producers that I haven't worked with a lot in the past and we're doing a story and they say oh are you one of the correspondents who is guaranteed flies first class I'm like no I didn't even know that was a thing so that's there's a level of like handling that goes on with some folks where it's like in their contract they have to fly first class and stuff like that i'm not that person like i'm i will show up anywhere i will talk to anyone generally speaking you know so i actually think that i am i'm usually like a pretty easy correspondent to work with because i'm not you know like i said i don't have a lot of like hard nose in fact like i feel like the first one of the first stories i ever did it was doing this story about adult summer camps like people going to like you know boy scout camp but as grown ups and part of the reason it went to me was because there was a different correspondent who thought it was going to be muddy at the camp and they didn't want to and you know they didn't want to leave New York and they didn't want to go where it was muddy and I was like I'll happily go to you know the Wisconsin Dells area I have galoshes yeah have galoshes will correspond so I think generally I'm I'm a pretty good hang on these things. This was an outlier for me. But, yeah, I mean, it remains to be seen. I don't think I'm in any trouble with the bosses over it. But I also don't know if, like, you know, I don't know how things will play out.

Well, you're probably not going to do any more black carpet events.

That was my one and a... That was my first and last black carpet event. I still do want to jam out with Bagel Bites. Of course.

you know what gives me solace on this monday morning andrew when i i may have lost my job at cbs television is it does it is a bagel bite related

it isn't no then no i don't i have no idea well in a roundabout way okay see i'm still label to purchase bagel bites for jamming out. purposes because this andrew what what's happening right now you and i talking to each other this is our job and it is our job and they can't fire me from this job andrew only i can fire me from this job and i am i have put myself on a performance improvement plan by the way let me

talk to john about that because i it was my understanding when we drew up sort of our operating procedure that that is not that it's things don't operate exactly the way you just described but i could be wrong about that i'll take a look at the contract as long as you guys

don't ever make me go to another black carpet. I think we're going to be okay.

We'll see.

I am so grateful for this to be my job and to be your job and to be John's job because of these donors, these generous people like Kathleen Vandera of Seattle, Washington.

Thank you, Kathleen. Appreciate that. What about Steve Pruitt of Ferndale, Michigan? Ferndale, Michigan sounds like such a... I'll bet you they have an amazing 4th of July parade right down Main Street.

A hundred percent. It's just Norman Rockwell out the wazoo.

it's norman rockwell at the hoo-ha thank you steve i'm sorry that that had to be attached

every kid is given a slingshot to put in their back pocket while they salute the flag next to an old veteran that's right oh what about kevin johnson in cordova alaska cordova alaska wow probably i've heard about the mosquitoes in cordova alaska andrew uh they're huge that's what i've heard yeah when i was growing up my buddy joe dollin he would go to cordova alaska in the summertime i think his like his grandparents lived there or had a place up there and the he came back i was like how was cordova alaska he said it was fun he goes the mosquitoes are enormous really and that's always lodged in my brain the mosquitoes are matched only by kevin johnson's generosity andrew in just sheer enormity yeah the the sheer enormity of the generosity i realized that i was saying 80 of what verner herzog said in that piece of tape i played at the beginning the sheer enormity of kevin johnson's charitability wow it turned into

christopher walken it did a little bit there at the end but that's not a bad thing that's never

a good unless you're trying to do christopher walk this watch i don't do a walk if you oh Oh, right, right, right. That's from Pulp Fiction.

That was rough. That was rough. Well, that didn't happen. We'll let all that up.

Here, hold on. Here's my Christopher Walken impression. Oh, you're walking, aren't you? No, no. That's him dancing in the, like, is it like Weapon of Choice? Yes, yes, Weapon of Choice. God, it was right on the top of my tongue. The Fat Boy Slim song directed by Spike Jonze, and it's just, what's his name, dancing around?

He, man, I really, I thought I could get to Weapon of Choice because I don't know why that name kind of stands out to me, but that is an iconic, iconic video. Spike Jones, right? Did you say that?

Yes, yes. Directed by Spike Jones. He also did the video for Praise You, which is another Fat Boy Slim song, and that's the video where Spike Jones is leading like a dance troupe.

Oh, my God, yes, on the streets, right outside the theater there in L.A., right? So incredibly good. Or maybe that's New York. I can't remember if it's LA or New York.

