Muse

No, I honestly don't know the man. Well, understandably, Bob is, uh, pretty broken up by all of this. And he asked me to ask you if, uh, you'd be willing to, um, be a pallbearer at Carl's funeral.

A pallbearer at Carl's funeral? Well, I don't, um, I, you know, I'm flattered. It's quite an honor to be here.

I knew he would say yes.

And, and, and normally I would. I, I would. I, I, you know, but my back, I have, uh, I, I have back issues, honey, you know? My back, the thing with my back.

Your back. Oh, it's, it's terrible. And his arms are so weak. Little muscles like corn nuts.

Yeah, yeah, we're just talking about my back, sweetheart. It's awful. TBTL!

Back here live at the Waterfront Village with my friend, the zombie, Jonathan. You're looking good. Jonathan just got an awesome face paint job. What do you think? I like turtles. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works.

Could one say that a book is nothing more than a painting of words, which are the notes on the tapestry of the greatest film ever sculpted?

One could say that. But should one?

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Are you sure? Mm-hmm. Okay. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Everything you're about to see is my real voice.

Coming to you from the Matrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty, windy and wet Columbia of mine. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. I was reading the paper today, and I believe they described the weather. I don't know if this is a meteorological term or not, or if it should be, but soupy. Soupy was how the weather was described. I just spent probably an hour plus this morning in torrential rain, my running shorts, trying to hang a tarp on the side of my house to create some kind of a shelter for this guy that's working at my house who's cutting tile. And I almost fell off the ladder. I almost got pulled off the ladder once by the force of the wind pulling on this tarp. it was as we say on this show it was literally a major disaster we'll talk more about that in a moment it is episode 4360 by the way let the fun begin in a collector series and i do know people are collecting them at least one cool people one time collected it um you know uh a lot of people have been posting their spotify wrapped we learned from andrew that um actually the rapification of a lot of different things, like different apps that we interact with has begun. A lot of places kind of picking up that trend and showing you, you know, data points and things on what you did all year. Well, anyway, a politician in New Jersey...

Welcome to the internet.

...lied about his Spotify rap and got caught doing it, which led the New York Times to have to print a pretty funny retraction. I made a huge mistake. Or correction, I guess, maybe. So we will talk about that today. And we're going to talk to this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show. So explain that. It means he's the person who has been able to tolerate me professionally the longest of any of the places I've worked. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I'm kind of excited. It is my understanding that longtime Seattle sports broadcaster Mike Gastineau may be coming to my house later today. The gas man? Genevieve says that the gas man is coming to install a gas line later today. Oh, wow. And so I'm assuming that's Mike Gastineau?

The guy contains multitudes. There's William the Refrigerator Perry coming also at some point to help with another appliance in your kitchen. And then Vinny the Microwave Johnson, the one-time Detroit Piston. I'm just going to keep meeting appliance-related people.

I love that. I mean, now I'm nervous to try to...

We have Melvin Patterson, who was a cornerback for the New York Giants, and he used to get burned a lot, so they called him Toast. Oh, okay. So that's kind of in the neighborhood. It's not actually the appliance. It's a thing.

Why was the microwave called the microwave? Because he was hot? Because he heated up quickly. Because he heated up quickly. I like that.

You put him in the game, and he would just immediately start just, like, raining down jump shots.

Like an air fryer. Has anybody been labeled the air fryer yet? That would be a good one.

In this era, maybe, you know what I mean? And maybe it's it's more.

Microwave, maybe the air fryer is a more is the updated version of being my Andrew the air fryer Walsh Yes, I you know what I think it's there for the taking Andrew the error error fryer

Probably a step too far, but I like this if there's one more what are other

What are some other I mean stove is an appliance I don't know anyone whose nickname was stove I pretty much like I said refrigerator. You said the gas man. Yeah, I said the microwave

What else do we have? Toast. What about dishwasher?

Luke, the dishwasher Burbank. Uh-huh. Sometimes you put them in the spin cycle. That's a

basketball term. That's a washing machine though, not a dishwasher. Yeah, that's not usually in the kitchen.

Unless you're in Europe. Don't you think it's... I think it's interesting how to have your laundry stuff in your kitchen would seem super weird in America, but it's very typical in Europe.

Yeah, you know, we had a mini washer. This just came up in conversation recently with somebody saying that they don't like having, like, laundry facilities in a kitchen. Although I can sort of see them being, like, ours are very nearby, but sort of in a dedicated room. And I like that because it helps my puttering be seamless. You know what I mean?

Well, what it is, it's the triangle. To take it back to Phil Jackson, it's the triangle offense, Andrew.

Oh, I thought it was going to be the triangle of success by, what's his name? That's John Wooden. John Wooden. It's not a triangle of success, though. It's a pyramid of success.

Okay, there you go. Which is a triangle, really, with more slaves dying.

With fewer. A triangle is easier to make than a pyramid, I would say.

No, but a pyramid, I'm saying. Oh, yeah. A pyramid is just a triangle with more force slaves. Yeah, no, certainly.

That's the book on pyramids, certainly. I like that as a pulp quote. And that's all we need to know about them. Yes.

no but like you know when i was uh kind of when i was remodeling or not even remodeling but like building this kitchen this little kitchen in my house which had just been like a a little kind of room like a dining room or something like it was not when i got here where the kitchen was but one of the things that you're trying to do when you're figuring out the layout of things is does this create a triangle because that just makes there makes so there's an efficiency there of where you're standing versus where the other things are it's just kind of a principle yeah that helps and and like you can be in your kitchen doing something then you can just kind of step right over into I know the area that you're talking about in your house it's right there near your kitchen but it's not in your kitchen but it's very close by so you can kind of just putter around and be you don't have to go down the stairs to the back of your basement to a room

to like do the laundry yeah exactly in fact you know I'm taking a little um I'm taking a a little moment here to reflect on all of the appliances that we've replaced so far so because i'm thinking about i don't i don't know if we're set up like a triangle but we do have a dishwasher i don't use the dishwasher all that much and ours is particularly old and particularly feeble like i don't i think it's i don't know exactly when it's from i'm going to guess the 80s maybe the early 90s but it literally only has like one spinny thing in there i go to friends houses and i open up their their dishwashers and it is like you have robots and worldly gig in there oh my god you got a little robot that's scrubbing other robots back and you have to close it quickly because you're like maybe i interrupted something i mean these dishwashers have so many doohickeys and this has one feeble doohickey that just spins around the middle and hoses down the plate so

that i was just thinking the other day of how grateful i am for my dishwasher and how much i use it every single day of my life that i'm here i love it it is one of the new fangled ones there is a certain amount of robot sex happening in there i assume yeah and um i uh yeah and in fact i have you remember i talked extensively about like some pots and pans and things i bought that were i guess technically you're not supposed to put them in the dishwasher i don't care i put them in the dishwasher like i just put everything in there because it's i've never had well that's not I guess in my last couple of rentals, I probably had a newish dishwasher. But in a home that I've owned, I've never had a really good new dishwasher. And it's incredible what those things will do for you.

