Muse

So, Frederica, you read both verse and poetry. In this, I believe, you take after your mother, who knows a great many things. Just yesterday, she cited to me a story from the Bible about a very wise king. This reminded me of many such accounts one learns in childhood. Perhaps the most significant in forming one's principles is that of the old prophet who came down from the mount with tablets bearing the twelve commandments which our Lord has taught us to obey without fail. Twelve commandments. Excuse me, but I believe there were only ten. Really? Only ten must be obeyed. Excellent! Well then, which two to take off? TBTL!

Please. No. Stop. I won't. Don't do that. What do you mean? Don't do that. Because you didn't even use it in the right way.

In a few hours, you're going to be smarter than anyone you've ever met.

Okay, enough chit-chat. Let's get the family in here.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. I need you to understand something so good. Check it out. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. Mimi! Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia, at least. The last time I was able to see it, which would have been yesterday in the afternoon. I have not seen it yet today. I've not observed it with my own eyes because we are once again cloud fogged in up here. We're up here in Cloud City. But it seems like the perfect day to stay indoors and bring you episode 4382 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Speaking of things that are outdoors, there's a woman in Tennessee who put up some spooky Halloween decorations, you know, like a skeleton and then the dog that's a skeleton dog, you know, real scary stuff.

I am petrified, petrified with this story.

And now she is in trouble because apparently they have rules there about how long you're supposed to leave. But her issue is, what is to say that it is strictly a Halloween decoration? It could be she's put a Santa hat on them. Now it's a Christmas decoration. Anyway, this is something I've observed in my own neighborhood, and we'll talk about it. Plus, it's a Thursday, a.k.a. Blur's Day, so we will bring you those Blur's Day messages.

Blur's Day today.

Including a very special one from my own family. And speaking of people that are in my family, or they might as well be. Let's talk about this guy. longest running co-bro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ship sipping on jen andrews sandrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning i love that little intro

i love it you could chop that into a million intros for me that's true we have so many options

and in fact i was uh i was thinking that this morning as i was trying to decide between all the different nicknames that i could have used for you landrew andy cane drool supplying to

andrew androgynous deja drew sipping on gin andrews delusions of grand drew one night standrew android scooby dooby drew drew bag no we were gonna take that one out you can't handle the

truth we went to take out we're gonna take that one out but uh the rest of them are pretty solid by the way thanks i think it was listener byron who sent that in and do we have a name and now

i'm putting it on the spot i assume if you had the name of the person saying that you would have giving them a shout out do you know who is it a ticky-tocky now you're asking me yeah i put you on the spot now you're being a real droosh back yeah i really am um hey listen i let's change the subject awkwardly here because there's something i got a little piece of information from a listener last night that i don't know if you were copied on this email or not but it clears some things up i I think for me and hopefully you, your friend and colleague, Bill Curtis, I have not seen this update.

Should we remind folks of what was going on yesterday on the program?

Yesterday, you said that Bill Curtis and you thought that he had told you at one point that he was maybe the inspiration or one of the inspirations for the character of Ron Burgundy.

on Anchorman, and we were talking about that because Mort Krim in the Detroit area has also...

I'm the Mort Krim of podcasting.

The Mort Krim. The Mort Krim. And so Mort Krim, some people have said that he's the inspiration. I believe he's said that he's partially the inspiration for that Ron Burgundy character. All that is to say, this note from Gregory says, Bill Curtis, Luke, was the narrator for Anchorman. he's literally in the production we got so much I can't believe that I didn't good morning Sacramento

it stands for whale's penis I intentionally botched that so that it would be one click off of the real thing I really want everyone to know that that was intentional but so if he's the narrator of it of course that's how I got it in my head but of course I then forgot that But I still like this idea that Bill Curtis ever tried to tell me.

But Bill Curtis is like going around the halls of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. And yes, there are halls of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Just telling everybody who will listen that he was the narrator for Anchorman. Is that what's going on here? I don't think he is. Put him on blast. Roast his ass.

Never. I would never, ever do that to my dear friend, Mr. Bill Curtis. Now, I'm sure that what happened was I just at some point, because he narrates the movie, I was like, well, he must be the guy that Ron Burgundy is based on. The other thing that before I ever met Bill Curtis in person where he loomed large in my mind was he records the weirdest like spoken word open to a Dandy Warhol's record called like Auditoriums and Others or something like this Dandy Warhol's record that I used to listen to. I used to wear this thing out back in the day. It starts with Bill Curtis reading this kind of nonsense intro. and so that was kind of part of the music of the Dandy Warhols for me was Bill Curtis' voice.

First of all, I'd like to say, and I don't know why I need to say this, but I really feel like I missed out on the Dandy Warhols and that makes it sound like I can't go back and listen. I can go back and listen, but it's a huge... Really?

I mean, I feel like it was a moment in time for me where I was into the vibe... Oh boy, Andrew.

I really feel like you're pulling the ladder up on the Dandy Warhols for me here.

golly i mean let's just say i'm i what you hear is me considering how much smoke slash blowback i want to get over nothing let's just say in the years since i became a dandy warhols fan and i was a big fan i have had occasion to interact with the band a few times including recently and it's left me feeling a little bit I still enjoy the music I don't see this as a group of people that I would spend a huge amount of time with socially for funsies

Why does everything come back to that black carpet experience you had in Los Angeles? Are you kidding me dude?

I would friggin hang with Metallica Those guys were great

Are you done meeting Metallica by the way or do you have any more interviews with them lined up?