I don't know where it is, but I didn't even know that was Spike Jones at the time. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

And he's dressed out like Norm Corp before anybody else was Norm Corp, right?

Yes. It's so good. So incredibly good. It's so good. Almost as good as seeing the name Tyler Nimi of Longview, Washington. Andrew, call me Sarah Palin because I can see Tyler's house from my front porch.

Oh, that's right. You're in the Longview district. I'm in the greater Longview district. Right. Nice. Well, thank you, Tyler. Thanks, Tyler. Appreciate it.

Nice to see a fellow Cowlitz County person on the list. And then Rhoda Ashley is just down Interstate 5 in Portland, Oregon. Another city that I can... Can I see Portland from here? Probably not. I can see Scapoose, Oregon from here, Andrew. If I look south. But I don't think I can see all the way down to where Rhoda is. Thanks, Rhoda. And then Margot Feather is in Redmond, Washington. You can probably almost see Redmond, Washington.

If I got on my roof, if I got on a ladder on my roof and got LASIK, I could probably see Redmond.

Okay. You know, speaking of your yard, we haven't even talked about the Yoda. About this Yoda. I'm sorry. Grogu.

We have not even gotten into this, by the way.

That's a Grogu. Let me just say thank you to our donors. We absolutely could not do this without you. Thank you so, so much. And I need this job today more than ever. It may be the last of my three jobs that exists.

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.

Let's just use this time together, Andrew, to update everyone on. on that situation with that Yoda in your yard. That went so, that did not go where I was expecting it to go.

So on Friday's show, before we started talking to our friend Cassie, I opened the show by saying, hey, Luke, I just brought the garbage bins from outside, and I looked over my fence, and I saw that there's this toy Yoda, apparently a toy Yoda or what we call the baby Yoda, maybe. It was unclear. The child. the child laying face down in my backyard but i didn't want to go across the yard and examine it because i was wearing my indoor shoes and it's kind of a wet muddy day and so i just left it there but i took a photo of it from the fence and if people want a visual of this go to tbtail.net and just look at the show picture from friday's show it's like a little like fluorescent green yoda looking doll you noted on it it seemed kind of buff it honestly had kind of a kind of a big dumper it was looking and it was face down like a crime scene sort of and and also feet facing me so if you can picture this photo you can see the bottom of its feet you pointed out that it had three fingers on each hand and you and and we looked it up yoda and i i guess baby yoda have three fingers on each hand um so we said yeah that's probably some toy yoda that somebody threw in our yard and like i was thinking could it have been a dog toy that sort of got out of hand or or something you know like or did somebody and listen we live in a neighborhood where it's not completely uncommon i mentioned somebody threw a like a a mattress up against our fence as if somebody was going to take a free mattress out of the rain at some point so like you know people there's detritus around the neighborhood um you know one time i found a a lighter in our in our driveway not a big deal you know you throw it away so anyway we um i i saw this toy a parent toy laying face down almost like a crime scene i don't know if i mentioned this to you on the show what i wanted to do was i kind of spray paint around it like like a body you know like crime crime scene but um but i didn't do that and i just left it there and i came in here and i did what i do best which is ruin this podcast and so anyway i left it out there and then that was friday right yeah so whatever on saturday i think i was sleeping in or something i heard a door close and genevieve's like andrew andrew i'm like what is it she's like it was i try to think what She said, that Yoda was a bong, and it's broken all over our yard. I'm like, what, huh? I'm, like, kind of groggy. And then she. You're kind of Grogu. I'm kind of Grogu. She takes a photo. And so it was unclear. So it was, like, this plastic toy that does look just like a plastic toy. And it's, like, an off. It's, like, a, I think. It's a knockoff Yoda. Baby Yoda. Skompson. Skompson? Bart Skompson. So, like, yeah, it's a knockoff Yoda because, obviously, you don't have Lucasfilm selling official Star Wars books or whatever. Wouldn't that be amazing if it was a, where's my Luke Skywalker bong, right? But, anyway, it looks like when this thing—

Lars Ulrich was wearing an industrial light and magic hat when I met him the other day, which I thought was an interesting pull.

