Muse

I used to be able to name every nut that there was, and that used to drive my mother crazy, because she used to say, Harlan Pepper, if you don't stop naming nuts, and the joke was, of course, that we lived in pine nuts, and I think that's what put it in my head at that point. So I'd go to sleep, she'd hear me in the other room, and she would just start yelling. That's like peanut, hazelnut, cashew nut, macadamia nut. That was the one that was sent her into a gone crazy.

TBTL You know, I would like to take this straw and stick it in your ear and extract everything you've ever thought or felt or seen or even dreamed about your profession. I gotta be honest with you, sir. The kind of work I do, I don't think it's as interesting as you think it is. My podcast is on life support. Hey, I need new listeners.

That was a joke. Humor is the tool of the interesting.

I was skeptical. It seemed too good to be true. I'm so glad I tried it.

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live don't go there my name is luke burbank i am your host brother who are you what are you doing coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia is what i'm doing uh weirdly bathed in sunlight on this wednesday it's sunny out oh ma pa it's just beautiful you could say the timing of that is pretty ironic considering i um spent the morning erecting my third count it third tarp in the last two days on the magic carpet and ride i now know exactly where they sell the tarps at harbor freight I've made friends there. We'll talk about it here on episode 4361 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

If you are, in fact, scoring at home, as I know many of you are. Some of you might be the folks who are using a bidet for your number two needs. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. And I saw an article in the Seattle Times, a Q&A, the headline, Should You Be Afraid of Your Bidet?

Could you come up?

We will tell you the pros and cons of using that particular modality to deal with your situations. And also, of course, we'll talk to this dude, longest running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. I've been collecting up some kind of direct messages from the listeners, and I tell him this with peace and love. I just want you to be normal, and clearly you're not. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. You are catching me in a pretty good mood because I, my friend, am so damn validated this morning. God, I love validation. Don't you love validation? Who doesn't? Few things are better. A good stretch, a good sneeze.

I'm at the age, though, my friend, where a good stretch can lead right into a good Charlie horse. Yeah, that's a bad stretch. I've actually got to be careful. Like, stretching and sneezing are two things that could really put me down for the day.

You've really got to plan sneezes at our age. You've got to really think, what's coming up this week?

Right. Like, reaching for my alarm, an unexpected sneeze, and a stretch that gets out of control are all things that can really put me into a bad situation.

But in the days and maybe even weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I don't know if you caught any of this. My guess is you did, because I think we subscribed to a couple of the same kind of morning news roundup emails. I, you know, subscribe to several of those of varying degrees of depth, I would say. And one of varying degrees of SponCon. Yes, exactly. And one of them that I subscribe to that is a little bit more on the Spawn Connie side or a little bit more like kind of pop culture headlines, I guess. It was I kept seeing this headline. I kept seeing this headline everywhere leading up to Thanksgiving, which was stop using your black spatulas. If you have if you have utensils that are made of black plastic, they are killing you. So it was like almost a parody of those kind of like scary headlines from the, you know, the popcorn you're eating.

What's in your children's vitamins could kill them more at 11.

Exactly. And I just, and I didn't even click on them because here's the.

deal here's something about me what is the what is the um tick tocky thing one one thing about me is that growing up my mom had a black spatula like a black handle get it spatula city spatula city spatula city spatula city um it was the classic kind with like a black plastic handle but then a metal then metal coming out of that and then plastic black spatula on the end of it I don't know. It was the one that my mom used. And, you know, as I became an adult, he used the kitchen more. We had spatulas in our kitchen. You know, I don't know where Genevieve and I acquired them. They just sort of, you know, you accumulate these things in your adulthood. None of them were black. But I remember being somewhere. I don't know if it was at a I mean, I feel like it might have been secondhand, but maybe not. But I saw like basically the spatula that reminded me of my childhood. And so I bought it and that's the one I use. And it's not even the best spatula. It's not the thinnest to get underneath like a fried egg. It's not one of those like fish spatulas now that I have.

I have one that are kind of, those are like, you can get underneath like, you know, who knows what. But those things are very, very, very handy. But this is not that. This is just a pure nostalgia play.

It's a nostalgia play. And again, it's not even like, you wouldn't look at it and be like, oh, that's Andrew's kitschy spatula. It's just one that spoke to me because it reminded me of the one that was around the kitchen when I was a kid. Anyway, I use that one quite a bit. In fact, I was using it on Thanksgiving. We had a gang over here of maybe, I don't know, maybe there were seven of us total. So maybe we had five house guests or something. And the foods I usually make for Thanksgiving are the last ones out the door and into the kitchen because they kind of can't sit for very long. And one of those is Brussels sprouts. So while I and I.

What do you do?

How do you how do you Brussels your sprouts? Saute. There's a very specific process to get that. Saute all day. To get them browned. Is that a T-shirt you'd wear? It is. Yeah, I'd wear almost any T-shirt underneath my button down. As long as it's clean and not too pitted out. But I was, there is a very specific process for sort of getting them right in a pan. But I've been doing it for a long, long time. And luckily, I was very nervous, in fact, about serving these for Thanksgiving. Because last year, I felt like I was disappointed in my work. But anyway, I was in the kitchen and there were a bunch of people kind of lingering about waiting for the meal to begin in like a half hour or something. Right. And while I'm finishing up the cooking and I'm I even was using my black spatula. It's good for that. And I was I was literally braced for somebody who had read that headline, especially like somebody over here, like works at Cairo and or used to work at Cairo. I'm like, I could see him that that, you know, like kind of catching his attention. Like, oh, do you see the thing about black spatulas? And I want to be clear. i saw the headline all over the place get rid of your black spatulas they're killing you i never clicked on them i didn't care i was like this is bullshit or if it's not bullshit i just don't care enough like the things i do to my body luke like the black spatula is not you can't kill something that's already dead i mean are you kidding me is your basic approach to health i'm like i'm like um what's her name and married with children i got a joint dangling out of my mouth while i'm cooking these things i'm drinking directly i'm like peg bundy i'm like drinking directly from a bottle of jim beef oh but don't but don't dare use a black spatula well andrew i uh i'd like to

activate uh the sound effect that i'm having trouble finding so instead i'm just gonna play

this one the validation sound effect yes stop the show you're seeing what i saw this morning

How did I lose my, oh, is this where you're going with this? Yes, this is my validation. What do I wake up? I wake up this morning. I completely forgot about this being validating. I thought you were just weighing in on how much you don't give a ass about these spatulas.

This all began with me then opening up or seeing the headline of today's bundle of headlines from pocket.com. And the headline is, your black plastic utensils probably aren't killing you after all. yeah i had a feeling news people did it link back to a piece by madeline wells senior food reporter for sf gate oh that's interesting you're on a different one no i'm on um i'm on life hacker uh we got uh beth squarky i think i mispronounced that sorry that had to do with my eyes not being very good not my mouth being bad although both are in play it's good to diagnose the problem down to a very granular level either like i don't know why that's better like i butchered your name But don't worry, that's because my eyes are bad, not my mouth. Squarecki is, I believe, how you pronounce this reporter's name.

I got Madeline Wells. I got the easiest name to say. You got, like, much more complicated. That was a raw deal for you, I think, in the name department.

But anyway, scanning it very briefly, it looks like, you know, some of the data just was not right about this. And there's a mathematical error. and who knows i mean i'm not listen i'm not out here blowhardened saying that like plastics and microplastics and dyes are good for you i'm not saying it's a health spatula i'm just saying i feel good in ignoring this it was just one of those headlines that i can't explain it just was like a little like i didn't i didn't even read it it just annoyed me a little bit and i don't think i realized how much it annoyed me until i saw this retraction today i'm like what the hell

So you're not out here blowharding, but what you are basically saying is. Please clap.

