Muse

I like it when I go traveling, I like to have a cell phone because it's really important to have a cell phone especially when you're going to pretend like you're a business person and I'm a business person too, I'm a business person I have pens I have a checkbook, okay and that's what I like to do I like to go, like when they have a conference in the hotel I like to go down and mingle my cell phone pretend like I'm there for the Yeah, uh-huh, yeah Can you believe it? They let me out on bail Yeah. Yeah. Manslaughter. Can you believe it? Shit. No, I did it. No, I did it. Anyways. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah, I need 900 billion. No jillions. TBTL.

Take a hot dog, stuff it with some jack cheese, fold it in a pizza. You got cheesy blasters. And then all the kids say, thanks, Meat Cat. And then Meat Cat flies away on his skateboard.

You know, what happened next was, you know, they'd open their mouth, they'd speak, they'd get laughed at, they'd get called Polacks, and they didn't want to go through that. You know, they wanted to get rid of that stigma.

There is something about the soul of a snake. I'm going to make you work for your dollar. Say something with that great radio voice.

Well, all right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. We're getting medium play on three independent radio stations in Central Europe. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

Give it up! We're Luke Burbank!

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia, where there's still a fairly distinct band of fog hanging above the river. Cloud fog. It was insanely foggy this morning. Well, I have to assume it was at about 3.30 in the morning because the ships making their way up and down the mighty Columbia were just absolutely jamming on their foghorns. Like, it was so loud and so sleep disruptive. I've said this before, though. If I'm going to have my sleep disrupted, there's something about, like, you know, a large river-going ship using its foghorn in the night to avoid a crash. It's not the worst thing to wake you up, but it's also not the best thing for your sleep. Many people use this product, TBTL, to help get to sleep. So there's no judgment around that. You're at episode 4,375 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. If you happen to be scoring at home. Speaking of sounds, we have a new segment today.

Hey, want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?

Calling it Random Audio Roundup. I basically have been seeing little things on the internet and hearing little bits of sound that none of them by themselves probably rise to the level of something that we need to play on the show, but taken together and put into a kind of a grab bag, a roundup, if you will. We're going to try this random audio roundup. Also, I feel like I'm really letting down the bird population, A specific segment of the bird population here at the Madrona Hill studio. Only bird gets the worm, but who wants to live on worms? Legitimately had a moment of deep, intrusive animal empathy yesterday, which we can talk about. And we can talk to this guy. He's the longest running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He lives by one. I mean, you know this guy, right? This guy is one of the all time great competitors, right? He lives by this mantra. You play to win the game. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. It was 17 years ago on this very day that a young Luke Burbank took to the microphone. Are you serious? Cairo Radio in Seattle, Washington, to say, you're welcome, America. Oh, my goodness gracious.

Whispering, you're welcome, America, into the microphone. You're welcome, America.

No, why did I?

A young Luke Burbank whispered, I'm not ready, into the microphone. was Steve Bruhl style. There probably was a Steve Bruhl drop.

Steve Bruhl was sort of the patron saint of early TBTL, I feel like that was probably. A mentor, I considered him when it came to broadcasting. Yes, indeed, at the anniversary. All I can say is, wow, today is. I can't believe it took me this long to realize this, but I think last year was the year that we realized, and this year was the first year that I remembered, that my personal anniversary with Genevieve falls on the same exact day as the TBTL anniversary. Oh, well, happy anniversary to both of you. Yeah, I said that as a reminder in case you wanted to give us anything. Wait a second. We're registered.

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Stop the show. We're registered at Tubs. Stop the show. You and Veeves have been together for how many years? This is not a quiz. This is 20.

you on this is 24 i believe because we start counting in 2001. gotcha okay yeah somehow i thought it i don't know why i always when when i'm talking about you and genevieve i will commonly say i think they've been together for like 20 years that's the number yeah that i have in mind but and then the reason that i stopped the show was because that if if that were the case which it's not that would have meant you and genevieve had been together a mere three years by the time tbtl was birthed but um but that was not the case you guys have been together my point on all that is when i met you you both you just seemed like you'd been together forever and i said that in a good way not in a lock not in a lock horns kind of way but in a just like you know you i knew you guys had lived in different places and owned a house in new hampshire and just you know lived a life together already so for a brief moment when i thought you were noobs when i met you i

was confused but now that's an interesting perspective on my relationship because and that's what the show is about today my relationship with Genevieve uh I would invite her welcome the new listeners who heard about us on this American life welcome oh yeah yes hi I'm Andrew I'm the other guy I've been together with my girlfriend for 24 years it's interesting I think a lot of people at this point I'm you know as as I as I continue to deepen in my middle age I don't think people are shocked to hear that I've been with Genevieve for a long time but around the time I met you i think a lot of people were surprised when we told people how long we'd been together because we weren't married and because we do use the phrase girlfriend and boyfriend or i think we do i don't know i do part of it yeah and so people are like what you've been together for 20 years and so i think people were usually shocked i didn't realize to you we were a couple of old

battle axes well that was the thing i mean you could barely stand to be in the room together yeah exactly that was when i was giving you a ride home in my audi a3 from tbtl one night uh a thing that i somehow both i guess did and then completely erased from my memory until sometime later you remember this right uh which which i mean you gave us a lot of rides the for well the first time that i met you and vives if i remember right you came to hang out and watch tbtl you were both relatively new to the northwest and brand new brand new yeah and and and so we chatted you both seemed perfectly nice um and then uh and then i was heading home and

you guys were up on capitol hill should i just mention that we didn't know each other at all i'd been listening to tbtl from the other coast and then and you'd been working at kuow with um

an ex of mine and not at this point no no no really no no so the deal was i you were doing

the brian park project i was working at new hampshire public radio working with a boss who wanted us to be listening to public i was working with a boss who wanted me to start a new radio show but he was trying to get me out of my public radio rut a little bit and having me listen to various things and then at the same time there were other new public radio projects going on around the country of people trying to i guess rattle the birdcage a little bit of public radio programming and you were one of them so you were sort of on my radar with the brian park project And then you moved out to Seattle to take this job at Cairo, which really intrigued me because I was like, maybe if we can't make public radio sound a little bit more commercial, maybe Luke, this guy Luke is going out to Seattle to make commercial radio sound a little bit more like public radio. Anyway, that's a lot of detail. But that's why you were like so on my radar. So a couple of years later, when I moved to Seattle, I shot you an email. I'm like, you don't know me. I probably I sent you that Bob Edwards drop. It's the saddest thing I've ever heard. And I'm like, I'm the Bob Edwards guy. can we i'm moving to seattle when we're out there can we come visit you and you're like yeah sure just swing by the station sometime and so we that's the saddest thing i've ever heard so you didn't know me from adam i was i was a listener at this point yeah okay i because then eventually

we all became you know friends and you became friends with with my ex and everything but like i remember i actually remember that night of you all being at the show and then i was like well i'm going up to capitol hill anyway where you guys also lived so i think i you hopped in the back and we we wrote up there but then I like deleted that from my memory somehow for like six months some long period of time and then when you went to KUOW and you sort of became friends with my ex and everything then we were sort of reintroduced at some point and I feel like my memory of it it was like was like being embarrassed that I thought we were meeting for the first time and and either you said it nicely or I became aware of it like no no no we've been in your car we've been at your nighttime radio show for hours like we already had a whole meeting you and i and genevieve um that that then i had like again i had somehow not grasped that we were talking i was

talking about the same people that's funny we all met up somewhere if if you've told me that i did not remember that i just like to know that you were feeling insecure around me could have got could have gotten away with it i do love though that i i kind of i did forget about that part temporarily that the very first time we met

And we were strangers to you, visiting you at your workplace, yet you gave us a ride home. Boy, that really set the stage. That kind of guy. But it also just set the stage for you driving our ass around Seattle. Like, I'm trying to read. Like, what were Veeves and I thinking we would have had a car, but I guess we were already that deep into the bus lifestyle? Like, we were only here for a little bit.