Oh, is that the— That's Lucasfilm's special effects company, right? Oh, okay, gotcha. Yeah, I mean, I think now that you say that, I can piece that together. I wouldn't have known it without that context. But anyway, so when you flip this toy over, you see that the belly was exposed. So it's like a full green toy, but the belly was exposed. And that was probably like the round part of the bong where the water would sit or something. And then at the top of this, oh, and probably where you put the little bowl for the weed. And then at the top, which is still kind of intact, coming straight out the top of Yoda's head. It's really amazing, if you think about it, Luke, the way I saw this thing. I saw this thing randomly from the one angle where I wouldn't have seen any evidence of this being any like the fact that it was feet like face down and feet towards me meant that I didn't see any of the glass works that was associated with this. But right out the right out of the top of the damn head of this thing is like the glass part of the bong where you would presumably put your mouth. But it raises. So Genevieve takes a photo of this thing and sends it to the entire to the entire text chain that says Yoda Coda. It was for drugs. And then we're going on, we're talking about how this Yoda bong thing was found in our yard with a bunch of broken glass around it or whatever. And then my favorite comment ever on the text thread of the world text thread is just one comment from Camaro Kev that says, that's Grogu, period. Like no other comment on the sort of grossness or grittiness of this discovery. I will say it does raise some questions. So we have like a little, in our tiny little backyard area, we have like one of those outdoor sort of swinging little benches, you know, just a cheapo thing that came with the house. In fact, I think I was going to take it to the dump, but Genevieve sort of likes having it out there. Yeah, it's kind of like a glider. Yeah, I mean, it's literally a glider, but a very light one that I can sort of move around the yard when I'm mowing, right? It's not like when we had a really heavy glider in our basement when we were growing up at the kind of, you know, like that you put on your Davenport or what have you. Um, but anyway, so that.

thing is right now that this you know two seats little glider bench thing is sort of in the corner of our yard and Genevieve was not sure if I had put it there or I mean her thing was like are people like smoking bongs in our backyard while we're sleeping like because it was I mean the

weirdest this is the weirdest plot twist for this particular toy that it was yeah right a bong and

someone threw it in your yard here's my thing I don't first of all I don't yeah like what I don't like having broken glass in my yard obviously i don't think people are back there like doing drugs in our yard i and honestly if it's gonna be a drug you hoping it's weed yeah i mean yeah again like the mellowest of the things that could be doing that's what i'm thinking is like i'm like well i got up and like when i was in the high school and college i got up to some weird shit like smoking weed really weird places or what have you just like there's sort of the thrill of like getting away with it or what have you um and so you know if the if it was true that a couple of ne'er-do-wells were were smoking a bong in our backyard but here's what i really think happened is this bong was probably already somewhat broken and potentially just stolen and it with a bag and people didn't want it but i feel like if you're somebody who's stealing a bag and you find this thing you're probably also keeping it like i have found i have found like once i found like an empty backpack outside of our house very clearly if somebody the only thing in there the only thing in there was somebody's costco membership card um and everything else had just been like kind of taken out and so you know there's a lot of theft i'm sure that that bag that i'm thinking of from a year or two ago was probably stolen from somewhere rooted out they left the stuff they didn't want in it so you know that could have been the case with grogu that's grogu dude that's

drogu um or i also by the way i love that that's such a for a person whose nickname is camaro kev it's fascinating how into the lore of the mandadorian and also someone who calls it the mandadorian he's actually really into the lore oh like he's really deeply knowledgeable about it which is so funny that he also like just it's it's you know it doesn't seem it doesn't sort of in a way it doesn't seem to like click with the rest of his personality but i kind of love it

yeah no he contains multitudes for sure but uh my guess is um this thing was probably already broken in some way and unusable and somebody had it and they're like well get rid of it let's literally throw it over this fence because we have kind of not a tall but a tallish fence um let's throw it over the fence and just and it probably broke the rest of the way you know what i mean i don't think people were like getting so high out there that they broke their bong and then scattered away you know right no i think your theory makes a lot of sense

um it again i'm just saying the same thing over and over again but based on the first photo you showed me and my expectations for this thing the idea that its belly was a home for drug smoking and it had glass coming out of its body which was broken was a truly shocking development it really

is now let me ask you this a production question we don't want to make that the show pick today do we instead of the rockers i mean what's let's make that the show pick just to draw a little

bit less attention from the various entities that might not sure yeah stoked about me and that story i mean i stand behind it it's just it's just the truth but maybe let's i i might be a good idea to focus more on the grogu aspect of today than the uh the luke uh stamping off from his job aspect

it is a grim picture i will say i will say that like and i'm not somebody who's averse to marijuana usage but like it's just a bong but it's just like it is really it's kind of good first of all Genevieve laid is set it up like on top of our garbage bin to take this photo so it's like this really like kind of grimy photo of a is there any indication of the preferred

gender of who might use the bong what's what do you mean is it possibly a lady bong oh a lady bong

for ladies

I just wanted to I don't know connect it up to some tape

Yeah, I'm sorry, and you wanted that bong tape ready to go And I'm furious No, no, I didn't

I honestly think that my impression of it was sufficient Wait, was that the tape that you just played? You know his name is technically Din Grogu?