That's right.

Please clap. You're just using a different Jeb Bush audio drop reference on the program.

Wait, wait, wait. That's Jeb Bush who says blowharding? Yeah. No, this is the first I'm learning of that. I had no idea that was Jeb. This is Jeb. I won't trash talk. I won't be out there blowharding. Maybe I did know that at one point. And I apologize. I called him Jeb.

Jeb exclamation point. I meant Jeb. What a different time.

I know.

You know, it's funny that you mentioned this story because I was, I forget where I was exactly, but it prompted my beloved girlfriend, who I absolutely adore and appreciate and who has only my best interest at heart.

Oh, something good is going to follow that.

Texting me out of the blue to say, honey, you're not using black plastic stuff to cook with. And my response, I'm not proud of this, Andrew, and I hope this isn't a turn off. You really got a text from Becca about this headline? Yes. No, about the initial headline. About the initial headline.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. So she, the two, this is one of the many ways in which the two of you are very dissimilar. And I'll take it.

Me and Becca? Yes. Well, let's see. We both are, we are both very healthy and fit and we love Whirl.

You both breathe. Oh, hey, by the way, we never got a, like last week or something, you said, how did Becca do on Whirl? and I asked her and then I never figured out why it was I can't remember that we wanted to know that question and she sent me her score we can talk about that offline but anyway, she texted me out of the blue and said hey, you're not using black plastic to cook with which obviously she had seen round one of the story she had been moved by it I hope my response isn't unrelatable it doesn't make me seem less relatable but I said, what do you think I am, a poor? I said, I got some jacked up caraway wood shit that I'm using that's discolored because I put it in the dishwasher. I'm on all wood cooking utensils, which I don't think they're superior, and they're aesthetically worse. There's that word again. Because I'm not supposed to put them in the... Remember, these are associated with those crazy pans that I bought. Yes. That I then sent back, but then they said, you know what, you can just keep them, and we'll send you new ones because it just wasn't worth it. So I bought these stainless steel pans, these high-end... They seemed high-end to me anyway, stainless steel pans. I thought they looked really nice, and then I tried to cook in them, and it was just too difficult. There are people that can do real magic with a stainless steel pan when they season it and do all this stuff. I was not one of them. I'm supposed to drop water in and wait until it's creating droplets at a certain kind of temperature, et cetera. I was like, give me some nonstick pans, guys. And so they sent me the new ones, and they said, don't even send the old ones in. But along with that, I bought some cooking utensils from them Because their whole thing is like, this is all very chemical-free, etc But I wash them in the dishwasher after I use them And that's caused them all to become discolored and weird

So all your spatulas, even the really thin one Those are metal Oh, okay, you use metal spatulas

Yes, I have The spoon, and then there's a wood spatula But it's not like you were talking about earlier It's not super-duper thin. Like, you can't get under, like, an egg with it easily that you're trying to do easy over or something.

And these pans, they're not non-stick. I know that's a weird way. They are now.

I now have non-stick pans from the same company.

Are you supposed to use metal spatulas on non-stick pans, though?

Good question.

I think the answer, I don't, that really, you know, I'll be honest with you, Luke. I phrased that as a question. Well, that's the study you believe in? I phrased it as a question. It wasn't a question. You know what Andrew Come over sometime and look at my pans

And tell me I'm doing it wrong Because these things look great That's more of a testament to how little I cook

I've just always heard you're not supposed to use a metal spatula Well here's what I actually

If we want to get really in the weeds on this And I think we do I actually have a red Plastic fish spatula That is Some high end thing That somebody got us back when I was married to somebody else and some a friend of ours said this is the best the spatula will change your life and it's this it looks like one of those fish spatulas but it's plastic and it's now God knows maybe I don't know if the color of the plastic theoretically would have mattered

in the story that we now know has been debunked. But like, I use that one a lot. And then for other stuff, I do have one of those fish spatulas. I use that more for like, if I'm grilling and stuff.

It looks like it was specifically the black spatulas. The author suspected that-

The color matters is interesting to me. You'd think plastic is plastic.

They, there was, there was suspicion that, and I'm sort of reading into this on the fly, but I guess there was suspicion that the black plastic that was going into specifically black cookware was being recycled from other items. Oh, wait, maybe I'm going to stop talking about this now because I think I might have flipped that and reversed it. I'm not exactly sure what the issue was, but it had something to do with flame retardants and something very specific with the black plastic, I guess. So there you go. We'll tell Becca, get Becca's update on her wordle today to give her this update on this story and tell her to fish those black spatulas out of the garbage can. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, and tell her I was right.

Okay, I'll definitely, yes, I'll say, once again, Andrew's health tips lapped you, honey.

We should do that. We should do that. I was, Vives and I have a long-standing joke. I mean, this goes back so long about, like, I was, one time I think I came out of the kitchen. I mean, this is so long ago. I came out of the kitchen with, like, a piece of bread, or maybe it was just, like, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, only there was no jelly, so I just put a bunch of honey on there. And I said something to Genevieve, like, oh, let's update my diet book and say, if you're out of jelly, feel free to just put a bunch of honey on your peanut butter sandwich or something along the lines of that. And we've had this longstanding idea of what my kind of diet recipe book would look like. It would be abhorrent, obviously. But I do like the idea of Andrew's health tips. Forever on the lips, forever on the hips. The Andrew Walsh. That's right. That's just called forever on the hips. Anyway. There you go.

I would read that book That's like H. John Benjamin Releasing a jazz record When he has no formal training in jazz That's you writing about macros Things like that

I feel like we could do a segment on TVTL Maybe in the new year

Well Andrew if you need a tarp hung And if you need to know about the different Kind of tarps that one can get And even where to get them I'm your guy because here we sit It's a Wednesday And the journey of me trying to create a rain-free area for the tile guy uh it's reached its apotheosis i believe i now have a heavy duty

tarp that is lashed to the side of the house this way hold on you were talking in great detail about this yesterday did you end up going for the really expensive one that was like a 200 tarp

no no well so so what happened yesterday right when we ended the show and if people remember there was a I had a light blue also coincidentally a light duty tarp um that I had bought that I had connected to my house on some eye hooks and then had tied ropes up to like because the way my driveway is set up I had sort of tied these ropes and actually attached one here to the studio and I had this little thing and the wind was whipping like crazy and it was tearing at the the little eyelets the little grommets in the tarp and it was coming apart I was cutting these holes in it to try to vent it so that the wind would oh yeah did that work so much apparently not well you know what it extended the life the lifespan of the tarp by probably 40 minutes so that was good i look it it allowed the tarp to survive up until you said and good luck to all then i stared out the window and there was no tarp andrew good because it had fully ripped itself into shreds and was now just like a kind of faintly like in the wind but like had all moved into a different part of the yard it was a and so that was pretty frustrating and pretty demoralizing because that was my third attempt at doing something like this and um so my tile guy said you know what you should probably do is get a more and by the way I told you that I was a little stressed about this whole thing because I kind of didn't know if the responsibility necessarily should fall on the homeowner to create a dry workspace like on the one hand that just seems like a that just seems like a reasonable work environment to create for anyone on the other hand it's like well it's the pacific northwest it's the winter time if we got to do stuff outside maybe we we he i heard a long story about the last time he tried to do that andrew do it outside or do it inside and bring his own stuff and the thing blew away oh well the story was but that that doesn't right that's not to you that's not um a fully satisfactory

answer no it's not it's all the more reason why that all the more reason why it shouldn't fall

on you well um i i got a couple of more a couple of more like details on this whole thing which for i don't know if anyone cares about this but just to update things so uh one thing uh it's not so much i thought it was about like maybe the equipment or the tile saw or something No, it just doesn't like getting wet. So that's one data point. Like I thought maybe there was like the equipment might break or you can't like get the right kind of cut on the tile. No, it is a purely comfort related. And by the way, nobody likes being wet.