Yeah, I think in the last apartment we lived in, I think our dishwasher died maybe even pretty early on in our stay there. And so it was replaced by a new one. And this was a rental unit. So I don't think our landlord went like, you know, he didn't go super splashy on it. But it was just a new modern dishwasher. And it really did make a difference. i'm not a huge fan of a dishwasher because especially for the big for the big stuff and it's all big stuff i have a bumper sticker that says that sweat the big stuff and it's all

big stuff um that's one that's right below the signee guy always works that's right but like for

me it's like a dishwasher is a place where you put the pan where the and so the food could harden on it until you need it again tomorrow like unless you're unless you have a big enough i feel like a big enough crew or a big enough family, or you're just going through tons and tons of of plates and especially pots and pans you have to run it literally every single day otherwise if you need that pan tomorrow which you know like i don't know about you but i have like a favorite pan or a go-to pan we have other pans but there's one that just like fits my needs perfectly and if it's like i make eggs in the morning i put in the dishwasher but i need it at night what am i doing i'm pulling it out of the dishwasher and now it's just grosser and harder to clean do you know that

i used to be like you andrew and then something changed and it was something that i heard i'm a hundred percent sure from either the like american dishwasher council or the tide the

american tide pod council or what you know you now run a cycle based on one pan you put one pan in

there and run a run a full cycle i literally heard some saw a tv commercial which is total propaganda but it just gave me it gave my brain some kind of like you know easement that allows me to access this potentially wasteful thing which is the guy says you know even if you run your dishwasher half full it still saves water over doing your dishes and i was like whoever's telling me this is selling me something related to dishwashing and i i want to say it was like you know one of those little packets of of detergent or whatever you call it soap that you put in the dishwasher it was someone who had a vested interest in me running the dishwasher wantonly and i understood that it'd be it was it's like it's like philip morris telling me you know smoke one cigarette a day for my health and me going well they said it was okay like i understand it's total propaganda but it has gone into some fundamental part of me where i'm like okay well um you know i'm gonna run this dishwasher even if it's half full because it's less water than doing my dishes well i have any

proof of that i have been trying to and this is probably runs counter to how i should be thinking about things but i i do think that like i've gotten used to running a not completely packed dishwasher if need be you know especially if like i've if i've actually made a meal like if i'm i don't know made a you know i roasted some chicken or something made a couple of sides on a sunday i will say listen look at you skinny ass chicken i'm starting with an empty roast chicken oh i was wondering i didn't feel like stopping but that is kind of funny i do like the fact that i'm just like oh man some of the chickens in here yeah yeah right i've seen some younger chickens in my day um is terry gross running wait no i'm not gonna no what wait do you have any idea trust your first instinct you should have ignored me do you have any idea what i was even trying to dance around there i was trying to dance around chris fleming's terry uh terry gross joke but it was not it wasn't well thought out and clearly not well said i don't even think you could argue that i did say it having said all of that i've gotten used to a little bit of just like you know planning out a dishwasher run and being okay if it's not completely full but um for the most part i'm not huge into dishwasher culture having said that you mentioned something regarding advertising and propaganda that i meant to talk about with hannah on spotless yesterday and i totally forgot but i'll tell you instead you're like a poor man you're gonna like the poor man hannah brooks olsen that's how you've been described i'm

basically um peacock to hannah brooks olsen's hbo oh i'm also a streamer but i have less good

content yeah i thought you're gonna be nbc maybe she's nbc and you're you're like well just because her initials are hbo and every time i see that i think of home box office right of course no that makes a lot of sense okay so one thing i saw see this fits either of my other podcasts commercials or cleaning because just not this one just not the one you're on not the one that i'm talking on currently so let's do it here and then i'll clip it and play it in the other two um i think that's really interesting you know one of the things i like to talk about when we talk about commercials isn't just like did that make me laugh or feel or whatever but like what they are marketing specifically and and who like they see whatever brand i'm talking about here who they see as their competition and i noticed something interesting in a bounty uh paper towel commercial recently usually i think of a paper towel commercial if they are competing or if they're if they're talking about a competing brand they're talking about a competing brand of paper towels think about the quicker picker upper right it'll be like here's a here's a cheapo paper towel look how it's not picking up the blue liquid but the bounty the quicker picker upper does a great job you know my problem with those bounty ads right quickly um the uh the ones where they go in slow

motion yeah it's very clear that the glass the cups they're using are they're supposed to look like glass but they're plastic and that the ice cubes are plastic and it's and they think that nobody's noticing but i want to tell you bounty i'm noticing you are noticing i'm noticing i just

looked it up it says it uses real ice

in those commercials

there's a whole thing in medium about this

I could I could just tell there's a pro publica piece. I heard the craziest pro publica piece. Everybody listen to this. When you get a chance, if you, it's called eat what you kill. And it was this piece about a cancer doctor in Montana who was basically just billing, like he was the highest, like the highest billing doctor in America for doing cancer. He was the only doctor. And among other things, there was a guy who thought he had lung cancer for 11 years and got all the treatments and never had the cancer because the guy didn't actually carefully read the scans like can you imagine living 11 years under the impression that you had stage four lung cancer and in fact you did not have it no i cannot although that's sort

of foreshadowing of something okay kind of related to some a voicemail oh yeah i know i know what i know about a diagnosis but back to bounty and back to bounty i think it's interesting that usually a brand will sort of use stand-ins for like maybe generic other brands look we're better than the other brands but what i saw on the television recently and i only saw this once so i'm kind of going from a just one viewing here but bounty clearly is now going after regular towels because i think more and more people are concerned about their carbon footprint or just using too much paper or what have you and so this last wait they're going after cloth they're going after cloth towels i saw jumping species and i'm trying to remember exactly what it was but i think what it was was they showed somebody wiping their hands on like a kitchen towel that was like on the on the counter or whatever then they showed like one of those fake germs or one of those fake scientific they showed two hands right and one that was dried after you wash your hands look at these two hands one was dried with the dish towel that you have sitting on the counter and the other yeah and so i was like and you know one thing we talk about on spotless is you know trying to especially since When I'm cleaning, cleaning comes first and carbon footprint comes second or third or fourth. But I've been trying to be, you know, I've really changed a lot of my purchasing decisions, I would say.

I've got this Clorox spray that I use in my bathroom. It's honestly probably the biggest dopamine hit that I get these days is walking into my bathroom after I've just absolutely annihilated it with this Clorox spray. Yeah.

It's so great. When I do the deep clean in the bathroom, I need a bleach-based cleaner for sure. um but anyway having said that i just thought it was pretty diabolical of bounty to say you know what we're losing it's so interesting how you can see a commercial and then learn about the marketplace right like clearly what bounty is losing market share to is not other paper towels they're more concerned about people saying why am i using so many paper towels and now bounty's like no no you need us your your kitchen towel is dirty and it has germs in it scum yeah look at under a Black light, you're all blue.

It's, like, and of course, if you shine that black light on any part of the standard kitchen, maybe not your kitchen, Andrew, because you are a meticulous person, but, like, yeah, any product, like, that's such an interesting way to sell any product. Because, honestly, like, imagine it's, like, a car dealer, or it's a car maker, and they're just, like, you know, road and track picked it as its best midsize SUV of 2024. Also, look at this actual zoom-in on the car seat of the other leading competitor. it's just mostly butt grease it's all farts it's just all farts man all the way down like if we if we a decent john green book by the way farts all the way down um you know what i mean though it's like it's like it's the it's the reason that like uh i would never ever ever want to shine a black light in a hotel room even in a very nice hotel room because i would never want to shine a black light in my own home like there if we if this is what we're talking about if we're zooming in this way on anything it's all covered in butt grease everywhere all of it you don't want

to shine i'll tell you what you don't want to shine a black light on my black light no that's

one of them actually that's the irony andrew and that's the irony yeah um you know what i mean but like that and also you're right it's like either bounty either bounty has so fully dominated its foes in the paper towel market um or or they just yeah their market research shows that the people that don't buy as much bounty or as much just paper towel product a year are people who are using a conventional dishrag or towel for their countertop and then presumably washing it at times you know what i this is so i wanted to talk tarps and now i'm talking uh micro micro uh fabrics or you know like when i bought my sink for the kitchen in my house it came with like I'm gonna I'm gonna call it a microfiber towel do you know what I'm talking about that particular material it's kind of synthetic but it's I guess it's good at like maybe shining things or something like you're not talking

about microfiber are you talking I don't know is it is it like the Turkish dish

towel thing the little squares no it's not let me see if I can find yeah I think it's actually called microfiber

Maybe something you said I don't fiber towel. Okay. I'm looking at one now. I'm seeing I'm

Googling this as we speak like it basically like I think that the maker of this sink is called like maybe Coast K it's like European yeah diamond textured well I don't know if this is what I'm looking for anyway, sorry. I'm getting I'm getting distracted Yeah, you line microfiber heavyweight towel dark blue. Okay, that's kind of what this is it's it basically just came with the sink for some reason and it has their little logo on it which i think it's like k o h l or something makes this sink with like an umlaut on it oh cool it's yeah cool it's so it this towel is so great oh nice i love it so much and like you know it came with a little hook that you can hook on the sink and and and i don't know if i don't know what it's exact if it's you know the the sink itself or sorry the the faucet let me Let me just be clear. Was this the sink or the faucet? This is the faucet. This came on the faucet, not the sink.