No, I didn't

I'm learning this from the internet right now Din Grogu, colloquially referred to as Baby Yoda Is a character from the Star Wars Disney Plus original TV series The Mandadorian And the Book of Boba Fett He's a toddler member of the same species as the Star Wars character Yoda and Yaddle. Did you know there was a Yaddle?

You know what? With all your Yoda-ing and Yaddling, why don't you pipe down?

With whom he shares a strong ability in the Force. I had no idea that there was a Yaddle.

No, nor did I. I started watching The Mandadorian, and I don't want to badmouth it because other people truly enjoy it, But it got a little corny for me About five episodes in You pushed all the way through, huh? Well, I was watching it with my nephews This was like

I downloaded, or not downloaded, I purchased Stupid Disney Plus to watch The Mandalorian with my nephews, Jack and Abe. Yeah, that's right, yeah. And we had a great weekend watching the whole thing. And I found it entertaining. What I was really fascinated with was the Pedro Pascal aspect of it, right? Because he is the Mandalorian. I can't even say the real name anymore. He's the Mandalorian, but the Mandalorian has this helmet on at all times. And you just wonder if he was actually in there the whole time, and why.

No, I think it, I mean, I remember people asking why, but I mean, it is acting, and I think he was. I think he was in there all the time. Yeah.

It'd be funny if he took a day off of work and just, like, had somebody else suit up. Do you think it's possible he ever stormed off the set because they wanted him to interview Sammy Hagar? They wanted him to take off his helmet, and he said, no. He said, I think we're done here. He undid his lavalier mic from inside his armor and said, do your job. Oh, my God. Yeah. The good news, Andrew, is that I've used up all my unprofessional behavior towards my other colleagues, so all I have left for you is professionalism.

You have to be so nice to me. I fucking love this. You have to be so nice to me now.

I've never needed this job more than I do today. If I'm being 100, you're right. Anything you need. Do you need me to post the show? Yeah, please do. It's a laughable concept. All right. Sorry we didn't get to this. I actually am excited to talk to you tomorrow, Andrew, about this New Jersey politician and their Spotify wrapped. Now, we were talking about Spotify wrapped the other day on the show, and you were saying how it's kind of like not something that particularly jazzes you up. But this is a really actually weird story about it. And again, it led to a really great correction by The New York Times.

Great. Yeah, I have not seen that. I saw that you had a link in the in the show. Don't click on the link. I'll tell you about it tomorrow. OK, good. OK, that sounds good. And it sounds like we probably don't have time maybe for emails or emails here. But let me just cap off the show then by saying a quick update on the Spotify wrapped thing. Oh, okay. Because I was kind of bad-mouthing it on the show the other day. And again, saying, hey, everybody who enjoys the Spotify wrapped, enjoy away. It's not for me, certainly, right? But then I geeked out about the bus version of it. The Orca, which is what we call the cards we pay for public transportation around here. My Orca wrapped. Not my Orca. Not how many times did you go to my Orca, as you pointed out. but my orca wrapped um and i was like oh i'm really into this i was surprised to see that the 40 was the bus route that i took more than the e-line or what have you but then another one hit me on i think it was friday luke i i almost texted this to you but i was like i don't know i just like he's busy melting down yeah i was like i want to i think i want to tell you about this one i i was trying to figure out the best way to reveal this and i guess it's right here which is i turned i went to play some darts and i turned on my dart bot an app called dart counter but i call it dart bot of course on the show and it's the app that like it kind of creates a kind of a virtual opponent for me to play against sort of uh it gave me my dart my year in darts wrapped like how many darts really how many darts thrown and how many uh let me see did i i don't think i have a i don't think i have a screenshot of it in front of me right here um but if i did i would share it with you but it was over my orca card it was very close to something now there's something meatier and now keep in mind there are plenty of times i've thrown darts when i haven't had the app open as well so it doesn't feel it doesn't feel now now that i know it's counting i want to like be even more um like sort of uh you want to you want to goose the numbers well i don't want to goose the numbers but i kind of feel like it's like when you have one of those uh fitness watches and you go for a walk and you leave the fitness watch at home exactly like why am i even doing this if it's not counting my steps it's like why would i even be throwing darts but um because one thing that i've been doing i did a couple of weeks ago is i i've decided that because in a lot of the games hitting 20 is important specifically a triple 20 on the dartboard and it occurred to me the other day i should be able to throw a dart into the 20 100 percent of the time like if i'm spending this much time throwing darts i should be able to throw a dart and hit the 20 every time i want to do it so i started throwing darts and not even using the dart bot just using my marker board just like how many times i hit a 20 and how many times did i miss a 20 and like trying to get my percentage up until eventually i can just like every single time 100 hit the 20 is it working are you pretty i got better i got much hit the 20 i got better at it but i think that then i kind of stopped doing it i went back to playing actual games with the