Well, no, I mean, that makes absolute sense. I wouldn't want to do my job outside in the rain after five minutes.

That was my first idea for this podcast. It was going to be a totally outdoor experience and you nixed that. We're going to need some tarps. But you know what I mean? I know exactly where to go in the harbor freight for those.

I was walking home the other day, and it's one of those things where I was wearing a heavy coat, and I was wearing a hat and headphones, and I knew it was raining on me, and it was pretty nasty weather. I think this was Friday night, but I didn't realize until I started seeing water literally dripping off the bill of my cap. At one point, I'm like, man, I'm really collecting rain out here. like i i think it's absolutely one million percent reasonable to not do this job in the pouring rain or even the even the slowly dripping rain that's going to eventually soak you to the bone when you got to go then go inside and like kind of fit the tiles and everything that makes sense i just don't think that it's up to the homeowner to provide this i think that if you know if you know what your job is and what what you need to get the job done you need to provide yourself the tools and in In this case, a tarp is the tool that he needs to get it done.

Andrew, when I think of dying, deliver me in a black-winged bird. Those are some of the lyrics to the song Rain King by Counting Crows. If we want to do another deep dive today, I'm here for it.

I thought that was Mr. Jones again.

I got the lyric wrong. When I think of heaven, deliver me in a black-winged bird something something. I am the Rain King. Were you the Rain King yesterday? Yeah. As you walked around? yeah i believe he does that in that song no i i sort of agree with you um but i agree with you in principle but i here's what actually helped me yesterday with this whole thing after the second tarp and third attempt at this because remember this started with me putting out a shelter that got destroyed then one tarp that was too small which by the way the first tarp actually was probably gonna be okay like it was it was a heavier duty tarp and it was attached pretty safely and it wasn't massive in other words it wasn't catching think about how a sail works on a sailboat the bigger the sail the more wind it's going to catch the second tarp was

probably fine this is the one that that the grommets came out of and that you cut no no no

i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm i'm i'm messing up the order of things my my first attempt at attaching a tarp to the side of the house which was deemed too small by my tile guy oh okay that one would have been fine actually it turns out because it was i i still have it it was heavy

duty oh i forgot about this so he rejected the first one okay he yeah it was it was it was rejected

uh based on not being large enough because if the rain quote was coming sideways it was going to be a problem this was back again when i thought we were dealing with like a the repercussions having to do with the tile saw not just a you know kind of a personal comfort sort of issue so that's when i went and got a larger tarp which i stupidly bought one that was listed as light duty because I just figured this is going to be up for like a week. What kind of duty do I need this tarp to be able to do? Well, that was a huge mistake because by the time I got it all strung up, and you have to realize also every time I put a new tarp up, I have to take out these eye hooks and drill different holes and put them in different places because none of the little grommets on the tarp are not a uniform distance from each other from tarp to tarp.

So you're drilling holes right into the exterior of your house for a temporary tarp.

but you know we got to get this done also they're very very very small compared to and they they're not actually very noticeable i was worried about that but anyway so so yesterday finally when the second tarp ripped shreds and blew i just walked in the house i just said to the guy go i don't really know what to do about this man like i go i'm not kind of out of ideas and that was weirdly liberating because like it was like instead of me being like i don't you know am i not am i not accomplishing what I'm supposed to as far as creating a hospitable work environment I was just like man I don't know I don't know what to do and he was like you probably got to go to Harbor Freight and get a more heavy duty tarp and I was like yeah but those are like 200 bucks he goes not at Harbor Freight he goes they got a whole section and my god Andrew if they don't have the most amazing section of tarps

I've heard good things about Harbor Freight I've never been there but I heard somebody said buy your supplies there but don't buy your tools there or something that person was

very correct yeah that's exactly the knock on harbor freight is they got lots of great stuff but the tools are are all break very quickly like the power tools not the place to get your power tools but apparently the place to get tarps i go back to the tarp department there's two other dudes standing there we're all dealing with situations it's rainy in the northwest everyone's like there's There's a line to go to the tarp area of the harbor. Harbor Freight, because one guy's got a garage that's leaking. He's got to throw one over. Another guy's got a situation. We're all sitting around. It's real powerful King of the Hill energy back there. And these guys are all in their 60s. I'm like the young buck in the tarp department. And we're all kind of standing around. We're all kind of eyeing these things and looking at the different light duty, medium duty, heavy duty, getting a couple of good, like real throat clearing, kind of working guy sniff thing going on. God dang it. Yep. Do I look like I know what a damn JPEG is? So, we're like, and sure enough, I got one that was heavy duty. And by the way, it's night and day, Andrew. If you ever buy a tarp and you're going to do something like this, may I recommend heavy duty? I don't even know why do they even make a light duty tarp. What even is the point of it? This thing was immediately, first of all, it was 19 bucks. Oh, man. I got 40% off for allowing Harbor Freight to steal all of my personal information. and sell it to the Chinese. He's not stealing if you give it to him. Then I was like, he goes, actually, I've never tried this one before, this negotiating tactic. He's like, what's a good phone number for you? And I was like, I go, I don't really want to give you my phone number. He goes, hey, no problem. And I go, unless there's some great discount, he goes, I can get you 40% off this tarp. I was like, well, let me pick up an air compressor while I'm here. 40% off. Let me buy $1,000 worth of stuff right now if I'm getting 40% off of everything. I'll take that little crane.

That's not for sale. That's for restocking. I said I'll take the crane. I wasn't thinking crane. What do you call those scissory things, like a cherry picker? Sky jack. Maybe a sky jack. Cherry picker.

Yeah, yeah. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, do you want my phone number or not, bruh? So anyway, I get 40% off, so I'm paying $16 retail for this tarp, and I get it home. and uh it is just such first of all the wind is like absolutely slack today there's no wind so did you cut holes in it again no no no no no no see i'm wondering is the tarp better or is the

weather better well that's a little bit tbd my friend that's well i'm a bit of a philosopher

these are the questions philosophers ask honestly you're the kierkegaard of my tarp situation um Here's the plan. I've thought about this. I was lying in bed thinking about it. Andrew, I can't overstate how big of a part of my brain this is taking up. And this is a bad week for that. I have a lot going on. I should not be thinking about tarps this much. So it's all tied up now, but it's just basically hooked to the house in such a way that if the wind were to start whipping up, I could just unhook it. And my plan, so my plan when the guy's all done working today is to go out there on my little stepladder and then just unhook it from the house. And then just place it down on the ground I'll leave all the rope side tied up And I'll just put a couple rocks on it And that's where it will stay overnight Because I don't need it whipping in the middle of the night It also happens to be pulling on a Where like the exterior of the house And the interior is my bedroom And it's loud and distracting if it's blowing So I'm going to unhook it at night It's basically going to now be Set up in such a way that if it starts raining It can easily be put up to keep the rain out And then the rest of the time it's going to be just lying kind of in a position where it's not going to catch wind.

Are you familiar with the works of John Wick? Wick? Who am I thinking of? John Irving. Are you familiar with the works of John Irving?

Brief in one. No, yeah, Prayer for Owen Meany. Prayer for Owen Meany. Yes, that's right. Cider House Rules.