So that's why you said that they kind of market it as, like, to clean up and, like, polish your faucet. Like, you probably have a nice faucet, yeah.

I guess, but what's insane is it is somehow resistant to ever picking up a funky smell. Like, it is so—and when I, you know, when we put the sink in or, rather, the faucet in and stuff, and I was like, oh, look at this little, like—I'm like, I'm an idiot who's going to put this, like, faucet branded towel on my sink yeah right nice try guys for getting me to like just display your merch like if i decide i need one of these towels i'll just buy one you know from bed bath and beyond or something well i threw it on there just like well where am i going to put this right now and i have used it every single day that i've lived in this house and it's amazing i think i've washed it like one time i probably should wash it again but every time i use it so i'll use it to just kind of like you know clean up if there's any water that comes off of the faucet that's around the sink area, I'll kind of wipe the faucet off it is space age technology and it's, and I keep having this thought, and this is very much how my broken brain works, I keep thinking I need to get more of these, this thing's amazing therefore I must have many of them and I haven't yet, I haven't bought any more, it's the only one, but it is, I just can't recommend it highly enough, whatever it's

called. Wait, speaking of broken brains, my brain is now going back to something we just said do we just call your faucet coal or Kohler? It's not Kohler. Oh, it's not Kohler. I'm sorry. It's not Kohler.

You said Kohl, but I knew what you meant. I knew you were thinking of Kohler.

Yeah, I was thinking of Kohler. And then Kohl's is a brand of housewares and stuff. So I don't know what you're talking about. My apologies.

It's some European brand. I mean, I bought it through Home Depot or something. It's not that fancy. But yeah, I'm looking at these. They're called microfiber cleaning cloths or something. I'm looking at them on Amazon.com. And, yeah, it's just Every day that I pick it up to, like, do Some kind of a little wipe down Of some part of the kitchen, I go like I just think, like, wow, you have Exceeded, I'm very lonely By the way, at this house, Andrew, as I'm talking to the Dish towels, you have exceeded My wildest expectations Sir, and maybe this is what Bounty is Worried about, if the word gets out About these fine microfiber Cloths Then, cause, truthfully If I did have just kind of like a stack of these, I don't know how they would perform with like, I spray a lot of like Mrs. Myers on the surfaces of my kitchen, you know, the countertops and stuff. Now, I've never used one of these in concert with that. That is a paper towels job in my mind. When you clean the, when you spray some kind of cleaning supplies, some kind of Mrs. Myers on your countertops in your kitchen, what do you then wipe them with? A paper towel?

Paper towel 90% of the time. One thing I've been doing, it used to be 110% of the time.

But 100% of the time, it worked all the time.

I am trying to use fewer paper towels. So Bounty, I don't know if this is actually. You're going to put a Bounty on your head. I got to use this as a show pick. This is so disgusting.

So ditch the dish towel for better hand hygiene.

Oh, wait, I started too late. But they literally have a, they literally put hands under a black light here.

Bounty versus the old family dish towel. Drying with a fresh sheet of Bounty leaves your hands cleaner than a used dish towel that can carry and redistribute food residue. So ditch the dish towel for better hand-hunting.

You just see these two hands under a black light, and one of them is all nasty. But I have been trying to do a better job of keeping lots and lots and lots of dish towels in the kitchen and using them a lot more than just turning to a paper towel. Like, we grew up in a very paper towel-heavy family, like, big time. And so now I always have a couple of towels going in the kitchen. Like, one, I try to reserve for as long as possible and sort of, like, dedicate it somehow by hanging it on a special hook or hanging it over the dish drying rack. I try to, like, keep that one just for dishes as long as possible. But eventually, if you're in there cooking that, somebody's going to grab that and wipe their hands with it. And then it's going to become, like, an all-purpose towel in the kitchen and just kind of constantly, like, what, you know, wiping your hands on it or wiping the counter. without any kind of mrs meyer substance but then what i'll do is if the counter is especially dirty i might spray on some mrs meyer's wipe it down with that towel but then throw that towel immediately into the washing machine which by the way another reason i like having that washing machine close to the kitchen because i can walk you know you know four steps and throw it into the washing machine um and then i would say give give a you know give this microfiber thing a chance yeah i'm about to

Order like a 15 – not a 15-pack, but like a six-pack of these things.

Hannah does something. I don't know if – I don't think they're microfiber, but they're some sort of like – she gets them from Marley's Monsters, which is like kind of, again, a kind of cleaning supply company that has its eye on, you know, being earth-friendly or what have you. And they have like what they call like reusable paper towels. They're not paper. They just say that's to sort of get you in the mindset of how to use these things where she'll like roll them up like she throws them all in the washing machine. And then when they're clean, she like kind of rolls them up and puts them in some sort of a container where you can almost pull them out like like a Kleenex or something like that and then use it for a while like you're using your microfiber. And then when it's done, throw it in the washing machine and pull another one out of the out of the container.

Fun. Yeah. I'm I'm I'm just you know, it's I guess you could say ironic that this whole conversation. Conversation has been motivated by Bounty's attempts to get us to basically, like, ditch the old forests. Ditch that old forest that's been helping oxygenate the planet and get on to something that you use once and throw out. But it's driven me now to order some Mr. Siga microfiber cleaning cloths, all-purpose microfiber towels, and see if maybe I could use these in lieu of so much paper towelage in my own house. Because, again, the one version of this I have is phenomenal.

Now, you haven't used this particular brand before, and you don't know exactly how it's going to turn out. I don't know how it's going to go. So I would buy at least 1,000. Well, yeah, that's the minimum order. You have to buy at least 1,000. Lock into it without actually knowing if it's going to serve your needs.

Yeah. Let's thank some donors, and then—

you didn't like me roasting you there like I wrote no no I did I'm just I've got a situation

out no I have a situation outside Andrew that is just ridiculous this tarp thing is like I can see it from here it just went into like a it's I'll tell you about it after the donors okay it's just basically like the number one again this is I guess a testament to how how low stress my life is but the number one stress in my life right now is this tarp that I'm looking at so let me tell you about that in a minute all right let's thank some of our donors who are keeping us in microfiber money not macro fiber we're no we're no my favorite murderer we're not macro fiber rich

but we are microfiber uh capable yeah i mean someday we might be microfiber i don't know You know what I've been thinking about a lot today? And I feel like I already led us on a bit of a clunky start to the show. So my apologies for bringing this up. But I've been thinking a lot about the lyrics to the song Mr. Jones this morning by Counting Crows. Yeah, yeah.

Down at the new Amsterdam. Yeah. Mr. Jones strikes up a conversation with a black-haired flamenco dancer. Keep going.

i always liked that song but i was like we all want it's like i want to be a lion we all want to pass as cats i don't understand what passing means does that mean like we do we want to be cats do we want to live we all want to be big big stars and then it's like first of all i don't want to be a big big star i want to be like maybe a microfiber star that that's fine i was like well i reject that but then i was then i was going back and i'm like what does it mean pass as cats i'd understand if you said like we all want to live as cats and that means maybe you're an indoor cat and you're snuggling all the time and you can be bossy to the people you live with and aloof but you still get fed because you're a little princess cat i could see that or if it's a jungle cat thing he says i want to be a lion um i i want to be you know out in the jungle and and king of the jungle and all that stuff i could see that but what is pass as cats does that mean that like really i'm a human and by the way we're going to thank the donors in just a second here but i am a human

So this is the highest thanks that we can offer the donor, just deep diving on Counting Crows lyrics.