Also, Cairo was not far from where you all lived. Oh, that's true. that's true down there yeah in like in like under probably 20 minutes or something uh not quite that

but you're right it was you're right it's not that far but it is interesting to think like i'm i guess vives was like well let's just take the bus like why wouldn't we have driven like we were going to

a radio station at night you probably had you probably had a parking spot did you guys have a dedicated part by the way if you are just catching up on this show it's mostly about parking from uh 17 years ago did you guys have dedicated parking at your place we did so wouldn't have been about us losing that blows my theory out of the water it blows my mind that like what

why did we but here's what also is blowing my mind and again i do feel like derza ride too if we do have new listeners this is not my best performance as we start the show with down memory lane but um to think that this was before the what we would call ride share services i think people are stepping away from ride share right like we've just been calling it that all this time where like the concept of ride share is so that is so benevolent towards the industry it's not ride share it's not couch surfing for your car anymore that's a really good point because

it's also i don't even know if is is is sharing the ride an option no we're not sharing rides anymore we're paying that was one of the early promise of this was like oh yeah ride share someone's going somewhere and you'll be one of the people that jumps in the car and you'll get where you're going and it'll you know like i i don't think that that's i don't believe that's a part of the service that people avail themselves of much much anymore no i mean i guess that was

the roots of it though like supposedly right like hey you're a person you're heading somewhere you just download the app somebody else can download the app i mean it was part of the um i remember maybe a few years before this my friend avishai was way into some website that was basically just a couch surfing app, which, you know, that was the early days of Airbnb or do we say Vrbo or VRB? Oh, Creeper Guy, right.

I used to go on that website sometimes. Oh, Creeper Guy? Creeper Guy, I believe that was, if you went to back end, if you looked, that was what was running. No, I'm kidding. But I mean, feel like the idea of couch surfing, I feel like it could have potentially been a thing where there was a lot of dudes offering up a lot of couches and then screening out who was going to come stay on the couch. I don't know. Maybe I just, maybe I'm just somebody who's- Yeah, maybe you're the Creeper Guy.

you know what that's for the courts can you hand me give me your phone i'm taking your phone as maria you can't do that without a search warrant give me your cell phone i'm taking

away yourself i just mean like i feel like to me when you say obviously because i just said it when you say a website that helps connect people with couches to surf on i just for some reason my mind immediately goes to guys with poor boundaries i don't know why i just feels like a thing that would happen it just seems like it's ripe for problems i think it was strangers surfing upon on others, strangers' couches.

But my point of this was, it was the very earliest days of what we now know as Airbnb. Like, that's all it was. that's what, It was like, I'm trying to draw the parallel between the, we call them ride shares. Now, now we're cooking. Welcome new listeners. We call them ride shares because the early days we were at least told that the idea was, no, it's just for, we're literally just sharing rides. We're using apps and technology just so that humans can help out other humans. Whereas obviously, it's just, all of these things have just become huge industries that are modern-day, essentially, hotel services or rental services or taxi services with less regulation.

Less of that pesky regulating to keep people safe.

I think the couch-surfing thing was more like people like Avishai who were young and broke but loved to travel and were trying to figure out, like, hey, if I go to Philadelphia for some music festival, how can I go without having to pay for a hotel or whatever?

Yeah. You know what else was 24 years ago, Andrew, and we've already referenced this a couple times, in a kind of sidelong way, but was, I think, that story that I did for TAL about the guy who dresses like Superman, which, I mean, literally I think it was about 24 years ago, because I'm 48 now, I would have probably been 24 or 25, and I did not realize that that story was re-airing on This American Life this weekend until somebody yesterday texted me and said, because my friend Jim Brunberg, who's a dear friend and a guy who owns and runs a lot of the kind of cool venues portland like revolution hall and uh the um mississippi uh studios and things like that and i'm trying to find the exact text from he said uh uh let's see i liked your your soft tal voice great piece back to whispering into the microphone

and uh and i was like i i would then i texted you and john and i said i guess that they re-aired this story on on this american life so maybe we'll get some new listeners this week i i'm surprised that i i'm only hearing about this now because usually that's i mean that's a pretty big show and yeah if if we're associated with something like that usually we hear from people and then andrew last night i opened my tbtl email account for the first time in a long time because you know holidays and things and me being lazy and the like and there were like 20 emails from some people i know some random people being like loved the piece here's here's the thing i'm pitching you now that you could do another story on and also critically a producer from this american life three emails asking me basically what are you up to now so we get it correct on

the show oh that's i was gonna say not that they would have to because obviously it's their story you did it for them they paid you but i would think an operation like this american life would have somebody reach out i was going to say that i'm really surprised that somebody from the show didn't just give you a heads up hey we're replaying this whole thing and also like yeah what do you want in your bio so they apparently just wikipedia'd you and i think they got it mostly right

because um my my friend jim said they mentioned tbtl and livewire which are the two biggies but yeah i was i was having this thought i was like that is kind of interesting because you know they've re-aired this in the last, in the intervening 24 years. The piece has aired a couple of times and they always reach out and they say like, what are you up to now? We want to make sure we're getting this all right. And they hadn't done it this time and I thought, boy, they're really slipping. No, I'm really slipping on checking my work email. I have now, I'm all caught up now. I've seen, if you emailed me in the last two weeks, I've now seen your email. I may have even responded to it, but I guess I'm relieved that they at least got the TBTL part right. So welcome new listeners. And if you started yesterday, I wish we would have come out stronger on Monday. Had I known, I would have really given it my all instead of giving it my mostly, which is what I was giving it yesterday.

I think yesterday was good. I feel like today – can we post more yesterday's show and what we've done so far today? Can we just take a moment to just talk about what we've done so far in the first 15 minutes of today's show and then just talk about what we can improve upon?

We did the open twice because the first time I had an air embolism from coffee and had to stop one minute into the show and then run around the studio trying to burp. So that was an auspicious beginning to today's program.

But nobody heard that part. And then you did an intro. We heard some old tape from Maria Bamford where we're still referring to phones as cell phones, making me think that's probably pretty old tape. And then I brought up my personal anniversary with Genevieve. And then we went down memory lane and really didn't bring, I don't feel like I did a job.

We clarified that you did have parking. I did. No, that is true.

That was a good part. We can isolate that and put that up on Instagram. Share that on the socials. Hey, John, if you want to throw that out on socials. John, we're being sarcastic.

So, yeah. I mean, you know that feeling. I mean, who am I talking to? That, like, it's so weird how I can snatch, you know, defeat from the jaws of victory so quickly. It goes from being like, oh, that's kind of cool. They re-aired that thing to like why wasn't I a why wasn't I aware Why wasn't I checking my email more Closely because then I could have handwritten The thing whatever I haven't listened but whatever It was Ira Glass said at the end of The piece which I'm sure was Luke Burbank's The host of tbtl and live wire But I could have finessed it maybe Like now when I'm on wait wait I always say The daily podcast Tbtl because I want people to know it's Five days a week sometimes I'll say the sexy Daily podcast you ever say that they Asked me to stop doing that I'll say the, sometimes I'll say the daily the confessional, I really will use the word confessional I'm trying to like think what slightly might kind of differentiate what we're doing, I mean one of the things is it's five times a week so that's, I feel like, kind of our number one deliverable at this point, it's just that we do it a lot and then I thought like confessional might make people kind of understand that it's people being very very real there's no artifice here um but i wish i could have finessed it but anyway i go from being like oh that's kind of cool that they used that thing from a quarter of a century ago to being like why don't i check my email more because then i could have finessed it then we could have gotten more listeners then i could have been better on monday's show then we would have then we would have taken off like a rocket ship and then you know like uh nikki glazer said at the golden globes the goal of making art is not awards it's to become so successful that you can start a tequila brand which means you never have to make art again yes i think that was the best joke of the night yeah right i just want to be successful in the podcast that we can make a tequila brand andrew we never have to podcast again that's the goal i like the fact though

that you're throwing confessional in there yesterday on the show You were, I guess, looking back on the glory days of, what was it, Taxicab Confessionals?

Which I was 100% wrong on. I thought it was like a fictionalized thing, but apparently it was real. You looked it up. It was like an HBO kind of after hours kind of, you know. It was one of those kinds of things that if I was at my cousin's house in Philadelphia and my Uncle Johnny had gone to sleep, I was beelining it for the TV room to try to watch whatever they were showing on HBO after, say, 11 p.m., because it was going to maybe have some nudity or at least be highly sexualized content. Again, I'm shocked that they were able to get enough good taxicab confessions that people were signing releases on. That's why I kind of assumed wrongly yesterday that it was like a kind of a you know like like basically like a penthouse forum letter yeah i never thought i'd be writing this because i just like how do they get people to admit to something that's interesting enough to put on hbo but that they then sign a release to let you use on hbo

that's crazy to me and actually like legally being able to um record people but i mean i feel like there's a lot of kayfabe here i'm gonna take a listen to this this is a promo from 2001 get in On the action, backseat action. I got whip paddles. Where the stakes are high. I want to pick up a crack. And all bets are off. With checks. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Did you hear that? I did. That was, I did not think. You're going to have to bleep out that entire, was that literally the promo? This is a promo for it. So apparently on HBO, they really leaked. They were saying that on HBO? Oh, I guess this is HBO Plus. we're seeing by the way like clips of the people in the car sorry that the audio was so low i'll try to fix that in post that was no honestly it's better just hearing what they were saying yeah no that was rough i'd say lower it but then they're showing like these like steamy scenes of just like strippers from behind like and it's just like they're really leaning into there's no way this was real no i listen i now you know what it's time to do an investigation where's jesse i'm I'm getting Jesse on taxicab confessions.

