Muse

Hey, speaking of fun, I know this super fun drinking game we can play. Every time one of you says something that the other can't relate to, you both drink.

Could be fun. I once played a drinking game with Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively at their macrobiotic firm with a particularly robust batch of homemade kombucha.

Do I have to drink for every word I don't know? TBTL! he is a fan of the outrageous he loves to surprise he loves other things as well

i'm a grammy emmy tony and webby award-winning and nominated songwriter artist designer director editor animator producer collector party thrower do you ever kind of look at each other and go art

we a couple of dapper Dans. I want to be the bad boy of public radio, like Elvis Mitchell. Dude, give me a bark. This is grass clippings. Give us the real deal or we're out of here.

You know what I'm going to do for you guys? I'm going to hook you up to the best stuff, okay? But you guys jump into my van. Definitely. For sharks. Come on.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Monday edition of TBTL, a show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheets?

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

I'm back, baby!

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia where it is a gorgeous Monday here in January.

Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful.

I don't think I knew how much I needed it to stop raining until I got up this morning and it had stopped raining. And in fact, we're looking at blue skies. It's just absolutely idyllic on this January 6th. I mean, everything seems to be going great today. This seems like an august day in U.S. history. You've got to be kidding me. At least we've got the weather going for us, people. I am a little under the weather right now. You might be able to hear it in my voice already, but I think I'm going to be all right. That's why God made cough buttons. I think it was on the eighth day that he made the cough button so that I could mute myself when I need to here on episode 4,374 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. I think my desk bell might be a little under the weather. There we go. That's the sound we're going for. January 6th, Monday, New Year. The New Year is like really, really here now.

The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here!

You know, we had some holiday time off and different things going on today, I think, is the day that's been circled on everyone's calendar as like the real deal beginning of 2025. And of course, we've got plenty of news. I've got lots of news. New year, new Luke, new plans that will probably end up like most of my new plans by the wayside eventually. But right now I'm in the optimistic era involving bird enthusiasm and business opportunities for TBTL.

That cash could really get me out of a couple of jams.

Involving Popeye the Sailor Man and other things that have recently fallen into the public domain. We'll talk about all of that and we'll talk to this guy. He is the longest running co-bro of the show.

Oh my God! He admit it!

Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Tell me if this is relatable. This is a new segment we're doing called Tell Me If This Is Relatable, where I talk about things in my life and how I approach them, and people can judge me. I was thinking about going to the gym today. I haven't been to the gym in a long time.

I mean, I don't think it could be more relatable than the thoughts that many folks are having this time of year. Let me finish.

I was thinking about going to the gym today, and I am hesitating to go to the gym not out of the usual just slurry of laziness and avoidance, but because I don't want to be a cliche, because I don't want them to see these very, I'm sure, fine, but very disinterested young people who work in the front desk of the of the I almost said 24 hour fitness I can't even remember the name of my gym anymore so that's how long it's been but for some reason I don't want their gazes I don't want I just don't want to be another person who's just like shuffling in there so that I can be judged along with the masses of doing something so just cliche here on the first Monday of January. Now is that relatable?

I think that is very relatable because really yeah in fact I would be interested to see some data on how packed the

gyms really are with people who are supposedly, you know, had done New Year's resolutions and are now trying to, you know, kind of reinvent themselves and exercise. I wonder if that's more myth, if that's like the tryptophan, you know how everybody was like, yeah, you get tired after you eat that turkey, and then they studied it, and I think it has absolutely no, tryptophan does not have any kind of sleepy properties to it. I wonder if that's one of those things that we've just all convinced ourself is true with kind of limited actual real world fact-based reality, if that makes any sense.

I'll bet. I mean, I feel, I can't say for sure. It's been a long time. But I feel anecdotally that you definitely see a surge of people in January at the gyms, the kind of gyms I go to, certainly, the kind of the cheaper chain situations. And so I do feel, but again, that's very anecdotal. And I'll tell you what, maybe this conversation will kind of be the spark I need to make sure that I follow through today. And I can report back tomorrow about whether or not those people at the front desk laughed at me and pointed and giggled like that dog and duck hunt as I walked through the door.

And also, I think that was a play on Muttley from Clutch Cargo, right?

I think you're right.

Hey, not bad. Tell you, this is the year of my impressions.

Wait, I was trying to do, what is the dog? Doesn't he laugh, though, or something as well?

That was me trying to do the laugh.

Oh, that was the laugh.

Well, I was doing more of the clutch cargo version. Yeah. Did you ever, like, have the friend, or were you the friend? I wouldn't see you doing this. I definitely was this person who would just put the gun barrel of the duck hunt, again, right up against the screen and just, like, try to set the high score.

I mean, a young boy has a lot of time during the summer. I'm sure there were times I feel I can answer that in the affirmative that I have done that at some point. I don't think I did it, though, to earn any kind of false valor, if that's what you mean. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think I was then going around and being like.

You didn't wait for Andy Engstrom to come back in the room and just be like, I guess I'm good at this now.

Yes, exactly. If I did it, it was just me like messing around.

You didn't listen carefully for footsteps and then move all the way back to the Barka lounger, like where you were supposed to be, and then just act kind of surprised.

Like, wow, I'm nailing it. While you're holding your football helmet with the falsely earned stickers on it. Wasn't that something? Oh, yeah, yes.

Oh, by the way, I had a viewing of, I had a sighting of some of those stickers the other day.

In the hutch or the dresser that you put them in?

Yeah, in the dresser, because I've been moving stuff around. What? in yeah so you know um i the the project continues at all times here at the madrona hill studio and little house associated with it and um so a big thing i've been trying to do is make so i moved from the little upstairs of the house i think i've mentioned this many times on the show but somebody that was working on the house said oh this is one of those one and a half story houses i was like is that like a joke goes no they used to build them this way there are these a couple of rooms upstairs which are if you're over five foot eight you kind of have to duck down up there and I don't understand I always thought it was just the attic and they had just tried to expand it and make a couple bedrooms and that's why it was like weirdly kind of proportioned I think that was how they built houses in the 1930s or some houses but anyway I've been trying to kind of like make the upstairs a little nicer because it's now there's two little guest bedrooms up there which is perfect for my parents who have been staying with me a lot lately while my dad's been working on the house because they can go to their respective rooms to sleep now i'll mention this my mom apropos of nothing and certainly not because i asked made the point to clarify to me that they are still intimate oh good i was worried i i mean i i can't tell you how low on my list of concerns that was but my mom was explaining how yeah at their house you know because they're older and my dad snores and my mom snores they both snore and they both think that the other one snores worse than like you know what i mean they both underestimate their snoring and overestimate the other person's snoring so you know they they go to their separate quarters as i think many people do at a certain point in life but again my mom was very adamant to mention we're still intimate i was like please save that for silverdale

but anyway did you have a lot of follow-up questions i had in fact zero follow-up questions