It's about time. What does pass mean? Like, I'm in a club, and somebody's like, is that a cat? I don't think it's a cat, but he can pass as a cat.

Yeah, I mean, so the song is, I guess, about somebody who's going down to, like, a strip club. Or at least, I think Adam Duritz is, you know, he's down at the New Amsterdam, staring at this yellow-haired girl. Mr. Jones strikes up a conversation with a black-haired flamenco dancer. You know, she dances while his father plays guitar. Maybe it's not a strip club. I didn't see it as a strip club.

Mr. Jones' dad is there? No, I think this is just like a dance. It's a fun time.

But also, Mr. Jones' dad is playing guitar at the club? Probably an old man. I've never even considered this.

Probably an old man playing flamenco guitar while there's dancing going on.

While his son, Mr. Jones, is in attendance?

Well, he's just like, yeah. Make some friends your own age, Mr. Jones. No, no, he's in the band. He's not hanging out. So it's a father-son act? No, Jones isn't performing. Jones is just there hanging out with Adam, right? They're just like hanging out in like an old school. Andrew, let me read you.

I'm just reporting the facts here. I was down at the New Amsterdam staring at this yellow-haired girl. Mr. Jones strikes up a conversation with a black-haired flamenco dancer. Okay, so imagine this. Adam Duritz, he's at the New Amsterdam. He sees Mr. Jones. He's striking up a conversation. That guy is striking up a conversation with a black-haired flamenco dancer. All these people are probably in their 20s. yeah she dances while his father plays guitar yeah she's suddenly beautiful and we all want something beautiful man i wish i was beautiful so what we've established is that mr she's dancing while mr jones's dad is playing guitar yeah i just never i did not know that this was like a intra-generational thing going on at the new amsterdam intra or inter i see it as a very

like kind of yeah like kind of cozy familiar place where and i don't take like i don't think the yellow haired girl is it yellow haired girl i didn't take that as another dancer or or performer but maybe just another girl who's there just like it's like a bar you know yeah okay so back to your

question uh i want to be a lion yeah everybody want to pass us cats we all want to be big big stars yeah but we got different reasons for that believe in me because i don't believe in anything and i want to be someone to believe to believe to believe yeah i do like that song especially I mean, you don't have to tempt me with a good time when it comes to the counting crows. But that being said, I don't actually know what he means by pass as cats.

Yeah. And also, I mean, I guess he's talking about his particular circumstances and I shouldn't take it so literally. But I guess I was this morning. I don't know. Maybe it's because I looked at my cat. I don't know why. If that's the case, you'd think I'd have this song in my head every day. For some reason, though, literally that line has been going over and over.

Do you think that maybe there's something going on with Mr. Jones's father where he needs full time care? So he's just bringing him to the new Amsterdam. I don't think so. I think that he has been— Maybe he's starting to become forgetful.

I think that he's been playing guitar there for a long, long time.

Well, that's muscle memory. That's one of the last things to go.

Right. Well, I appreciate your concern. They do this in retirement homes.

They play music because that's a deep part of the brain that doesn't forget.

Are you thinking that Mr. Jones has one of those cats that's very realistic, but it's actually a robot cat? That's a different song. Okay.

You know who knows—who could probably explain most of this to us is Emily Todd, who's in Torrance, California. I'm sorry, Emily, but thank you for donating to the show. Our first donor of the day. Thanks, Emily. Thanks also to Cassie Fontenot of Monroe, Washington. Nice. A nice pronunciation of that.

I was looking at that. It's one of my specialties. I was like, Fontenot. But no, of course, it's Fontenot, yes.

Yeah, you would Fontenot mess up her name, Andrew, anymore. Is Cassie the one who owns a pizza joint in Monroe? We had some listeners, a listener that owned, I want to say it's called Sahara Pizza in Monroe, Washington. Oh, wow.

Well, then let's support Sahara Pizza.

And if not, you know, shout out to whoever that listener was and shout out to Cassie.

Yeah. Appreciate the support over the years. Apologize for pushing so much business to Spiro's. I like Spiro's as well, but I mean, if we have tens running pizzerias.

This is the billboard budget for that pizza place is potentially being spent here on TBTL. So we've got to give them some earned media. By the way, we might not even be talking about the same person in Monroe. Malia Mayer is in Wenatchee, Washington.

Thank you, Malia.

Beautiful Wenatchee. Apple country out there. Just a glorious, glorious part of the world.

That's another thought I had today that I can totally, totally dismantle the show with, which is I was cutting up an apple. I ate about two-thirds of an apple this morning as a little breakfast, and it was so good. And I literally had this thought, you know, we're always talking about bad apples, but we don't talk enough about good apples, and that was a really good apple. It was a Fuji. That's my apple of choice. I assume you do not have an apple of choice because you're not a big fruit guy. You do, okay. What's your fruit of choice?

It's a green apple. Yeah. Granny Smith.

Granny Smith, yeah.

Because those are incredibly healthy. Oh, are they? Oh, they're like, they have, they're very, as far as apples go, they're very, like, low sugar. They're very, they have high fiber. They're like, they're like kind of a health food, And I know this because Becca has told me this, and she knows everything about this kind of stuff. Like, historically, when I was much more obsessed with, like, trying to have no carbs in my life, which what a fun way to go through life that was, I didn't eat a lot of fruit because a lot of it has a lot of... natural sugar in it but a granny smith apple is like a a wonder food and i also like the tartness

i did not know that must be why i'm so healthy because i've been eating a lot of granny smith

lately they're good for you dude i love them like just know next time you're eating granny smith

apple you're doing your body a favor that was always my go-to apple until i started eating some fugees and i really like fugees they're a little bit sweeter than a green apple but i love the tartness of a green apple and then for some reason the fugees at my local grocer were not looking so great earlier this year so i was like well let's get back on this granny smith train and i just was i was just pounding are you supposed to pound them i was just housing those yeah ready or not here you come yes right it's a fuji's reference i got it yeah oh okay i got that one

i got that one sure casting my pearls before swine today malia mayor is in wenatchee washington we just said that denise tipton is in las vegas nevada i call it lost wages nevada oh because

Because you go there and you gamble and you lose your wages. No, because they are taxing the tips of the hardworking service workers.

They're losing their wages. And that's going to change pretty soon, folks. Thank you, Denise. Thanks to Karen Tarantyev of Kent, Washington.

Tarantyev?

Tarantyev?

Tarantyev? Could the J? Maybe we've got a sneaky J in there. That J is probably a Y, though. Tarantyev? In Kent, Washington.

Thanks to Karen Sneaky J. Yes. Of Kent, Washington. and then Joni Karnowski of Long Beach, California. What a great little trip around the West. We've got Torrance, we've got Monroe, Washington, Wenatchee, Las Vegas, Kent, and then down to Strong Beach where Joni is. Thank you to all of our donors. Thanks for making TBTL possible. We would not be here without you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. I want to apologize that I do seem so distracted, Andrew. You know, you and I are on a video link, and you can see me, you can see my eyes kind of darting probably over in the direction out of the frame kind of constantly because there is a big— Well, you're always a little shifty, so I'm— I think I'm even extra shifty today, though. Oh, okay. I didn't notice. Okay. And it's because—so last week I was telling you about my attempts to set up this thing called a rapid shelter, which was a very misleading name. uh... you know one of those canopy things that you can use for camping or farmers marketing or whatever you might use it for and uh... i was setting this up because i was trying to create a non it's sort of a covered area for this guy who's cutting tile at the at the at the house uh... he needed somewhere that was dry to do this work that wasn't inside the house i think because it creates a ton of dust we may actually find out just how much dust later i'll explain

Can you tell us about how many days work this is expected to be, or was expected to be? I don't know where you are in the process.

