Muse

Captain, cabin's ready and doors are closed.

All right, gentlemen, it's time to get high. And also fly this old bird. Just a little captain's joke. I never get high when I'm flying unless I mistimed the edible. Another captain's joke.

You really think that's a good use of everyone's time?

If I can't have some fun with my passengers, why am I here?

To fly the plane. Go do that.

TBTL!

All good. Here we all are. together again. Can I throw something on you? See if it feels good? Sure. Okay, this is what I would do. I would start with a joke. Joke. Vince Vaughn quote. Obviously. Swingers or crashers? Fred Claus.

What are you doing now?

I'm trying to get some butter.

You're supposed to sop up gravy with your biscuit.

I don't want to use my biscuit to sop up some gravy. I got other plans for my biscuit, and they involve butter.

The only thing that's nice about this is even though it's a Tuesday, it feels kind of like it's a Friday.

I believe that what's about to follow is really going to amaze. So I suggest you sit back and enjoy your front row seat.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

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

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

It is our turn.

Coming to you once again from beautiful, and I mean this, and I cannot overstate this, beautiful San Diego, California. California got sunshine. Just an absolutely spectacular day. I could read you the surf report, but you already know it. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous day down here looking out over the bay and over to Point Loma and the whole thing. Gosh, I am sad that I've got to fly back to the Pacific Northwest later this afternoon. But, you know, all things must happen in their time like this, which is episode four thousand three hundred and eighty in a collector series. Let the fun begin. We talked about this yesterday, did not get to it. And now it's actually it was fortunate because we then got an email from listener Ryan with a link to some audio tape of the very people involved in the story we were going to talk about, which the people being Bob Dylan and a guy who's been going through Bob Dylan's trash. for many many years and trying to sort of get dylan i don't want to say canceled but basically this guy has been sort of hating on bob dylan for years and i just hate you and i hate your ass face and i had no idea he existed as of like six days ago and now i'm borderline obsessed with him but we'll talk about it coming up and we're going to talk to this guy longest running cobra of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he's not only very demure but And get this, I hope you're sitting down, he's also Very mindful He's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now, good morning my friend

Good morning Luke How is the military industrial complex treating you this morning? You left us I mean visually You left us hanging yesterday at the end of the show Saying that you're going to move to San Diego I really want to And it's because of the military Which I hope you already got one of those tattoos That a sailor gets with like an anchor and a heart

Do you know that I actually posted and then deleted something from the Ascendant social media platform Blue Sky yesterday related to the sort of military slash punisher industrial complex that's from here in San Diego? Oh, no.

What did you post? I did not know that.

Okay. Let me, by the way, don't let me forget to tell you how freaking cool the boats and planes are. Okay. I was wrapping up a little jog yesterday. out on the Embarcadero. And I was walking back past the train station, which is so cool here in San Diego. It has this giant Santa Fe, as in the railway line, the Santa Fe, sign on it. And anyway, I was wandering back to the hotel and I went past a place. I'm doing this from memory now because I've deleted the Blue Sky post, but I think it's called Protector Brewing. And it's got one of those, some kind of a, I don't even know like a what you call it like a mask that probably they think maybe you know Roman soldiers wore or something I'm sure as popularized in some sort of Jerry Butler film and it just was and what the I took a picture it was just like I'm sorry

what was the how was this displayed I sort of lost that you said it was a bumper and the back of a car or is it

no it was it's a store it's a brick and mortar

oh it's a store it is the store

it's a brewery It's a place that you can go and get beer. It's called, like, Protector Brews or something.

Okay, sorry, I don't know how I missed that. Okay, gotcha. It's the name of the brewery, and it's kind of got this whole theme, this tough guy theme.

I mean, all it has is a sign that says Protector. Mm-hmm.

And then, like, their logo is like a copper face shield with like a big dent in it. Like, you took a sword to the face, but you're still protecting everyone's beer. It just was like, it just gave me a terrible feeling. The endorphins that were coursing through my brain after my jog were immediately, buzz immediately killed by this logo and the vibe. and i took a picture of it and i think my my post was something like what in the red-pilled crossfit adjacent bullshit is this and i said that with with no knowledge of what the backstory was of this place but i didn't need it i knew it was some ex-military bull-ass shit and uh it was and i uh when i you know got i posted that and then some people were responding and there is a thing our friend chris the the chris o'leary the uh the the beer guy the guy who's had sampled every beer known to man was like oh you might be surprised to know this is all vegan and i was it is surprising that it is a vegan thing but that is that is the one surprising thing about everything else remains unsurprising which is started by a veteran who

wanted beer in afghanistan and had to make his own and decided to punish her every hop in sight

or whatever it's just exactly sustainably crafted we only use pure organic ingredients in every

batch luke it's sustainably crafted through profiling people of color wow that's what that's what that's what sustains this brand but anyway the reason i took it down was because it was starting to get a lot of activity and uh you got scared of the smoke i really didn't want the smoke

yeah i genuinely didn't i was like that's what's good about us we don't want the smoke

Dude, there are some times that I want the smoke. This was not the smoke. This smoke didn't matter enough to me. Like, I was like, this is going to get back to this guy and his, you know, and his friends who think it was okay that somebody ran into somebody on their way to Marjorie Taylor Greene's swatting. and I just don't want to be part of that discourse and I don't want them coming for me because I just, I had a spidey sense that it was going to get out of control fast.

I was wondering if you were hearing from the CrossFit people who were just like, wait, how did we take a, how did we catch a stray here?

CrossFit is so, so frickin' red pill coated. Do you know this?

No, because, you know, my kind of knowledge or journey of learning about CrossFit It goes way back to kind of when I first moved to Seattle. So we're talking like 2009, 2010. And I had a friend who was really, really into it. But it wasn't quite as popular then because I think she was even, I don't know if she gave one or she pitched the idea of doing like some sort of one of those local TED Talks about like how I got involved in this cult. And it was like sort of tongue in cheek, but she really, truly loved it. But I don't think it was then what maybe it's become now. So my point is, like, I have a friend who doesn't fit into whatever stereotype you're about to describe. She's, like, the opposite of all of that. So that's not what I think of first when I think of CrossFit.

And I want to say, too, we have a lot of listeners who love CrossFit. And if it's good for you and your body, awesome. And there are so many – they're called boxes, Andrew. Please use the right term. There are so many CrossFit boxes. Although, actually, I don't know if you can legally call it a box if you are not paying the dues to CrossFit, Inc. Sure. I mean, I did CrossFit in Port Townsend, and I promise you there were no – there were zero guys bringing in some kind of German shepherd, decommissioned German shepherd named Trump or whatever. Like, it's not in every CrossFit gym is it a very weird, like, sort of law enforcement thing, but there's a heavy component of that in the CrossFit culture now, which is not to say that everyone who does CrossFit is part of that. But it's very, like, I promise you the guy who started Protector Brewing has at some point done CrossFit. I will, I'd put my, I'd put my entire fortune, Andrew, which right now I think clock's in at around $8,000. Oh. I'd put my entire fortune up on the bet that the people that love this Protector Brewery are also, many of them, interested in CrossFit. But anyway, all that is to say, I posted it, it started to get a decent amount of interaction, and then I just got scared. I just was like, I don't want this to become the – I don't want the headline on the New York Post to be CBS Sunday morning correspondent fired over brewery comments.