That's a question for my friend the producer who I stormed out on to answer no i think i think that's still uh that's still happening um that's back on track everything's good we were we've hatchets have been buried which by the way is also the name of metallica ep hatchets have been buried master of hatchets and uh yeah we'll be that that's all

that's all still happening uh you know i didn't even ask that like did any did did that event on the black carpet scuttle anything i just meant like did you get everything in the can or did you still have no no i have to go to like james headfield's house or something right yeah i thought that that hadn't happened yet but um well all of this for you oh sure yeah well no no i have a question before before you play it i have a question related to it so this is the beginning

of that song or that album my question auditorium or warlords of mars and what is the name of the

record so one i have one question but first a preliminary question about what era of your life

were you listening to this record well it came out in 2005 so oh you're an adult you're an adult i'm I'm an adult. I'm living in Los Angeles, and I'm probably bouncing around at that point maybe between L.A. and D.C. and New York, because I may have already kind of gotten into the world of being a kind of quasi-NPR reporter. That would have been around maybe 2005.

Which I think answers my next question, which is, did you know that this was Bill Curtis when you listened to it? Did you already have an awareness of Bill Curtis and his voice?

I had an awareness of him from, as I mentioned yesterday on the show, his like American Justice type shows where he would kind of, he was the narrator of those. But I don't think I connected that this guy reading this thing was the guy from the steps of the courthouse at the beginning of like American Justice. I didn't have a huge, I didn't have a huge thought about Bill Curtis at this point to where when I heard this, I was like, oh, that's the guy from TV.

Okay, gotcha.

Because he wasn't on Wait, Wait yet. We were still working with the estimable Carl Castle.

Exactly. And you didn't know that he would someday be your best friend. And annoy you a little bit by walking through the halls of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, just constantly bragging about his CV. We've all got our kind of blind spots, Andrew. Okay, I'm excited to hear it.

This is, um... By the end of the Great War, the Dandy Warhols had progressed far beyond the traditional jug band sound. Zia had all but hung up the washtub bass in favor of her new invention, which she called the synthesizer. The banjo was still there, but now it was electrified through a flat microphone, which Pete had wound tightly with copper wire and called his pickup, and in turn made it louder by what Fathead jokingly called Pete's amp. Well, the name stuck, And by the time such luminaries as Gene Vincent, Elvis Presley, and B.B. King had heard this new Warhol sound, they were calling it rock and roll. Dandy frontman Courtney Taylor Taylor would be quoted as saying, I know it's only rock and roll, but I think I like it. I'm Bill Curtis, and you're listening to a piece of history. So I guess I knew it was Bill Curtis because he says it right there.

You didn't make the connections, though, right?

Yeah, now, since we're already, that is technically track number one on the record, means we're already in trouble in Romania. So can I just play you, can I just, we're already, we're already screwed. I'm going to play you a little bit of the track that sold me on the Dandy Warhols. It's called All the Money or the Simple Life Honey. And this song slaps. I'll try to talk over a little bit of it so as to distract the bots right now that are listening in on us.

Well, I can tell you for the money The simple life, honey, is good Uh-huh, now, yes, it's good

Can I ask you a question about this? Oh, yeah. Yes. Is it, am I hearing it? Oh, wait, turn it up a little bit more now.

Yeah, it's intentionally stepped on the beginning.

It is intentionally, yeah. It's like, it's supposed to be thin and, yeah, I like that.

You've got to be good to yourself

This also classically has one of those moments. Listener Garrett, our music guy, could tell me what it's technically called. But it's got a point later in the song, because this builds. There's all these horns, and there's a ton of instrumentation, and then it just cuts back down to that, like, just the rhythm, which I'm such a sucker for.

Yeah, and it's kind of lo-fi-y. And then it, uh... Okay.

Yeah!

Anyway, I was really, really, really into this record, Auditorium or Warlords of Mars. Actually, it still really stands up for me as music. Now, the other thing was, around the same time, I feel like that movie Dig came out, that rock doc that was actually, it's funny, yesterday we were talking about how we don't like docs anymore, or you don't. Weirdly, you like doc sing, which I think is strange.

That's one of your main pastimes. Exactly. I've been posting your home address online for weeks now.

It's amazing, by the way, how I'm undoxable. You keep putting my home address out, and nobody really cares. People continue to not show up. They're like, yeah. Thankfully. We know. No, let's not. We've got listeners who lived down the street from him growing up. They know everything about this guy. No, please don't come to my house.

Let's not put out there that I don't like documentaries. That's not a true fact. Okay, I'm sorry. I've traditionally loved documentaries, but since in the past 20 years, kind of the idea of what a documentary is. They're just kind of over your head now. Yeah, I'm not smart enough. You're not able to follow. I don't know. Some of them have words. People are speaking different languages, and then they put the words on the bottom. Oh, you got to read? Oh, I'm like reading. Stop remembering that.

Hey, I'm going to read a movie. Okay, yeah, sure. Why don't I go listen to a book?

I don't know what I was doing there. But no, of course I love documentaries. But I just think that the line between reality TV and documentary and people making their own documentaries as little honorariums to them. Not honorariums. I'm sorry, like a tribute to themselves. So anyway, that's what we're talking about there.

Well, there is this documentary. I'm actually I'm guessing you've seen it because it was a sensation amongst the kinds of people who watch this kind of stuff, Andrew.

which would be you and I in, say, I don't know, the 2000s, which was it's following a tour of the Dandy Warhols and the band The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

I've been meaning to watch this movie for decades.