but i um have been trying to make the upstairs uh a little bit uh a little bit nicer and a little bit more i mean the the hvac is still a problem up there in that there is no heating or cooling so while the downstairs while the main part of the house is uh is is kind of is pretty cozy now with there's like a pellet stove and a mini split up there is is still if you like go up there at night it's like it's freezing cold it feels like you're not even indoors anymore so anyway i have been trying to uh make the upstairs of the house a little bit more hospitable and i'm now forgetting why did i even get on that topic because i wanted to mention to everyone that my dresser with that my parents are still intimate yeah well that's the headline so i had moved the room that i was using upstairs i had eventually moved everything out of there um one because i was moving my stuff downstairs to this other bedroom and two because i was painting it all and getting it all put together that meant i took this that dresser this dresser that i've had since my childhood i took it out of that room and i put it in the other room and then eventually when i moved it back in i took all the drawers out so it'd be easier to carry and and when i was taking one of the drawers out i look and there were the one of those football helmet stickers which if you're new to the show maybe your 2025 resolution was to listen to more amazing podcasts and here you are listening to tbtl um that's all right most of us aren't able to keep our resolutions and you've already failed at yours. But here you are listening to TBTL. The story goes, when I was on a football team in like junior high you used to get these little kind of plastic. The thing about them, Andrew, was they were stickers but not in that they used a bunch of stick-em. It was more static cling related, I think. Oh, like a window cling almost? Like a window cling, I think was more the deal. Because somehow i was able to every time you made a tackle you got a football a little small football sticker the coach would give you so if you had five tackles in a game you get five of these stickers and you put them on your hat uh your helmet and then at the end of the season you could really tell who the good players were because they're just their helmet was just encrusted with these little you know kind of indicators i'm sure i said this last time you know i didn't i knew about the

stickers i didn't know what you got them for i knew it was performance based but i didn't know what thing i or what particular action but i am surprised that you played defense have we had that conversation or at that age are you playing both sides of the ball probably both sides of the ball

but probably more defense because i was i really liked hitting kids i mean i was i really liked the experience of tackling people and i was pretty shrimpy too like what happened was every season i moved further back on defense because everybody else was getting bigger and i was not and so it like i wasn't a very effective d-line minute you know five three and the 95 pounds or whatever but i think they were associated with tackles because what i knew is that i did not have nearly as many as your pat lamerts your barry castona's of the world but um what i also realized was i don't think they're changing these out between seasons so what i'll do is i'll take the whatever i had you know 10 footballs off of my helmet i will hide them i will stick them to the inside of this dresser i like also that i was hiding them like if someone was to come into my bedroom when i was in eighth grade they'd go what are you doing with these football stickers somebody call the police

you should put them on the underside of the drawer they have to pull out the drawer empty it out and

like dump it i put them in the inside of the toilet tank with my gun and my uh wow second gun reference on the show today it's uh you know it's a whole new whole new ball game in 2020 well the first one was duck hunt related right yes but i still use the word gun and i think the problem is i watched so much tiktok still andrew you know while while we still have our time with tiktok and you know that's one of the words you can't say on tiktok you know the people call it all kinds of annoying euphemisms like a pew pew because your thing will be pulled down if i think so yeah i think yeah i think that's a word that'll get you pulled so i've like internalized that now

where i don't want to say the gun in duck hunt how is their gun doing with their ads well it Ain't the Keurig of booze, Andrew. That's for dang sure. I can promise you that. Have you been seeing, I mean, I know that we're spinning so far to control, but have you been seeing all of the posts of people, like, I shouldn't say all of it. It hasn't been a deluge, but, like, I've seen, I'm going to say more than a handful of people posting or advertising these, you know, drink-making machines, these cocktail-making machines. I guess the best way to describe it would be like a Keurig machine for cocktails, which

Oh, you mean like Robin Quivers did on Stern when I sent you that tape?

Oh, that's right. You sent me some tape where they were talking about it on the Stern show. I saw people like getting it for Christmas or the holidays and then sending me photos or seeing them in stores. I feel like, and a little bit backstory on this one is years ago, I guess during the pandemic, a company asked us to advertise these machines called Drinkworks, which were made by the brand keurig and the best way to describe it would be it's like a keurig for cocktails except in the copy it said do not call this a keurig for cocktails which i'll always be confused why they did that it went out of production after i did one ad literally i don't think you did any ads i did right before i gave

them to becca's brother because i was like they'd like this and then they loved it and then they ran out of pods and then no one makes the pods anymore and you know what i have i just stumbled

on this i was cleaning something up and i realized i still have some of the co2 cartridges for it because the co2 cartridges were so expensive but we ran out of the ones they gave us for free so genevieve and i went somewhere i think to like one of those wine and more stores or something i can't remember one of those beer and wine huge bevmo yeah like a bevmo situation we have a bev

less out here someday we'll have enough for a bev mo yeah so anyway securing for bev lesses but

anyway i i just came across these like what seemed at the time somewhat expensive cartridges for a machine that i no longer have that i remember breaking into pieces so it'd fit in the old garbage can at the old which is not environmentally probably what i should have admitted to not what i should have done but what i should have admitted to the clip that i sent you from the

from the howard stern show was literally a number of the staffers trying to understand one person was talking about one of these machines and the other person was trying to understand how what they were describing and then rob had jumped in and said it's like a keurig but it makes drinks like basically doing the exact thing that we were instructed not to do and i'm with you i think i think if they would have let us call it that i think that company would still be in business

and thriving and i would be the president that's right i would be and a client i do think though that i don't think i don't know what happened to drink works or why it was a failure so early on or how they describe it all i know is as somebody who had one of these machines because it was given to me as an influencer um i oh by the way we are influencers i saw a bunch of people buying um fresca over the weekend by the way our conversation about fresca has really moved the move the dial that they have on the outside of the box. But yeah, I don't know exactly what went down. All I know is I received an email along with all other Drinkworks users saying we're discontinuing this. And so if you want to buy any more flavors or whatever, if you want to buy a gin and tonic pod, do it now. Because otherwise, how will you drink gin and tonics? How would you ever crack that code of how to make that cocktail? But for some reason now, three years later, I feel like maybe other brands have stepped in and are maybe having a moment. I'll be interested to see if they stick around. but there would be something kind of interesting about the fact that for some reason the first one even during the height of the pandemic when everybody was drinking and more at home when

you're the first one to get to something as a company or an idea uh it usually you make a lot of mistakes that then the people that come subsequently can kind of like learn from your

mistakes and do the thing successfully yeah yeah i suppose so i don't know what i don't know what the issue was i told i think i maybe i told you this via text or i was having this conversation with somebody else but I'm like it's like the web tv of drink makers it was me yeah because like I always web tv always lives in my head because like yeah we just watch all of our tv like our tvs are basically computers now that's how everything molded together or merged together but back you know like what 20 years ago they were saying no we're gonna make a company called web tv and it's gonna provide you television on your computer and that just failed like it's it's failed miserably I had a friend with a Web TV email account for a while.

Oh, that's my go-to joke about antiquated email to this day is at Web TV. At Web TV, yeah. Here's my question, though. I think Web TV was you got the web on your TV, right?

Oh, you're right. I mischaracterized that. I'm looking at it up now.

No, but which was a genius idea because our televisions are just a big monitor now for our internet life. I mean, no, your point is actually really, really legit, which is, yeah, Web TV was just saying, we'll surf the net on our TVs someday. And, you know, a bunch of people signed up for it, and then it was like, oh, that's a terrible idea. And now Luke is just making fun of people with Web TV email accounts. And now all we do is surf the web on our TVs.

Yes, exactly. I was saying to you, I don't know why this is on my mind. I think I maybe was listening back to an old episode or it came up again recently or something. But, like, essentially, our TVs are just, like, giant iPads, essentially. I think maybe I was talking to you about that when you were getting ready to make the leap into Tubi. Not Tubi. Fubu. Fubu, yeah.

Fubu? Fubo. Fubo. You Fubu. I Fubo, Andrew. Hey, speaking of. Oh, my God. I cannot tell you, but, sorry, quickly.