So would you be okay with us calling the show today The World According to TARP? Would you get that? you do get that reference okay good because i felt like there was a tarp joke somewhere for the show title and i've been kind of like in the back of my mind trying to figure out what it is and if you're in the john irving camp then i guess that'll that'll fly with you i wanted to mention to you luke and i don't have i don't have enough details on what happened but the weather up here early this morning i guess late last night or but very early this morning really um was just absolutely banana cakes like yeah weather wind wise right I mean yes but then the heaviest rain and I was I was in bed sleeping and I'm guessing that what I heard was probably well I didn't go to bed until pretty late last night so I'm guessing this was probably like maybe four in the morning five in the morning or something it woke me up the sound of the rain battering into or onto or against I guess I should say our bedroom window was the loudest rain I ever heard in my days in Seattle it sounded like the rain was literally trying to break in and it must have been that the wind was just blowing it absolutely sideways the way the tile guy was concerned about like and then I woke up this morning and I saw some really weird things you know i get emails on this like uh this like micro neighborhood email list that somebody signed me up for and usually it's people being concerned about people stealing mail or something but this time it was just kind of like does anybody know what was up with that weather last night which was a strange thing to put into an eat like well you're opening up your computer your phone to type that into a email chain why don't you just google weather.com or seattletimes.com and read what happened to the weather. It seems like a strange thing to open up to the forum, but it really was. People are buzzing. I think people just need to talk about what the hell happened last night up here.

My bedroom door to the exterior blew open last night, Andrew.

Oh, you have a bedroom door that goes to the outside, right?

It's eventually going to go to where the deck wraps around the other side of the house, and there's going to be a walkway. So I have like a French door that right now opens out to like a four-foot drop

Yeah, right very very sarlacc vibes nice. Yes, precisely. It's giving sarlacc

It's giving sarlacc Who says we're not young and hip when we use things like it's giving sarlacc? It's giving digestion over the course of a thousand years

That might be a better show title

I think we should warn the people about how much tarp talk is gonna happen i think we need to kind of level set yeah um but anyway yeah so like yeah it was crazy around here last night and i like to the point where yeah stuff was just blowing around outside and then this door which i i obviously hadn't deadbolted it it's a glass door too just i'm in the living room doing something and just like blows up what i was actually doing was sitting on my guitar trying to learn elliot smith songs um so that that's just if you want to check in on my mental

health well i would say about a b i would i mean that's a double-edged sword like you are still like kind of you mentioned a few weeks ago that you're going to try to like kind of learn some

piano and you're i was i was practicing my piano last night too i was practicing playing with two

hands so that's actually good so it is good that you're continuing this um this routine of self improvement and finding artistic outlets the fact that you're still plunking out elliot smith songs

that's maybe where yeah yeah yeah the fact that the lyrics somehow resonate is uh you know where we might want to talk about a 5150 or something hoping you're more green sleeves mood honestly as i was doing that though i just hear this crazy noise like what the hell i go in the bedroom the wind has blown open this door it was like kind of terrifying actually yeah i believe that that's

been very scary i remember that time when we were relatively new in this house and this is how i learned that the basement door doesn't click all the way closed because we didn't like you know flip the deadlock on it but it was closed and i was sleeping down in the basement i'd fallen asleep on the couch and all of a sudden i woke up to wind in the basement and i realized that the door was wide open and i think bingo our cat was pretty new at the time and i was like oh my god and just to wake up in that manner of just being like how long has this door been open i now think that i woke up as soon as that door blew open from the wind but in the moment i was just freaking out because i thought i'd been sleeping while this door had blown open for hours or something along those lines it's very disconcerting in this case you were awake and you just heard the noise

but still very scary yeah so the i guess the end of the story is it's an absolutely gorgeous day here after all of that shit it's totally and completely unnecessary that i have this tarp up but i guess better to have it ready to go in case uh you know it starts raining i just really want get this uh let me get this project done because what it effectively means is that i'm kind of evicted from the house all day which luckily i have this other place to work where i am the madrona hill studio so it's kind of fine kitchen and a bathroom yeah i'm i'm you know i'm this is a this is not a bad fallback plan but it is just like i'm and also my the entire inside of my house is now a construction zone again because there's this bathtub that's going to go in this bathroom that's just sitting in the living room there's like all of the there's a a kitchen or sorry there's a shower kit you know which is like the glass walls of a shower that are right now in these big cardboard boxes there's just i have the the uh the vanity that's going to go in the bathroom is in here i just feel like everything is on hold until this tile goes up and i can get everything put in the bathroom and get back to real life so anyway i'll be glad when this is all done thank you for being a tan all right let's thank some of our supporters these folks are donating to tbtl and keeping it ad-free and 100 percent listener supported that is i was gonna say

100 listenable but i was like oh i didn't know that was part of the agreement i don't know if you heard what i said earlier about level setting yes i was like do not do not set us up for that

Luke. No, sir. I would say tolerable.

sure now even now even tbtl donors can tolerate tbtl that's right now even michelle neptunes that's right new york brooklyn new york thank you michelle for supporting the show now luke can i blow your mind for a second i blow your mind for a second chris is leaving he hates it when i get into this um michelle neptune first of all i love neptune as a last name what a name you and i have done luke burbank a real run for its money we've done at least three tbtls at the neptune you may have done more uh before my time on the show uh where is the neptune theater what are the cross streets here in seattle washington what are the cross on brooklyn and 45th it's on brooklyn and 45th where's michelle neptune donating from brooklyn new york 45th new york and brooklyn that's right and this is her 45th donation this is bananas unbelievable that is

actually a little bit of a of a fun little coincidence there like michelle neptune brooklyn new york tbtl supporter and amazing name haver exactly thank you michelle thanks also james winters of louisville kentucky that's also a pretty solid name really really really good yeah now i don't want to sounds like a texas blues man oh only because there's a guy named johnny

winter who was a texas okay i was gonna say that because i could see james winters being a musician but from a colder climb i would say um as opposed to the texas because winter let's see is he from

texas though he seems culturally beaumont texas and there you go that's johnny love it when i go out on johnny winter not our our james winters and also uh james is got the plural where johnny has got the singular so our james winters is in louisville kentucky thank you james for real thanks to jt thorstad another saw there are no name there were no non-solid names yeah on this

list today jt thorstad yes coma washington long time friend of the show thank you jt hope things

are going well down there in tacoma appreciate you yeah rebecca johnson is in new haven connecticut

it's probably beautiful there right now you're living inside of a winter wonderland exactly snow globe holiday scene rebecca thanks for taking your time out of your holidays to donate to the

show. Yeah, I appreciate that. Also, Bruce Morris is in Vashon, Washington. In or on. Vashon Island. In or on. Absolutely beautiful. I remember I had a friend, I may have told this story last time Vashon came up, but I had a friend who I went to that weird Christian kindergarten with, which has been coming up a lot on the show lately, Pillar of Fire. And he lived on...

Where do you send your cute little kids

to Pillar of Fire? Where do you send your kids to just get their ass completely beaten by the teacher pillar of fire is where is where you can find that kind of kind of educational environment but there was a kid that I don't know why he went to the school but he lived on Vashon Island which seemed like a little bit of a schlep although the truth of the matter is it's a quick ferry ride anyway I remember going and staying over at his house on Vashon island and i remember we had to go take the ferry now that his dad i want to say his dad was a metro bus driver andrew and maybe that was why the kid went to school maybe there wasn't maybe there wasn't a school on vashon where they beat the shit out of the kid so they had to bring him into seattle for that they had to import him to seattle but um his dad i think was a metro bus driver and what his dad would do was ride a motorcycle to the ferry because it was way

cheaper to take a motorcycle on the ferry than a car yes yeah okay as opposed to driving your

your car onto the ferry which is pretty expensive and then you've got to deal with the parking and so i think the solution was and i think a lot of people probably do some version of this so he would take this motorcycle from their house on vashon to the ferry and then over to seattle and then to wherever you know the bus barn was or something and i don't know how this became the case but like i was getting brought back from jeremy's house but sans my friend was named Jeremy Sans my friend Jeremy so what it was was me riding on the back of his dad's motorcycle with no helmet kindergarten just being like this doesn't feel safe and Grant I don't think we were going very far I don't think his dad was being unsafe other than child who is not his with no helmet on the back of a motorcycle that was I I think that was when my love for motorcycles was

not born yeah when it was slowly slowly buried under under the earth i think i remember being

afraid as a kid which is weird because you know you think about it you're like i mean you you love you a dirt bike and you've got dirt bike dreams you know that's the name of my reality you've got a vespa budget but dirt bike dreams andrew that's my my reality show is dirt bike

dreams um i uh i did not have that reaction i was like oh i don't like this i don't want to make this weird, okay?