So instead you just air it here on DBTL where nobody will.

This is where no one can – this is honestly where I hide all of my secrets.

We're like the smokeless ashtray of podcasts. We just suck up all the smoke and make it disappear. That's right. Zero smoke. Listen, I literally- I call it the no smoke zone. For the last 18 hours or so, I have literally debated about whether or not I want to talk about this on the show as a thing, or at least at this point. If you're worried about your comments gaining attention, this is the place to air them out. Great. But because you brought it to social media, I feel like maybe that's the universe saying, yeah, let's let's talk about this for a second. And I know we want to talk about planes and boats in a little bit, too. I'm not trying to steal that away from you conversationally. But for the past, like I say, like the past day or so, actually, no, I would actually say for the past week or so, ever since I heard that report on NPR about Mark Zuckerberg, like kind of rolling back fact checking and everything. And I brought it up on the show last week. It just absolutely, it sort of turns my stomach. I'm seeing in a bunch of different examples, like CEOs sort of lapping up. Like I used this analogy the other day and I don't know if it really works, but I sort of feel like I'm seeing examples of CEOs kind of almost like, I'm going to use words that how I think they see the world, not how I see it. Almost like coming up for air after holding their breath for four years of wokeness or what have you or whatever it's been. I'm just sort of seeing like policies being rolled back from Starbucks policies that were started because of racial incidents about five years ago. Starbucks mentioned they're going to kind of roll back their open door policy now. Oh, yeah, you have to buy coffee to be there. Which, again, like I don't even want to get into the details of the actual things that these CEOs are doing because maybe some of them are fine on their face. But like what I'm seeing here, though, in Zuckerberg saying, oh, we went way too far for woke culture and now we're not fact checking anymore because facts are woke or like what? I'm just like I'm sort of spinning here on a lot of different levels, but certainly seeing and then let's not even get into the Bezos shit and the Washington Post shit. And so like I'm just like kind of in a bad place. And one thing that I think I mentioned here on the show is like as far as me engaging with these companies like Starbucks is an easy one for me. I've never been a Starbucks guy. So that's fine. Amazon has been very difficult for me to break alliances with because it's like it's something that I use both for shopping and for watching Super Wild Card games on Super Wild Card weekend. And so like, you know, I'm not saying that I'm right in that, but like that one's a difficult one for me. And I keep on talking about when and if we're going to cancel our prime subscription. But one that should be very easy is just getting off of Instagram. Like it's not anything I need. I mean, the only the only aspect in which Instagram is sort of a tool and not a toy for me would be regarding TBTL.

Like, John handles almost all of our, like, Instagram posting on behalf of the show. But, you know, we get tagged in things. We're supposed to, if we no longer want to be the smokeless ashtray of podcasts, like, I should be probably using social media to trumpet our show more. Like, if I delete my Instagram, I guess I'm sort of eliminating that tool sort of. But aside from that, like mostly it's just a dumb thing that I can post some photos and then get like an adrenaline jolt when a bunch of people thumbs up it. You know, like I don't need that. And so I've been trying. I'm basically I'm definitely stepping back from Instagram as if I need to make an announcement. I keep on thinking about that guy. Everybody, I am leaving. I'm leaving this. And I realize I'm being that guy. I'm telling you here because I'm struggling with the right way to do it. What I want to do is just totally delete my account, right? And then I was looking. I think there is a way that I can, like, sort of download everything, like a history. Because, I mean, I think I've been using it for about 10 years now. And, you know, like if I scroll back on my Instagram, it's a trip for me, like seeing my shots of things I was taking in L.A. when I first moved down there and was having whatever feelings I was having as a transplant in LA. And like, it's like a diary in a certain way for me to go back through my Instagram. So I kind of want to say that I also think about connections that I have that are only, that only exist via Instagram now because I'm not on Facebook. And like, there are people, like, I can't explain it. Like a friend of mine who I'm just like, maybe every 10 years we check in. Somebody that I met at a conference, at a public radio conference a long time ago. that that young lady that we gave a a ride or no she gave us a ride when we were hitchhiking in denver iowa denver iowa you know like these weird connections that i have to people that if i delete my account i will just lose these connections they're not necessarily like daily connections or strong connections, but they're connections that exist only on this app. And so anyway, what I've done right now is I've taken the shortcut off of my phone. I'm probably gonna delete the app off of my phone. I'm wondering, like, do I put a little note up there? Like, hey, I wanna stay in touch, but I'm not here anymore. Like, here's where you can find me. Here's my TBTL email address and my Blue Sky account. I'm just gonna keep on going. Here's my Ello account where you can, with good conscious. What's the new one? Like Red Something? Have you heard about this? Oh, the TikTok replacement. Is it Red Line? It's like straight up.

Red Something. It's literally owned by China, like actively by the Chinese government.

Yes. And I mean, isn't the interface, like doesn't it use like Chinese characters?

I haven't downloaded it yet, but you know, depending on what happens on January 19th with my beloved tiktok i i might give it a shot anyway all of that is to say like i feel so extra

doing this it's i actually did reach out to a couple of people i'm only friends with on there but we chat on there a lot and i've said hey like just so you know like here's how you can get a hold of me because i think i'm gonna be and again i i feel so self-conscious i don't want to be like everybody i'm leaving but i really do want people to if they go to my instagram to to contact me i I want them to know that I'm not seeing messages there, for starters. And secondly, where they can reach me. At least not more than normal. Yeah, right. I'm kind of withholding. So anyway, that's where I am. Maybe it's not worth talking about on the show. Do you have any thoughts on that? What should I do? Should I delete the whole thing? That would feel great, man. It would feel so great just to be like, I'm done. I have no zuck in my life.

I don't have my mute button, so try not to say anything else funny for the rest of the show. So I'm always still on the edge of a cough. You know, I go back and forth on that because whereas when I jumped off of Twitter, that was purely a place where I was going to try to get a certain kind of experience of people approving of me. I don't feel like that is your Instagram feed. I think your Instagram feed is really lovely and it has a lot of just like cool photographs and it's not political. it's not you i mean maybe you're going there for the same reason i was going to twitter which is you want people to say good job space ghosting that pink panther episode but um no i mean i think your i think your instagram feed is really nice and i like it's like this is always the issue with things like that which is if you delete it does that meaningfully impact any part of mark zuckerberg's life and the answer is obviously no but i guess if it gives you a feeling of you've taken back some i mean i don't regret the decision to get off of twitter so i guess if you use that example then then i'd say go for it but i would be a little sad if your instagram feed didn't exist because and you know what's really weird because i have such a my relationship with instagram is you know as i've said before it's like my relationship with marijuana i could go months and not think about it so therefore i never even occurs to me to delete instagram because of zuckerberg's bullshit because i just don't it's not whereas with with musk and twitter i like i had to delete it because twitter was like critical to my daily feelings about myself so you know i mean like just instagram doesn't matter enough to me for it to be a political statement for me um but uh but but i will tell you that i i did feel good when i got rid of uh twitter so maybe you'll have the same experience um but you should you should do whatever it is that where you can