I cannot tell you how satisfied I am with the Fubo experience. It's incredible. That's who we should know Nads for. It's the Keurig of the internet.

The Seahawks were playing a meaningless game yesterday in that they were not going to go to the playoffs, and the Los Angeles Rams, who they were playing, were going to go to the playoffs regardless of what happened on the field. And I had an extremely low level of interest in the game, but not so low that when I was at Becca's place for like five minutes when she was doing something.

something i just like you know look at my phone and i just see what the score is and i'm like all right they're kind of holding their own and then i just turn it off i'm thinking i'm trying to think of what the other there was another oh the sun bowl i wrote this on uh blue sky i knew all-time low was unlocked when i was googling how do i stream the sun bowl was it the arizona state one which one was no that was that it's in el paso it was the thing that the huskies were in they lost to louisville right but like they they got to get rid of these bowl games by the way unless they're the national championship because what you have are every single team that wins more than six games gets to go to a bowl and any of the good players that have any nfl aspirations sit out the games now because why would you risk your why would you risk your nfl career for the sun bowl so it's like half of the positions are like you'll see the graphic on the screen will just be like you know two or three of the best players on both teams it'll just say opt out like did like just decided not to play again which i don't begrudge them that decision but it's like i don't even know what the point of these anything that's not for the like the national championship it just seems like it's kind of a weird farce that's just meant to make someone pay more money to subscribe to big 12 tv or whatever but all that is to say well

don't you dare try to take away the bowl games now that we're in the pop tart bowl era now i wonder if you and i have very different feelings about this pop tart bowl situation because i you heard about the antics at the last one right the one that just happened well here this this

was my awareness of it i was seeing a bunch of memeified shit first of all i didn't know there was a pop tart bowl and then i was just seeing a lot of like meme stuff about you know pop pop tarts like you know people in like pop tart mascot-y kind of outfits like being ridiculous that's my level of awareness I don't know who the teams were I don't know what what's your take on

it so I and I became aware of it I think last year but I think and I could be wrong about this that they're in their third year so let me give you the narrative here and I would totally understand and respect if you just think this like because you've been a you know a college football fan for I'm assuming your whole life or most of your life and I am not I'm not even a college football fan now so this might feel Savannah banana-y to you which I like I'm gonna just I'm gonna just stop you

there it does but i'll but i'm gonna listen to you i'm gonna listen to your defense of the pop

tart bowl but the difference is this is about marketing and this is this is more the the the comparison is more like the mayo bowl whatever that that brand is i can't remember but it's more about like duke's mayo bowl it's not they don't change the game the way the savannah bananas like i i didn't realize how that is not baseball it was on at a bar last summer and i was like oh i don't like this at all everybody was talking about how much they love the savannah bananas i was like oh this is just this is ridiculous like this is a real bowl you know i'm looking at i didn't know this but it was that it was miami versus uh iowa state so okay it looks like it was a 42 41 game so maybe it was interesting up to the end i'm not sure i don't know blow by blow but the thing that bubble gummers in this arena like myself enjoy is the mascot game going on with the pop

tart bowl and so oh i see so they played a little like a football game with the mascot

No, it has nothing to do with that. They just have, like, mascots on the side and a lot of Pop-Tart marketing or whatever. And then what happened last year was I believe they had this, you know, strawberry-flavored Pop-Tart mascot that was going around, you know, kind of being silly and doing whatever. It didn't affect the game at all. It's just all the stuff around the game. But then at the end of the game, they brought out, I believe, onto the field, a giant toaster and they lowered the Pop-Tart mascot, still waving and everything, into the toaster. Maybe this happened at halftime. Dark. It was very dark. Maybe it happened at halftime because, Luke, it gets darker. This is still last year I'm talking about. After the game, and I don't know who played in the bowl last year. After the game, they made it look like the Pop-Tart mascot was now toasted. Obviously, there is nobody in it anymore. And somebody just made a basically a big giant cake of a Pop-Tart thing that was in the shape and size of the mascot. And the winning team all got to come and kind of scoop up bites of this thing. And they were eating like presumably they were eating the mascot. And then on social media, like there were photos of how nasty and everything it looked at the end. An eyeball was weighed down by where the waist used to be. And it's just like all destroyed and gross. And it was like, people were talking about that last year. How are they going to beat that this year? And again, I didn't watch. I just saw clips of it online. But they didn't show the strawberry Pop-Tart. The strawberry Pop-Tart is dead. They had a couple of other flavors out there. Rest in power. But then I don't know, again, if it was at halftime or what it was. They do a tribute to the fallen strawberry Pop-Tart. And then with dramatic music, all of a sudden the Pop-Tarts that are still living.

see the half devoured Pop-Tart back as a humanoid but still destroyed like humanoid mascot with like the eyeball where it was at the end of the devouring at the end of last year's game and it was kind of smoking still as if it got like kind of stuck in the toaster and it's on top of the scoreboard like it's way up in the sky and it's smoking and waving and the other pop tarts or like respecting it and saluting it it was like is it supposed to be in the heavens i don't know if it was the heavens or just the great like a phoenix i don't know if it was just like kind of returning from the ashes but like they took photos of what this mangled pie looked like at the end of last year's bowl and then reconstructed it again as a mascot a mangled mascot and brought it back to life i gotta say that's pretty good it was pretty awesome okay

That totally exceeds what my, like, momentary theories were about it. Because you know what I mean? You know how it is, modern life and the internet and stuff. It's like, and I feel like this actually happens to you somewhat, maybe even a little bit more than me, where something happens, and I'm not really following the initial, the precipitating event. Yeah. But then I'm just seeing all the, like, the poorly written headlines that are just like, you know strawberry pop tart owns total karen grape pop tart and i'm just like whatever this is i choose to not engage so oftentimes that stuff is like it's like almost like if you get if you catch the hype first then the the initial event kind of i my opinion of it goes way down um and and even though i've never even seen like i literally didn't know any of that stuff you just told me and now that you explain it to me i'm actually into it i'm trying to find here i'll

just send you this you don't have to look at it now you can look at it on your own time whenever you want but um yeah some of the photos and like they of course had a camera up there with him too so there's some really stunning photos of this nasty looking pop tart and again like it's all just the marketing side of things i do think that like you know it's like i think the comparison for me is if i if i really have strong feelings about my mariners experience and then some like i like most of the frivolous things that they do in the park at ball games not broccoli guy no that's unsanctioned but celebrated i don't like broccoli guy it's true i i don't know why actually no i don't know why other people like him so much i mean i'm sure he's a nice guy i don't want him to hear this and think i'm being a jerk i just don't i'm not into that bit it's just a guy who brings broccoli and dances and look at me louis um but uh but you know like the hot dogs from heaven i don't think you like that so much they drop hot dogs with little um parachutes on it down to the fans like i'm fine with it it doesn't affect the game i like we've talked about this i like the new edition of the running of the salmon salmon yes okay just wanted to make sure for a second salmon sounded wrong coming out of my mouth the running of the cod um so anyway the running of the white fish um so anyway yeah some of those things as long as they don't impact the gameplay itself i'm fine with it and in this case it's not impacting the gameplay and it's sort of an entry point for me somebody who doesn't really care about college sports that much you know yeah no

that's actually i i like i like it getting getting gruesome like that and i mean the you know that's i thought i literally it's so weird that my mind again without doing any kind of research on the matter for some reason i literally thought that the meme or the like what people were talking about was that like one of the pop tarts like pretended to hump the other pop tart that might have happened as well this is the story that my mind wrote based on a couple of shitty internet headlines like and that's why i was like what that's why i didn't go any further i was like i don't care what pop tart mascots are doing to be extreme what they failed to convey to me was this is a whole shakespearean fucking drama and sorry that i've broken out the f-bomb i don't know why that i needed to do that but this is like a this is a tragedy and i love it but a redemption story as well i didn't even kind of realize or a zombie kind of narrative because i was like re reanimated uh strawberry pop tart coming back for blood coming back to get all of the pop tarts that that led to his initial destruction i didn't even realize and it's just such good

marketing too i didn't realize that before they resurrected him i guess the fans coming into the stadium i'm looking at this photo now there was a huge like sort of memorial to him like a little statue of him and it says frosted strawberry first ever edible mascot uh 2023 to 2023 anyway um yeah I think if you're into marketing, this is fun. I could see it, though. In fact, you mentioned a zombie. When I was going to send you this article, I saw another article that mentioned a zombie Pop-Tart. I'm like, I'm not sending Luke that one, because the whiff of zombie humor has you out the door.