But there is a reality of you are intimately close to somebody when you're on the back of their motorcycle.

I think I didn't like that aspect either.

And I honestly don't even mean it in a weird, gross way. I just mean that like when you're a kid.

And he wasn't being weird or gross.

Yeah, no. And so I just mean, though, that like just physically intimate, you have to hug somebody from behind when you're on a motorcycle.

Who's not your dad. Who's not your dad. Who's Jeremy's dad.

Who's Jeremy's dad. Like you're smelling Jeremy's dad's jacket. Like you just, I don't know. like that's yeah i remember i was a very very shy kid and i remember being again we did ride dirt bikes and stuff but usually you know i'm on the back of my dad's dirt bike and you know giving him a big hug from behind and you know about the little uh cardboard things i they made for me for my legs don't you because for a while there my dad from the pipe to protect me from the yeah i don't know motor yeah i think yeah i don't i i do feel like i wore two so i don't know why there would have been heat on both sides because i do think it would have been the exhaust pipe for definitely one side of it. But yeah, there's these photos of me as this really little kid like on my dad's Suzuki holding him from behind. But I've got these cardboard like guards on both of my like calves and shins that were like kind of taped up so I wouldn't burn myself.

I love it. You know who else loves that story? Becky Jeans of Carnation, Washington. Not just a stylish fashion.

Ah, jean! Oh, jean! Sorry, I didn't have that queued up as well as I wanted it to be. I was trying to needle drop that for our donor today, Becky. Thanks, Becky. Jeans? Appreciate you.

I used to know Becky a million years ago.

I hired her a million years ago. That was such a bad audio drop. But, Becky, I hope it didn't ruin us thanking you for your donation. Thanks.

Thank you to all of our donors today for making TBTL possible. hello and welcome to top story all right andrew we are men of honor lies do not become us okay so i just want to be straight up with you right at the beginning of these top stories this is a pretty bunk top story except for one dazzling deep that jumped out at me does involve black plastic spatulas it does not what am i a poor it uh it the headline in the seattle times today should you be afraid of bidets oh yeah my attention yeah okay this is why this one this is why you first first you got a show sheet today and then you got an updated show sheet because after i'd sent you show sheet number one i happened upon the headline should you be afraid

of bidets i would like to take a quick moment to honor your choice of drop to um promote this i thought it was a very clever use of i didn't know you like to get wet though good job very much

Thank you, I appreciate that We unfortunately did not have time to reach out to our senior bidet correspondent, Chris Hayes

It does feel weird doing this without him

But we'll be, I think I'm going to be a guest on Why Is This Happening next week To further expand on this Now, here's the thing This is one of the thinnest articles, it's not even an article It's the weirdest, it's borderline bunk journalism And what it is, it turns out, is a King Features, like, thing that shows up in newspapers, which, like, when's the last time you read a King Features item in a newspaper, Andrew? That's the province of, like, a Deer Abbey kind of a thing, right? Or, like, you know, King Features, I think, was, like, you know, putting, like, Marilyn Vos Savant, the world's smartest woman, in Parade magazine, right? Like, it's a real throwback.

And this is written by Joe and Terry Graydon, who are the executive producers and hosts of The People's Pharmacy. I'm guessing that is a podcast.

Maybe. I mean, it lists it doesn't. Here's the thing. It doesn't seem like they're doctors or, you know, epidemiologists or virologists or I don't know what their qualification is to weigh in on bidets. And this is a very, very. Here's what it is. Q. So headline. Should you be should you be afraid of bidets? question from who we don't know it's not listed i've never understood clean focused americans so this is i were to believe a random person sent this into joe and theresa at king features this

is one of my favorite things to do in the newsletter by the way is to to like answer fake questions from listeners that are usually gushing about how good i'm doing on the show before they get to their question and they're basically doing it in a non-spoofy way and again

Yeah, I do not. It's so unclear to me who is posing this question. It's just a question from the ether. I've never understood clean, focused Americans fear of bidets, exclamation point. Jeb, for me, bidets were almost the best part of travel in Europe. Is there a problem I don't know about, such as an increased risk for urinary tract infections? This comes out of left field. We're just right to the races. I honestly am wondering if this. is like you know yesterday you were talking about how bounty was trying to get us off of using you know washable towels like that's their new target yeah is is not other paper towel companies yeah but but the you know traditional cloth companies oh my god i think i just saw

your dazzling detail sorry i'm reading ahead and i think i have i think i think have you You honed in on it, Andrew? A $100,000 bet that I know what the dazzling detail is.

You're having the same reaction I did to the news of that.

I'm sorry to cut you off. It's just when you see that in print in front of you, it's hard to do.

It stops you in your truck. You know what it does, Andrew? It makes you send an updated show sheet.

Okay. Looks like I got a new subscription I got to pay for. Okay, sorry.

It does feel like this might be a letter that was planted by the toilet paper industry.

Uh-huh. Yes, yes.

Like, I love bidets, but why are we so afraid of them? Could they cause major health problems?

Now, but wait a second here. How are, I haven't read the answers yet. My assumption is that these folks were, Joe and Teresa Graydon, were going to, like, sort of, like, push back on these straw man arguments. and this ends up being a celebration of the bidet.

Well, Andrew, you'd think. The answer, again, from two folks, I don't really know what their qualifications are on this. They run the people's pharmacy. This question is a bit more complicated than you might imagine. There have been several studies regarding the use of bidet toilets and urogenital infections. Urogenital infections? Is that the term for it?

I guess so. I've never heard it before.

I always thought a UTI just meant urinary tract.

No, I think that a UTI is a urinary tract infection, I believe.

But they're saying there have been several studies regarding the use of bidet toilets and urogenital infections. In general, they do not reveal more urinary tract problems. They cite Epidemiology and Infection Magazine and Preventative Medicine reports. A different study, however, suggests that the nozzle surface of electric bidet toilets may become contaminated with bacteria. And Andrew, yes, this is where we arrive at the dazzling detail. this idea that the electric bidet nozzle could become contaminated with bacteria is from the Journal of the Anus, Rectum, and Colon, October 28th, 2021. How is it that we always end up talking about buttholes at this poker game? Yes, Andrew, the Journal of the Anus, Rectum, and Colon is very much a going concern.

Now, have you done what I'm going to do right now, which is go right to the source on this?

I have a safe search on my computer. I can't put those terms in.

Have you got a governor on that thing?

I mean, it actually stands to reason. Look, it's an important part of the human body. It can, you know, when functioning can make life great, and when not functioning, it could be a real problem. So it makes sense that there's a medical journal dedicated to this particular part of the body, and yet somehow it stops you in your tracks when you see it cited in a kind of a quasi-scientific article. Hey, Luke. Yes.