Everybody says it's so good. It is. I mean, I don't want to, like, overpromise. I haven't watched it in however many years. I don't know when it came out. I haven't watched it in a long time. But when it came out, it was a pretty big deal to the kind of people who watch this sort of stuff. and uh yeah it was just about like the dysfunction of these two bands and also their their dislike for each other their deep dislike the the the real just kind of like um sociopathic behavior of the lead singer of the brian jones town massacre it i feel like it sort of crescendos with him literally like kicking the shit out of a fan at doug weston's troubadour by the way a place tbtl live has occurred um and uh anyway it's but it's it's so it's it's the opposite of one of these documentaries that again quote unquote documentaries that now you would see on netflix that would be about a band that's supposed to be just like all the access you want but it's like the band excuse me the band is the executive producer of it this is the opposite of that this is like a couple of guys with like sony vx 1000s like early like digicams just like hanging around filming these people just completely melting down left and right it's really good well

it came out in 2004 and it's the result of seven years of taping so they started taping in the late 90s and here's some potentially exciting news except it may only be for people in england because i've never seen it and like like me in a few weeks as you describe it like i'm like yes this is a movie that i've been meaning to watch forever i think genevieve might have watched it or at least knew a little bit about these two bands and has been recommending it for a long time. And again, I see that it came out in 2004, and now I see a headline, it's returning to cinemas for one day only for its 20th anniversary, but that might only be in UK theaters. I'm trying to see if it's going to, because this is one where I would... Right, you would go if it was playing in Belltown? Yes, I would love to go, because sometimes, I mean, first of all, it's a little bit tough for me to have the attention span to sit down and watch a full-length movie at home that's a true story you need to you need to

basically like obligate yourself i need to go to a geography yeah oh in fact i want to tell you about a theater going experience i had i probably saw this at like the grand illusion so you saw it

in theaters well and that's the thing but i was going to say it's also because the content because i know it's going to be confrontational that's another layer of like there are things that i know that i want to watch that have been told are like good films or projects or what have you but But if I know it's going to be very serious or very sad, I like very serious and very sad things. But it's just hard for me to kind of sit down and say, I'm going to sit down and watch this now. Which is why after years and years and years of never watching it, I randomly watched Schindler's List last year. Yeah, that's amazing. That I hit play on at like 11 o'clock at night thinking, I'll just watch a little of this before I go to bed.

That was me last night with the Darjeeling Limited, Andrew.

Oh, yeah. I saw that in your show notes. Now, I think I've seen that one. Who's in that one again?

That's a Wes Anderson joint. Yeah, I know that. Can we call it a joint if it's anyone other than Spike Lee? Does anyone else get to call it a joint?

I love calling them all joints. I think that's very funny. It's a Michael Bay joint. Yeah, that's right.

So this is the power of suggestion. And in the gloaming of TikTok, I saw some clip from the A24 TikTok feed That was Jason Schwartzman and Adrian Brody Just kind of talking to each other Like, not in the film This is them, like, recently Reminiscing about the shoot for the Darjeeling Limited And, you know, I mean I've said a lot about Wes Anderson on this show And if you care to get my thoughts You can go back to those The short version is I kind of never know what's happening in a Wes Anderson film Or why it's happening But I just find it so visually entertaining That being said, we're getting to a point where he's a victim of his own success and his own visual style to where I see things and I'm like, oh, this is Wes Anderson being extremely Wes Anderson. Which is, you know, I mean, he literally created a visual language as far as this kind of filmmaking goes, as far as I can tell. So the Darjeeling Limited was one of those ones that I just didn't get a chance to see it. But boy, did I love that soundtrack. He was really leaning into the kinks, was old Wes Anderson at this point. and so I saw this moment where Adrian Brody and oh by the way I cannot wait to see the Brutalist that is like I mean put it in my veins like I'm kind of obsessed with Brutalism as an architectural movement these days like Brut Builds was a was a is an Instagram feed that I like subscribe to so like Adrian Brody playing an architect who's instrumental in the Brutalism movement is like very in my... zone of interest i saw a trailer for that um recently when i was at the when i was at the theater do you know that this is i just want to get super hyper i want to interrupt you and go super hyper local about an abandoned building in north seattle do you know that brutalist building that's sort of near my house house it's near um it's it's been abandoned since i've lived here but it's on 130th kind of across from well what i would call sprouts except you would call it where the old Kmart was. You know that building? It looks like a government building.

Yeah, I know exactly that. As you're going down the hill, it's on the right, correct? If you're going down the hill with the highway behind you, basically. If you're going away from Aurora and towards I-5, it would be on the right.

Yes, it would be on the right, exactly. Since I was a kid, I never knew what that building was. It's an amazing building. I'm not really into brutalism, but that's an amazing building.

I want to clarify. I'm also not into it as a style. Like, I wouldn't want to live in, I wouldn't want, I wouldn't snap my fingers and have my house somehow be more brutalist, but I do just find it really interesting as a movement that took hold. I mean, you got like Odegaard and you get Susilo over there at the U-Dub and like the idea that it kind of was a thing for a while is just fascinating to me. By the way, one of Nikki Glaser's best jokes in the Golden Globes that went right over everyone's head was two-time Holocaust survivor Adrian Brody is here.

Wait, what's the other movie?