Not really. That's not a space that I tend to voluntarily play in. You know a space that I have been trying to... to play in at least last night was finally catching up on somebody somewhere oh yeah which has been i've been threatening for for weeks and months to actually start watching that show which i'm very strongly associated with in the minds of uh the tbtl listeners in that when the when the latest season and i guess the final season came back so many people told me about it our friend barry who we interviewed obviously went to manhattan kansas for the uh for the sort sort of final episode finally last night i got myself like in the like proper emotional place to start watching this and i was kind of pleasantly surprised that when i turned on my web tv andrew uh i had max like because also calling it max i don't know i feel like i'm giving into something at hbo for that like i just call it hbo yeah it's like hbo or it's hbo max but like you know that feels like calling it x like i will never give them the satisfaction but i was mad i'm i

had to look up the like a bus route to climate pledge arena um and i always vowed never to use that name just call it amazon arena or key right key bank or stadium or whatever um key arena but the thing is google maps isn't going along with that bullshit you know what i mean google maps has one name for it i was like angrily tapping it into my phone yeah that's me when i turn on my tv

and i'm scrolling through my uh my apps and i get to max and i click on it but i didn't have to do any like weird like scanning a qr code on the tv screen or going on my computer to verify some shit so i was kind of like i was like oh this is great because i never know which one of these streaming services i'm like still paying for or not in fact uh the other night my dad and i were watching a show called um silo which was on um like apple tv and again i was pleasantly surprised that i had apple tv watching that show silo by the way did lead me to an unusually snarky blue sky post i'm trying to i don't i don't want to yuck yums and there's no reason to get you know go out of your way to be kind of critical or mean about things but i had this experience in watching that show i don't know if it's silo or the silo it's kind of like a are you familiar with this at all the concept never even heard of it so it's like a i guess dystopian future where these are based on some books i guess it's a kind of dystopian future where all these people i guess what we are led to believe is all of humankind what's left are living in this huge underground silo and the air upstairs is toxic it's got david olielio i can

never say that guy's last name I read these books they changed the name is uh was it wool I think wool was the name of the books right let me look this up but I read these books about um these people who live in these underground silos and I had always thought like because the it was a series of three books and I always thought these are the first one I enjoyed the second two were as follow ups usually are a little bit a little bit more middling just kind of like taking advantage of the fact that they had you know created something that people were interested in um but I remember thinking i read them years and years ago and i was like oh my god this is more this will be perfect for a movie or tv show and it took them years to do it i think we're talking about the same thing

here is the is it the case that when the if a person says i want to go above ground they have to go above ground is that one of the bedrock principles of the books um i am looking i don't

i don't i know that to go above ground is almost like moonwalking like i don't remember it's like And they have to clean the lens on this camera? You have to clean the lens. Yeah, yeah. So this is definitely the same stuff. I see. So it was called the Silo Series. It was Wool, Shift, and Dust were the three books in this. And I did not know that that was already a series we could watch. I would be interested in this because I really enjoyed the books, and I loved the premise of it.

I love the premise, too. Actually, Walt B. was the one who hipped me to this. But anyway, so we watched it. I think it's pretty decent. I mean, there's a few things that are a little corny, but whatever. That's, you know, that's just what happens when you when you, you know, make something into a television show. I found it compelling. I'm going to at some point continue watching it. But I the blue sky thingy that I wrote, whatever post skeet was here was effectively. I said, I think that they're out of original sentences like you've never there's no thing. There are no more sentences that are a truly original string of words. But I think I just found one and it's oh, good. Common is in this. Like, because Common is so incredibly bad in this television show Like, everyone in it is pretty good at acting And like, I believe them And I'm, you know, Rashida Jones is great David Oyelowo is great Like, there's some amazing, like, British actors Who I was, my dad knows Every single person with a British accent Who's ever been on one frame

of celluloid andrew if that was a when they come out with that like a game show on nbc know your people that were in wolf hall my dad will my dad would be the ken jennings of that shit like every single person be a guy in the back like sorting garbage they'd be like oh yeah he was in um uh you know he was in whatever like shows i've never even heard of but anyway so we're watching this and then common shows up and it's just brutal it's like why did how did we get how do we get bamboozled into thinking common needs to be in acting i feel i think i may be in uh

apologies for this because i was gonna say i feel like i saw him in some stuff that i like but i think i'm thinking of most deaf who doesn't go by most deaf anymore yassine bay yassine bay and i think i think he's a good actor he's a good actor and so second i for a second there i wanted to defend common hey another sentence nobody's ever said before um uh but i think i might be confusing

them as actors yeah i feel like i just have never like honestly when common shows up on a project whether it's like a a movie where he's a basketball player and queen latifah is a ref he falls in love with i believe that movie might have been called crossover like i just feel like anytime common shows up in something i know that the makers of the program are unserious i mean that's really The issue is it's like oh you put Common in this well then I know that there's only A certain amount of care That you're giving to this project because if You really cared about acting you would By the way I think the same thing would go For Schwarzenegger like there are plenty Of people that fit this bill when they show Up in a project I know that the people Making it are unserious you know Because these people are bad at acting To a degree that it takes Me out of the reality of it and what you're banking On I think I'd put Vin Diesel in this category um i'm trying to think of other actors who if they show up in something i know that this is purely a marketing play or something like i don't know what the appeal is but it can't be that this person blew them out of the water with their audition for the part because the

acting is not good you raised the specter is that the right word maybe of game shows right like name that british actor game show and it occurred to me that there's something i've also been wanting to tell you about for well i mean been wanting to tell you about maybe for the past 24 hours because i think well no i stumbled on this on saturday night um something's going on in our culture luke and i don't know what it is that's a new segment um what what a way to what a way to start the segment i've been watching a lot of max as well first of all also HBO Max you mean exactly hate that font so there's something that irritates me about the slightly the slightly curvature in the straight lines yeah it's weirdly out of time with any kind of like

whatever the whatever the moment we're in with fonts it's somehow just just either before or

after it but it's it's unsettling and it just also yeah and it just speaks to the the weird hasty rollout of like kind of of almost like the erasure of HBO and them coming out we're gonna

We're going to force you to get Paramount, or Discovery, I should say. We're going to force you to get some Discovery bullshit you don't want to watch.

I don't know if I got sucked into that whole thing. Well, that was what precipitated it, right? I don't think, all I know is that Max took over, and then HBO became a tab under Max, and it just all seemed like Cable Town bullshit to me.

Right, because I think Max was being, I thought was being combined with, maybe I'm thinking of seeing that.