Get me, I want the definitive oral history on taxicab confessions and what was really going on because I am telling you, I used to live in New York City in the pre-ride share era, Andrew, and I took hundreds of taxicabs and often probably fairly inebriated, nothing interesting ever happened. There's no flipping way that they just hooked up some GoPros, which by the way didn't exist at that time. These would have been some giant ass, you know, like who even knows what kind of camera they were using, rig in this taxi cab, and then just happened to get a bunch of people that wanted to talk graphically about their sex lives. Like something's rotten in Taxi Cab Confessionville as far as it being just a straight up documentary program.

This little promo that I just played for you, which was a terrible idea because the audio was awful.

That was not a terrible idea at all.

I said things that I now have to bleep has absolutely, I mean, one search on that has absolutely destroyed the YouTube algorithm for me because I'm going to tell you some of the things it's now suggesting that I watch. And by the way, I'm accidentally doing this logged in as the TBTL account. Oh, great. And so, first of all, this is interesting. I want to, I feel like this may take us down, I could fall down too far of a rabbit hole here. But the first thing is Taxicab Confessions, Las Vegas, Sarah Palin. Is there a chance that an unknown Sarah Palin at the time was on this? Or is this just somebody who looks like her and the Internet? I would be unsurprised to find that it was really Sarah Palin.

I saw some clip of Marjorie Taylor Greene trying out for like American Idol back in the day. Oh, really? Which is upsetting to see her in any context, including that one. According to AI, because as we've mentioned on the show many times, Andrew, the era of good internet search is long gone. Now when you try to find something out, you get this AI crap. But here's what the AI crap says. No, taxicab confessions was not entirely real. The cab drivers on the show were loosely scripted and were actually show producers who were not clearly identified as such. The conversation between the passengers and cab drivers were recorded using hidden cameras. Well, that's not much. this is what that that ai you better check your hypotenuse ai that was a very unsatisfying answer um but uh but i've just i just again this is for some reason the hill that i'm gonna die on in uh 2025 i there's that had to be staged in the way that like you know elements of the jerry springer show were staged right like in that i don't think the jerry springer show went oh my I got Andrew I'm sorry we have TBTL breaking news uh that I have to uh well let's stop the show I'm gonna put a

my taxicab confessional conspiracy tinfoil hat and put on my intrusive animal empathy pants That I wore in the Prince of Tides So I just saw a hummingbird doing something that has been happening now for the last two days, and it is shattering my heart For Christmas Becca got me a really cool hummingbird feeder like a world kind of designy one. That's great Aesthetically pleasing And also This One of those Bird feeders That has a camera in it Called Bird Buddy You used to have

One of those You said right

Well I bought A Bird Buddy And then I got out of the packaging And then I realized It was $200 And that was not A good use of $200 For me Legitimately And I sent it back Because I was It was at a point In the remodel project Where I was counting Every $200 And I just had this Moment of clarity That was like This is not this is not how I need to be spending this money

well that's a good gift, so you never even took it out of the box and now you get one to play with

yes, and it's set up and it's pretty cool, what's uncool about it is, like I wanted to, you can invite other people to come and look at it and I was going to invite Becca and even like if Genevieve who's a bird person was curious but you have to have the $100 a year premium service to let anyone else see What's going on on your birdhouse Which is

Oh so let other people see it What about you?

Allegedly I can see it Although I have yet to have any I put it up yesterday I have yet to have any birds visit it But they tell you that it takes time But the other thing is I got this hummingbird feeder Which is much less involved technologically You just do the little kind of nectar She also got me a packet of It's probably sugar But it's pitched as like The ideal hummingbird feeder nectar Or whatever So I put that all together And because it was like a rainy Gloomy, I think it might have been Saturday or Sunday I just went out to the Just outside my little living room There's some siding glass doors out to a deck And I had a hook That had been holding One of those yellow wasp trap Things, you know That's like a tube And the wasps have long since Decamped for southern climes So I don't know why that was still up, but I took that down and I hung up the little hummingbird thing Not as the final destination if you will not as the permanent home of this But just somewhere I could put it mostly so I could take a picture and send it to Becca and go like hey look I set it up Well in those like two days. I guess the hummingbirds got the memo That that's where it was always my plan was to hang it up here outside the studio the madrona hill studio where it currently is kind of on one side of this window and then have the um bird buddy bird house with a camera on the other side of the window so i just kind of have like this whole bird central going so i moved the hummingbird feeder over here and hung it up and it's great i love where it is it's perfect easy to change the water i can see it i'm gonna make this i'm gonna be like a a guy in a freaking one of those disney movies where they're alive, but then cartoon birds are landing on them. That's my plan for the spring. I'm going to become the most beloved human amongst the bird population out here. Are they going to pull at your sweater or your shirt a bit? But, you know, in a kind of like a loving way, not in an attacking way, not in a like tippy-hedron-the-birds way, but more in a, you know, oh, what a beautiful morning kind of a way.

What if it turns out the birds in the movie, the birds just didn't know how to love? Like, really, they were honestly, they were just trying to say hello. They were like, this is

for, like, this is how we this is our love language to other birds right exactly sorry that you're covered in this like kind of very easily pierced kind of fatty you know organ known as your dermis so here's what's been happening what just happened a minute ago andrew hummingbirds will fly over to where the

feeder used to be yeah for like 24 hours right or was it there for longer than that it was there for

a max of 24 hours but as soon as I moved it starting yesterday and I was working I was in my living room doing some work yesterday and I swear at least five hummingbirds like zoomed this hummingbird over to now where there is no feeder and just kind of like looked around like wait we were told there was going to be food here and then they just like zoomed off and it keeps happening and I need to somehow get a message to the hummingbird community it's over here now you guys can you just put up a little sign i put up like three different signs and they're apparently illiteracy is one of the number one issues facing the hummingbird community because um well you didn't write them are they did you

write in english hummingbirds don't read english they they speak french oh oh okay okay well that oh my god you don't nothing about birding this is really i don't usually like to dunk on you but that's really embarrassing so you put up signs in english saying we've moved the bird we we masseur good answer

so i don't yeah so i don't understand and i it's just a matter of time they'll figure it out over here but in the meantime i don't know do i buy another hummingbird feeder and put it over there I have like this is the thing about about hummingbirds this time of year is I get very concerned about their well-being because you don't have the normal you know flowers and things like whatever it is the hummingbirds are surviving off during the spring which is probably the abundant time for them it's not happening right now weren't you saying Viva's got some hummingbird feeders right yeah she's got a few of them in fact this is a conversation we had recently

We were we were in Home Depot looking for some lighting and nearby was like kind of a shelf full of various hummingbird feeders and stuff. And I said and I was not joking. I said, do you need anything here? Like they had food or whatever. She's like, no, I am. I am highly indexed in hummingbird. She's like, I got three hummingbird feeders right here. And I was like, oh, yeah. And it reminded me like for the longest time I was thinking about getting her one of those exactly probably even probably the same brand that you have. I was being targeted with ads for, like, a year for those hummingbird feeders with the camera.

Oh, those are different. That's just a bird feeder. That's with, like, suet and stuff. With the camera on it? The camera, yeah. So there's two things. The thing that I'm, the hummingbird feeder has, like, a liquid in it, and the thing with the camera is for, like. Oh, you're right.

That's not for hummingbirds. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. That's just for other hummingbirds.

Who doesn't know anything about birds now, monsieur?

That's all I know in French. um i um sorry yeah yeah but that we are talking about the same thing i just forgot that that is right you meant the bird buddy my buddy one but it did raise that again and i said oh yeah because i was really thinking i was going to get that for genevieve i think also we may be past the peak of it now but i feel like two or three years ago everybody was talking about birding at least in my social circles and social feeds um but genevieve is like highly disinterested in the camera one And she's like, I just like looking at the birds from the way the birds present themselves. She's like, I just don't need, did you get one?

Keep talking, keep talking. I'm going to try to photograph this. I believe we've got a hummingbird sighting, my friend.

Yes. At the right place now? Yes, it's happening. They'll find it. I think they're especially appreciative in wintertime, by the way.