archive it because there's some great photos on there yeah thanks and you know it's like the it's believe it or not the photo posting of it is the thing i struggle with the least because like this is silly but the first social media site i think i was ever a part of was flicker which is a photo sharing website and because that's where all of my archives are i've been paying for a flicker pro plan for flicker pro yes hard to say but like you said no more funny things i mean you have to pay for it otherwise you don't get to keep all your archives you know they like and i've it's been in existence for so long and that's where i was posting things when i was first getting into photography back in i don't know 2001 or 2 i mean it goes way back and so like i now i think i'm paying like 80 bucks a year or something for that like why not start actually it it's crept up man it's been because i used to be like i don't know i don't know 20 bucks a year back in is it possible

you're the only person paying for flicker pro they just have to keep jacking the price up they're

like we need to get 10 more bucks off of walsh well i did see that like um uh so it's funny the community that i built there is talk about a remnant i mean it's or or uh is that that's not the word I'm looking for I'm sorry but a remnant of the past maybe is what I was supposed to say there I'm not sure what i was going for but like looking back at that is it's like i had a whole community of people i didn't know i mean social media was so new back then and like if i go back i see these people i'm like oh my gosh that's right we used to interact just talking about photos all the time and you would know if this person didn't like your photo and this person did or whatever and like now i it's like it's sort of like proof that oh yeah you move on from these things and it's not really that life-changing and also i have a site that i'm paying for where i can like still you know work on my photos and post them and actually maybe even have it be more in a photographer's sort of community there's also that cara website i believe it is i downloaded that a while back some artists put together i'm looking it up yes c-a-r-a i was telling you about i have that on my phone is sort of it was an instagram alternative for people who wanted to i think move away from instagram maybe about a year ago or something and i i still haven't posted to that but i feel like You know, there are other places where I can sort of, like, build community even more directly related to what I'm doing, which is sharing photos. Like, Instagram isn't really about sharing photos anymore. It's about showing off your life, I feel like, and staying in touch with people. And I don't really use –

It's about not fact-checking.

It's about not fact-checking. Like, I don't even really use Instagram the way it's supposed to be used. So anyway, all of that is to say I'm kind of fine moving away from that. Like, I don't have as many friends or followers over there. So, yeah, I'll lose some of that dopamine of posting a photo and literally like maybe one person liking it or something. But that's fine. To me, it's just like that. What I want to do is just totally clean slate it and just delete Instagram and pretend like I had never been there. But for me, it's just kind of like, yeah, but what about that? What about that person that I'm not even thinking of right now who I will just see post something maybe three months from now on Instagram and be like, oh, yeah, that's right. I know this person. If I delete that, that relationship, I feel like totally disappears.

is well this is an official statement with peace and love that if uh you have been interacting with andrew on instagram and suddenly he goes radio silent it's not you it's zuckerberg it's zuckerberg

and you can email me at andrew at tbchel.net send me all of this split split.net all of the photos of of your family you weird talk about planes and boats why are you deciding to be the

most funny in this episode.

The thing is, it's better when you laugh with me. I feel like a lot of this is laughing at me, but that's okay. Thank you for being a tan.

Alright, let's thank some donors. These are the wonderful, generous people who are making TBTL happen with their donation, and we very much appreciate it. No donations, no show. No money, no honey. It's my new catchphrase.

I like that. Just come up with that now.

I thought we broke up there for a minute. I didn't get the peals of laughter I was expecting.

You thought we broke up as podcasting partners or just you thought the line broke up?

All of it. I thought the line broke up and our friendship and our business relationship had all crumbled under the weight of that joke by me. Thankfully, Brian J. Kirk of Philadelphia, PA loves it.

Oh, thank you, Brian. Appreciate us talking about your fair city. uh, yesterday evening with a friend and how great it is and how great Brian is too.

I mean, it's, he's really the kind of one of the number one draws of Philadelphia. There was something, yeah, there was something the other day. Well, first I told you, I listened to, it's not Philadelphia. And in fact, you know, folks in other parts of Pennsylvania will tell you that there's sort of like there's Philly and then there's like kind of everything else in Pennsylvania. Um, but, yeah, uh, I was listening to that, um, concrete city podcast, which is in Donora, Pennsylvania, which again if you're somebody who just really needs to hear a brutal like western pennsylvania everywhere outside of philly accent delaware county delco county mayor of mayor of east town accent if you need that in your life listen to concrete city it's amazing but there was something else the other day that was deeply philadelphia centric oh you know what it was it was this It was this Pushkin podcast that I'm listening to, hosted by Jake Halpern. It's called Deep Cover, and it was about an unsolved crime in Philadelphia. There was a lot of good Philly references going on. Now, here's, if I can ask you this, Andrew. Jake Halpern, who I looked him up, he went to, like, Yale. He's a very, you know, classy individual, very smart person. By the way, I think there's a Zumwalt-class naval ship coming in right now, and it is incredible. It's breathtaking, Andrew. Absolutely breathtaking.

You have a view of the water there.

I do. I have a view of—this is what I wanted to tell you about yesterday and today, but we got sidetracked on Zuck Talk. on the de-zuck, the de-zuckification of Andrew's life. Um, uh, anyway, Jake Halperin is a very smart person, but he said, it's impossible. He said he was talking about something in, you know, in his script, in this podcast, and he said, it's impossible to underscore the importance of this. And I spent the rest of my drive trying to figure out is that, that seems wrong to me, right? It's impossible to underscore, isn't it? It's impossible to overstate. Like he was trying To make the point that something was very important or something was very It was a real Thing and you sort of you can't Overstate how real of a thing this is And he said it's impossible to underscore How hurtful this was for the family

Or whatever I don't like that word there What does that mean I don't either

How did that make it through Jake Halpern's Yale educated brain And Through the editors at Pushkin And past Malcolm Gladwell Apparently hasn't done 10,000 hours on Reading sentences

I like him editing the script of every podcast that leaves Pushkin and literally they're typewritten pages and he's got a pencil and a red pen

I would honestly believe it that's how mythical Gladwell is at this point but then it made it through Gladwell and it made it onto the podcast and through the aux cable into my stereo in my car and into my ears and it made me mad Is there a universe in which I cannot underscore? He was saying basically I cannot emphasize enough.

Yeah, I think you could say you cannot underscore enough. I still don't love that. But if the word enough is in there, then it's exactly like what you just said. Underscoring, underscoring.

Underscoring means underlying, underlining.