You know, that might be part of it as well, although I do think that you might be conflating the CBS Paramount stuff. but it's possible all of that is to say i have been watching because i've been just like kind of constantly have like if i'm just looking for something late at night to put on i've been putting on the sopranos um last night um genevieve and i watched a movie that was sort of recommended by a listener that i'm already forgetting the name of it was an old french noir film called elevate the reason a listener suggested is because miles davis does the soundtrack uh it's called the english title is elevator to the gallows was an old french noir film so views and i just like

That's what they sent strawberry Pop-Tart into.

That's right. It was more like down escalator to the gallows. The thing is, I think I called it escalator to the gallows when I was pitching Genevieve on it.

It's such a different, if it's an elevator versus an escalator, it's such a different experience. It really is. Elevatoring to the gallows is like when those doors close, you're screwed. Escalators, you might be able to run backwards down the escalator. There's a chance you could still get out of this.

It's a sporting chance. Oh, okay. So one of the things that I have been seeing, I can't remember what Vives and I, it doesn't really matter to this story, but it's driving me a little bit bonkers because I know that Vives and I were binging something the other night and I was like, wait for the commercial to come on. There was a promo for a new show. And the first time I saw the promo, it was just 15 seconds long and it seemed generally fine. It was, it's a new.

You probably saw the promo last night while you were watching your show. It's for a Friends-based trivia game show hosted by Whitney Cummings?

No.

Okay. I saw a quick, like, 10 or 15-second promo for it. Seems pretty straightforward. Friends still huge in the zeitgeist, whole new generation's enjoying it. People have been obsessed with this for the majority of their lives in some cases. And now, you know, why not create? You know, I'm not judging necessarily just the flat idea of the whole thing. it's not for me but that's fine it's another just silly game show sure and then i saw the 30 second version and i was obsessed with it for a full night and i was trying to find it for veves because it turns out it's not just a friend's trivia show it's a friend's trivia show combined with an escape room or something it seems like part of the promise is you answer questions so that you can escape from friend city or something it's not it's not an escape from friend how do

How do you unlock this door? How you doing?

Like, I don't know exactly what's going on.

If your Joey Tribbiani impression is good, you get out of the room.

Oh, my God. And, like, there was just something about it. And I kept on saying, Vives, you've got to see the promo for Escape from Friend City. And, like, I don't know. And then on a different network, I think during—

Six Pop-Tarts are locked in a room. Only one will escape from Friend City. The rest will be toasted. And then eaten by Jim Gaffigan live on television.

During the football game yesterday, so I'm assuming this is like a CBS thing or God knows what, there is some network game show called Deal or No Deal Island?

I believe I've seen a promo for that, and I assumed it was Deal or No Deal set on an island.

Like, if we're taking, like, game show ideas, like your usual trivia or whatever game show ideas, and we're mixing them with this idea of reality TV, I guess, but you end up, I think I proved that with Deal or No Deal Island. I really thought I was watching it. Get off milk island. I thought I was watching a parody of something.

It's got strong Jack Donaghy just grasping, grasping at straws.

Starting with the catchphrase and working backwards.

Meep, meep, ribby, ribby.

God cop? Of all of the shows that you would put. Crime just met a new worst friend? Of all the shows that you would put on an island, why would Deal or No Deal? That seems like two very different ideas. Like put Deal or No Deal in a grocery store or something. Right. Or put literally anything else on an island. Put no whammies on an island. No, that's Deal or No Deal, I think.

I feel like the problem with Deal or No Deal Island is if you lose, either you say no deal or you make the wrong deal, then there's also, so then it's like, okay, goodbye, and then you have to just go stand on a different part of the beach for like two hours waiting for the plane or the boat to get you. What happened? The time of getting off of Deal or No Deal Island after you've been eliminated from the show, like if you're in the soundstage in burbank and you get eliminated from deal or no deal you just you leave they put you back out on you know magnolia or whatever if you're on the island you're kind of still there you can still see the game everyone's like waiting it's like awkward there's going to be this period of time after you've been eliminated but where you're you're waiting for transportation off the island i think that's going to be kind of it's not going to be in the show but it'll be awkward for folks i'm glad that you brought up the ads though on max andrew because this is what i really wanted to talk about last night when i finally got down to biz with somebody somewhere which remains spectacular an unbelievably well-written show i i realized that i hadn't i had legitimately hadn't watched the last two episodes of season two so not only do i have all of season three which i'm excited about but i i watched two episodes of season two last night that i hadn't watched but what i realized to my great dismay last night was that i am somehow at the max subscriber level where there are flipping ads oh yeah me too and it is so jarring because andrew it's not television it's hbo no it was there was a there was like and i they've also gotten rid of that you know the static kind of thing that

we all love they should bring that back by the way somebody will at some point they'll be rebranded

hopefully but but like what i didn't realize until last night was i go into i sort of have an i would is emotional the right word i go into some sort of like state of like of revelry and of giving my attention over to HBO programming that I don't do for other shows. These days, I promise you, if I'm watching a sporting event, at a minimum, I'm having a two-screen experience, possibly three. And then based on how much I care about the show, it gets more and more of my attention. This is all laid out in chapter 17 of Chris Hayes' new book. People say there's only six... 16 chapters I know but this should have been the 17th chapter what is Luke Luke's attention to these television programs and what I realized that the the highest honor that I can pay a television program is putting away all of my other screens and fully concentrating on it and that is what historically I have done when an HBO program begins because it's prestige television it's well done whether we're talking six feet under whether we're talking Sopranos whether we're talking a whole variety of of great shows that HBO has done over the years including somebody somewhere i'm watching this show last night i'm it's a it's such a beautiful quiet little show set in manhattan kansas with really nice um i can't believe that we've talked about this show this many times and and i'm having to ask you this question but have you watched any of it no i haven't no okay so um it is just you would i think you would enjoy it andrew but anyway it's got this like the soundtrack is really interesting to me it's just it's it's got like a lot of like i know This is gonna sound crazy kind of like tuba in it and stuff. It's it's just like a really calm Somehow the the the the the the music from the show Really matches kind of the tone of the show which is just not ever trying too hard But very it feels very true to life, but very funny and great. It's just such a subtle beautiful show and You're watching it and something beautiful is happening between two of the characters and all of a sudden it shifts into get off milf island and it's such a vibe killer like it's like it really ruined my experience of watching these episodes of somebody somewhere because you i get into a kind of a i get into a thing with these shows and again because they're on hbo and because you have to subscribe to this they're able to create programming that you don't see on network television if i'm watching friggin blue bloods with Tom Selleck as you know I do and they throw in a Jardians ad I don't give a shit second swear of the show I apologize sorry for swearing um you know like there's a kind of show that I don't really it doesn't bother me to have a commercial it the commercials on max are really really upsetting because the shows on max are generally speaking so good that it really messes

up the vibe when you jam an ad in somewhere I I've been you know pretty used to it I think the

bigger cultural believe it or not everything you said makes sense to me and and also the idea of hbo being this kind of special place in in our culture but also in our imaginations and everything it just underscores we don't have to get into it all again because i know that we talked not just on this show but when it first happened about how crazy it was that some company was going to rebrand it as max and bury the hbo brand when it is just like such a good brand like capital b brand like everything that i mean from the its earliest days of showcasing comics and boxing but but it was always something different it always represented something special like you said something you put down the newspaper for or in this day and age you put down your your phone for You know, and that's why it's just so shocking that they went in that direction as far as marketing is concerned. The ads thing I'm a little bit more used to. I remember when Vives and I cut the cord, we moved to this new house and we decided we weren't going to bring Comcast with us, which I'm still very glad of. But because of that, when we were like sort of like, you know, purchasing all of our various bundles directly from your Hulus, Netflix, HBOs, like these are all just separate bills we pay now. I think we were trying to make sure we didn't just end up paying the same amount we were paying for cable before. And Genevieve is always looking for deals.