Well, that's the whole thing. That's, okay. First of all, amazing. Go tell your friends. Now he's just, this dude, this hummingbird is friggin' loving this right now That's the thing is, I know that they need They need this nutrition, they need this sugar or whatever This nectar so badly right now Because it's cold out, because their bodies are constantly burning You know, calories, etc That like, I just, I feel a personal responsibility Now back to the question of Genevieve and the camera thing I actually, believe it or not, I kinda get it Like I'm both excited to have this thing Because you know me There's nothing that I love more than technology That will change me as a person And you know if I can just see the birds on my phone While I'm at the casino Andrew Then maybe I'll become A friggin Ansel Adams Or something you know I was trying to remember which one We don't say Audubon anymore Apparently he was a bad dude

Oh yeah he was a bad guy

So then I just changed to a nature photographer Okay cool It's like last name starts with A was associated with nature a hundred years ago but anyway uh i i'm i'm excited to have this thing i've got it all set up but i'm kind of with you a little bit that it's like for instance that hummingbird that i just saw fly up and drink out of the new hummingbird feeder it was not well i technically it was documented by a camera because i took a picture of it but generally speaking it won't be it's just an event that happens it's a moment in time a moment in nature where to some degree i guess i'm interacting with nature and it doesn't have to be anything more than that it doesn't have to be technological I don't have to share it with my Instagram feed or whatever you know I actually kind of get where Viva's coming from on this yeah and Genevieve is not somebody

who really leans into technology anyway you can you can tell because if you text her right now she'll get back to you in the next four or five days um and she and kind of proudly so and same with Instagram like she's been working on various sewing projects and getting really good at it lately um and and she i know she enjoys sharing her projects on instagram but aside from that like i'll ask her something about instagram she's like i don't know i don't know how to do stories i'm not interested like she just has this like this almost um obstinate um uh kind of approach to i think technology and so i think she's like what like i love going out she likes she likes changing her bird food and the bird seed and the We'll be right back. water for the or the you know the sugar water she boils up the sugar water herself for her hummingbird she likes doing all of that she's engaged but she's like what am I gonna do then go down to my computer and now it sounds like I'm now it sounds like I'm I'm disrespecting the gift you got I actually think it's really cool I would be interested in doing that but Genevieve's just like no I I like the relationship I have with birds I don't need them in extreme close-up on my phone when I'm sitting behind my computer or on my phone or whatever I think for me the appeal

of it i was joking about being at the casino but i do think like the idea because i tend to be gone so much of the time in far-flung places or near-flung places i think in the springtime particularly like if if i can like kind of while i'm sitting in some airport feeling yeah you know disconnected from everything if i could kind of like see a little cute bird you know eating a sunflower seed at my house um i think that might be kind of an enjoyable experience again i was mostly excited to share the like you know invite becca to check it out so it'd be like oh hey look at this cute thing that happened you know that we can both experience the fact that i have to spend or she has to spend a hundred dollars a year for that is like kind of to share yeah that's you know

kind of some bullshit and i'll be straightforward on this basically the keurig of birdhouse it's the keurig of birdhouses that's a show title right there um i uh it's similar to do you still have your digital frame sort of flipping i sure do andrew somewhere yeah and i still have my skylark skylight skylight yeah and so we were the reason you and i both have these digital frames which is such a funny thing because i think of digital frames as being almost pre-internet like i remember digital frames were something right as the internet was maybe sort of becoming more popular and kind of an everyday thing but we had these technologies right before them that were locking that were like knocking on the door of internet e things like i'm thinking about our pdas i'm not talking about public displays of affection for a change talking about our what is it personal digital yeah like palm pilots and like we had various versions of those and like we were like tapping them together with bluetooth to like trade v cards which sounds really filthy when i say it like that from pda to v card right exactly it's not gonna be hey this is a taxi cab confessional But anyway, you know how we had those sort of things that then eventually the Internet came along and everything was just slicker and more interconnected and we didn't need to do that anymore. I think of digital frames as being part of that whole thing. But then a few years ago when we were still with American Public Media, a company called Skylight said, hey, we have these modern digital frames where you just upload photos from your phone and you can share it with friends or whatever. And I was like, yeah, I'll give it a go. And I actually love mine. It seems sort of antiquated. I absolutely love mine. i have it like kind of constantly rotating in my little dart area down here so we're playing darts listening to records looking at photos from the past like it's like just kind of a nice little vibe to have in the corner but i will say the thing is if you want to like engage with it in

a way where you can share it with other people like they're constantly that was part of it right i think i was theoretically sharing mine with you at some point well yeah well i gotta say i'm still

a little you know I don't know if I've told you this and I'm still a little bit mad you I you gave me the link so that I could send photos directly to your frame but you never said that but you never set the privacy settings right like it just like somewhere like from three years ago there is still like an email inviting you to allow me because I had a photo of me kind of like making almost monster hands I took a selfie of me sort of like you were going into the camera making

monster hands. Subtly integrated into my photo role.

Like I'm kind of coming at you like I'm going to straggle you or something. And I took that photo years ago and it just kept on saying like oh Luke hasn't accepted your invitation

or whatever. Okay you know what Andrew this is new year new us okay. I was just moving that thing that frame because of reorganizing some stuff in the house and whatever and speaking of technology tomorrow maybe we're not at the end of the show yet but just remind me tomorrow can I tell you about the love affair between me and my new techno toilet no no really something no it's not it's actually not that's it's not as gross as that sounds but anyway um i was moving that skylight frame from where it had been sitting and i was trying to figure out its new home part of the thing that's a little bit challenging is it needs to be plugged in so that creates a little bit of a like a kind of a court a cable management issue you know like because normally a picture frame you hang it on the wall there it is this one you've it's got to be near power it's got to be you've got to figure out kind of what to do with the cord so it doesn't look janky it's not just kind of hanging but i will i will figure out how to reshare this with you because i think it would be a funny thing will you but here's the real question no i will you but at least i believe we this we had this conversation like four years ago right because you are not willing to let let me raw dog your skylight but you want to be you want to be able i thought it would be funny if we both have the ability within reason to occasionally drop a photo into each other's thing just to like if i just what if i just dropped a ryan court baseball card into your lineup and then you can delete it but it'd just be like a funny visual joke i would i would love

to share that with you well this was a i'm gonna lower my voice here this was a little bit of a I want you to sound like me in all of my radio productions of 25 years ago when we first got this frame we set it up we're having fun with it and I you know me like I have a bunch of photos that I like you know as as as a sort of has a bit of a hobbyist right and I sort of have I would be absolutely loathe to pat myself on my back on the back as far as my photography skills but you're a really good photographer I have the eyes that I have, and I like the photos that I take, and they sort of fit all into, I sort of feel like, an aesthetic, which is a word I was avoiding because I really can't say that word with the lisp that I struggle with.

I also already used it once, and probably incorrectly, so we've got a lot of problems with that word today.

But having said all of that, so I loaded it with all these photos that are of various things. I mean, going back into my archives, just some of my favorite photos. And let's say when we first got it, maybe I loaded it with 20 or 25. And then Genevieve's like, oh, how can I load things? I'm just like, sorry, what? She's like, well, I want to load things under the frame, too. I'm like, oh, yeah. That does sound like a fun thing that we could do together.

I'll just get, I'll go ahead and let me figure out how to log into this and then just like, you know, stall.

And, you know, this is really, really rude, but there are just like some photos, like, again, this is just, I'm such a jerk, Luke. I can't believe I'm saying this on my anniversary and on TV Tales anniversary. On the anniversary of TV Tales. As well.

On the day of my podcast anniversary.

There's a photo, a very, very nice photo of Genevieve standing next to, what's the Husky's name? Dubs, I think. Dubs. Dubs or Dubs, you know, the real life Husky dog that sort of represents the University of Washington. is on some step and repeat or something like that at some event you know just a photo of Genevieve posed and stand and like I guess that would be one thing like none of the photos on my frame are of anybody posing for the pic for the camera you know what I mean that's just they're they're photos that I've taken around town or you know in my travels or whatever but it's never like hey here's a mic my uh my frame does not have any selfies on it or anything like that you know and so it's like it would just be like oh here's a photo of sort of a stranger walking by some graffiti from 10 years ago here's a there's a photo from inside a library that shows some really interesting kind of architecture and and angles and here's a here's a brightly colored blue wall thanks for a brightly colored red wall and then here's genevieve standing next to dubs on a step and repeat and i was kind of like i don't know um you know it was it was it sort of it sort of killed the vibe i was i kind of secretly genevieve's outside i secretly sort of over because that was years ago Oh, and she's lost interest, and I've deleted them since. Just quietly, one by one.