It's, no tile has yet been cut. Hardy backer, Hardy board has been screwed down over the floor and into the shower area and stuff. So basically prep work is being done. All the tiles, all the stuff is here to do this, but as of yet, and so I guess my hope is like Friday, optimistically, but one of the things that I've learned about all of this trade work is, it happens on its own timeline, and the folks doing it, in my experience, at least at this house, are, you know, how do I put this? It's not usually the kind of thing where someone shows up at eight in the morning and leaves at seven at night. It's kind of like a, kind of, it sort of has to do with their schedule, maybe in other work they're doing or how they're feeling that day or what have you. It's usually sort of like, they show up when they show up, they work for the amount of time that they work and then they leave. i would say that's probably one of the pluses of doing this kind of work you know is that you get to you don't exactly set your own schedule the other thing that i've learned about trades trades guys is there's nothing that a trade guy likes more than sitting in his truck for up to 30 minutes after he's arrived at your house it's a big part of the lifestyle and it's it's that sounds like i'm saying it bothers me it doesn't it's just something that i've noted across all trades Whether they're electrical, whether they are plumbing, whether they are tile work, whether they are sheet rockers, it's the move is you pull up in the truck and then you stay in the truck for like a while. And then eventually. And the reason I noted is because usually if somebody pulls up, I'm going to come out and say, you know, hey, welcome or, you know, how's it going? I will greet them. And what I've learned now is just because the truck is in the driveway, it does not mean the person is going to materialize anytime soon.

you know why probably because there's probably business and paperwork and various other things and the truck is sort of the office you know what i mean like you're probably stopping and then like looking okay these emails came in and this job and you got to like you know there are probably times where you've been well i was going to say texting with but i know that your guy doesn't like a text but you know you've called your tile guy well he's probably sitting in his truck at some other site while he's you know making plans to visit your site tomorrow or what have you and that's that's maybe just where the

business gets done i think you're right i do think that this is it is a mobile office for some of these folks i would also say that it is not um in my experience a communication uh format that has involved any emails ever once so i don't know what's yeah probably filling out some invoices and and doing whatever but all that is to say i set up this shelter last week and the problem is the area of my little yard it's not even my yard that's the problem it's a it's like a patio is what is right next to my front door and that means you cannot like nail down there you know these these these shelters are a design so that they have an area in the each there's four posts obviously then you can nail a big old stake down through a hole in them that would attach them to the ground you can't do that if they're on the cement maybe you've been to a farmer's market or something we've noticed they have like sandbags that they'll put down yes i was picturing that

when you finished your sentence yesterday by saying that you employed some buckets which i think you're getting into now i was assuming that these were going to be sand filled buckets or

sand filled bags or something um those sandbags that you will see would not even begin to hold down that stupid rapid shelter that's now literally in a pile up in my debris debris area um i hung these buckets of water and um and i only had three of them well really what it was is i was running late to go do live wire and i'm running around in my yard filling up these buckets of water like a demented mickey mouse from fantasia or something and trying to hang them and coming hang them like above the height of my head which first of all just weighs a lot and was risking a spill a dumping of a bucket over me full of water like it was really cartoonish what was going on but i did i managed to get three of them hung up full of water and and left and thought well at least i did that at least that's secure and then of course i uh end up uh going to la for work and then i get a call on saturday from the tile guy going just so you know that entire thing blew over and there is no saving it so i was like okay so i come home and it's just in a twisted wreckage so i mean like bent like it's okay so fine now that thing has bit the dust so i i fold it up and break it down and go you know dispose of it or whatever i put it in the area where it will be disposed of eventually and i had what i thought was actually a fairly clever solution which was like i can't this one of these setup canopy things will never work in this space because there's not a way to ever actually anchor it down sufficiently unless i guess what i could do is literally drill into the patio and you know have like some kind of permanent thing where i screw it down and then anytime i want to use these that's what i do but that would just be a huge hassle i don't know if i have the proper drill for that i don't even know if i know how to do that and you don't have

the permanent need probably right yeah so what i thought i would do is i would go and buy a tarp

And what I would do is I would put some screws some like eye hook screws pretty burly ones into the side of my house And I would hook cuz you know these tarps that you buy at like Home Depot. They've got these grommets in them They're like, you know, these like eye holes that are grommeted in in the corners and stuff And I thought I will get one of those and I will Attach it to the side of my house, and then I will tie it off with some rope in the other direction and I will create a little Canopy there that is not like A thing that is sitting on a metal Structure that could blow away if it gets You know And then the tile guy shows up yesterday And I go is this going to be big enough and he goes Not even close actually what he said was Not even close I was like really and he's like well yeah Because if the rain goes sideways then I'm like Well maybe you get wet I'm not sure Like I mean I don't know How delicate are we with this but anyway It's like okay well I'll go work on that tomorrow I'll have to, I'll work on that later. Okay.

This does seem, this all began, if I recall, if I remember my TBTL history, which is important. You are in such, such a dangerous zone of repeating it, Andrew. This started with him saying, well, I need, I need a dry place to cut the tile, which like at very first blush, that seems very reasonable. Like, okay, there is electrical. Yeah, and like, okay, you can open up the, you know, maybe if you had a different setup, somebody could say, okay, well, I'll open up my garage door, you know, and I'll park in the driveway.

Yes, that would have made, if I wasn't sitting in the garage right now, Andrew, that would have been the solution.

I guess my point is, at what point does this, I feel like it is up to the contractor to bring what they need in order to get their job done, especially if you're working outdoors in the Pacific Northwest. Now, I understand. Here's what I'm troubling out here. We had workers come.

let's see, to paint the house last year. I'm trying to remember because I know that we've had workers over here who have come with these exact things, Luke, like these tent kinds of things that they had here for several days and they would work underneath them. But I guess the difference is that is outdoor work, so they're prepared to do it. This guy, he looks at his work as being indoor work because he's tiling your kitchen, but there's just no room to cut inside, or I'm sorry, bathroom or whatever. I treat them exactly the same. if you ever want to come over for dinner no wonder you've had to replace all your appliances and towels you do not want to put my towels in your black light no but you see what i'm saying i'm just sort of trying to puzzle this out because i know that some contractors would like hey if this is a definite need you have then dude you need to provide it but maybe i'm misguided in that because he sees this as indoor work and he's not coming around with like tents all this is a

you raise an interesting point and you raise a point that has been jangling around in my head a lot as i've been on a ladder getting pummeled by rain this morning because so i was like okay the first tarp is too small all right so i go and i get this other tarp a big one that i uh i bring back and what i should have done when i got back from home depot last night it was getting kind of dark and honestly i was just like tired and wanted to make some dinner and i didn't feel like dealing with it and i said i'll deal with it in the morning that was a critical error because because it was not raining last night the way it was this morning. So it was miserable being out there. And it's so, the other thing is where I live is in a perpetually sort of windy area. And I didn't really factor that in when I bought the house or when I thought about the outdoor. I mean, in the summertime, it's fine. You've been here. It's not like it's constantly windswept, but it is the case that it gets gusty up here. so i buy like a much larger tarp one that's like i want to say maybe 12 by 20 i think and here was one thing like i was surprised if you buy a really heavy duty tarp it's like a couple hundred dollars like which it seems amazingly expensive for something that's just like whatever it's made out of you know some kind of a plasticky thing and so i bought a like a lighter duty tarp which would turn out to probably be a mistake because i thought well i don't know this needs to just stay up for like a few days and just create a little bit of rain protection so i get up this morning and i now i had screwed like i had screwed these eye hooks into the house for the other tarp but of course the sequencing of the little grommets of the little circular things in this tarp is different so i have to pull the eye hooks out and change them so that they are in the right position to basically hook this tarp up to my side of my house and it's just torrentially raining and this thing is enormous it's like a you know it's like a parachute of plastic that's whipping around on me i have to be on a ladder to do this by the way yeah and in the rain in the rain i'm also in my running clothes because what i was going to do is go on my run and then just on the treadmill and afterwards i was going to come deal with this but then i started messing with it on my way out to my jog you know how that goes like i was like well let me just see if and then next thing you know i'm just in it i'm just doing it and i'm like miserable and and like um i'm like so i'm hooking it uh i'm hooking it up on the side of the house and i'm putting these you know more and more hooks into the side of my house then i'm i'm tying the other side of it i'm tying the um with ropes like

I bought some rope at Home Depot, and now the problem is this thing, and I'm looking at it right now, is so wind-whipped that within, like, 10 minutes of me tying it off, so I tied it with rope to, like, actually the Madrona Hill Studio, the eyelet that that's tied off to, I go look at it, and I can see that it's almost 80% of the way ripped out of the tarp. Does that make sense? Like, this is, the thing is already ripping.