You didn't just order every appetizer on the menu.

Right, exactly.

Like no main course. But wait, why was it $1,000?

So anyway, and also Genevieve likes to find deals and everything. We've talked about that. I don't know what my life would be like if I were just making these decisions on these things. Let's not test it. Yeah, let's not test it, exactly. But I remember Genevieve saying, hey, we're going to get this Netflix that has commercials in it. And for some reason, I was like, Netflix with commercials? Like, Netflix is a DVD service. God damn it. If we're swearing, we're swearing. Oh, yeah. And so anyway, I remember the feeling that was really weird. I've just kind of gotten used to it now. But I know what you're talking about. But also, it's pretty solvable, right? Like, I think you can just probably buy it. Well, it is.

I'm going to have to go buy the higher package literally to just watch the rest of the series. And then I'll, I guess, go back to having ads in it or whatever. I mean, even with Netflix, I think I have the I have the Netflix with ads. But but again, for me, it's like, what am I watching on Netflix? I'm watching like the Robert Durst murder doc re revisited or whatever.

Like, I feel like that was HBO, I think.

I think that they.

Oh, did they do the second season? I'm sorry.

OK, no, no, no, no, no. I think you might be right. So then maybe that kind of like crumbles my theory. But like, I guess my what I'm trying to say.

Overarchingly is like I feel like I can roll with ads on Netflix because I think Netflix is generally speaking low lower quality Like it just tells you how how sort of like what a rare category HBO programming Enjoys in my mental landscape that like and I don't think I've ever watched it with ads before I think I must have had either they just instituted a couple years ago or somehow I know this wasn't happening the last time I was watching this somebody somewhere stuff because again I'm just repeating myself, but like there were just these beautiful little moments or funny kind of rye simple moments between characters And then just friggin hard vibe shift right into an ad and it's just like you gotta be kidding me So yes, I'm gonna have to go pay ten more dollars a month Watch this whole, uh, you know series and then like I guess hopefully remember to switch back to Basically what I need to do is just like not have max until a show burbles up that I want to watch because here's what I don't do right now i don't go on max and poke around to see what's good to watch that's just not how i experience that network these days uh there's so much tiktok to look at andrew there's so many other things competing for my my valuable attention that it's not worth it for me to subscribe to that thing when i only watch it once every two years when like a show like somebody somewhere comes on also penguin is supposedly pretty good right yeah a couple of things on

that first of all sometimes what uh hbo will do is for their like kind of premiere shows i'm surprised they're not doing that with somebody somewhere is they will put like a long commercial like maybe a 90 second commercial for one specific thing like um but it'll be like a high-end thing for like for the penguin when we were watching that was that where you were saying all that range rover craziness yes i think so and but well that might have been sopranos inserts but But for Penguin, I think they had like – I remember commercials for like really expensive watches that were like 90-second commercials. And I think it was like Martin Scorsese talking to the camera about why watches are important. Maybe I have the product wrong. But anyway, you know, like kind of a commercial that was like sort of like for a luxury brand and produced in a very luxurious way. And it almost felt like old – you know, I listen to a lot of old 1940s radio programs, right? And like, what were those? It was like a Colgate, well, literally the Colgate comedy hour. Right. But like, yeah, it was just like the whole thing was like, this is presented by, you know, King Baker flower or whatever. And the whole, and it's sort of, it sort of harkens back to that. Like, cause it'll say, you know, thank you to Rolex for now bringing you this premier ad free experience after you watch a 90 second Rolex ad or something like that feels a little bit better to me. I would be totally fine with that.

Like, honestly, like, I'm cool with, put a two-minute, like, you know, short film about, you know, yeah, some, I don't even care if it's a high or low-end product. Like, I'll sit through that. Oh, by the way, you can't fast-forward these things either. No. Which is, like, which was so frustrating last night. You can't rewind them either.

That's why I was trying to show Genevieve Escape from Friends Island.

Boy, we have different problems associated with these ads. I'm trying to get through them as fast as possible. You're trying to really sit with them.

I just took hours of Genevieve. I finally, whatever show we were watching, I finally went upstairs and I heard Genevieve yell like an hour later, I saw it! I saw the ad!

That reminds me. I really have to get on my recording of the Sirius XM, whatever it's called now, baseball ads that play during the Mariners games. Because if they're not running, if you want baseball, the doggies got you covered this year. I've been like quoting that ad to you for years. Although maybe you've heard it now.

Do you finally get those because of some of you listening to Sirius Satellite? No, because first of all, whatever Sirius I have does not guarantee all the, again, I'm paying for like the $6 a month one. So I don't have access to all sporting events. I didn't realize that. But I do pay for the MLB app. And so I get all the games. I just listen on the MLB app, basically.

I'm just thinking about those kind of almost like they're both annoying but sort of ephemeral type of ads that either you can't rewind or they're like auto-loaded into some kind of streaming experience. experience where it's not on your tv where you can back it up it's like you just kind of you kind of have to be there when they happen and so if i want to like capture the audio to make you laugh i gotta like be rolling for the whole game set up set up a recorder and just roll on an entire mariner's game by way of the serious app just to get all this terrible stuff that they put in the you know in between the innings or something so that's a that's a project for this spring

andrew that i'm looking forward to sounds good i had another point to make about max but let's forget about it. I don't remember what it was and it probably wasn't that great. Thank you for being a 10.

Hey, let's thank some of our donors today. These are the folks, and in fact, I've surveyed almost all the donors. and i've heard from them that if we played any jardians ads in this show they'd be out they have the relationship with tbtl that i used to have with hbo max we're the hbo

we're the hbo not max we're the hbo of podcasting yes thank you um in that it's mostly taxi cab confessions it's mostly oz do you remember taxi cab confessions only in theory i think it was a

show where like i think it might have been like if i remember i mean i only got to see this like the briefest of moments like at a slumber party at someone's house who had hbo and inattentive parents or something but i feel like the premise was it was with actors but it was allegedly based on real you know real things that people had confessed in taxi cabs but of course capturing like think about you set up a camera in a New York City taxi cab and you drive around you could drive around for a year before you got a good story like a saucy story or whatever so I think it was kind of like these are based on real taxi cab conventions but now we've hired some actors and writers to like you know and my guess is that there was a very little factual basis for any of these but I just remember like definitely was the kind of show that the intro showed you a manhole grate with steam coming out

of it. I can totally picture that. That was 100%

in the intro to Taxi Cab Confessions.

Anyway. It says here that there was actually hidden cameras. Passengers enter the cab. They're recorded with several small cameras hidden in the taxi. The producer prompts passengers into discussing their past or present circumstances. I think my idea was better. Yeah, have people

I think I was, maybe I was thinking of the Red Shoe Diaries.

Right, exactly.

Combining. Hey, Andrew, look at the first donor that we're thanking. If it isn't, Julia Haas of Concord, New Hampshire.

Julia, my sister-in-law. Thank you, Julia. Appreciate it.

I know that there's a difference in the pronunciation of the last name. Is Julia of the Haas variety or the Haas variety?

I believe Haas. I always call them the Haases. I think that Genevieve's brother might pronounce it Haas these days. I'm not sure. He's still finding himself.