Was it like the pianist or something? Oh, okay. I feel like Adrian Brody is always playing like a, just like a, he's just always playing sort of like an absolutely broken, like Holocaust surviving person who finds a crack of light in the otherwise, you know, dim world that he exists in. I feel like that's really his sweet spot.

That's a really good, edgy joke. It's a solid joke, right? Yeah, exactly.

Nobody laughed, which tells you it was a good joke. Anyway, so they were, those two, Jason Schwartzman and Adrian Brody, here's what sold me on starting the Darjeeling limited at 10 p.m. last night they were talking about the actual practical implications of filming on a moving train the entire film set was literally a moving train in India and that they had to be at set on time because the train had to leave and then if you didn't get on the train they couldn't you know you couldn't be in your scenes that day it's a moving thing and that what they did was they split the train in half and they built one entire set and then they built the exact same set in reverse so that the light would match so that they would shoot in the in the morning and then you know midday or whatever and the light would be at a certain angle and then they would go to the other side of the train coming back so that the afternoon light would match the kind of mid-morning light and i just thought that was like so genius from a filmmaking standpoint that it made me want to watch the film yeah it does

me as well one thing that's really bothering me here is me not being able to tell whether or not i've seen this movie but i'll tell you why and i've struggled with this memory or lack thereof many times in conversation when this movie comes up and it's because of the grand budapest hotel and that's how i'm going to say budapest now i'm not gonna i'm not gonna say it the proper way i'm too insecure to do that but um i love the grand budapest hotel i think it was a slow burner for me i don't think it was one of my faves originally but i've seen it several times now but i also think parts of that take place on a train i believe there are checking papers and and and that uh type of train situation and so i think i keep thinking i've seen the darjeeling limited but really i'm remembering some key scenes from the grand budapest hotel and i don't think i've seen the darjeeling and i think i should especially after everything you just said i think i would have remembered if the entire if i saw a movie where the entire thing takes place on a moving

i mean there's there's a they get off the train eventually but it's the you know 90 of the film is on the train and um uh i would say to have a gummy or whatever it is you like to kind of put your put your mind on like we're going with this mode you know what i mean which is a good place to be with a wes anderson film anyway just because it is almost just kind of i overuse this but it's kind of a tone piece in a way right it's the it's the the songs that are being used it's the colors that are you know being filmed etc um I really enjoyed it by the way I really I had not had a gummy but I was just in some kind of I don't know I was in a I was in a place where I was open to the experience and I really really dug it the other reason I think you could get confused Andrew is because I feel like Wes Anderson loves to put a beat-up Wilson brother in a film nobody loves an injured wilson brother in a film like wes anderson so you've got owen wilson who's got this like he's got bandages on the entire film because he's been in a car accident right before it starts and i feel like we got some kind of quasi injured luke wilson going on in tenon bombs or i don't know does he ever i know he shaves his head in a pretty intense but no owen wilson

owen wilson also doesn't he have a bandage over his nose a big part of tenon bombs doesn't he

get yes and he's like he's a writer yeah maybe it's just

Maybe it's just Owen Wilson.

I don't remember why he gets assaulted or why he would have a bandage.

Isn't he, like, dressing in Tenenbaums, his whole thing is he's sort of writing, like, Native American stuff?

Well, he's, like, yeah, he sees himself as, like, a swaggery sort of intellectual writer, but he's a real dummy.

He's always wearing, like, leather fringe and trying to appropriate Native American culture or something?

Well, no, I mean, he wears a cowboy hat and sort of a fringy jacket that I think is...

The cowboy hat, that's Native American culture, right?

But also, though, I do think that he maybe has some art or something, and his book might have had something to do with that. I'm stretching the edges of my memory of that movie, so what a dumb way to put that. But I do, yeah, that is a recurring thing, which I don't mind that. I kind of don't mind nods. Well, the conversation doesn't always have to end up with me saying why I'm not into his newer things. It is surprising to me, though. If you were to go back 15 years.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is his newest thing, right? And you like it.

No, actually, it was The French Dispatch. Oh my gosh, no. There have been so many. Oh, please don't tell me. No, no, no. That movie, no, you're wrong.

That movie came out six months ago. And I won't listen to any other discussion on the topic. Oh yeah, Asteroid City.

Asteroid City, the New Yorker one, there's so many.

Yeah, that's The French Dispatch. I have to say, I was challenged by Asteroid City, Andrew. I'm here to tell you. It was so subtle. Like what I liked about Darjeeling was this was, it was still like, it was an emotional film. There was actually a lot of kind of like, like love between these brothers. I mean, the idea is you have these three estranged brothers who come together to take this train to go find their mom. And there was genuine affection there and, and, and feelings. I asteroid city was so, it was just, it was so many people just having these conversations that were so, I don't know how, how you saw it, right?

No, no, I didn't see that.

Yeah, it was tough for me. It had too many people, first of all. That's a thing I think that, like what I liked about Darjeeling was, it's basically these three guys. That's the movie. And that gives me a chance to kind of connect with them. Whereas something like the French Dispatch or Asteroid City, there's like 40 people in the cast. so it's just like constantly a person showing up and kind of talking kind of brusquely and in a detached way to someone else in a kind of non naturalistic dialogue and usually while like holding a cigarette kind of at a certain angle in their hand you know and then saying something and then leaving abruptly but if that just keeps happening over and over again I start to sort of check out from the film a little bit as the viewer

yeah you know I kind of when these conversations come up I tend to kind of say the same things over and over but yeah Yeah, I sort of felt like the French dispatch ended up being sort of a commentary, like a self commentary by Wes Anderson about his his, you know, his filmmaking and those criticisms. Because what I always say is, like, when you look back at Royal Tenenbaums, I mean, that is a movie that has all the harm hallmarks visually of a Wes Anderson film, all of the preciousness and the filmmaking and the style. But it also just has so much heart. Like, I can't watch that without almost without crying or almost crying at the end of it. And then as he becomes more and more of kind of playing with his dollhouse, I sort of felt like as the as the movies go on.