The eyelet on the tarp. The little circle that's on the tarp that's made out of metal, the grommet. That's already tearing.

That's already tearing. Because it's just like, I haven't even seen the movie The Perfect Storm. But I feel like a scene like this happened in The Perfect Storm. The wind is whipping. The rain is going sideways. You're dangerously standing on the crow's nest of the ship sailing out of Gloucester.

Sebastian Younger is standing next to you and you feel deeply ugly next to him.

I've experienced that, by the way. I've interviewed him, and it's exactly what it feels like.

He's a very handsome man.

He is, devastating himself.

You actually, dare should I say was?

Is. I thought... Are you thinking Sebastian Junger's not alive?

Why am I thinking that? I thought that that was something that happened, but I'm glad to be wrong.

I am confusing him with another journalist who, another handsome journalist who is known for putting himself in, um, in dangerous situations.

Tim something?

Maybe. Okay. Anyway, I am glad to say, I am, I'm sorry for even raising that. I am glad to say that Sebastian Younger, according to Wikipedia, is an American journalist, not was. So thank you.

And is doing, is doing well and being handsome. Yes. And, uh, and I could have used his help today, Andrew, because I get this whole thing like hooked up and and then i i like again i'm i like i come into the madrona hill studio to like turn on the treadmill and get ready to do it and i look out the window and i can just see that the thing is already basically tearing itself into shorts and it's and it's also coming unhooked from the hooks because it's blowing around so much that i mean what i really needed to do what i need to do is get up on a ladder and crimp with a set of pliers close the hooks a little bit more so that they're, you know, not letting it escape. So what do I do? I get a knife. This is where it gets real, like, this is where it gets real, you know, perfect storm. Again, I assume this also happened in the perfect storm. I get a knife out of my kitchen because what I realize I think I need to do is cut some flaps in the tarp because part of what's making it so crazy is the wind whipping, it has no way to get through the tarp other than just trying to basically literally turn my house into something out of the movie up.

Well, I was going to say, like, before you said that the grommet or whatever is being ripped out of the tarp, I thought you were going to say that your entire studio was going to be just taken up into the skies via the wind. It feels like it. But, yeah, what you're saying makes sense. Now, I would be nervous cutting this tarp. And also, by the way, if you're going to keep on evoking the perfect storm, you better have put this knife in your teeth. I did.

I was like a Tampa Bay Buccaneer mascot circa the 1980s, like Steve Young era of Tampa Bay.

When you go or if you're passing by a construction site, often they'll put those big tarps, almost like privacy screens around the fence or what have you, and you'll always see that they have big holes kind of cut or like flaps kind of cut. They're not holes that you can see through, but it lets the wind go through. That would be important, yeah.

But, of course, this tarp doesn't have those, and now I'm just making them.

now i'm just like out there with a knife thing and it was expensive yeah no this one wasn't this

was this was the problem i went with the like 20 one instead of the 200 and i think i'm noticing the difference i see so because again i didn't want to spend all that money on a tarp i just thought you know this will be so so i'm i'm out there in the rain now i still haven't started my jog and i'm cutting these flaps into this thing um uh to try to keep it uh from tearing itself apart like I like to create a little bit of pressure release, I guess. And so then I'm tying some of the other grommets down. So I'm trying to take some pressure off of this one that I can already see ripping. It's just a situation with this. And the whole time that I'm up there, I keep going in my mind, like, is this the only solution? Like, how much of my life is going to be dedicated to trying to figure out this tarp situation? And then I'm getting kind of like frustrated with my guy, which is not really fair to him yet. Like I'm having a conversation with him that hasn't occurred yet. I'm in the shower now and I'm thinking if he comes up and says, this isn't going to work, I'm literally going to go, I don't know what to do, dude. Like this is, this is attempt number three. And it really disrupted my morning. And like, I don't know, could we cut it in the, in the bathroom where the tiles go? Like, what do we, like, this, I felt like, like, really going, like, this cannot take up any more of my brain space anymore, this tarp, okay? We have to, I don't know, figure it out. That's what I wanted to say. That isn't what happened. He did pull up as I was coming up to do the show, and he was chilling in his car, in his truck, smoking a ciggy, and he just, he just rolled his window down. He just started laughing, looking at the tarp. Now, I don't know what that means, but that's the. Oh, usually something good.

Is that, usually, is that a. I think so. In some cultures, that's a compliment, Andrew.

so I don't know I'm just but here's the thing I'm looking at it right now and what I will tell you is that the thing that I'm afraid the corner piece that I'm afraid of it tearing out hasn't yet torn out I don't know if it's just a matter of time it is like a very fluid situation it is not like some kind of a nice stable covering that the rain is just shedding off of and that creates a nice dry space for a person to work it is like it is a wild whipping i keep using that the wrong analogy really as far as like nautical movies it's this is much more like a sailing ship kind of a thing this is much more of a you know like moby dick or something or like one of those you need to batten down the hatches hatches need to be battened like it has much more

to do with like a squall happening out on the ocean and you're trying to figure out how to deal with the sails. You didn't get the sails down in time. That's much more our situation. So even while my guy is under there working, he's like, at the best, he has this rollicking, ripping, giant piece of, what do you think they make these? Why can't I think of the word that this kind of stuff is made out of? It's not strictly plastic.

Is it fiberglass-y plastic? It's not really fiberglass, though, either.

It's something else. It's like poly-something or other. I'm guessing poly's got to be involved. It's polyamorous. Yes. A polyamorous tarp.

So, I don't know. This is my whole morning. You know, I'm sorry. Did I get distracted? How did you respond to my question about whether or not we feel like any of this should be part of his toolkit? Well, this is the thing that I'm going to say. Oh, I see. He's there. That's why you didn't maybe address it. Well, no, no, he can't. I don't think you can hear me right now. Well, let's talk like this anyway. People are like that. Yeah, just to be the same.

It should be cool. It's funny because, it's funny the different personalities of the different kind of folks that I've had kind of out here working. And I'll just say that this fella is a very, very, you know, kind of a salty, you know, kind of older dude who's definitely, you know, seen a lot and becomes highly recommended, by the way. And I think it's going to do a really great job. but is like you know the kind of guy who was probably born with a cigarette in his mouth and and and it's just kind of like a pretty you know kind of you could say sort of rough around the edges and yet what i've found out is also a sort of a sensitive dude i think like keeps having me go into the bathroom to observe things about the process that i don't really understand or to honest with you care about like and and at first i thought oh we have a problem like well come on in here and take a look at this and i'm like oh no this is like is going to cost more money or is this like we've hit a dead end or you know we've hit a we've hit a a sort of a point where we can't go forward and what i've really what i figured out over the last few days is no he just wants to talk to me about it to be heard and then it just and then the then the work just continues so it's It's like, it's an interesting professional, I guess you would say, relationship to, maybe professional is the wrong word for it, but it's an interesting relationship to try to finesse because it's like, it's a little more finicky than I was expecting based on the like, you know, I could, I've also had folks working here who just like, are just standing around in the rain all day and just like, they're like, it's part of the job. You know who one of those workers is? My dad. Walt. I'm always like, hey, dad, do you want to? I'm like, we have umbrellas. He's like, no, it's what we do. That's my dad's big catchphrase now. It's what we do. Now? It's new? Yeah, he cycles through them. He also has been really leaning into Chinese bullshit again.