However you're saying it these days, Julia, we appreciate you so much. Indeed. Supporting the program. Also, thanks to Heather Rowe of Sellingsgrove, PA.

Hey, thank you, Heather. Appreciate it.

Sellingsgrove. I think this is the first time learning there's not a G in there. I think I always maybe thought it was Sellingsgrove. Oh, man, Andrew. I know we're like, this is already threatening to be too long of a show. But speaking of PA, I have been listening to this podcast that is really good and just has some of the most brutal Pennsylvania accents you've ever heard. And it's called Cement City. And, I mean, it's a really, really good show It's about the town of Donora, Pennsylvania And basically, a couple of journalists Just, I think they literally decided to buy a house in Donora And go in and just kind of live in this town for a year And just, you know, this is classically one of those places where The prevailing industry, which had been zinc Some kind of, like, processing of zinc and other things Has kind of left and it's left behind a town that's pretty cratered out but they get really into like what's going on in the city council of Donora and who the folks are in Donora and it just becomes totally riveting but it is unbelievably brutal the accents like oh yeah he's going down to the crow club the crow club being the Croatian club Andrew I'm tempted to tell Anita about this like I don't know if anyone even identifies as Croatian American but they're always going down to the crow club which is the croatian club in denora oh yeah he's going down oh yeah denora denora's dying it is just it's and everyone's named dawn there's no one in the show that's not named dawn from denora it's it's incredible anyway would recommend cement city thank you heather whatever

whatever your accent is like heather we thank you for your donation heather's from uh manhattan She talks like

Catherine Hepburn in The African Queen Thanks Heather Thanks to Lars Lang-Peterson Who's in Seattle, Washington Hey, thank you Lars Appreciate you Also appreciate Allie Port Who's in New Orleans, Louisiana Beautiful New Orleans In the news lately for some really rough stuff Hope everything's as okay as can be Down there for our friends in New Orleans And also for you, Allie uh thanks also to uh is it do we think this is noel kelly or noel kelly in sligo i think noel oh sligo ireland nice yes i think erin go brah thanks noel i have been on here's the thing

know i'm a i'm a part partly an irish american so i i can say this andrew i think irish people in ireland have been responsible for some of the absolute best internet memes over the past few years and i only know this because suddenly this thing has popped up in my tiktok feed which is folks in ireland rating their five favorite irish tiktok memes and i was like how many good irish tiktok memes can there be it turns out a ton it's over as a nation it's over

delivering on funny weird meme stuff will a i don't first of all i don't think tiktok's really gonna get banned here anymore right like they'll probably i don't know i've already said that like

honestly it would free it would liberate me yeah it would free me from from something i'm doing you know too much of the time anyway so i i feel pretty like i guess ambivalent is the word like i would love it to stick around i'll be relieved if i don't have access to it but i i wonder if

ireland will always have access to it no matter what i would guess so because they're not run by

a demagogue slash other weirdos well actually i don't really know what the structure in ireland is i bet it's not as bad as it is here how could it be but um i feel like it's just like this i mean you said something the last time we or at a time we were talking about tick tock you said something that i hadn't thought of and now i've heard other people saying it andrew which is basically like intrigued as if as if somehow our information is less safe with the chinese than it is with the American companies that have it all. Yeah, right, of course. I never thought about that. We're just assuming they have somehow worse intentions than Jeff Bezos.

Yeah.

And that's a foolish assumption.

Yeah, no, it's absolutely foolish news. And again, a lot of Democrats were the ones who were, I think, pushing for this originally. And I just remember being kind of shocked. I hadn't heard people refer to it as communist China so much in the news. And I was kind of like, but you're using the phrase communist China as you are saying as the government and again i'm not even i'm not even weighing in on whether or not it's right or wrong i'm just saying the irony of you like emphasizing this idea of communism as if it's a bad word while you say we're going to use big government to quash industry and again that's not how i you know that that is not a statement on how i see the free market or what have you but it was just like so ironic like we can't let communist china have our information So, therefore, we're going to come in and make sure that you sell it to some Americans who are all going to trust the good guys.

Simmer down, McCarthy.

Right, yeah.

Like, yeah. So, anyway, what I'm saying, Noel, is I need you to, once TikTok is illegal here, I need you to download the funny TikToks you see in Ireland and send them to me.

No, that's probably the best way to do this.

You're my direct connect.

Also, by the way, I just noticed, Noel.

Put them on a thumb drive. get a vpn download them to a thumb drive oh dude walt and i had to get we had to get down on that bad boy the other day because there's some episodes of shetland that are yet to be released on britbox old school baby oh wow like i'm paying for britbox britbox by the way is kind of a lie and i have to say as much as i love love my fubo tv uh i cannot say the same about britbox it's advertised on npr a lot it's real highbrow i wouldn't honestly i wouldn't waste the money on it it's like you know what it's like it's the columbia house no of of um of of television in that it's not anything that you want to watch that's been on the bbc it's whatever leave-ins they have it's whatever shit they're not moving or it's one episode of season three of some shit it's really it's super bs honestly like it is it you the way they pitch it is like you're gonna get all any kind of show you want to watch that's been on the bbc or itv or one of these things and all the seasons it is not that at all it is literally the crumbs and you have no idea you know it's more like the tj maxx of streamers you go in there and you're like all right a ralph lorenz sweatsuit that's cheap i mean that's cheaper than i expected it but then can you find anything that

you're actually looking for no you know that reminds me um i have i have a shirt that i stumbled on somehow um that uh i'm trying to remember where i saw it i think it was like a decent deal but it's like a nice looking it's like a nice looking shirt i mean maybe it's actually you know what i've had it for a while so maybe it's a little bit out of style right now but it was a little bit a little bit outside of my norm as far as shirts are concerned and it happened to be a Sean John shirt and so Genevieve would always be like oh look at Andrew in a Sean John shirt I don't think I can wear a Sean John shirt anymore right?

I think I need to get rid of this guy. How prominent is the Sean Johning of it?

It's huge it's like big blocks of color it's a SJ No for real? No I wouldn't wear anything like that

It's an oversized white tee that just has Sean John embroidered right across like a sash. I was trying to recreate

what was the big brand in the like 80s

maybe more 90s that their whole thing was like red white and blue but like more i think cross colors sort of but it was like literally every shirt you bought was branded very prominently with that name of that designer but uh this is not that no it's just a shirt but i do think if you look closely on a little tag or something on the outside i think you can wear it i think as

long as it's not like i i think if if the average person looking like if you like the shirt and the average person looking at it would not identify it with that guy then i think you know i think you you can wear it i don't think that i don't think it is in any way a statement of support for him

for you to wear the shirt what about my michael jackson pants i mean honestly i think those are the only pants look good on you okay thank you and they are an endorsement of him but i think

you gotta do what you gotta do they're super flattering dude i'm sorry yeah anybody will tell you know who will tell you that tyler fornia of monroe washington hey thank you tyler thanks Tyler really appreciate you. Yeah, thanks to all of our donors for making TBTL possible today. We could not do this without you

Here I go once again with the email every week I hope that it's from a female. Oh man, it's not from a female

You know Andrew so as to try to avoid a logjam that we just ran into in the last week Where we were trying to get through all the top stories that I promoted that we never talked about let's just clear let's clear the decks on old Popeye Popeye the Sailor Man this year enters the public domain so if you have any Popeye the Sailor Man I just think it's also important to always use his full name did you guys remember did you guys do I'm Popeye the Sailor Man I live in a garbage can when you were a kid I don't think so no I'm Popeye the Sailor Man I live in a garbage can I We had some weird kid version of that song. If you have any Popeye the Sailor Man related merch, parody songs, ideas, I'm just saying we can finally use it. I know you've been waiting and waiting and waiting for this. And just so you know, everything's on the table now involving Popeye the Sailor Man.