It's called JARC. now listen i i'm with you there's move over jamma it's j-a-r-c i'm not joking i don't know why that's so funny why but you know it you know this is serious stuff and obviously dying to get my article published did you read the latest edition of jark can you imagine just going into a waiting room and having jark waiting for you there like on the coffee table but like the thing is like these are important studies i'm sure there's important science and medical discovery around it but on the other hand i also have the right to be a child right like i can i can laugh at the journal of anus rectum and colon without being disrespectful i can i can laugh at jark i'm trying

to see if like okay uh okay uh jark jark is uh well the thing that is the first uh internet result for jark is something different some kind of like a housing concern but what i'm wondering is how does the person at the front desk of the journal of anus rectum and colon how do they answer the phone when they say jark or do they say uh anus rectum colon like what do they what is the i wonder i wonder that person and also how many calls do they get they say unfortunately it's

a robo call that says our our options have changed so please listen carefully we're experiencing unusually high call volumes that's right um i'm just trying to see if they have a phone number

i'm not proposing that we call them live on the air to be honest with you i know you used to when you were younger you made a few phony phone calls as they call them on the stern show and I remember when I was a kid like being obsessed with the idea of prank calls and being obsessed with the jerky boys and I just like lived for that stuff it's weird because like as an adult it makes me deeply uncomfortable like it's a big thing on the stern show they love phony phone calls and sometimes they're kind of funny but a lot of times they I just have to next it because it actually makes me feel like

uncomfortable for some reason yeah yeah and it's funny that I did go through a phase of doing that myself and i was young and it was like they're the jerky boys era and i was the jerky boys is that a show title by the way um if you were to call them and they answer the phone i don't think we'd be able to communicate well because this is a japanese publication which is interesting that it's that its title and everything is in english but oh maybe you could hold the conversation um but no beginning and end of it it's published by the japan society of coloproctology

interesting yeah go ahead i wonder if the japanese folks are a little more mature about

these things possibly why i'm looking at this here the editor-in-chief and the deputy editor-in-chief are both people based in tokyo but then there's an advisory board of people based it looks like all over the world a bunch of people um from the united states boston and austin only uh cities that rhyme here in the u.s uh china korea netherlands um so anyway yeah it seems to be kind of a global publication but it does seem to be based in japan i would like to also just

give a bit of a trigger warning if you're home right now and you are considering going to this website and scrolling through it there are thumbnail photos associated with these scholarly articles and they are pretty gruesome yeah and you don't it's not even like you you don't have a choice about about seeing them or not seeing them they are just associated with the article and they're brutal i think i speak of surgical outcomes after laparoscopic repairs of paracolostomy hernia and para ileal conduit hernia colon and i mean this as in like the two dots colon a comparative study i wonder if they have to clarify that a lot in this line of work really i mean the grammar thing, not the thing we're all

operating on. Well, we should start a journal of the colon that is all about the punctuation

mark. Yes, that's an opportunity waiting to happen. Anyway, they oh, you know what? They do mention that it's they don't mention that the that the JARC is from Japan, but this is how they answer the question. A study suggested that the nozzle surface of electric bidet toilets may become contaminated with bacteria, citing journal of the anus, rectum, and colon. In Japan, where bidet toilet seats are widely used in hospitals, a field test showed that self-cleaning bidet nozzles using neutral, electrolyzed water reduce the risk of bacterial contamination. That was published in another magazine. Another reader is also enthusiastic about bidet toilets. Quote, we visited Japan, and the first thing upon arrival, we dashed for a restroom in the airport. The Toto Company, in the best marketing campaign ever, has installed their bidet seats in every restroom so tourists may experience their product. what a joy to find immaculate odor-free restrooms this is the thing i don't know if i've said this

before on the show um and i don't want to it's like i don't want to talk about it because i'm probably just going to make myself sound very very ill-informed and immature about this but i do think that one of the reasons i am turned off by the idea of a bidet is even though i understand intellectually that there should be no actual touching of the device and your body it feels just like way too intimate and potentially gross to have something that is shared you know what i mean the idea of a public debate bidet yeah that very um off to me and going to somebody's house and using their bidet which i know is a very common thing i'm not i'm i know that i'm in the wrong here but like i can't imagine going to your house and just firing up your bidet well you're

not going to have a but choice depending on what bathroom you're using because one of the many things that's being delivered in the next few days is a toilet for this new bathroom that has a built

in one yeah but you don't have to use it though oh you have to and i'm going to be in there i mean that would be that would be a move if you didn't provide toilet paper i think you still need toilet paper though, right? You still need toilet paper to-

That would be intense. Yeah, so I have, when I moved into this house, it had one bathroom, and I bought like a bidet toilet seat for that one, where it's very kind of medical looking though, like I'm not in love with the appearance of the whole thing, it is a toto, and it's effective, but what it does is, the toilet seat itself, right, so you buy it, It comes, it's this big toilet seat thing with a water hookup and electric. The toilet seat.

itself is a reservoir that's heating up the water so somehow the water goes into the toilet seat and then it's being warmed there by a heating element so that when you are washing yourself after going and by the way i don't want to get too detailed on this but i have a process and it involves a little bit of toilet paper and a lot of bit of washing i don't ever go just just the water route i kind of do the first passes with some toilet paper and then the the last pass is is with the you know getting some water on the situation and then there's some drying is there

more toilet paper there's a dryer that's built in oh i see okay yeah so i mean it's a i mean i

have to say and i've got it i've got a got a whole system going with this now and i think it's pretty effective just check my yelp reviews no complaints but um because the toilet seat because again this is just the thing that i bought that you put on a regular toilet and so it has to it's like it's it's a kind of a weird looking thing because it's got to hold the water and warm it up so that when you wash yourself it's not like freezing cold and so that gives it kind of an odd it almost seems like a toilet seat you might have that's um for somebody that has mobility issues like it's it's kind of high up it's just again it's just it's not a great look so i decided because i am see i'm on a septic here so i'm technically not supposed to throw like wet wipes into this for some reason I don't, maybe they don't, they don't actually like, you know, sort of decompose is the wrong.

Yeah, no, because you're not, you're not supposed to use them in any system, right? I mean, isn't that what's causing issues?

Well, yeah, but I mean, I think people are throwing them down the, you know, public, I think people are flushing them down their toilets if they're on public sewer, because it sort of becomes, you know, in their minds, not their problem. I mean, we talked about.

But it caused a problem in your backyard when you were on public lines, right? Wasn't it those wipes that caused the backup in your house that, no, that wasn't part of it?

That was, wait, which house are we talking about?

The house where you always tell the story about the plumber kicking over the trap.

That was root intrusion, unfortunately.

Oh, that was root. Oh, okay, gotcha.

But, I mean, it's one of those free rider things where, I don't know, maybe that's not the exact principle, but it's sort of like if you're using wet wipes at your house and you're on like city sewer, It's like it's sort of easier to flush them and less gross. But then at some point, if everybody does that, it's really bad for the city sewer system, as we've talked about. But it's tempting to want to do it because it doesn't feel like it's connected to you directly. Well, here I am.

The whole nobody washes a rental car type of thing.

And so but here I'm on a septic tank. So anything I do here is exclusively this is a closed circuit. It is just my problem. So it's interesting how how how much that changes behaviors, Andrew.

Yes. It's almost an argument for more public, I don't know what's the word I'm looking for. I'm thinking of public transportation and public utilities and being all in together. I think this is a good argument for that.

Right. Or being all out together. Everyone's got to be on their own thing.

That's the American way.