Yeah, it's like emphasizing it. Like, because I think that that's something that I say a lot. Like, I really want to underscore this here. I do not get Flickr for free I am a Flickr pro subscriber I really want to underscore that point

It's the one piece of content you don't pirate

Yeah, right, exactly I pay $80 for a website I don't use yearly

From the NFL Network to pay James Flickr That's right How great would it be if Flickr was actually a family name And they just dropped the E at Ellis Island

And then that set the stage for every single internet company to follow there's like oh i guess we're dropping vowels right now yeah even though it's just it

was just an old family name right anyway i you know what i think part of the problem here is is i don't think until this conversation that i really fully grasped that underscore just means underline or it means what i think of as underline because yeah i think that's i think that's a good so to emphasize but i think the word under has been confusing me for many years so now are we

swing it like i i feel like the way you said that sentence at first i didn't like the way they were using underscore but if they said enough well then i'm on i'm back on board with pushkin i can't underscore enough how important this conversation is not the problem is i'm i'm paraphrasing i'm do

it for i'm doing this from memory so i can't say with any certitude if he said enough in the sentence and i'm gonna you know what i'm gonna go with i'm gonna go with jake halperin and his Yale education and assume that he and Gladwell pouring over the scripts to all of the Pushkin podcasts the typed out scripts I'm going to go with they probably know what they're saying and it's probably the fact that I just I really don't think I ever understood that underscore just means underline if people would just say underline instead of underscore then I'd probably have a better understanding of what was going on. That's a good point

I've never used it in that way I can't underline enough that just seems like it lacks some gravitas

Andrew I have to tell you something insane I'm not saying that I'm distracted while we're doing the podcast but I will tell you that before we started I was signing up for some new bullshit that you need to go to England if you are from a country that doesn't need a visa

oh that's right because you're heading over there for work in the next month or so

actually a story related to what I was doing here in San Diego last night but um i uh i had started that process then i stopped because we were doing the show and then i just looked down and realized by some bizarre thing it was in a mode this like application for the england like the nation or the you know united kingdom or whatever it was in a mode where it was just voice to texting so every everything i've been saying to you for the last 30 minutes was just going into my application for my temporary visa to visit

England can you just randomly read some of it can you just go into the middle because I

stupidly I stupidly paged away from it and now it's it's now it's not doing it anymore doing it oh I'm sorry Brian

Brian Kirk

I know this was going to be one of the best donor segments ever yeah the the

Amen.

I think it's called UKETA is the thing that I have to do. Anyway, thanks, Brian. We really appreciate you. Thanks also to Amber Scrant in Caro, Michigan.

C-A-R-O. So close. Speaking of web names, what was that app I just mentioned? Cara, C-A-R-A. This is different, though. This is Caro, Michigan. It is. Beautiful place.

Not to be confused with Cairo, Illinois, right? There's a Cairo, Illinois that I believe is spelled like Cairo, like the place in Egypt.

Oh, but it's pronounced Cairo? I did not know this place. Yeah, they go with Cairo. Oh, man. That's some huge... What do you got?

I think those are Hueys coming in.

Those are airplanes?

Those are helicopters.

Oh, helicopters. Sure, I should have known that.

Big old... Come on, Andrew. Sorry. Big old Huey. I cannot underline enough. into these military vehicles i am can i ask you a question would you be able to fly in a helicopter

and have your legs hanging out the side of it like in those vietnam movies we were just watching it's a great question under the other day and i was like i wouldn't be able to do that either either as a as an army man or as a movie man i would not be able to do that you know it's one

of those things that if you ask me as i'm sitting here in the safety of my hotel room i would say absolutely but i haven't actually tried to do it and i was thinking about this the other day because i was watching there's you know on tiktok on the descendant social media platform tiktok there was somebody who was doing these um like uh base jumping things but like somebody in like you know arizona or whatever who you can go you can pay them and then you will tandem base jump base jump with them so you you know are attached to them you don't have to know anything about base jumping you just have to walk to the edge of this like insane canyon and then the guy who's got of course like a selfie stick the guy who's in charge of the base jump has a whole patter that he does about like you know you know okay just breathe and relax and like you got this and whatever and then they jump and then you know he throws the parachute he's apparently everyone survived because these videos are going onto the internet so i assume that this is so far it's working but what's interesting about it is you get a really really sort of front row seat to what absolutely paralyzing human fear looks like because most of the videos of people base jumping and and skydiving and doing all these sort of a quote-unquote adrenaline junkie kind of things um it's from the perspective of a person who's done it a million times and they're pretty hyped about it and they're usually wearing a camera that's facing out from their helmet like a gopro this is a camera that's pointing back this is a this is a souvenir this is a memento of the experience for a guy who is very possibly evacuating his bladder yeah out of like what what the what the basic thing is is every person who gets to the edge you can see on their face that if the guy doing the tandem base jump offered them the opportunity to not do this at double

the price they've already paid to do it that's a business model man that's honestly that's like

you know like a frisbee you sell them the invisible string you sell them the base jump and then for double you sell them the not doing the base jump because everyone it's all fun and games until you're standing on the edge of that canyon and and again you're not an adrenaline junkie you're you're an aspiring adrenaline junkie you're not some guy who's jumping off of the uh you know whatever Burj Khalifa towers in Dubai or something who climbed up the side of it and then jumped off as a gorilla. And who's spent

most of your life sort of probably like elevating up the challenges, right? Yes, exactly.

You are a civilian who probably had two glasses of wine and decided to radically change your life. Went online and signed up for some sort of tandem base jumping. And it is so apparent what the differences between those folks and the people who like get off on this kind of stuff is and uh and anyway so i it's really changed my opinion of myself actually and kind of like how i think about my my my ability to do things i now think about it when it's like a mascot at an nfl game is bungee jumping off of the edge of lincoln whatever field and back to philadelphia what up brian j kirk like there was a thing the other day that was like the mascot for the eagles i think or something just like not just repelling but like doing a crazy you know like not how do i describe this basically like with a climbing rope on the roof of the like football field jumping and then the climbing rope just catching him and him kind of swinging or whatever and it was like i've seen this kind of stuff a million times. it never occurred to me until I started watching these TikTok videos of the space jumping how terrified that eagle might have been. Like, he probably said, yeah, I'll do that. That'll be a cool photo op. And there must have been a moment when he got up there and he was like, I don't, I can't, I don't, please, can I go down? How much? I'll pay you double. What are you paying me? $8 an hour to be this eagle? I'll pay you $16 an hour for me to not do this. Like, I have a new appreciation for how scary shit really is. by which i mean i don't know if i could hang my feet out of the helicopter or not so i am

petrified of height so there's not even a part of me that sort of thinks like oh maybe i could get through this like i think of um quick aside i think of that story you did what did you have to climb the world's tallest tree i'm totally wrong about that but you were way way way up in

a tree yeah like a probably 300 foot tree or something yeah and so i mean that's something