You let them on there, but then you kind of, you did a little curation. I didn't have a lot of choice, yeah.

Well, here's the thing. I've plucked them out.

If you allow me access, I promise you it would only be jokes that I send you, maybe after a couple of N.A. beers, and then you can delete them right away. So I wouldn't pollute, I would never expect you to leave them in, but I just want the ability to send you a picture that I think will make you laugh when it hits you by surprise. Hashtag no goatsy. Now that's a taxi cab connection. Thank you for being a 10. All right, let's thank some of our donors today, these wonderful, generous people, making TBTL happen, making the confessional podcast tbtl which you can hear five days a week happen the steamy podcast the steam that's the word that i'm looking for steamy right ever let me back on uh wait wait i'm gonna ask them to please call it the steamy podcast thanks to andrew tentio of kensington maryland thank you andrew sounds like a fancy mustard kensington maryland oh does it wait what Doesn't that sound like a Kensington? Doesn't that sound? I mean, there's a Kensington in Philadelphia that's a neighborhood that's definitely kind of, let's just say, suffering through some stuff. But just the term Kensington sounds like a guy with a monocle.

who's handing me some Grey Poupon.

Oh, okay, with the Grey Poupon. I see. Yeah, I think so. Don't you think Kensington? A bit. I think that the man's name is Kensington, not the mustard.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, the mustard is Grey Poupon.

Okay, great.

Okay, there we go.

Embarrassed yourself again in front of Andrew and in front of Anastasia Todd, who's in Maricopa, Arizona. Hey, thank you, Anastasia. Gosh.

Now, you said Anastasia, Anastasia? I said Anastasia. Anastasia. Thank you, Anastasia.

That's what I'm, I don't know. What do you think?

I know some, Genevieve works with somebody with that name, and when Genevieve asks her, we were just talking about this the other day, Genevieve asks her, how do you prefer to pronounce your first name? She always says, it doesn't matter, which is very, very nice and such a chill way to go through life, but also incredibly unhelpful.

Well, here's my thought, and Anastasia, you can please correct me on this. I feel like there is a name Anastasia, and then there's a name Anastasia, and they're

spelled differently oh they're spelled differently i didn't realize that yeah like this has got some

extra letters in here and the only reason i'm dialed in on anastasia at least the kind of most common spelling is because addy had a vhs tape of a movie called anastasia which was kind of like an off-brand it wasn't made by disney but it was kind of like an off-brand like animated disney Style movie But not made by I don't think it was made by the Disney folks But in the way that We're talking about like, I don't know, the olden times And pre-internet And web TV And the like Where am I going With this My daughter is old enough that she grew up in the era Where sometimes if you just had like Three or four VHS tapes at your dad's house That's what you were jamming out to like you just didn't have a million billion options and so you would just watch these things and then by extension your dad would watch these things over and over again and Anastasia the cartoon first of all I thought it was actually pretty good and it had Hank Azaria plays her friend a bat named Bartok and I think I actually mentioned this not that long ago on the show but there's this moment where you know basically you know how in all these disney movies you've got kind of the main character and then they've always got some like wise kraken sidekick that's usually you know maybe not the same species and in this case it was like you had anastasia i think it's like the whole thing is like vaguely soviet right kind of like or eastern european so of course the bat is named bartok i think like the composer bartok um and uh you know bartok is always like having problems and flying into things and then at some point there's some kind of a plan being hatched that Bartok thinks is a bad idea and Hank Azaria as Bartok the bat goes, this can only end in tears. Addie and I spent a significant portion of her childhood and honestly into her adulthood saying, this can only end in tears because of Anastasia. So anyway, that's why I have very specific thoughts about how we say this person's name, which could be totally

wrong. Is Bartok, I'm not as steeped in these this is not a Disney film but these animated films from this era I'm not steeped in them the way you are by the way this came out in 1997 Meg Ryan, John Cusack Kelsey Grammer, great guy Christopher Lloyd, Hank Azaria Bernadette Peters, Kirsten Dunst Angela Lansbury, that is actually no joke, I mean I know that you can get some pretty big names for the voice acting on these things but that's a hell of a lineup all that is to say is Bartok like the what did you say he's a raven is he the raven equivalent no he's a bat or a bat didn't one of the movies have a a sassy parrot or something wasn't there another sassy bird well yeah but

bats i don't think are birds but yeah a flying thing uh yeah that was uh aladdin oh okay that's aladdin iago iago the parrot voiced by gilbert godfrey so you have bats coming to your hummingbird

feeder and you're taking photos of them that's what's happening there okay great i'm gonna send you the pick so i'm wondering if bartok is a bit of a rip off is maybe too strong of a word but oh

definitely influenced by yes exactly yeah um i think bartok uh i think that they use bartok was like a romanian composer who did a lot of real kind of like edgy kind of a tone not atonal but like it wasn't like super um it wasn't like tchaikovsky right like this beautiful lush kind of baroque music that really kind of welcomes you in as a listener i want to say that the music in the shining might be bartok some of it

anyway like i just remember him being because my my friend peter growing up was um you know a really really serious cellist and i would go to a lot of these concerts and sometimes they'd be playing you know tchaikovsky and i'd be like this is great and then sometimes i'd be like what was that he's like bartok like real like angular kind of you know kind of you're in a to take it back to another hitchcock movie you're in a shower at the bates motel and it's not gonna end well kind of music um which i thought even then i was like that's a pretty actually you know what i'm looking this up he's hungarian bela bartok not romanian i don't want to get i'm gonna get in trouble with our hungarian and our romanian listeners or i don't want to get in trouble with uh amy mazone or mazoni rather who's in mill creek washington thank you amy thanks amy and i pronounce that amy by the way andrew i don't know how you pronounce it uh me uh thanks to sarah longino dekalb of moxie washington this has come up before and we've looked up moxie washington

because that's a hell of a name it really is it's a it's a town that you it's got sass moxie washington so it's got moxie is what it's got it really really does and i always ask you this but have you tried the soda moxie yet or is that still something you haven't tried um i haven't tried it

yet and then then usually right after that i tell you that the uh i guess magician you'd call him Penn Jillette his daughter is named Moxie Crimefighter oh that's right that's how this conversation goes once a year once a year and I will say that

thanks to Sarah if you have never tried Moxie um don't but you really hate yourself but you love soda Moxie is the soda for you for self

hating soda lovers you know what I tried the other day that was I couldn't quite decide how I felt about it but it was a seven up zero Shirley Temple it was a can of seven up that's like diet seven up seven up with no sugar in it but that was surely temple flavored becca just had it in her refrigerator she is like speaking of birds or bats she is like a crow when it comes to sparkling water or bubble water drinks like and this is what i mean i think you know she has a lot of work events and things she has a lot of events for her work i mean she's literally an event coordinator where there must just be a lot of like loose cans of soda water around because when i come over to her house like and she must just throw a couple in her like tote bag on the way home it's like if you come into my house and i've been on a grocery run you will see in my refrigerator a bunch of you know whatever kind of soda water was like on sale at the store and they will be it'll be the lime ones and then it'll be the black cherry ones and the whatever and it'll be clearly like you know 12 packs of them or six packs of them you go into her fridge there's a million cans of soda water and like many of them are just are basically orphans like including a shirley a seven up zero shirley

temple i'm gonna recommend we start installing some metal detectors for the way out of these

events that becca is going to she's like can't figure out why the why is her why the portland chamber of commerce budget is they cannot seem to rectify it they're like we don't know we're like we the money coming in should match the money going out but we're losing money somewhere in

this is it the shirley temple seven up becca's got a huge bag she can barely lift and she's yelling we're all looking for the guy who did this i'm actually going to text her right now where did

you get that seven up surely because I know she didn't go out and buy like a six pack of that anyway it was it wasn't it was not terrible I could what I said was if you were doing like you know dry January as it were or if you were going to a party and you kind of you weren't going to drink alcohol but you wanted something that seemed kind of festive it would definitely do the trick but but as far as like a daily thing something you would consume on the daily it was a little it was a little too sweet a little

too flavored for me it doesn't sound it doesn't sound great to me but honestly like because i'm not a diet soda drinker at all but i like a bubbly water every now and then and of course you and i were praising um fresca i do love fresca we almost always keep that in the fridge these days and so like i sort of feel like if it was a seven a diet seven up if i can't explain it like I do not want to diet cola. I don't want to diet root beer. I don't want to diet Dr. Jazz or whatever the generic dog or pepper is.

I bet you that was on that list.