You're saying guys can't play with dollhouses.

No, I'm into dollhouses. But it's just like it's more like it's more about the house and less about the dolls. Frankly, that's the issue.

Very, very well put.

Very well put. And then do you remember? And I think we've had this conversation at the end of The French Dispatch, which I kind of didn't like. I mean, it had its moments.

I'm going to put you in the headspace I was in when I watched The French Dispatch. Two martinis in and had eyes on buying a truck I was never going to drive. Oh, that's right. That was outside the theater as I was watching it. So I'm a little hazy on the details.

No, I definitely saw The French Dispatch in the theater. And again, I love going to the theater. And I like seeing something that isn't like I'm not into action films or whatever. So I'll sit through any Wes Anderson movie in the theater. And again, I still want to come back and talk to you about this theater experience. I had recently but oh yeah anyway at the very end of the French dispatch which I thought was very uneven which is like such a cliche to say about any film I feel like um at the very end I can't remember who the actors are in the final scene Bill Murray might be one of them but I know one of the people is like an editor right and the editor is saying to the person who's turning in their article like this is all there's no heart in this there's no feeling there's no human emotion it's all just sort of like it's beautiful but and and they say well I'm not changing essentially i mean that's so that's wes anderson basically saying dude that's my that's my that's my theory i have not heard i have not pursued to see if that is actually what he's trying to say there but it's felt to me very much like like a filmmaker saying listen this is this is what i do

i just thought i cracked the code when i figured out it was sort of new yorker-esque i thought that was a great insight well again

And I could be totally wrong about that. That was just a takeaway I had. And let's see, that came out in 2021. So that's me trying to remember the end of a movie. I don't remember that well that I saw four years ago. I did want to recommend to you, though. I think you would like this. I always get nervous recommending things to you. But the Eisenberg film, A Real Pain, with Kieran Culkin. Vives and I saw it. Oh, you saw it? I saw it in a theater. Me too. But I saw it in a theater that should not be open anymore, Luke. We went back to, and I knew the theater was going in this direction, but the only place this was playing, was it like the day after? No, it was New Year's Day. Theeves and I wanted to see a movie. That's a very traditional thing to do, I feel like. But the only thing we wanted to see, because I was not interested in any of the other movies, was this movie, A Real Pain, which Genevieve had just told me about. But the only place it was playing was at the Varsity in the U District. And I knew that that place was pretty bombed out. I think the last time I went there was four or five years ago They were showing some classic old movie And it was in bad shape then And I'd heard that it had gone downhill Now this is a theater that like If it was in the right hands Folks who've never been there Should know this would be a really really cool

Old school theater 20 years ago if you were planning Your final act of employment This is where you'd work The varsity, it's on the ave right? It's right on the ave It's got an old school marquee All the employees used to wear ties back in the day. Is this true, or you're saying that- 100%. Yeah, okay. No, no, 100%. It was like, by the way, regardless of gender, you wore a white shirt and a burgundy-type tie or some kind of a tie, and everybody who worked there were people who just loved film. Either they were at the U-Dub, or maybe they were grad students, or they just were interested. It was all artsy, creative people that ran this thing, and it was just like a haven for film, people who liked film.

I I knew this theater was going downhill so my expectations were set pretty low going in and because of that I was able to not there were some people who were waiting for popcorn with me who were having really bad reactions to their environment like some people who were like at their wits end because what was going on in this theater was not normal what but just the way it was being run and it was just so filthy and it's so weird but like I was able to like kind of be gracious to the one guy who was working there um but luke it is like really bad like you go in like first of all both doors are shattered and like cardboarded up you go in and there's one guy the popcorn machine isn't working the soda machine isn't working right now and i just mean it just has the the feeling of like there's a there's like a toaster oven balanced on the counter like it is just it i cannot believe there are this is so dark but i mean i cannot believe that this is a theater that shows things like a real pain like you would think that this would be like a scuzzy like porn theater from the 80s in New York or something because like I'm who's going to this place in time yeah like it is so bananas and then and like some of it is like okay it takes a lot of money to keep a theater going like maybe some things are going to break but like the guy who was running everything was he was a young man you know this is in the college area for people who aren't around here and I'm he was probably a college-age person and you know he was friendly enough but also just kind of like i can offer you what i can offer you which is i'll get the popcorn going in a little bit i missed the first like five ten minutes of the movie because he couldn't get the popcorn going until after he got through all the tickets people that's where i say there were some some pretty strong and i apologize for saying this but there's some pretty strong karen energy emanating off of a couple of women who were like had been waiting around and we're getting a little stampy with him and i was just trying to be the best boy i could be and just say like this is the last time i'm coming to this this theater it was also just like it's one thing to be a bit broke but like it was filthy that the steps because the theaters are upstairs the steps just filthy and you really notice when you're going up steps because the floor is right in front of your face you know we all know how steps work i think we all know how steps work and you just see it's just like nobody's cleaning anything luke like doors are like are like warning taped off in some instances there's no heat everybody in the theater is wearing i'm wearing a coat and scarf the entire time the popcorn when it finally was made because i've always said by the way i've always said if i go into a theater and either the projector is broken or the popcorn machine is broken i prefer the projector to be broken this is a popcorn delivery situation exactly i'm not going to sit through a movie without popcorn so i did wait for some popcorn to be made i missed the beginning of the movie the popcorn did not taste very good but i did put my popcorn where my mouth is uh quite literally um because i i really didn't choose the popcorn over the how was the actual popcorn the popcorn was not that great it had kind of a funny taste to it but i ate in fact i