that you did in the past couple of years and so like you were able to confront that i'm not saying that you were terrified but you were able to do it and my guess is if they told you you need to do it again you would whereas that would just be a non-starter for me the thing about my fear of heights and we'll get back to the donors in just a second everybody just janice bowers of tucson arizona just hold your holding horses thank you for your patience with me one of the things that triggers my fear of heights is the mundane details that are associated with the heights. Let me try to explain. I'm going to give you one example that I'm going to ask you to, and the listeners could do this as well, and this is a good way for us to bump up our website numbers. I don't really know what website numbers are, but if you go to tbtail.net, and look, I am asking you to do this unless you think it will destroy our internet connection that we're talking about. If you go to tbtail.net and you look at our recent episodes, and you're going to have to click back. You're going to go back to last week. You're going to look at the episode from January 6th, and it's called Steamboat Popeye, which wasn't my best work. We had already used a steamboat joke in a headline not all that long ago. My apologies for that. But if you look at the show picture for that day, it was the scene that I was trying to describe for you from the pop. yes of the pop tart exactly and so what you're seeing in that photo this is a like a still image that i clipped from a video off of like twitter or something um you see like kind of a massacred looking pop tart mascot with a real human being in there but they are standing on top of what i believe to be the jumbotron you don't really see the jumbotron you just see the grace oh interesting

that never think about the jumbotron being as as wide as wide as that and what you're not seeing

there because i had to crop it to to fit the website is you can sort of see that there's um there's like a cable attached to that mascot and right outside of the frame that you can't see there is a person who's sort of crouching and sort of minding the mascot up there who's also strapped in but then also holding the mascot's strap and and you can see far far far below the football field and the fans who just are ants you know and this photo makes my hands sweat and there's something about it there's something about like the the seeing of the other person up there it's like seeing the straps up there the mundane details of just seeing the straps up there that makes it so real to me do you remember you and i were at a mariners game years ago doing we were there doing work we were interviewing people about hot dogs and then we were roaming the stands and we got sick of interviewing people so we said how about we just eat hot dogs way way up in the stands so you and I went up to like the like whatever the highest level is way out by right field I believe and we were sitting next to the right field pole and I don't know if you remember but I had a little maybe I kept it to myself although that's not really my style I had a little minor freak out of heights up there and part of it wasn't looking down at the field it was looking up at the top of the foul pole and how close we were to it it was like oh i know this thing is way up in the sky and i can see the top of it and now i'm evacuating my bowels and that was just that was in a seat at a baseball game like there's something about like seeing the i don't know the the small details of things that like freak me out and really trigger my fear of

heights well it's funny because at first when i saw i'm looking at this photo steamboat popeye and And I'm thinking, do we really need a safety line on this Pop-Tart? And then I'm like, we do. We're sending a person up to a height that they would die if they fell off of. And then we're putting them inside of a foam costume with limited vision. I don't even see eye holes.

I don't even know where they're looking out.

If there's anybody who needs to be tethered, it's this person who's playing this Pop-Tart. That's actually...

an extra layer of terror is that you're not just up there, but you're up there in a suit that you can't see out of.

And I don't know what's going on with those shoes that they're wearing, but those look like a tripping hazard. It looks like, oh, I see.

Just because of the photo, I thought they had one legging on, but not the other, but that's just the lighting. They've got yellow legging on. Anyway, this is all stuff that Janice Bowers of Tucson, Arizona can't get enough of, as can't... I'm the grammar police when it comes to jake halpern but i like to make i like to make up sentences i go along this is uh janice bowers can't get enough of this as can't kelly kilburn my friend kelly kilburn how do you know kelly just longtime friend wonderful person mother friend to my daughter quasi mother to my daughter good old kelly kilburn thanks kelly really appreciate you nice to see you on this list as it is as well as as there once was bobby smolinski of seattle as also is bobby and also

with you andrew i can't bold face enough how much your support means to us bobby smolinski another another familiar name longtime donor of the show thank you appreciate you bob and rachel

chriswell of mount vernon and me means maine right maine me means maine yes or it means

that you won an award for your work on television. That's another thing that Emmy means.

Or it means, well, I was about to give away too much information about my email address, Andrew. Oh, be careful. Be careful there. Let me just say that I have a personal email address that is related to a particular service that rebranded itself as .me at some point, and I've always hated that. i did not sign up to be dot me and but what happens is when people receive my email address my emails from my other account it'll just come in as as the address and then dot me or yeah i

thought i thought the whole dot me thing because i don't use that address for you i don't know what it looks like when you get it i thought the whole dot me thing was some service that was created a long time ago where if you had several different email addresses you could input them all into dot me and they all come in through like kind of one hose or something like that although as i say it out loud i'm not exactly sure what the benefit is oh i think it's because you might have a bunch of stray email addresses but you can get all of your email in one place this is a an apple product

unfortunately so like i signed up in the days of mac um and uh and and at some point they decided to try to do this kind of global thing of me so i i think it somehow cloud related i don't know but it feels extremely braggadocious i don't i don't like my email address that email address ending in me yeah letters m e but but like for instance on this uh shoot that we were doing last night uh the producer was putting together the call sheet of all the people associated with this that would be the camera person the sound person and then they were listing all the emails and contact info and it was like my particular email address dot me and it just it sent a shudder through my system but it's because when i've emailed with this producer that's what they're seeing in their inbox and i don't like it at all and i'm always trying to change it but it's actually led to some problems in the past because sometimes if that gets logged in as the thing if that gets somehow inputted or imputed into the system as my email address i'll be like trying to sign into something i'll be why is this being so crazy and it's like because i'm not using the dot me version

of my email address so podcast daddy 420 at me dot com oh that's why you're not getting my emails okay i'll resend you well among other reasons yes thank you to all of our donors for making tbtl happen we really do appreciate you hello and welcome to top story all right i'll just say

it quickly because i'm not going to be in san diego much longer but andrew the view that i have from this hotel which by the way is pitched as in the gas lamp which is kind of like the the district that has a lot of bars and like we used to go to a place called moose mcgillicuddy's down here back in the day when my buddy JJ would come to San Diego a lot it's kind of the like party district of San Diego that's allegedly where this hotel is but really at least if you're on the floor that I am you have an incredible view of the bay and the naval installation and Point Loma and what is going on as I sit here and try to co-host this podcast with you is just a cavalcade of the coolest both naval ships and also naval aircraft. I'm talking like Harry... or jump jet style things stuff where it's not actually a harrier jump jet but some other propeller aircraft where the propellers rotate if that makes any sense like the propellers are on the wing so

this is something that can take off oh yeah i know they're from like a sitting position it can go it's

got it's got rotors like a helicopter but it's an airplane and yeah i think i think i don't think i

had it but somebody had a gi joe toy like that i think in my life growing up and they're just like

landing left and right plus all of these like insane like not just like your standard you know think about a naval ship whether it's an aircraft carrier or whatever it's like these small super fast i mean relatively small super fast like i don't know what they are some kind of a thing that like if the navy had to like get somewhere really quick but also shoot people they would take this boat these things are just racing around in this bay in front of me as behind them these crazy airplanes that have rotating propellers are just landing left and right as i'm looking right now at a chinook helicopter another helicopter reference a chinook helicopter that's just cruising through it's all of the stuff that like i would go to like an air show or they don't really do naval water shows do they anyway i would go watch this stuff i would go pay money to just like sit around and like geek out on this and it's just constantly happening in front of me and all i can think is if i lived here i'd be home now it's funny how much you love the machinery but

hate the culture like i don't know if they're i mean i'm i'm similar because i'm the one that almost caught the smoke over protector brewing like i love i love that stuff as well i mean i'm i i share your feelings on both sides of that but yours are so intense on both sides of that i I wonder if you're the person in the universe who most loves one aspect of military culture and most hates the other, the real extremes.