Probably. By the way, diet Dr. Jazz. But if it's a clear soda like 7-Up and then it's diet, if you can cut the sweetness down to a level where it's almost more like a bubble water as a... With just like an idea of that 7-Up and cherry flavor. By the way, I haven't had a Shirley Temple since I was a kid. I assume, is that just like Spriter 7-Up with marachino cherry juice and just a little touch of whiskey?

Yes, just a thimble full of whiskey just, you know, kind of to help you go to sleep. Because you're teeming. Um, I, you know, God, every, every conversation that we have or every statement that is made then leads to another whole waterfall of statements. I honestly have never had a Shirley Temple in my life because I mean, until this one that I had the other day, which does not count. Um, because again, this sounds like I'm constantly trying to drive home. I don't even want to say how hard Scrabble my life was. It wasn't that I did not have a hard Scrabble life. I didn't live in a world where we went to restaurants and we were allowed to order a soda-related drink. We were never allowed to order—first of all, we never went to a sit-down restaurant one time in my life as a family, as a kid. We would go to Burger Master at Northgate Mall or someplace we had a coupon. It was never like someone comes to the table and says, what would you like? And if we would have been at that place, in no universe would I ever have been allowed to say, Shirley Temple, please. Even though I was fascinated with the concept as a kid because I knew it's what kids ordered at places where grown-ups were maybe having drinks. It was like a kid thing that was fun but didn't obviously have alcohol in it. And where this is really going is my beloved daughter and how the weird thing about parenting is you want life to be better for your kids than it was for you. But you also low-key resent them for the fact that it's better. And I remember once being on a flight with Addie and her—by the way, we have another hummingbird sighting. At the bird feeder though At the correct bird feeder And it's a different hummingbird This one has a green belly The other one had a red belly I don't know if they know each other

I wouldn't get into profiling them Luke That's fair you know what

That's absolutely fair I don't see hummingbird color So I remember being on a plane And the flight attendant Taking my drink order Which I was probably getting a gin and tonic And Addie going I forget what she said something like okay can i have a um like a sprite but can you just can it be like half cranberry juice half sprite or something she was just like asking for something and i remember looking at her with like so much annoyance being like like where do you like first of all you're on an airplane that's amazing that's even happening for you and then second of all really you're gonna like order an off-menu cocktail from this poor hard-working flight attendant honestly though just wave the the cranberry juice over the seven. Yeah, exactly. Just precisely. But like, it's like, that was so not a big deal. It did not in any way, I don't think it negatively impacted the flight attendant. In fact, they're probably like, cool. They probably had made four more annoying things before that it was just like, can I get half and half of this or whatever? But somehow in my mind, because I was so, I grew up in such a culture of, and again, a very loving, a very warm, like I didn't grow up in a house where we were being, you know, criticized overly. Like, I'm very lucky with my childhood. But it was not the kind of place where you ever were talking to an adult and going, can I get, like, a splash of crayon in that or whatever? Like, that was just not – because you know why? That might cost extra. And so it was all financially related. It was all, like, you're not ordering from the – first of all, none of you kids are ordering because we can't trust you with that. We are ordering with what we have from the entertainment book, and we have a plan going into this Burgermaster of what we're getting. which leads us to another conversation, Andrew, which maybe we need a table for another time. Salad bars, will they ever return?

Oh, interesting.

Do you think Kim Kerr of Seattle, Washington, wants to hear a salad bar conversation?

Well, she wants us to carry that over into the D block, I believe.

We'll sweep the C block and go right into the D block.

I'm just curious. Let's not get into the topic now because, I mean, it just seems like such a rich vein of conversation.

We owe it to Sue Strauss of Orlando, Florida. One of our favorite places to broadcast from a Waffle House, right?

That's right, yeah. But I wanted to ask you, why are you bringing this up? Is this something that came up in your life recently? Are you missing? What is the basis of your question? Are you missing salad bars? Are you glad they're gone?

Becca and I were driving, and we were talking about Sizzler for some reason. What we were talking about was how Oregon seems to over-deliver on having the last of something. Yeah. Like they got the last Blockbuster in Bend. There was something else they have the last of, and then we got onto the topic of Sizzler, and I said, you know, I didn't ever go to Sizzler as a kid, because, again, see previous comments, but as an adult, a few years ago, I went to a Sizzler near Sacramento, and I was psyched, because I thought it was like a kind of a mid.

steakhouse but really it's just an all-you-can-eat free-for-all of like taco fixings and salad bars and then we started going off on that whole the dressing the salad dressing at a salad bar from the 80s is an iconic thing that was like that red kind of cylinder sometimes it might be an ice it would have the long spoon and the spoons would be labeled and it'd be like spilled ranch and And there was for a while we were trying to they were trying to get us to call French dressing Catalina, I think, or maybe those were slightly different. But I remember there was one that was called Catalina and there was one that was, you know, ranch and whatever, blue cheese. And we were talking about salad bars and Becca was speculating that they went away because there was concerns about like that kind of salad bar that we grew up with in the restaurant, that they went away because of concerns about like, you know, germs and maybe the pandemic or something. And I was saying, I wonder if it isn't just because we don't eat out at restaurants the same way anymore. Like people don't go spend their evening at a sizzler and go to the salad bar.

You know, I have and by the way, I just want to reiterate because it was the last name on our list today. And I sort of talked over you. Thank you to Sue Strauss of Orlando, Florida. I know you got it in there. I just talked over it. So I just wanted to thank Sue once again. I don't want you to feel left out. um this raises so leaving the salad bar thing aside for a second because i we did talk about that a little bit i think maybe it was actually pre-pandemic they were starting to really go away i think and remember we we read that article that really stuck with me about like all of the all of the issues with a salad bar like from from even just the outside of the cantaloupe being dirty like i just remember there are all these details of germs and you know maybe even possible contagions that salad bars do not protect you from i'm sure if you shined a black light on it it'd be a absolute nightmare pretty rough scenario one thing that i've been struggling with lately i don't feel like we can get into this i don't know what i'm doing today can we start i almost want to start the show over um i uh and i've been trying to examine whether or not this is because it's the type of places i go and i'm gravitating towards or if it's just because it's a kind of a regional thing around here um or what but one thing i've noticed lately is i can't seem to just go to a restaurant if these and i are going out for the evening and we're going to a slightly upscale restaurant that will have a very cozy feel to it you know the type of place where um you know they might change out the the menu and they want to make sure you've been there before and stuff like i kind of tease about that stuff but sometimes it's a very nice night out right but generally speaking if i'm grabbing a bite somewhere or i don't want to go to some place that sort of seems more high end I just want to go to a regular restaurant I'm finding it hard to find restaurants around here that are like some that are just sort of in between I feel like every place I go is just and maybe this is just the winter time but every place I go now seems cold sort of like everything feels like it feels like everybody's keeping their heat way down probably to save costs but also like and it might just be because I'm not Vives and I were up in I think Linwood or another more suburban community this weekend we were running some errands I had to return some shoes to DSW and then once you're there once Vives and I are in like in a mall-esque area we're like oh look at video only and like all these chain stores and restaurants that we don't usually see right exactly and so we found ourselves in some chain restaurant with some of the worst font and logos I've seen but it was serviceable enough it was called Indigo I don't know if that's a chain that you've heard of or not it's just like whatever it's nothing that you would that you would write a review about but it was totally fine it was acceptable but like we went in there and you know what it was cozy like it wasn't a fancy restaurant in any way it wasn't elevated it was you know very kind of suburban basic restaurant but it had carpeting and booths and booths booths booths booths bees

I just thank god you were there I could have just been doing it I'd still be doing that morning i dial up the line you're just boo somebody unplug him and plug him back in but like it felt and maybe it's because like i associate that with because i did go to restaurants as a kid uh did you see the font did you just look up well yes but it also says welcome to your friendly

neighborhood restaurant so it's this is the website for for indigo yeah this is like this is like you couldn't get the rights to papyrus exactly it's an elevated papyrus speaking of

elevated but anyway um my dislike of the and by the way all the signs like that were printed out from their printer like there was one sign stuck to the door and Genevieve's like that's definitely papyrus like we were examining as we went in but anyway all of that is to say was it was a nice little like we sat in a booth and uh and had you know some some very like tasty but like you know Mediocre clam chowder and whatever else. You know, like we had we shared some steak bites, I believe, and everything was like totally fine. But my point is, like, it was nice to be in a place that was sort of warm and cozy with a carpet on the floor. I feel like unless I'm going out for the evening to an actual like kind of nice restaurant everywhere I find myself and I love a diner. I love like a teriyaki place. But every place I go just sort of feels cold and like more like they would prefer it if it were takeout. Maybe that's too that's too strong of a word.