dart bot but I think my my best was I was getting it maybe two out of three darts and that might be a slight exaggeration but like somewhere around they're better than better than 50% I think maybe um for a little bit there but it's you know it's it's difficult um but anyway so not

Not every single dart thrown was counted, although I do think it had me at, like, 19,700 and some darts thrown or something like that. And that was a pretty big break at the beginning of spring as well. Yeah. So, yeah. Wow. So, I mean, I think what we've learned from this is that everything is now wrapped. Everything is wrapped. Or at least everyone's getting on the engagement train, right? Right, exactly. Like, I'm glad that, like, my refrigerator doesn't do it. Oh, I promise you.

your new stove. Oh, I never even told you about pizza beans. Oh, that's right.

Yes. Although, I am looking Do you want to do that tomorrow? It's not enough of a story

for tomorrow. You could even start bringing the music. I'll just tell you. It doesn't matter. It's basically some weird story came out, like on Sunday or whatever. Becca was reading it to me about the food that they're serving Luigi Mangione. Oh, okay. And it was allegedly the headline was he had his choice between chicken parmigiana and pizza beans which sent the internet first of all that sounds pretty good for jail my guess is the chicken parmigiana is not great in whatever the state jail in pennsylvania is where he is but um it sent the internet going to explore what are pizza beans and what they are is like cannellini beans in tomato sauce with some mirepland how do you say that i don't know Basically, you know, like kind of, you know, onions and celery and carrots and garlic and whatever that is kind of sauteed up and then a bunch of cheese on top of it. So it's kind of like a lasagna, but instead of noodles, you've just got beans in there. And I made it yesterday, Andrew, and it was so good.

I'm seeing different pictures of this online and some of it have it more like a finger food that you can actually pick up. but some of them are more like it's just beans that you eat with a fork, but it's the ingredients on top that make it the pizza.

Yeah, the version I made was definitely not finger-foodable. It was basically a casserole, but OMG, it was good. I mean, I have like half of the casserole dish. No, I have almost all of the casserole dish left, Andrew. I didn't eat half of a casserole dish of pizza beans by myself last night.

Come on, I'm kind of a freak. Do you think I am? It's funny that you mentioned chicken parmesan because that's what I did on Saturday. I drove Genevieve to the Eagles and then came back home and I made what I call my poor man's chicken parmesan, which is a bunch of boiled like spaghetti on the bottom as the base with some oil in there. And then just like, you know, like frozen, you know, like something you get out of the freezer at the grocery store, just like chicken breasts or whatever, strips or whatever. Cook those up. I lay those down on top of the noodles once the noodles are sort of seasoned and oiled. And then I put down some, you know, marinara sauce. But then I put down some pepperoni, then I put down more marinara sauce, then just tons of mozzarella cheese. And I put that thing in the oven and it's almost gone. I made that on Saturday night. I have one more serving upstairs that I'm probably going to eat for lunch.

I was just eating my Seahawks feelings last night by way of pizza beans.

I don't know. I'll send you a couple of photos of this. It doesn't look super appetizing. It looks like a casserole, but I think you'll appreciate the crusty. I know you're a big fan of the crusty corners on things. Yes. Yes. All right.

You send me that, please. And I will let everyone know that we have reached the end of today's broadcast. But I have incredible news. We're going to be right back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. For all of you, please join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

This one was created from a wooden vase from Fiji. Unsure what type of timber. But it's a ladies' bone for ladies. Power out.