I'm not a history guy, per se. I don't geek out on World War II documentaries or whatever. I couldn't tell you the name, clearly, of any of these things. My interest in them does not go deep enough that I can tell you anything about them Other than when I see them in action I am reduced to being a five year old Child and it's just a Constant like you know where I live There for some reason Maybe they just want to follow the Columbia River or something there's like a lot of military Helicopters that fly by I'd say every day there are probably at least Four big like I don't know if they're Hueys or Chinooks but big Military helicopters And every time I hear them in the distance Unless we're doing the show I run out onto my porch And I stare at them And I will do that until the day I die It's like me with the Blue Angels But that's just like A couple times a day and it's just those helicopters If I lived here Andrew And I could just watch these crazy Rotating propeller airplanes And also everything's landing At a crazy angle too because I think Maybe there's not a ton of runway or something So they're kind of like dive bombing in Which is even more exciting And then, again, with the boats and the racing around, I feel like this is what the Columbia River needs more of. And if we can get a military installation in Kalama, I think I could bring together all of my interests, which includes staring at military stuff.

Well, we have a new governor coming in. Maybe Ferguson can make some significant changes.

I didn't know he was a chess prodigy. Did you know that until today?

I did know that only recently. This is how I talk now, too, as I try to think. Somebody just told me that recently, before today, but in the recent past. I want to give you some good news and some worse news here, though, regarding something we were just talking about. It has to do with Moose McGillicuddy's Pub and Cafe there. First of all, it is closed. That is the bad news. It's permanently closed. The worst news is the reviews, and this is going to be a ride. So first of all, two stars on Yelp. Like, to achieve a two-star, like, to be a place that has multiple reviews.

By the way, as a place that caters to college students who literally won't remember they were there.

Luke, I'm going to read some of these to you. You've got to get a pretty early two-star on Yelp. Now, this is the very top comment. I don't know how it floated to the top. and this is going to use some language that we were just talking about earlier this week or late last week on the show about language that I try not to use anymore but this is, somebody in Pasadena posted this somebody who goes by the name C.T. wrote

But they go down to, this is the Moose McGillicuddy's in the gas lamp in San Diego

Yes, so I'm assuming this person was visiting and they wrote, more like douchebag McNasty's It was probably a mistake

Oh, they saw me there Hey! It was probably a mistake to do anything other than drink it, Moose's, but it was late and food was needed. Too bad they brought us nasty meat between two pieces of bread. Apparently, the place turns into a dance club on Wednesday nights for the kids. They offer $1 drafts of domestics, which really brings all the girlies with their tramp stamps or Alabama license plates, if you prefer. I don't know if that is. Is that a slang term for a tramp stamp?

I've never heard that before, and I hope to never hear it again.

Now, I feel like I'm in very dangerous waters here reading these cold. Nicole wrote, way back in 2008, went here. Oh, two stars for Nicole, by the way. Not one star, two stars. Went here during my bachelorette party in the gas lamp. Even though I was drunk, I thought this place was dirty. A friend of mine likes to go dancing here. Let's see. This is exactly what you just said. Tony P says, Tony with an I, by the way. I do not remember much of this place. i was at bourbon street before i came but not a fan uh i had been drinking gin what i do what i don't remember about it i don't like it looks like a lot of people are complaining about sort of like shifty servers who would like bring um extra let's see here uh wes wrote way back in 2008 yes i actually went to a place called moose mcgillicuddy's i'm usually the last guy in the group who wants to go to a cheesy sports pub but we had nothing to do on a saturday afternoon I think that's interesting. And they had 22 glasses of Guinness or whatever. The waitress tried to pull a fast one on us. When we asked for the check, she brought us one last round of drinks, claiming we had asked for them. Anyway, so it goes on from there. But, yes, its lasting legacy is a two-star rating as it is just a ghost frigate here on Yelp.

If I'm remembering right, and I could be mixing things up because – so this was my buddy, JJ, who I met in college at the University of Washington. He was a year ahead of me. but he was from San Diego originally. And so when he graduated, he moved back to like La Jolla or something. And so I came down to visit him a couple of times. And if I remember right, there was something you could buy at Moose McGillicuddy's called a Boomba, which really seems on brand. And a Boomba was like, it was like a mug that held like three beers worth of beer. And I think it was, you know, it was all about ROI. I mean, this was the same guy that I drove we drove to Vegas once with no hotel room booked and no money for a hotel room we drove to Vegas in his car and then just played two dollar blackjack at O'Shea's for like a day and a half and then got back in the car and drove back to I think at that time he was living in Pasadena but anyway I so we never had a lot of money in those days and so I think the draw of Moose McGillicuddy's was the Boomba which was like three beers for the price of one or something

Poor Taya T from Oakland really wanted to give it two stars, but couldn't quite do that. Here's the first line of Taya's. One and a half. Gross. I was just going to give this place two stars since the service was good and my appetizer was okay, but the sickness me and the partner felt all night after the meal demotes it down to a one-star review.

Huh. I mean, listen, I don't want to blame the victim, but i'm just saying you're going i'm trying to understand the sort of person who goes to a place called moose mcgillicuddy's and then is let down by the experience what what were you thinking it was going to be like i mean you know the server if a server is although by the way i side with the server on that other one if they had 22 guinnesses and then their their point is that

the server tried to wait the server i think i think i'm sorry that's on me i was reading i was scanning two different reviews i don't think that was the same review and i think they were talking about how many guinnesses that they were uh marketing or something like that i don't think that somebody said they had oh i could be wrong about that although i don't know that that makes sense whatever that was was a was me misspeaking i believe okay but the but but the the point of

that review was the server tried to pull a fast one by bringing us an extra round that we didn't order sir do you understand how bartending and serving works so this person what did the work of bringing you extra drinks to possibly catch what an extra tip from a 20 of the of the round that they had to carry out to you like they're not paid on volume like that person that person's entire story is falling apart for me like there are a million scams you could run as a server bringing out an extra round and then arguing with the possibly drunk people that who said we didn't order that like the worst scam ever because you have done the work of serving of carrying the beers to these people it's like the worst way to get extra money off of them

i would i would maybe agree with you if that was an outlier but like Thank you. Like every review is just terrible service, either couldn't get their attention or the kind of similar stories of some sort of chicanery. I do like this one, and this will be the last one. This is not reflective of the servers, so you don't have to defend them. This is from Denise B., who says, if you want to meet a Marine, then this is your place. Other than that, I would avoid the place. packed full of marines nothing against them they protect us but a whole place packed with them and not much else marines and their groupies since i'm neither you will hopefully never find me here thank you i'll be a protector brewing

coincidentally just down the street all i'm trying to say andrew is i really really really like looking at these um i may go if they ever reanimate moose mcgillicuddy's i may go to it to meet some Marines, to ask them if they'll let me ride on one of these cool helicopter planes that I keep watching.