Oh, like about the cheap products that you're buying?

Yes, which it's really his way of just any time he encounters a frustration, it's now called Chinese bullshit.

Uh-huh, but he's saying that kind of knowingly because it had come up on the show when he was a little shiguring.

Yeah, and he knows it came up on the show, and he was like, I think he was maybe 5% embarrassed or something. But, like, he was putting up some window trim in this bathroom, and I was, I think I was, like, out of town, and I came home, and he said, And I said, Oh, it looks great, Dad. He goes, Yeah, well, there were some Chinese bullshit moments. That's our new, that's just code for, he hit a few moments where he thought this wasn't going to work, you know? And so – but anyway, all that is to say –

So right now, as you're distracted, you're not distracted because you're waiting for something to happen. You're just distracted because you're hoping that this tarp doesn't go flying off or that you don't go flying off into space.

I'm hoping to see what it's doing now, what it's already done once, and I just watched him go out and fix it, is it's coming unhooked on the side that's on these kind of like little eye hooks. That's the problem now is I need to go – I need to get up on a ladder, And I need to squish those down so that they don't have so much area that the grommet can slide off of. Yeah. Now the problem. So that's one thing that we have to solve. But again, I keep going back to this question of like, is like, could we just cut the stuff in the house? Which I actually think the ideas of avoiding that is because it's very dusty and we're trying to keep the house nice, which I appreciate, by the way.

Yeah.

I keep going like, yeah, can we bring our own stuff? Can we bring our own rain covering? Like, how is this, how is this something that I am spending as much time? And here's what I would think, Andrew, if this were, you know, you can hire trades people through like Home Depot or something. And, uh, my guess would be if I called like whoever the huge tile concern is down in Portland and they came out, they would charge me three times as much and they would bring their own shelter. Yeah. Sure. Of course. If need be. Or if I had hired someone through Home Depot, because they, you know, all that means is they use one of their preferred contractors who kind of comes out and does something. i'm sure there was a way for me to not have to deal with this and that way would involve spending an extra three or four thousand dollars yeah right yeah and that's how all this stuff goes it's this constant dance of like of like you know i don't know just trying to finesse these situations so that you're getting the best outcome while not overpaying and and maybe doing some things on your own because that keeps the price down um you know if you want to have white glove service on all of this and you want to never be on a ladder trying to lash a tarp to your house on a Tuesday morning, there's ways for that to be the case. I guess I'm just trying to take the road that cost me a little bit less, because as we've established, I have microfiber money, not macro-fiber money.

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.

By the way, this New Jersey story is... I'll just give you the one-minute version so we don't have to keep promoting it over and over again and not getting to it basically this uh guy named josh gottenheimer or gotheimer who's actually running for governor of new jersey uh was putting out a spotify wrapped and all it was was bruce springsteen songs and then people who knew what that was supposed to like a spotify rapper supposed to look like they quickly identified that this was like a photoshop job and and he basically said well yeah okay you caught me but the reason i photoshopped is because i share my spotify account with my kids and my numbers my wrapped was going to be skewed by the stuff they're listening to on my spotify account so this was me saying what i this was

aspirational oh my god i when i i did not read this full article because you specifically told me yesterday like not to you're gonna lay it out for me but when i read the headline and then the quick little you know headline blurb or whatever i thought that this was going to be maybe a mountain out of the molehill type of thing where like yes he photoshopped it but that was just kind of part of the bit maybe he didn't shine a light on it but it was a little tongue-in-cheeky like look it's the boss it's new jersey but there was but no he felt the need to explain and apologize to a degree like this really was him trying to kind of pull one off well yeah and he also was doing a very

like unfortunately a typical kind of i don't know if he's a maga republican or not but he was doing a very unfortunate kind of i would say trumpian thing oh by the way i guess he's actually a democrat so he's definitely not but he was doing this thing of like acting like it didn't i mean first of all does it really matter probably not but it was kind of like instead of going yeah you got me he basically said like um to paraphrase the boss i wasn't here for business baby i was only here for fun mr gottheimer wrote on twitter so just relax and then he pointed to his dog it's a joke to question my springsteen creds just ask my dog rosalita so he was like he wasn't apologetic and he wasn't being like oh yeah you got me he was kind of like yeah it doesn't matter it was all a joke and then what was amazing was somehow this led the new york times to run this correction in the second in an updated version of the story um a correction made on a december 11th 2024 article because of an editing error an earlier version of this article misstated the order in which the song ghetto superstar that is what you are appeared on the list provided by representative josh gottheimer's campaign it is number four not number three it did so okay i Yes, his real Spotify rap featured Ghetto Superstar as the number four song. He listened to that the fourth most of any song. Well, his kids did. But the New York Times, or his kids did, which is like, there's some old heads. What are they doing with that Pross Maya song that's not ripping off, but sampling and kind of a reimagining of the Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Islands in the Stream?

Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, that's Islands in the Stream. i honestly thought for a second i was so confused i was like wait did bruce springsteen cover that song that would be such a weird cover bruce springsteen doing ghetto superstar i'm tempted

to try and do an example of that here but i'm gonna spare the listeners of that but anyway i just i i thought that that correction was so was so weird i feel like that's his campaign trying to be like the failing new york times couldn't even get the order right of where ghetto superstar was on his rapt as a way of acting like the whole reporting was flawed. Right, right, right. Like, who wrote into the New York Times to say, just by the way, you got it wrong. The order of his actual Spotify rapt. Ghetto Superstar was number four, not number three. Get a clue.

What are you doing? This is bunk journalism right here.

Exactly. It's like this kick up a bunch of dust, try to act like, well, nothing in this story can be believed. They didn't even have the right order of where Ghetto...

No superstar falls on this guy's listening habits.

I will say that I, and this might just be a factor of age, but in recent conversations about Spotify wrapped, it does sort of seem like a lot of conversation I'm having with people are, well, it doesn't really matter because I share it with my family. You know what I mean? So it's also like, and so it is more of a young, I think Spotify wrapped might be more of a, it wasn't me. It wasn't me. All right. So in fact, mine, all top five songs were by Shaggy. I can only name one right now for private reasons. Can I play a quick voicemail for you? Because I sort of set it up earlier, and here's a reason I really want to get this in today is because I have another voicemail that I'd like to play for you later in the week that is, I think you're going to find it so delightful, and it is about Christmas times and Seattle nostalgia, and I think you're really going to love it. But we're going to start with a darker one today, And as this anonymous caller says, this is a this is a bit of a dark story, but she calls it in because you and I have been talking about our various trips to the doctor. About how good our bodies work. Exactly. And, you know, in trying to keep this show young, we spent almost all of last week just exchanging stories about going to get our blood tested and you going to get eye surgery and all of our all of our failings bodily. But anyway, one thing that you brought up is this thing that, first of all, they're always asking us our birthdays, right? Yes. Name and birthday, name and birthday. And it's their way of confirming, I guess, you know, that they're treating the right person or communicating with the right person.

And I was surprised at how often they ask that. And how, first of all, the fact that, like, is my birthday unique enough that that's, you know, makes it so that I could. Because weren't other people born on that same day?

But if you had an appointment at 3.30 on Wednesday, it just sort of confirms that you are the Luke Burbank in the books for this particular— That's a good point. That's what I'm sort of assuming. You know, maybe back in the early 90s, people weren't asking that so much, and that leads to this story. Oh, and by the way, I will say again, the listener does say this. This, you know, does—this is a bit of a dark voicemail, especially for the holiday season.