ate about half the bag and that's a rarity for me that i don't eat all of the bag half a bag of

the experience that's a on cinema reference if you guys want to watch some of them Most surreal, like, movie conversations. Watched the Tim Heidecker and, oh, my goodness. He's been a guest on the show.

Oh, Greg Turkington. Sorry. I was thinking about a real pain again. But just to wrap up my story, it was a – I'll tell you what. The fact that I enjoyed that movie so much in these conditions speaks well to the movie. And I'd like to hear your thoughts on it. But, yeah, for those who want to know, like, The Varsity, somebody either needs to buy that and fix it or, like, I just don't – I would actually specifically say don't go there or don't go there unless you know what you're getting into and you kind of want a rough and tumble movie going experience.

That's such a bummer because that used to be, like I said, a delightful place to go see a film. And it was in this, you know, little circuit of you had the the Guild 45th and you had the Harvard Exit, which was the Harvard Exit area. You know, but still just there was that. Yeah, there was this little kind of circuit of of art house theaters in Seattle that were so much fun to go to and just great spots. And they're mostly gone now. I loved the film, A Real Pain, and I loved it so much, Andrew, that it it made me retroactively regret my one and only decision to have personal like work life boundaries. Because if you remember, I was supposed to go interview Kieran Culkin about the film.

I forgot. And that was for this film. OK.

And he was supposed to happen on a Thursday, and he missed his flight home from England or whatever, didn't want to do the interview on the day we'd agreed upon, so they were trying to get me to come out and do it on a Saturday. That was the same Saturday I was supposed to judge a Halloween pet costume contest. And I said, that's what I want to do. I've been looking forward to this. I want to hang out with Becca and her family, which I did, and it was really, really fun. And then they ended up having Mo Rocca do the interview And then I saw the movie And then I was furious at myself For not going and interviewing Kieran Culkin Because he's so good In the film And also is now nominated for an Oscar And I don't know if he's going to win It's probably going to go to Adrian Brody For surviving the Holocaust twice But regardless, I was like Of course the one interview I don't go do Is associated with a film that I was absolutely gobsmacked by

Yeah, it's a hell of a film, man and they tour Auschwitz, right? I have the right camp. I don't think it's Auschwitz. No, it's not. As I was saying that, I knew it was wrong.

It's one I actually had not heard of, so it wouldn't have been like, I'm not going to try to name concentration camps, but it wasn't like Treblinka or Buchenwald or whatever. It wasn't one that I had heard of, but they do. They go to a concentration camp.

But the reason I bring that up is because it's just shot, unlike I think anything I've seen before. Shot is the wrong word there. It's just presented unlike, I think, any scenes I've seen in a movie before where basically the movie, because you're building up to it, and it's not like, and I'm telling the audience this, Luke, obviously, you know, but it's not like they don't do flashbacks or anything corny like that. It's just a group of people who are taking a tour of a place where the most horrific things of mankind happened, and you know that that is going to be a part of the movie because this group of people are, you know, like kind of touring Poland, and that's kind of why they're there. But when the movie gets to that part, it's like the movie just sort of stops. In fact, the tour guide kind of says that both to the people he's giving a tour to and I think also us, the audience, just saying, hey, listen, I'm going to kind of stop talking for this part. I think it speaks for itself. We're going to walk around. And the movie just gets super quiet. There's no music. There's the sound of a group of about, I don't know, eight people walking around. You hear the creaking of their footsteps. as they just silently look at things, and as you silently look at them with them, and I'm getting emotional thinking about it. It is so powerful.

It is incredibly moving. It's a really phenomenal piece of filmmaking in that it, yeah, we've, well, you, in fact, recently watched Schindler's List. Like, we've seen movies about this horror, and this one made me think about it differently or experience or feel like I was able to have at least a small, a slim view into the experience of people who went through this in a different way than I've ever had before. Which is really saying something because a lot of, you know, a lot of celluloid has been used up trying to in some way document the horror of this experience and yet they found a new way to do it that was tremendously affecting.