What you need to do is you need to start, and I know that I think Kucinich wanted to do this. Well, he wanted to start a Department of Peace. What I was going to say was you need to create something, you need to pitch this, a peace force, something that lets you fly around in these airplane helicopter things, But for moral reasons that are not as military. Yeah, you've got to spread peace. But you have to spread peace using ships and planes and maybe tanks.

The problem is those helicopters are $1,000 a minute to operate. Yes, they are. And there's no money in peace.

There is very little money in peace. That is true.

That's, I mean, because, you know, because it's a theme of the week so far, not to get overly serious, but it's like, you know, they're doing this confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth. And I mean, the guy is very clearly unfit for the job of Secretary of Defense, very unfit for the job. But part of his whole, I get allegedly whatever his pitch or something is like, I'm going to come in and I'm going to like, I'm going to trim spending and bring. I mean, the problem is every organization that he's ever been in charge of has gone into bankruptcy, and he also appears to have an alcohol problem and also is a sex pest. We'll just use a cute term for it. Guy's got a lot of problems. But I don't actually disagree with the idea of slashing the military budget. You know, like, cut it in half. And then, you know what? Use a quarter of the money that you just saved for benefits for veterans. like let's fire half of them and let's give them all good health care to deal with their PTSD you know but like I'm just watching I mean I'm both obsessed with this stuff as you can hear in my voice and I cannot stop thinking about the dollar signs I mean what I'm watching are people just learning how to like fly these these things and run these ships and all this and it's probably in the hour that we've been doing the show I have probably observed I want to say $100,000 of just like fuel and uh you know man hours and you name it like i just i just watched a hundred maybe that's low too like a hundred thousand dollars of training for us you know to i don't know what but it's like so it's weird because i i do not think that guy pete hegseth has any business getting anywhere near this confirmation but give me a different dude who wants to go in

slash the budget i'm kind of all for it i'm trying to think what my peace tank would shoot and um i all i kush balls i'm getting stuck on rainbows i maybe kush because like that's just too um i think rainbows is just an idea i don't i mean do they just literally shoot light i like kush balls though also would be a boon to the failing kush ball industry it would finally

honestly it's been the the koosh ball industry has been looking for a lifeline for years this could i think about this would bring back the koosh belt it's absolutely the hollowed out parts of phoenix arizona well the thing about the koosh belt was

it was always hard to define because it was sort of stretch um yeah did you remember because i did you have a koosh ball or is it are you you know don't give me one of these like well my parents had to buy me an off-brand Koosh ball. A Koosh ball?

I had a Merch ball. I had a legit Andrew. I had a legit Koosh ball, and it was a big thing in my life. Do you remember

discovering that there were little loops in there? Because I remember seeing a Koosh ball and just thought, oh, it's like this rubber furry ball. But then, remember there were little loops that you could find, and you could hang it off your finger almost like a yo-yo?

I do remember, I I think delving into the gutty works.

the koosh ball what when i got into the koosh ball was around the same time that i was making a real attempt at hacky sacking oh really i had a friend yeah i had a friend named ben magow who was really into hacky sack actually you know i had a couple friends and like listen hacky sack is it's it's come in for a lot of uh you know a lot of criticism and a lot of people making fun of it and it is kind of silly looking but it's also actually it's so fun if you're into it i could do like i could really do some hacky sack moves uh you i could catch it and then kind of squat down and then jump up and it falls between your legs and then you kind of thwack it with your foot behind your other leg i was like pretty into it and at the same time there was a kind of a community of people that were doing hacky sack moves but with a koosh ball okay and so i was really into like basically hacking the koosh that's not okay we have not that was not the

As I said it, I could hear it going on the internet.

But my big thing, and I know I've told this story many times on the show, was we went to Astoria, Oregon once as a family when I was in my real intense Koosh Ball obsession. It also helped that they were like six bucks or something. It was very attainable. I did not need a Koosh Ball. I could go out and with my own money buy a legitimate Koosh Ball. But I think it was my sister Liz I had her go up to the top Of the Astoria Column Which is this I don't know, it's probably like 150 feet high It seemed very tall at the time And there was an observation deck At the top of this thing, the Astoria Column And I had her throw my Koosh ball off of the Astoria Column And then when it came down I hackied it

And it was actually

Perfect for that because it was extremely non-aerodynamic like i do not think a kush ball can achieve terminal velocity like a kush ball's terminal velocity is like four miles an hour like you could you could drop a kush ball off of the space station and by the time it lands in tampa it's going maybe four miles an hour tops but i remember being so excited i think there's even a photo of me hacky sacking this

kush i was well that was my question i mean if you did that today of course somebody would be filming it on their camera um or on their phone i should say and uh now but this was the 90s you

just did it for the thrill i do think walt might have documented it because i have a specific memory of the outfit that i was wearing i was very into this like zebra club sweatshirt and then these red gym shorts that were actually they were like the gym shorts you had to wear when you went to jesus creek for gym class but i just liked them and they matched my zebra club sweatshirt And then I was wearing some Adidas Torsion Tennis shoes I don't know if you remember this but there was a period of time Where Adidas' big play They were like okay Nike has air And Reebok has the pump But what we're going to have Is a plastic bar That's embedded in the Kind of like The sole of the shoe So it kind of runs from the top of your foot to the base of your foot

We're going to have nails We're going to have nails that come up through

the rubber sole of the shoe and this is we're going to call this the torsion bar and this is going to somehow make this shoe superior for athletic endeavors and what i remember about that was they sold them at chubby and tubby they must have been cheaper than the nikes because i got the adidas torsion bar shoes and there is a picture of me somewhere i can ask walt if because he is the keeper of all the photos if he's not putting up a parking sign in a mall in right now i can see if i can get him to send me this photo because i can remember it vividly but i'm i believe anyway i'm wearing these adidas torsion shoes a zebra club sweatshirt these red like sweat shorts and i'm i'm hacky-sacking a kush at the historic column i'm looking for my

old kush i know i had a purple and blue kush i think i got it for christmas one year i found one online that looks exactly like it but it looks like this is a kush mini and there was nothing Not to sound braggadocious myself, but there was nothing mini about my couche. Boy, these shoes are really terrible. I know. And such small torsions. I'm working on... Is that another review of Moose McGillicuddy's? I don't know what I'm doing there.

I thought you were actually looking up the Adidas torsion shoe.

No, I was trying to take that. Is it an old Woody Allen joke or something? The food at the place is terrible and so small.

Yeah, the soup is bad.

I heard torsion. I wanted to do something with it. You heard torsion. Your mind went to portion. Yeah, don't know that I made the right programming decision there.

I'm busy texting my dad about these photos. All right, you good. I'm sorry I'm distracted. You do that.

And if we have time, I don't know what else we have to cover. Oh, we never even covered our top story.