Hi, Luke and Andrew. This is a kind of dark story, but I think it explains why it feels so important for doctors to check and double-check birthdates and last names. My husband, oh, 30 years ago, you know, he was a teenager, and I don't remember why he went to the doctor, but he had something going on. But they did some blood work, and they came back, and he met with a doctor. And, again, like 15-year-old boy, they said, you know, we need to tell you that you have AIDS. And my husband was floored, was like, how could this happen? I've never even had sex. Like, how could this have happened? To which the doctor and his parents were like, well, it's time to be honest. You have. And I'm almost positive he hadn't even kissed anyone at this point. And he just thought, like, my life is over, and I don't know how this happened. And he was going through his head, like, I do think I stepped on a nail once. I sometimes sit down on toilet seats. Like, what could have happened? And they, you know, even when he protected that, like, this could not have happened to him, they were so certain because they had the results. um and i think it was like 24 hours he was certain that he was diagnosed with AIDS and this is like the 90s uh this is really dark uh he did not have AIDS they messed up the charts so i for one i for one stand by the uh birth date questioning love the show power out

that must have been a hell of a 24 hours.

I mean, can you imagine being the kid? Can you imagine being the parents? Like, just, I mean, everybody involved, like, your world. I know someone, by the way, who had this happen to them as well. True story.

Specifically with, like, HIV positive?

Yes, with HIV, yeah.

And it was another false, it was another, yeah.

What?

What it was was, yeah, yeah, no, and I will leave their name out.

How many times has this been happening?

Well, two that we are currently tracking.

Or you're friends with, or you know this person's husband.

No, no, no. This person is not married, as far as I know. This person was donating plasma. This is when we were all just shortly out of high school. Was donating plasma, and this was, again, the 90s, the mid-90s. You know, the idea of being HIV positive or having AIDS was a very, very, very different prognosis than it is now. And I just remember hearing...

from some from a third party that this person they were like did you hear so and so that they and i don't think we had a super nuanced idea of the difference between being hiv positive and actually having aids at that point you know so it was like did you hear that so and so has aids and what it was is that they had donated plasma and at the time the the the sort of the way that they set the screen if you will the the they for very obvious reason these blood donation or plasma donation places had to be unbelievably careful about the blood supply that was coming in because there in fact had been issues with that in the early days of HIV and so it was like a false positive because of the sensitivity level that was set on the screener but what happened was they couldn't get a hold of this person because this person was like in like living on the east coast for college and they called this person's parents oh my god and said what can you please come in we need to tell you your child has tested positive for hiv and so this person was under 18 at the time maybe just over 18 i don't know why they were allowed to tell to tell the parents if you're over 18 i mean maybe that maybe it was a thing where it was like this person gave permission to disclose the info i don't i mean i wasn't there for all but what i know is this person was not available to come in in person to alpha plasma center on crown hill and so it was their parents who received the news that this test and what they said was like you know there's a very small chance that's a false positive but we don't think so or whatever and it was the same kind of thing i don't think this person had actually that's not true i think this person had had a maybe a very brief sexual encounter in their life but it was like all that is to say this person really thought their life was was going to be over before it started and then they took another test let's say

three months later at an actual like facility that was testing for because this is still sort of a byproduct of just trying to donate plasma right so then you go to a doctor's office and

you have like more extensive i think that they went to a like a regular doctor yeah like a place that you know that and the test came back and they said um it doesn't show that you're hiv positive but that happens a lot so this doesn't mean that you're not hiv positive you have to take another test in like three months oh my god so then there was another three months and then finally like upon the second you're not you're not hva positive test they started to believe it more and i i almost think there might have been like a third test to exclude it before they would officially say okay

you don't have this so it's like potentially like a half a year or so of just probably of like at first thinking positive not thinking positively but thinking that you are positive and then and then thinking well maybe not but then just having that insecurity and just not

knowing i just i and the fact that again it was a death sentence in those days yeah yeah it was crazy and i would say that uh i think it really impacted this person's life because it was you know i think yeah it was a trajectory thing i think it really they've said to me before like this really this really did a number on me as you might imagine i mean probably if it was now you might all i mean i'm sure you sign a million forums that sort of you know um what's the word i'm looking for like i'm sure you sign a lot of forms that actually like mean that you can't the place can't be held liable if they if they tell you this news that turns out to be incorrect but it almost seems like today you might have a lawsuit or something for saying like you know emotional distress or something because it was emotionally very distressing as you might imagine

Well, I feel like you're already like kind of, you know, trying to tell this story, which I'm on the edge of my seat about, but being respectful of the person and people involved. So I don't mean to make you speak for them even more or certainly what goes on in their head and their heart. But when you say that it had an impact on their life, did you did you read that as a way of being like, well, in a certain way, it's made me appreciate life and the time I have here more like it is a combination of both like a traumatic. hangover from this but also well i'm certainly not going to let any uh time be wasted that i do

have here on earth i think it was more by their description like they went into a complete funk they they flunked out of college oh my god they like just didn't they just stopped leaving their dorm room and then and again i don't you know yeah that's the it's been expressed to me by this person that that was like they basically shut down after hearing this and they kind of never they did that that so then they end up leaving the college they were going to on the east coast and they and and then they kind of begin a somewhat peripatetic life that you know that maybe if that doesn't if they don't get that news maybe they they go to class they stay in college they their life looks they get their degree their whole like trajectory of their life different so it wasn't one of those like i take every single day as a gift i think it was more like i my my my got really messed up kind of mentally and emotionally and i kind of derailed

my life that is heartbreaking but the good news is crazy right tomorrow on the show i have a very fun voicemail about christmas trees that i'm gonna play for you find me a good voicemail about tarps

about a time when a tarp didn't blow away i'll take a picture of this crazy thing okay okay and we could use it for a show pic i mean i mean i have i have spent the show editing a photo of

those dirty ass hands under a black light oh do that we got ready to go very excited but i would still be interested in seeing this tarp the um the fact that these grommets are starting to um not hold in the tarp has definitely gotten me nervous i know that's the thing andrew that's

That's what I can't, it's like the one that's blowing off the hook, all I need to do is crimp the hook down so that they can't get away. That's fixable. The thing about this one grommet is it is the corner of the tarp. It is, it's a critical part of this. Yes. And as I'm talking to you, I'm just watching this thing whip in the wind. and I'm just all I can imagine is like that little metal ring working itself closer and closer to the edge to where it eventually just like rips yep and then and then you know we got

a whole new situation what is what is I asked this before and I don't know if you answered what do you think assuming that this thing you know goes according to plan how long does this tarp have to be up like all the rest of this week you think probably at least that yeah yeah well

yeah i mean i'm hoping that this stuff is in by i'm hoping that this stuff is in by friday it's actually a pretty small room it's not like it's it's not a massive amount of stuff the square footage of it it is a little detail oriented certain parts like i'm running subway tile all the way up from floor to ceiling on one end of the bathroom and going around this big circular window that me and my dad put in so circular window yeah that's a big circle yeah Yeah, there's some detail-oriented stuff going on. But, yeah, I'll see. I need to go. I haven't yet actually fully interacted with my guy about this, like if he thinks this is going to work or not. All right. We shall see. I'm going to go sit in my truck for a while. But the good news is we'll have a full update tomorrow. Nice. And that's the beauty, Andrew, of living your life on the imaginary radio. There's always an update for the listeners each day about whatever's going on.

And people are probably wondering also, I mean, this was sort of a sneaky one. I let fly earlier, but I only ate two thirds of that apple today, so listeners are probably curious. Are you letting sneaky ones fly? Yeah, they're like, will he eat the rest of the apple by showtime tomorrow? I guess. How good will Luke's

pizza beans be on day three? I guess we'll find out. The show is full of cliffhangers.

That's right.

Alright, thanks for listening, everyone. We will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you, so please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Try to stay out of the wind and rain. If you're here in the PNW and we will see you tomorrow. In the meantime, please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all.

Power out.