Everything is turning into basically a DoorDash factory where the main thing is just getting everything out the door because there's a million DoorDash orders coming out.

Yeah, and I was trying to avoid the feeling of being in kind of a takeout place, but we just wanted some Thai food. So Vives and I were like, well, let's go to that Thai place that's right on Greenwood. It's right in the main stretch of Greenwood where there's a bunch of little restaurants and stuff. You know that area really well. I'm guessing this place has been around for a while. And I grabbed takeout from there one time. I thought it was pretty good. And so we went back there. I'm like, yeah, maybe this will have more of a restaurant vibe to it. But it's very small. It had like five tables in there. And like, I don't know, people were coming and going and picking up orders. And you're right. It just sort of felt like it's hard for me to find a place that is like, maybe I just need to move to the suburbs. Maybe that's the key here.

Or a smaller city, because as I look at this Indigo Kitchen in Linwood, it reminds me of about 10 different places that were in Bellingham when I lived there. and that I could probably find if I went down the hill to good old Longview, Washington. I think there's something about being in a pretty large American city that's fairly hip like Seattle is. Not that you guys are in the annoyingly hip section where everything is, as you like to say, a two-word name. Other than Handy and Andy, most things around you are not two-word named.

It would be funny if Handy and Andy rebranded as Handy and Andy. Andy plus Andy.

God, that would be incredible. But yeah, this looks like there's something about kind of like suburban places or I would say maybe even smaller cities, smaller towns, where it seems like you've got more people taking a swing at kind of opening there. I think about like when we when Beck and I go out to visit her, her brother and his wife, they live out in an area that's I think it's called like Cedar Hills or something. and in fact there's like there's this sometimes we're going out there they have a swimming pool and we'll go out in the summertime and we'll stop off at this little grocery store New Seasons and get some stuff and it's in this newer mall development but in that mall development there are at least four restaurants that are versions of this thing that I'm looking at which are like a little place that you know you know somebody to do their dream had like opened a little little brewery or a little you know restaurant of whatever you know maybe it's it's Mediterranean or Italian or whatever you want to call it And, um, it doesn't matter. It's immaterial, Andrew. I might have Italian for dinner. Anyway, point is, when I look at this, I can think of, like, 15 examples from places I've lived that were not Seattle or New York or Los Angeles. So part of it just might be, you know, being in Seattle.

The fact that I can't find a sort of mid place, you mean? Yes.

Well, a place that's like this, a place that's not fast casual, that's not a chain, And that's also not, like, maybe a, you know, a kind of a canless or something. Right, right. Whatever we call this kind of strata, if you will, this layer of, like, our dining experience, that there just aren't tons of them. Most things are either, like, some big operation, like a Chipotle. I mean, I also think there's a fast casualization.

I do, too. I think that's part of it. Of American cuisine. I also, I think there's that, and I didn't think about this until you said it, but now I'm leaning into it in the past five minutes. The idea that maybe because the pandemic forced so many restaurants to go towards a takeout model, that didn't do it before. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know, your Patty's Eggnest or whatever. Suddenly, the only way they can survive is by just churning out these orders. But then when things sort of return to normal but not even quite, that's probably where most of the profits come from, I would guess. like there is a teriyaki place i'm not going to name it but it's one of our it's a place that i know that you used to like on the ave as well um just like you know a very to go type of place it's always been a to go kind of place but it's got a bit of a dining room and it's long um kind of this long dining room with i'm going to say maybe 20 tables in there or something um and again very very quick lunchy kind of place type of vibes but yeah when the pandemic happened you would go in there and everything obviously was to go so they would just give you a bag instead of like bringing out to your table on plates your teriyaki meal whatever it is they would just give you clamshell containers and a plastic bag and then out the door you go now several years after things have reopened I will stop in there if I'm working at KUOW or something and I'll go in there with Durs and it is such a turnoff we will go and we'll say we are eating here then they'll say okay and they'll take our order and then they come by our table and everything is packaged up in the clam shells and in a to-go bag which by the way right is just a waste of plastics like they just seem they they can no longer even though they are paying to like maintain a space with a bunch of 20s they just cannot understand the idea that we want to eat this here and we don't want to cut open a bag to get to our food when we're sitting there at the

table. And it's a waste of their bags. They opened this new Indian restaurant down in the neighborhood that Becca lives in, which I was stoked about because I love Indian food. There's none of it out here. And so the other day I went down there. Becca is medium. I don't know if you and Genevieve have these kind of conversations where the other person clearly doesn't like something but they refuse to admit they don't like it and i don't know why but it's like every time i suggest indian food she's like ah maybe not tonight and i'm like well you don't like indian food i don't not like it i just have never felt like it once ever in five years well i see a pattern here so i was like well i'm gonna go i was i was gonna head home but i was like hungry so i'm gonna go get some indian food at that place and it was crazy the the the server was like so nice so super nice and the food ultimately was very yummy i was very happy with the whole experience but man i was the only person in the restaurant and i'm sitting at a booth and it must have taken 45 minutes for me to get the food because the amount of to-go orders that were flying through that joint and the number of people that were just sitting there with airpods in and their phone up presumably DoorDash drivers and other, you know, food delivery services that were just waiting to get their orders, waiting to get their orders. And I was like, man, this is a different world we're living in now. You know, these places are. And again, I understand why they're just reflecting where the, you know, possible business success is. But it's just it's I do think that we've somehow moved away from a dying inexperience and we may never go back to how things were.

Yeah, you're you're right. And things will just continue to evolve. So I was just trying to figure out, and that's why, and this has actually been a very beneficial conversation, because it's something I've been thinking about a lot, like just this idea that I kind of can't seem to, like I went to a nice little Thai place for lunch, and I remember it was New Year's Eve, and I was having a very late lunch, and I was having a lot of trouble finding places that were still open, because it was like 3.30, and a lot of places were closing for the night at that point. and I sort of missed the lunch area. And so I went to this place. You know Monkey Bridge in Fremont? It's a tiny little corner Thai restaurant that is kind of across from the Majestic. I mean, unless you had been there, there's no reason to necessarily notice it. But it's totally fine. I'd had food there before, but I go in there. Is it in Ballard, maybe? What did I say? Did I say Fremont? I'm sorry. I meant Ballard, yeah. I'm just looking it up. I'm trying to get eyes on this. It was just so cold in there the whole time. I'm, like, wearing my coat the whole time. It was a cold day outside, too. But, like, it could be a cozy little place in there, but maybe I'm just running cold, too. But I just sort of feel like I can't, like...

Are you losing weight, Andrew? What's going on? No, I wish so. I can always tell if I've managed to shed a few pounds because all of a sudden I'm like, has it always been this cold in this place? Oh, really?

No, I don't think that's the case for me. I did shave all of the hair off of my body, so I don't know if that is something... It's dirty, Dad. It's dirty, yeah. Anyway. Yeah.

So what we can take away from this conversation is really Somebody needs to open a restaurant That's main sort of Core competency is It's warm in here

It's warm and cozy

And I don't want to gender things Because you're assigned male at birth Andrew so I don't want to say this is Uniquely the women in my life But I will say this I've never been in a relationship with a woman Who was not significantly More cold than I was in most places That's my personal experience And if you told any of these women in my life there's a restaurant where the number one thing we promise is you are not going to be cold if you're in this restaurant that would immediately be the number one restaurant

that we went and and me let me ask you this i'll add you to the list of long-term relationships in

my life i was man sometimes it's just funny how once you let me into that skylight yeah

we'll see the skylight frame um but uh i was just reading a thread on um reddit on like the seattle subreddit somebody said what do you guys keep your thermostat at now i want to i want to caveat this by saying it really there's i don't think that there is a level playing field for answering that question because it really depends on your home and how well insulated it is and if it's a smaller place setting the thermostat at something may be like it may be more accurate throughout your apartment than here where we have a basement

Okay.

and we spend most of our time in the basement but the thermostat is upstairs and so setting it to whatever upstairs may not reflect what we're actually living in downstairs so putting that caveat out there generally speaking what is your temperature in your home where do you keep things

in the winter well my home is extra confusing because like i have a mini split right which is one of those it's like a big fan unit that lives outside but then has this pipe that it goes up into this vent inside my house but that's just one corner of my house that's the only currently that's the only like permanently installed hvac in the house so i run that thing i'll run that pretty hot i'll run that at like 85 oh wow because it needs to well first of all that well then just

to get to the heart of the question then like what about what is a good what what's the temperature i'm going for you're literally in under construction right now so that but like just generally speaking at houses where you've lived where things have been more stable and everything is insulated never you're obviously you're not keeping it at 85 that's like so that's growing no no i probably

i would think like i would think 78 in the winter no way yeah like again well okay yeah you must

live in drafty places yeah this is because that we have to separate so far beyond because i keep it at 71 and it's like everybody is like 71 i keep it at 65 and like so 71 is hot i guess listen

if we think about a comfortable temperature 70 sounds comfortable to me if it was 70 degrees outside right now and i went and sat to finish my coffee that would be a good temperature i think i'm confusing it with what do i have to jack the heat to to get the outcome of 70 degrees yeah i

I can't give you a good answer. Because one of the things that always sticks in my head is, I don't think it was Genevieve who said this, I think it was Genevieve's friend or our friend, Jessica, who lived with Genevieve for a long time, who would say, a house is not a blanket. Put on a sweater or get a blanket. And I think about that all the time. She lived with an 80-year-old? Yes, because I am always like, I like my house to be a blanket, honestly. Look, I'm wearing short sleeves right now in the winter because I like to be warm in my house but not having to be bundled up.