Can we do Bob Dylan tomorrow? Actually, you know what? I want to actually, I want to port the audio over to my real system at home. It'll be better. And I'm going to, I also want to listen to, so listener Ryan hipped us to some audio tape of Bob Dylan and this guy that we were going to tell you about. And one of the recordings is 41 minutes long. And I'm going to be honest with you. I listened to like 15 minutes of it and I was riveted. And then I had to stop and come do the show with you. So I actually want to listen to the entire 41 minutes and try to pick out some choice bits.

Oh, that's good. I'll try to do that, too. Yeah, I saw that email come in, and I forgot to listen yesterday. I did want to ask you this. I don't know what your time is like today because it's a travel day for you. We could save this for tomorrow as well if you want, but I do have a voicemail that I'm very eager to play for you. Do we have time today, or do we hold that?

Yeah. No, we've got time today. All right. I'm stalling for Walt to send me these photos anyway. Great.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

All right, here's a voicemail for you, Luke. And I know this is an email that speaks to one of my obsessions, which, of course, is garbage and people throwing dog poop in my empty garbage bins on garbage day or whatever and how I have a problem with that. But this, though, I am fascinated by this interaction that listener Brian had with somebody who was emptying the garbage at a bus stop.

Oh, hi, friendos. This is Brian from Capitol Hill, Seattle. I know there's been a lot of talk about how nice it is to have your bin cleaned and not have anybody dropping their dog waste in it. I walk my dog in the morning, and this morning I went past a bus stop, and there was a Metro employee cleaning the bus stop, and I dropped my dog's waste in the garbage there. The Metro employee that was at the bus stop said, are you a customer? And I suddenly turned into, like, Seinfeld doing a bit. I'm like, I'm not a customer today. And he said, garbage is for customers only.

What?

And I said, I might be a customer tomorrow. And then he said, are you a customer? And I responded again, I'm not a customer today. But I was wondering what your take on this would be. Do you have to be a customer to drop dog waste in the bin at the bus stop? No.

No, you do not. Those are public trash cans that our taxpayers... I know I was going to sort of understand it from the perspective maybe of the guy who's emptying that like I could maybe see a sense of ownership but no that this is you are I'm hoping I'm hoping that this person was joking it sounds like they weren't and Brian would have picked up on that but that is ridiculous we pay for those trash cans to be maintained and we should if anything we should have more of them and again I hate this sort of like I pay your salary yeah rant like I don't want to go there

But it is a public good, the bus system that we, well, I don't because I don't live there, but that we all pay for. And, yeah, like the answer is not icing people out of the experience of interacting with the bus system in whatever way. It's having a more robust bus system, having more people to empty the garbage, having more garbage. Everybody wins with more garbage, theoretically. I mean, I don't know what the budget looks like, but you know what I mean? Like it's not this is for us and you're not one of us right now. That is not helping with people's perception of Metro.

It got me thinking all the different kinds of trash cans or trash bins that I see at bus stops because there are there are different kinds. Like there's one at the bus stop on 65th underneath the five where it's like a big modern, one of those big city trash cans that only has a kind of a small hole cut into it. And you put garbage kind of in the side of it. And it has a bunch of, I think, signage on there that's kind of like keep our keep our waters clean or whatever. Like it's one of those things that's kind of like reminding you just throw garbage in here, recycle your other stuff sort of. I don't know if you can kind of picture those sort of city trash cans, kind of like a PSA on the side of it or whatever, and also controlling. It's making sure you can't just dump all of your – you can't just bring a garbage bag.

And dump it in, which I've seen that before. See, that's where I sort of feel like if we want to explore this at all, there is maybe a little bit of a spectrum when it comes to how we treat city garbage cans, whether or not it's connected to a bus stop or not. I remember walking through the park one time, kind of on the outskirts of Ravenna Park, and I remember seeing a car pull up. I was walking, but a car pulled up outside of a city trash bin there at the outskirts of the park where we need trash bins so that people aren't littering all over the park. And they took out, like, two bags of household trash and put it into the city. Okay, that's not cool. And I'm like, well, that, you know, I didn't say anything. It's not my business to. But I remember clocking that. I still remember it years later. I remember clocking that and being like, that's not what those garbage bins are for. So I think most reasonable people can say, okay, that's probably not proper behavior for living in a city. But if I'm holding, let's say, the other side of that spectrum, a tiny little bag with a little bit of poop in it, and you throw that in there, it seems like that is what it's for. And then you have to get into, okay, well, is it connected to a bus stop or not? Some bus stops have tiny little baskets that are actually attached to the bus stop itself.

Yeah. And they have a kind of a slot, I think, to kind of control not putting in your household garbage.

Yeah. And I could sort of see like maybe that guy, you know, the person who's like, you know, emptying the trash and cleaning up the bus stop, maybe having some feelings about that. Like if he's like, oh, here comes somebody who's not using the bus, but they're happy to use the happy to use the bus trash can or whatever, the bus stop trash can. I could sort of see maybe taking a sense of ownership. But but you also got to acknowledge that you're just wrong about that. you're just too close to your work you know what i mean like i'm persnickety enough to see myself having feelings about it but knowing that i would be in the wrong that like i'm just glad that people

are using public trash cans right and also yeah that strikes me as a person who doesn't like their job like that's true they're kind of they're kind of don't they're not in it for the love of the game if they're policing and again you're right and it's just like the it's the sort of reasonable test right we all understand that you should not roll up to a city garbage can of any kind and throw out your house like bags of your household garbage that's not what they're for anyone could tell you that but yeah a bag of dog poop is totally fine and this seems like a person who's just like kind of like this whole thing is on their last nerve anyway the fact that they're maybe in charge of dealing with the garbage at the bus stops and uh and they're gonna they're

gonna make it a listener was it brian listen to brian's problem yeah and maybe also having brian maybe also having some feelings about it being dog poop like maybe they're thinking hey listen I have to empty these things emptying poop is more disgusting than just emptying waste paper or whatever

and definitely the worst thing if you don't like your job of emptying the garbage the last thing you ever want to see

going in there is well except for liquids I think liquids would be the worst right because then you pick up the bag so like dog pee yeah right exactly you scoop your dog pee right

you live in a society

I do scoop my cat's pee because it's sort of the litter sort of makes it scoopable yeah but what a weird place to end the show, but anyway, I just wanted to air Brian's voicemail because I do think that Brian was somewhat wronged emotionally here, so let's try to give him an emotional... We have your back on this, Brian.

It's rare that Andrew and I are in lockstep on something, but we are on this one. You were in the right to be a little annoyed at that.

And I hope you'll remember this conversation when we ask you to donate in the next TVTL-a-thon. That's all we ask. We were here for you, Brian.

You've got to donate. It's like Calico Cut Club. Do you donate? Do you donate? Right, right, right. All right. Well, by the way, I still haven't told you why I'm mad at Alaska Airlines either.

I thought about that after the show yesterday, and I was like, I don't know if I want to. I was like, I almost reached out to you. I'm like, what happened with Alaska? Then I was like, I might not want to know based on how you set that up yesterday.

Well, tomorrow I'll try to remember to get to that. So we've got a lot for tomorrow's show, and we hope you can all join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourself, stay safe wherever you might be And please remember, no mountain too tall

And good luck to all Power out