It made, I was going to ask Genevieve this, this is one of those movies that I saw. Also, did you, what's the other one? Did you see Queer, by any chance, the William S. Burroughs movies? Vives and I saw that, too. I didn't even know that was a William S. Burroughs movie going into it. And we saw both of those, which are both two, like, kind of very heavy, tonal movies that we saw, like, kind of probably within a month of each other. And both of them. just really really stuck with me I don't even know if I liked queer I mean I think I did I mean you can't see a movie and then think about it as much as I thought about it for weeks and weeks I kept on coming up to Genevieve and like another thing about that movie but it's a it's a much tougher watch I would say but what was I going to say oh I wanted to ask Genevieve after watching A Real Pain whether or not she how she would feel about touring a concentration camp And if the movie changed that, and I guess I would ask you that question, like, that's not something I ever thought about because I so rarely travel overseas. But, you know, I know people who've taken those tours and I'm like, yeah, I could see myself doing it. And then there was something about seeing that, seeing it in this movie in this really realistic way, a realistic way of taking a tour, I want to say again, that really made me wonder if I could emotionally handle being there in person.

if i could if i could take a tour the way that they did in the film i probably would you know because they seem like they were the only people yeah that was the one part that didn't seem exactly um probably realistic if i could do it that way where i could just be really left alone with my thoughts and my experience with it as opposed to you know queuing up at various places for things And crowds of You know, Becca and I were in Italy this summer And like, touring a Non-emotional place With throngs of people Is already kind of like annoying Like, I don't have a lot of feelings About the Colosseum But, you know So if I were at a place like that A former concentration camp And then there was this sort of The hassle of being there with a bunch of other people That might be really tough for me Because I think it'd be a lot of emotion and then a lot of annoyance.

Yeah, I thought of that while we were watching the movie. I'm like, this is amazing, but also there's no way that you're the only eight people here at all. You know what I mean? I mean, maybe, though, you never know,

because this was in Poland, and I looked it up, by the way. I'm not even going to try to pronounce it, but it was a former concentration camp in Poland that I had certainly never heard of before this. And who knows, depending on what day you're there and what time of year and how many, I mean, it's insane to think about this, how many different concentration camps there may have been you could probably find one that wasn't just teeming with with with visitors you know and my guess would be that people are respectful if there's one place where i would i would hope anyway that people can be respectful uh it would be something like this um but but yeah i definitely felt like again and i'm also not trying to be glib but i i felt in a way like i went on a tour of that place that's how that's how expert the filmmaking was yeah i'm glad you saw this film i didn't i didn't know that i am too but again if kieran culkin i want everyone to know if kieran culkin wins an oscar just know i will literally never prioritize my personal life over work again that's the big takeaway

america by the way i'm really you and i before the show were mentioning um uh brian brian cox that's his name right from succession we're talking about the mcdonald's theme song of all things this is before the show began uh and now talking about kieran culkin i feel like i'm really surprised you did not watch any succession if you like karen caulkin's performance in this even though his background as a character is completely different in succession and this movie yeah if you like that style and his his personal kind of quirks and ticks or whatever both characters sort of have that caulkin-iness to them that i think you would like in i i think

I think I will. Particularly if TikTok legit goes away. I look forward to my brain reconnecting with longer form content. Maybe out of necessity. I really enjoyed Darjeeling last night. I really need to hunker down and finish somebody somewhere, which I haven't yet. For reasons that I can't quite put my finger on, maybe it's that I feel like now there's pressure on me to watch it or something. but um i could see myself watching and enjoying succession i i watched the first episode and i think i was coming to it um i was not in a place of jam when i was well i was i think i was for some reason looking for something to not like and i didn't what i need to do is watch nancy pearl here's a hyper local reference yeah the awesome kuow um you know i think she was literally like seattle's official librarian for a period of time she used to have a rule of thumb for a book she said give it 50 pages and if you don't like it after 50 pages you have every right to put it down but give it 50 pages which i think is actually a very good rule of thumb so i need to give succession 50 pages i gave it like three pages and i've been giving the count of monte cristo

500 pages i'm still slogging my way through this i didn't tell you a quick update on this so the reason i started reading the count of monte cristo was because i mean i mean probably over a year ago.

So I misunderstood the menu. I thought it was a more sandwich-based book. I really did. I thought it was a menu, actually. No, I was walking somewhere, and I think I was walking to probably a bar or maybe just to the train. And I pass a couple of – on my walk to the train, I pass a couple of those little libraries that people put in their front yard. And I saw it, and it was a big tome. And I was like, oh, maybe I'll just grab this and read this on the train. or maybe, again, I can't remember where I was going, but I just grabbed it on the fly. I'll kind of do that sometimes. And then, oh, that's right. I think I was going to a pizza joint because then some students in the U District saw me reading it and then gave me like a huge download on it. It was kind of cute. He was so excited that I was reading this book. Anyway, all of that is to say, I remember the first thing I did when I read, when I picked up the book was I read the introduction and it was a note from the translator complaining that the editors made him cut the book back too much. He's like, I mean, how can you cut any word out of this book, et cetera? But it is what it is. And I remember just thinking, like, what a pompous way to start this book. And then I start reading it. And then I – this is a problem with me with physical books. At nighttime, I would prefer to read on my phone because I don't have to have a light on. I can hold the phone closer to my face. I can adjust the font. I don't read physical books when I'm laying in bed at night. So I downloaded a version of this. And I immediately noticed that, and you get this with translated books, the translation isn't exact, right? I would read one passage from one book and notice it's slightly different than the other one. What I did not realize was the book that I downloaded is not abridged in the way that this other book that I picked up is already very thick, like thicker than the Bible. And that's the abridged one. That's the one where the guy complained about having to cut too much out. I grabbed the physical copy of the book the other day, and I took it to The Vibe, the sports bar in my neighborhood, and I sat down to read it, and I couldn't find my place.

Do they let you bring backpacks into The Vibe?