Well, let me give you an example of this in my little house. So I have the two heating sources literally in the whole house. I mean, I have heaters and things. In fact, I just bought yesterday this crazy thing called a Kelvin from a company called Boulder, and it's an infrared. It's a flat piece of glass that is infrared heat, and that basically, like, if you are within, like, sight of this thing, It physically warms your body up It does not warm up the air temperature It warms your body up Yeah, it's crazy I'm on the waiting list for this

Oh, you haven't tried it yet Because I was like, what is that sensation like that?

Well, I'll tell you when they send it to me But I'm going to put it in a bathroom of mine Where I don't want to, whatever Here's the thing In my little house, there is this pellet stove And that, a bag of pellets at Home Depot is $6.99 And if I were to run that stove all day It might eat up two-thirds of a bag of pellets or whatever. So I think of it as like running that thing is costing me $7 if I'm going to do it all day. It is very effective. It really warms the house up. The mini split is so much more efficient. I could run the mini split at 88 degrees, and at the end of the month, it would raise my power bill by $3 for the month. It's like insane how efficient these mini splits are. So really what I should be doing is just run the mini split as warm as I want it to be But I like the coziness of the fire It gives me a good feeling And also I run them both at the same time So that when I wake up in the morning I come out of my little bedroom to make my coffee I'm not freezing And every time I do it I think this is so decadent I'm not running the pellet stove overnight Don't get me wrong But first thing I'll do, I'll walk over to it, I will turn it on because it is cozy, it makes me feel good in the wintertime when a lot of things make me feel bad from a weather standpoint. And I'm always hearing my mom and dad who are extremely careful with things like heat, and I'm thinking basically what you're saying, Andrew, which is I want my house to be a blanket. And I live here. There's so much about this world that is not comforting right now. If it's going to cost me at the end of the month an extra 50 bucks to feel comfortable, and it's something that I can do by just, like, leaving that mini split at four degrees warmer, it's the best 50 bucks I'm going to spend, I think, in the month. That's the constant conversation in my head.

You know what I've been doing lately? So I, over the holidays, Luke, I was staying up so late. Like literally, if I was getting to bed at three o'clock, that was pretty good. I was I was staying up until four a.m. at times and then like sleep. super late and like it's like you need the rhythm of tbtl regular tbtl to just stay alive right i

gotta say like it like it was really really nice at first but then you do get to a point where you're like oh yeah i need a little bit more structure here because i i definitely because i'll just start staying out and then eventually four could become five you know what i mean like i literally i don't know what it is about me but i i like the nightlife if the nightlife is sitting behind my computer um so anyway all all of that is to say i'm trying to get into better habits now And I'm and so I'm trying to get out of bed early, early or not, not early. Let me correct that. But like, you know, I just sort of feel like if I can be out of bed by like eight or eight thirty, like that's a pretty good head start on the day. That's not late. I'm sorry. That is not early by most people's standards. That's actually probably quite late by most people's standards. But, you know, I am who I am. My point is.

Oh, and you can say that legal.

Now I can say that, but I can't say it with spinach in my hand or my mouth.

No, no, no, no, no. No spinach. See yesterday's show. If you wonder what the hell we're talking about

I was trying to, does he laugh like Or no, was I doing the Three Stooges there?

You were doing more of a Three Stooges Which is that, hold on, let me Is that in the public domain? What does he do? Doesn't he have a laugh? What do Popeye do? I am what I am what I am What I am what I am Now I'm being Robin Williams as the live Was that Coppola? Or Scorsese? I think it was one of them live action Popeye that was one of the like that was like a great director that did the Altman Robert Altman

yes yes yes yes I remember that movie I remember being a kid I want to finish my thought about the heat really quickly but I remember that movie as a kid you're like oh yeah I like Popeye I've seen Popeye cartoons let's rent the Popeye movie and you're like what the hell is this darkness it's like I just remember being like shot in like kind of a gritty dark in that who plays Olive Oil.

Well, that's what America needed was a grittier Popeye.

And the woman, Shelley Duvall, not Shelley Long, plays Olive Oil. All of that is to say, one of the things that I have been loving about my new thermostat, which I can control from my phone, is when I'm trying to wake up at just like a quasi-decent hour in the morning and it's so easy just to like kind of roll over and go back to sleep because I stayed up too late, is I can use my phone to turn the heat up a little bit because I've got it set on a schedule now where the heat drops down to 65 at night when we're sleeping because you don't need it to be blasting and also it gets too hot but if I wake up around like 7 or something and I'm like oh I don't want to get out of bed and also it's a little bit chilly I can just like open my phone and tap out a hotter and let the house heat up a little bit and then it makes getting out of bed so much easier like there's something about getting out of a warm bed into a cold air it's like you're jumping out of an airplane without a parachute i hate it so much

well that's the thing is that i i so my bedroom now uh also doesn't have any like you know heating vents or whatever there's a heater in there but i never use it at night in fact i have my window open i'm a maniac i like i'm like this is the most i like german thing about me um is that because i think they're famous for what are they famous for well one of the things uh is that they really really like to have like the windows open even in the winter and the the bedroom and the house really cold and then you're under like a really warm you know like you know duvet or whatever i love that feeling but because i'm a man of a certain age i also have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and this is the constant dance because i sleep better if the room is cold, but then I have to get up and go to the bathroom, but I'm frickin' freezing, and then same problem in the morning, so I don't know what the solution is other than maybe get on that remote control train that you're talking about, but eventually the Madrona Hill studio will have a mini split in here, so the temperature will be, because right now I just have like two different heaters going, the temperature will be regulated in here i'm going to have a small mini split in my bedroom and then uh one upstairs and hopefully we'll be able to have some the problem with it is they're all different systems it'd be nice it was all integrated and maybe there's a way to do that yeah the listener knows can you integrate mini splits from different companies if somebody knows about that get at me but um yeah uh it's uh i guess

that's the downside of buying a house from the 1930s genevieve you know and i'm on board with this I don't mean to put on Genevieve but as kind of a cost cutting measure what we're doing for the basement again because the temperatures can be so like kind of divergent is um we have like a like a 55 gallon drum that is like kind of it's got some garbage and stuff in there and we just light that on fire here in the basement and we sort of like like after the show like I'm freezing right now but after the show I'll go out there and I'll huddle around that for a little bit have you considered getting some new like shoes because that one your right one that the top is just blown out on yeah right well you can see my toes yeah i feel like that's i don't think that that's necessarily the best look for you i don't know it's all part of a what do you got in that bindle do you have a different shoe in that bindle you could replace it with all right uh we did not get to random audio roundup today but i i'm actually kind of weirdly excited to play you this tape Although I don't know if it's really going to work But we're going to have to find out tomorrow Together I am proud that at least yesterday We kind of as a bank shot We did get to the top story That we promoted

In the beginning of the show today When you were promoting things Did you promote the story That was on the show sheet Or do the listeners not even know The listeners don't even know what I'm talking about They don't even know what you're talking about

They don't even know why you use the term fresh hell What?

But welcome, new listeners. I hope you enjoyed the show today. I have regrets.

The show is a very cryptic mystery that you have to solve by listening for 17 years.

That's actually kind of true. That's the best description of TVTL I've heard. Well, that and steamy, I guess.

Yeah, right. All right. We are going to be. We were going to be back here tomorrow. And in fact, we are going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. So we hope you'll join us for that. In the meantime, everyone have a great Tuesday. Happy anniversary, Andrew.

Oh, yeah, you too.

And happy anniversary to us as a show. And to all of you who have been listening either for a very long time or are new to the show, we love you all. All right, we'll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Power out.