I mean, that's the problem. What I'm making is an argument for this sort of individualism that is actually bad for us, I think. All that is to say, I don't like using wet wipes out here because I know someday I'm going to have to pay someone to come vacuum that thing out for $5,000 and God knows what. So I thought, well, I don't really like how this bidet toilet seat looks on this other bathroom. I'm spending all this money and time and energy kind of making this kind of nice little bathroom in my house that's, you know, going to going to be hopefully a relaxing spa like environment. And I just went ahead and got this crazy toilet. It was not as expensive as you might think. I want to say it was on the order of maybe four hundred dollars. That's a lot of money to spend on a toilet. But if you go to Home Depot and you buy a regular toilet, it's a couple of hundred bucks. Right. And in fact, I think I might have meant this mentioned this on the show. before what's really weird about going in the toilet section at home depot is how the toilets they're all first of all none of them are on the floor level because i don't they don't want people

pooping in them they don't want kids pooping in them yeah or anybody but i think it's a haven't didn't we talk about them the show didn't we even hear from listeners who's caught their kids maybe

doing it yeah so you go they're all like kind of they're all sort of mounted up on the second level of the thing and they all so many of them are bragging about how powerful the flush they are and they're often showing you like a plastic like it's like a laminated plastic kind of art rendering of a bunch of billiard balls like you could flush billiard like you would want to but if you needed to you could flush an entire game of snooker down this thing

yeah right do they do ball bearings too because I always picture Bender on the toilet Just clanking them out

It's like what are we eating As a country that we need to be able to flush Nine billiard balls down this toilet But anyway

Um, so, uh, I've got this toilet that's going to be delivered, and I'm really interested to see how this, so for one thing, uh, the seat automatically lifts up if you put your foot, there's some, like, sensor at the front base of the toilet, and if you pass your foot over it, it, like, opens the seat, it also flushes it for you if you kick it, it has a kick flush on the toe of it. Does it scream when you go to the bathroom and do it? Depending on what you've been eating. What the setting is.

Oh, no! Please, God help me!

Yeah. It depends on which AI software you're running in this thing.

Oh, so you can do it with any voice. Oh, God. Why is Terry Crews screaming while I'm using your bathroom?

Yeah, exactly. Take a dump with Tracy Morgan. Oh, the horror! um but uh yeah so i it's it's uh it'll be interesting to see uh if this is how what kind of a game changer this might be for me also i feel like what i'm you know i it's generally i'm here sort of by myself or becca's here or waltz here so maybe over time when i have more visitors i feel like i'm going to be doing a lot of explaining of how this toilet operates i don't think it's very intuitive and this is the main this is the main toilet that somebody would use

if they were just coming over for a cocktail or something? I don't know what your life is like.

That's what I plan my life being, out here when things are done. It's just one cocktail party after another. But probably it would be, there will be two. So the original bathroom that was in the house is going to continue to be a bathroom. I'm going to also give that one a facelift because it's real right out of the 1970s. But this would be likely a bathroom that a lot of people would be using. and yeah I do think I'll have to the other one will still have a normal toilet in it I think anyway unless I get crazy unless I love this one so much that I also put a crazy robot toilet in the old bathroom as well but I do think there's going to be a lot of me having to give people a pep talk about how to use this thing

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

Andrew I've got an email from a female that I was hoping to share with you, if that's all right. That is all right.

I do have a voicemail I'd like to play for you after that, though.

Okay, great. Well, let's start with... God, I'm still on the Journal of the Anus, Rectom, and Colby.

Yeah, get off of that.

Boy, that's a real eyeball shocker when you think you're going to the TBTL email account and you're just seeing the JARC. You're definitely staring into some sort of void, that's for sure. Yeah, and I don't want it to stare back. This email is from listener Rebecca It says dishwasher versus hand washing Remember yesterday I was saying how I heard an ad I think maybe I saw it on television That was saying like Do you know that basically like if you run your dishwasher Even if it's half, only half full You're still By the way I sent you a picture last night Of this in action Of my lightly filled dishwasher that I was using About 50% probably full And it said basically even if your dishwasher is not full of dishes you are saving water and i was like i know this is coming to me this is provided by the like dish dish detergent council of america or something like to somebody who benefits from me running the dishwasher as much as possible well listener rebecca said hey luke and andrew it's not just marketing dishwashers use four to seven gallons per load hand washing is 10 to 15 gallons i work for a water utility rebecca knows of what she speaks andrew i work for a water utility please remind everyone to turn off their irrigation for the winter by shutting off the irrigation valves not just stopping the electronic programming this guards against leaks in the system i guess this would be if you have i'm guessing rebecca means people that have lawns that are irrigated i don't think she's speaking to the farmers of america that might

be listening yeah i have no idea what this is about i was trying to figure out if the irrigation thing had something to do with the dishwasher and using the gray water or something i think

the irrigation has to do with if you if you've got a sprinkler system in your lawn i see turn

that off so it's not like leaking into the ground um uh if you ever want in seattle i think you're going to get a lot of hairy eyeballs if you have a sprinkler system built into your yard right i

I feel like that's – yeah, I don't even – I'm trying to think of the last time I even saw one of those. Like, that was a big – I feel like that was sort of a big deal when I was a kid.

Like, the built-in ones or even just the temporary ones? The built-in ones. I remember, like, it was a huge deal of us, like, setting up a sprinkler and running through it. Like, we had the kind that sort of made the – not the rainbow, but kind of the arc of water, and we'd run through those. But then we're always jealous of the people who had the tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

kind i'm talking about like pvc pipe sure buried in the in the yard with little spouts yep um which uh you know i feel like that has maybe because just like in general the way we think about lawns has changed yeah those of us who you know subscribe to the new yorker or whatever whatever the like sort of cultural predictor of a person who now takes a dim view of lawns is yeah i feel

like i would be i mean i like i like having some grass in our in our lawn but i would i feel like i would be so shamed out of the neighborhood if i just set up a sprinkler system i just feel like it's it's i'd be persona non grata because of the waste of water people are very adamant about not wasting water just to have a green lawn you should yeah it's very out what do you think the number

one predictor of a person who has complicated feelings about a green lawn in the summer would be i said the new yorker is there something else that's even more of a predictor i mean i feel like

a new yorker tote bag is like really sums it up pretty nicely oh you could be my daughter who

just says i'm one of i'm a carries the new yorker tote bag girly oh yeah as opposed to being a new yorker reader i mean she does read it somewhat but she was like no i'm more the carries the uh the

the tote bag kind of a person yeah so that's that's what i'm picturing certainly but i actually

looking a lot of judgmental looks i'm looking right now at my beautiful green lawn that's been you know watered by nature yeah and uh i'm thinking uh i'm thinking yeah it's uh i don't i don't know i do think that what am i trying to say what what the the main reason that i'm okay with my lawn dying in the summertime is because then i don't have to mow it as much so there is kind of a benefit as well but i do i do like in there's that moment in the spring where it hasn't died yet oh yeah and you know and baseball is on and you're mowing it and you're getting it all nice and it's all green and it's just like i mean that's a that's a special time of year oh god i

mean listen i love a green lawn i grew up in the country we had a we had a huge green lawn with a lot of acreage um but we didn't water it because it was kind of out in the country and it just because of where we lived it didn't get scorched in the summertime maybe it grew a little bit slower but we had green lawns all the time whoa if i had my druthers i would yeah there's something about the sun here that once the summer there's something about the west coast that it just it's scorches the it was not like that in the midwest growing up we had those green lawns all the time and then when we lived in the city maybe we put out a sprinkler to keep the tree lawn um you know kind of green and you know if i had my druthers if there was no environmental impact i would totally water my lawn like everything everything being equal i would absolutely water my lawn you could can't you see me being obsessed about my lawn watering and moving the food i saw a guy on

tiktok the other day that i thought this is i need to share this with andrew he had you talked about your tree lawn which i never i didn't grow up with that term but i think that means what we

would call the parking strip right yeah the thing between the sidewalk and the street yeah yeah this

guy had somehow because of the design of his neighborhood he had a triangle of grass it was basically like where his driveway came down and then his neighbor's driveway came down and and it was sort of like a tree lawn but it was like i may be like three feet by and then it came down into a point okay and it was basically a sped up version and it had was totally dead it was just like it was like not a very healthy thing and it was him just like lovingly restoring this like two foot triangle of dirt into like a beautiful little triangle of green grass so he like rototilted out and then he was like or he was like scoring it with some kind of a thing and he was hand seeding it and then he was watering it and then he you know jumps forward three months and then he's mowing it very beautifully and like it was just a perfect little three foot green i I was like, I would watch more content like this.