I mean, I don't even know if I'd want to release this. But I have some pretty steamy olive oil and Popeye scenarios that I just write them for my own sort of edification. And maybe I could actually make some money off of those now. So thanks for letting me know. I appreciate it. But in all seriousness, I haven't read this story. Not that we need to go into depth here. But do you have any idea, though, if it's like one of those things where it's like, is it steamboat Popeye? You know, like, is it like one version of Popeye? But like, because these things are not the good one. Yeah, they move around so much to avoid any kind of... I'll tell you this.

This is according to pcgamer.com, which is where I turn for all of my Popeye the Sailor Man-related info. It's a new year, and that means a new crop of iconic characters, some more than others, are ending in the public domain. According to Title 17 of the United States Code, once 95 years have passed since the creation, then they become a public domain. So let's see here. Popeye the Sailor. uh i'm trying to i'm doing this on the fly though um if uh let's see oh the um this doesn't help but the falconer work the sound and fury that's in the public domain now as is all quiet on the western front tin tin as in the adventures of tin tin is uh making it into the public domain and let's see it doesn't specify which okay popeye's hallmark spinach habits for example andrew weren't established until 1931 okay so if you were going to make your own popeye reboot by the way this was written by um lincoln carpenter in pcgamer.com want to give lincoln carpenter credit for this um if you if we wanted to do some kind of a popeye related thing here on this show by the way I'm kind of dressed like Popeye the Sailor Man today. I've got this red Watchman's cap on. You know who I actually realize I look like, looking into the little computer connection here? It's the character on Bojack Horseman that's voiced by Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad.

Yeah, yeah, sure. Who is that?

Is he like the boyfriend of one of the characters? What's his

role? Yeah, he's just like Bojack's best friend, right? They live together for a while and right yeah i can't remember i feel like i'm i feel like i'm i'm giving strong whatever

that character's vibes are today anyway if we want to do a popeye the sailor man thing on this show okay um we cannot he cannot eat spinach it can't be the spinach connection yet okay you know which i don't how fundamental to the character though is the spirit i feel like pretty fundamental i love it if we do our popeye reboot but he just gets really freaking hype hyped on okra or beets

Beats.

He constantly thinks he has colon cancer.

Yeah, he's freaking out.

He's getting all just gassed up on Beats, and then the next day he's just freaking out. He's just freaking out. Actually, that could be an interesting development for the character. So you're right, Andrew. It's not good Popeye yet.

Yeah, it's not good Popeye yet, and chances are they'll keep on probably rearranging those chairs in order to avoid the actual expiration of the copyright. I wanted to share a couple, well, at least one, And if we can get to two messages from the listeners here, I got to say this one came in from a very it was this this note is very sweet from listener Deb in Redmond. But I also it was one of those things where, you know how I don't like it when somebody will send in something like unrequested and then say, you're welcome. It's like it was an Internet thing that, you know, like people just kind of like, here's this, you're welcome. And it's just always seemed a little presumptuous to me. This is, with all love and respect to Deb, this, I would like to set the record straight on something here to this kind of your welcome-y post on our blog. Amok? Andrew? Amok? In an episode about vocab words, I cannot let this pass. It's pronounced either amok, most common, or amok. Not that I've heard.

It is political correctness, run amok.

i have read it's the only malaysian word in common use in english that's interesting couple of links are in here um so there you go your first word for 2025 you're welcome happy new year from the verdant suburban hills of redmond washington it is political correctness run amok so set the record straight here luke i know how to say the word amok this is a long running joke on the show based on that piece of tape you're playing right now i mean this goes

which i want to say i think is from fox news or something it is political correctness to run amok

this is from the radio days am i right about that like this is some of the earliest tbtl lore i

you know i think it was fairly early on and again the irony being that the actual statement that this person is trying to say is political correctness run amok yes but they're just reading it off the prompter and you know what needs to run a moak is a a greater understanding of how we pronounce words in english right um for the fox news staff so uh so yeah that's the origin of it i can't tell you the exact year we started using it but in fact when you it's it's like the word refrigerator now on this program fresh fresh fresh oh yeah butter microwave or microwave there are there There are a variety of words that we can no longer say in the normal, traditional way because our brains have broken from these drops, and amok is one of them.

And spread she is another one as well.

Yes, precisely. So what I would say to the person who made this post is, if you ever hear Andrew or I mispronounce anything or get anything wrong, just know it's an intentional thing.

It's always. It's on purpose. Always on purpose, exactly. And also, let me just share one meetup. Now, we have plenty of time on this. I'll remind folks of this in the coming weeks, but I thought this was really sweet. Got a note from Annie in Seattle who said around Thanksgiving there was some chatter amongst tens about tens wanting to do— Amongst tens. Amongst tens. What did I say? Amongst. Amongst. It is political correctness run amongst. Folks wanted to do some informal meetups And also was wondering if there's a way to kind of combine it with some sort of volunteer activity. And so it looks like Annie here in Seattle has set up a great opportunity to do this. Here's the copy she'd like me to read. Come hang out with fellow tens and give back to the greater Seattle community by volunteering at Food Lifeline in Seattle's South Park neighborhood on March 1st. What day of the week is March 1st? I'm going to look this up really quickly here. Looks like that is a Saturday.

day i mean we had such a fun time getting together with a bunch of tens to do the volunteer work of fulfilling the tbtl yeah sure there was a there was a sort of a volunteer project that you could say benefited us as the people who couldn't make all of the friendship bracelets in time and then the people who got them in the mail but what what really stood out to me about that was just how great of folks the tens are and how much they love contributing to things and this is something that's actually meaningful in the world, you know, Food Lifeline. So a great organization, by the way, for many years in Seattle. So love the idea of 10s getting together to help folks and then getting to enjoy each other's company.

Yeah, so let me read her thing here. It says, come hang out with fellow 10s and give back to the greater Seattle community by volunteering at Food Lifeline in Seattle's South Park neighborhood on March 1st. I just looked it up. That's a Saturday. From 9 to 11 a.m., we'll sort and repack.

nutritious food to feed our neighbors who may be experiencing food insecurity you must sign up in advance though via food lifelines volunteer program and it looks like annie is posting this link to facebook i don't have the link here but maybe i can connect people with it as well if you're having any issues here you can email me andrew at tbtl.net annie says there are 20 spots and volunteers must be 10 years old or older and if you have questions here you go you can here's a good email address for all questions here tbtl tens give back at gmail.com tbtl tens give back 69 at you know just joking tbtl tens give back at gmail.com if you don't remember that email me andrew at tbtl.net and we'll get you connected but anyway that is really cool we have plenty of time sign up it's on march 1st it's a saturday from 9 to 11 a.m great good opportunity to get together with other tens and also to do something good absolutely thanks uh annie for uh putting the

word out on that very cool all right my friend um i got a busy day i've got to hack into my hbo max account and figure out how to get rid of these ads uh that's pretty much it that's the rest of my day um but uh it's gonna it's gonna take a while so we should probably wrap things up uh the good news is we're gonna be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for all of you so we hope you can join us for that in the meantime have yourself a great monday and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all that went slightly better than the worst it could have possibly gone so hooray power out