Yeah, that sounds like a dream. Now, I do want to play a voicemail for you. Let me tag Rebecca's email, though.

If you ever want to tour a sewage treatment plant, let me know. We're currently installing the largest array of lights in the country to disinfect the treated wastewater.

Now, I was looking. Rebecca doesn't say where she's writing from, but maybe specifically so because she says I work for a water utility. But just a quick Google on her area code tells me that this is probably northern California somewhere. So, and again, I'm not trying to dox Rebecca here, but is that something you'd be interested in?

I mean, kind of in a weird way. On the one hand, a sewage treatment plant seems like a, you know, a kind of an intense thing to go view. I mean, it's a sort of looking at the southbound end of a northbound society in a way that I don't know if I want to come face to face with. You just tuck your jark under your arm. Oh, that's a tote bag. I need to get you a jark tote bag. Could we sell those? Could that be TBTL merch?

You must be joking.

What kind of looks are you getting on the e-line, Andrew, if you've got your camera and your other things stowed away in a journal of the anus rectum?

your big headphones on i want a jark tote bag do they sell them i'm gonna see if they have if the jark has a merch store but um anyway um thanks for the invite rebecca i'll consider it i mean actually it sounds like a cbs sunday morning story honestly we're install installing the largest array of lights in the country to disinfect the treated wastewater so that sounds like there must be some science behind ultraviolet i'm gonna just assume it's an ultraviolet disinfectant of stuff i'm guessing so i heard about that during the pandemic um i have great

news andrew tile is being cut outside oh nice well let me play this first let me play this voicemail for you and then i'll let you get out of here and you can go play with your tile um but the reason i'm kind of pushing hard for this is because i will do blurs days tomorrow and god knows what friday friday shows tend to be weird so i really wanted to make sure to get this in here as the um holiday season progresses this is from listener lizzie who luke has a memory of was it chubby and tubby is that oh yeah chubby and tubby that was the on aurora christmas tree lot that you were telling me about here in seattle back in the day hey friendos it's uh

lizzie calling from tacoma now but i grew up in greenwood and nice just listening to y'all talk about uh chubby and tubby christmas trees and for years when we were in high school probably four or five years between me and my brothers um my older brother's buddy worked at chubby and tubby and he was sort of infamous amongst the ballard high school teenage boys that um if you brought him dick's cheeseburgers he would throw you a christmas tree over the back fence um one of the So for several years, we had like maybe two or three Christmas trees because I don't know. We just kept going to get them with cheeseburgers from Getchy Nick, who worked at Chubby and Tubby. Sketchy Nick? Sketchy Nick, I probably bought. Thanks for all you do, Chris. Power out.

You probably bought Christmas trees from Sketchy Nick.

I probably purchased something from Sketchy Nick in the day. Like, I'm very certain I did because we – that was like – I mean, I went to Chubby and Tubby almost every single day because they had everything like they had basketball shoes they had you know flannel shirts

they had slingshot like wrist rock okay so this wasn't just a temporary place that set up shop

for christmas trees chubby and tubby was a was a hardware store but one of those old school ones that just had like it was just shit piled up to the rafters okay and there was no rhyme or reason about about kind of like what products they so there wasn't a real consistent focus of the store So like you could buy Levi's in there, you could buy basketball shoes, you could buy, like I said, like slingshots and BB guns, you could buy nails. They had every single thing. And then outside, they set up this Christmas tree lot every year. And famously, it was like any Christmas tree was $5.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I'm looking at an article from 2003 in the Seattle Times, Farewell Chubby and Tubby and Thanks for All the Memories. I'm looking to get my eyes and some photos of what this place was like. It sounds like a goddamn delight, honestly.

Dude, it was just absolutely the best. And by the way, that story from Lizzie, Dick's Cheeseburgers being traded for $5 Chubby and Tubby. You couldn't get more core, like Luke Burbank core. Right. If you want to understand everything about me, it's a story that involves Dick's Cheeseburgers being swapped for Chubby and Tubby Christmas trees.

And I'm looking now, I'm looking at photos of their little kind of Christmas tree lot that they had set up. I don't know when they stopped doing this. Maybe I'll use this as a show pick, but that's why I really wanted to play that voicemail for you, because I just I love that the call is coming from Tacoma. It's about growing up in Seattle in the 90s that involves Chubby and Tubby and Dick's Cheeseburgers and sketchy Nick who would throw who is probably listening to Nirvana while he threw Christmas trees over the back fence in exchange for local cheeseburgers like that just checks all the boxes.

Andrew, I'm going to send you this picture of the actual vintage Chubby and Tubby from Aurora. There was two of them. There was one in White Center and there was one at 85th and Aurora. And this one that I'm going to send you, me and my dad painted these words on Chubby and Tubby. Oh, nice.

And that's the show pic? Is that a good photo? Is that clear? Sure, if you want to.

And I remember helping him paint this Nike. They had this Nike on there. They had Carhartt. car heart like they basically had you know these paintings of like the things that uh you could get inside the store but it was painted let's see here um subject i'll just put pick as the subject

i see people have turned it into a meme too it says back to school shopping when i was a kid and it's a big um a huge sign i didn't realize this must be the one you're talking about it's a huge sign across the top it says chubby and tubby it's got a car heart logo on the left and a nike and a converse all-star on the right that must have been so that's a huge sign that you got

painted you painted that on location yeah on like a scaffold or whatever I think my dad most my dad did 99% of it I think I just kind of like was hanging out there and uh-huh like probably I don't know I don't even know maybe mixing some paint for him or something but um yeah that was a extremely um what's the word I'm looking for it was a big part of my my life going to chubby and tubby when I was growing up so that's a great story from Lizzie thank you so much and then there was the store down actually not even in White Center it was actually kind of I think it was on Rainier not very far from where the the house that I had um was that was down in you know kind of south Seattle in the um what do we even call that area anywhere um how long it's been since I lived down there the Rainier Beach or I'm not sure not Rainier Beach but like not quite Madison Park either whatever that was called where I used to live now there was another chubby and tubby wait

Mount Baker oh okay I wasn't sure I I was confused I like you you're not forgetting Mount Baker I was forgetting Mount Baker Andrew

I suffer from long term medium term and short term

it always really kill part of me dies inside when I see my own disease catching on with other people that's not supposed to be your role that's my role

I'm looking at a chubby and tubby hat on Facebook on Vanishing Seattle

I was wondering you're not a big t-shirt but I was just thinking should I get you this chubby and tubby t-shirt that has the old logo on it serving seattle since 1947 i think i feel like i feel

like we might have even i don't know this is actually probably a mandela effect but when i look at this chubby and tubby hat this red one with white stitching on it chubby and tubby seattle washington it looks it makes me think that there was a chubby and tubby baseball team in the north central little league which i that might be just you know fanciful memory for me it might not have really been a thing but i do remember this logo and this hat vividly people wearing that it's so great nice thanks lisa or excuse me thanks liz lizzie for the for the call

great story memory lane yeah let's share more stories from that era of seattle i love it now

i'm hungry for a christmas tree all right thanks everyone for uh listening today we're going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio so uh come on by for that if you can in the meantime have a great wednesday take care of yourselves may none of your tarps rip and may all your articles submitted to Jark be peer reviewed and found to have scientific merit and also please remember

may your tarps be strong and your Jark's even stronger

and please remember to about too tall

and good luck to you all

farted right into my butthole it's like a fart transplant power out

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