Yes, they do. And I was so confused why I couldn't find my place in the physical book, and it's because the physical book that I grabbed out of the free library is just missing chapters. It's just fully missing, and it already looked like a big book. the one i'm reading on my phone leaves no chapter out and because i was going back and forth and i'm just like oh my god they're just skipping entire scenes at the at the at the opera is this the

abridging process or is this that someone literally tore the chapter no no it's the abridging process

it's the guy you know the translator in the physical copy of the book was like oh i had to leave too much out i'm like i'm holding a book that's like heavier than my car what do you mean you left too much out and then i start reading the digital version but you don't hold a digital version the same way i don't know how big the book would be if i was if i was able to manifest it out of the digital version so all that is to say the reason i'm selling 60 through this book is because i i'm reading some unabridged version that is like i literally think more than half like more than half over maybe maybe twice the size i should say of the of the physical book that I had grabbed out of that little library.

I mean, if I can say this with peace and love, that sounds so frustrating. Why? That sounds so unrelaxing.

It's just like, are you ever going to read another book? We're talking about Hilary Mantle, by the way. Oh, sure. I never read those.

Station 49 or something?

Oh, I know her for reading the Wolf Hall, the Henry VIII historical things. And those were thick books that I had to kind of Google

a lot of stuff you know about i was thinking somebody else by the way and i somebody mandel

i think oh i think i know what you're talking about but anyway i was confusing our off anyway point is even those were like kind of books that i had to like you know kind of really pay attention to to get through and i'm just like and i never read the third one in the series in the wolf hall series and i'm like i can't wait to read that'll be like beach reading to me now and i cannot wait to get to it genevieve's like you're never going to get to it if you refuse to read anything until you're done with the Count of Monte Cristo, I don't think you have enough life left in you to

read any more books. I admire your tenacity, sir. Why? It's so dumb. Listen, I would have given up, listen, I got like six hours into the David Foster Wallace book, and I was like, I can't, I mean, that for me, the problem was a lack of footnoting, because I was listening to it on tape, and it didn't have the audio footnotes, so it's just like, there's so much stuff that I was kind of missing so you know um andrew here's what i would say to you um people often ask like why is tbtl so popular why why are people flocking to this show and it's because we are the show and i think the only one that can pivot effortlessly and deftly from conversations about the holocaust to the life and times of bob uecker

This is a difficult pivot for some Not for us Because that is the level that we're operating at Bob Euchre has passed away The Milwaukee Brewer great And by that I mean I think he was a pretty average player He was a bad player He used to make fun of himself all the time You know I'd actually like to I only realized he passed away As the show was starting I'm wondering How actually bad Bob Euchre was Like, he was certainly not an elite player, but I wonder how much him being a bad player became part of the mythology of him as a broadcaster and commercial maker. I was saying to you before we started recording, I feel like, to some degree, my thoughts about broadcasting were shaped by Bob Euchre. Because when I was a kid watching, you know, This Week in Baseball and other things, I would see these Miller Lite commercials with Bob Euchre where he was always the butt of the joke. the entire premise was Bob Uecker thinks he's a big shot because he's an ex-baseball player, but in fact he was so bad that people actually dislike him. And it was just so kind of, the joke being on Bob Uecker, I loved it, and I think it really went into some part of my brain about a way that you can be sort of a broadcaster, and I'm not trying to put myself up in the pantheon of Bob Uecker's broadcasting, but here's just one. This is from 1984, Miller Lite. This is Bob Uecker. He's at the stadium, and he's all excited about getting his seat, which he thinks is going to be right next to the field, but of course.

You know, one of the best things about being an ex-big leaguer is getting freebies to the game. Call the front office, bingo. And once these fans recognize me, I probably won't even have to pay for my light beer from Miller. I love them. These fans know I drink light because it's less filling, and it tastes great. Good seats, huh? You're in the wrong shape, buddy. Come on. Oh, I must be in the front row. Light beer from Miller.

everything you always wanted in a beer and less now of course he's in the nosebleeds by himself

he's yelling down to the field good seats hey buddy he missed the tag he missed the tag by the

way uh all you want in a beer and less is a great tagline yeah that's a really good good but then of course also you know in major league which i'm sure there are parts of the film major league the many films that were made under the major league kind of banner eventually i i only know the first one really um i'm sure there are parts that that don't stand up it's an unfortunate mascot for the the cleveland baseball team at the time etc etc but still the bob uecker performance if you're somebody my age is just absolutely legendary as the announcer uh for that entire film he's essentially the he's the narrator of the movie in a way and there's just so many great bits he just was a he was a really really funny self-deprecating guy who who i you know again i think some part as a fellow funny, self-deprecating guy, I can say I got a lot of it from Bob Euker.

Self-deprecating, I'll give you. Sorry, I had to, I had to, I had to. You set it up. Do you know, and I don't think you'll be surprised by this, as somebody who had zero or, well, almost zero interest in sports growing up, what do you think my first sort of, like, recollection of Bob Euker was? Because I think that this sort of points to his...

Did he have a sitcom?

Yes, Mr. Belvedere. Wait, he was on Mr. Belvedere? Am I right about, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wasn't he the dad on Mr. Belvedere?

It's very possible. I mean, I was just always focusing on Mr. Belvedere.

Yeah, right, exactly.

What a time. So he was the dad in Mr. Belvedere?

Yeah, I mean, he's definitely played George Owens in Mr. Belvedere, so I'm assuming that, yeah.

What a time. What a time in this country, Andrew. All of America would sit down at night together and watch one of three networks And watch these sitcoms, these multi-camera sitcoms And so many of them, for some bizarre reason, were starring former pro athletes Like Dick Butkus Did he have a show? Did he? I believe he did Like George Papadakis, who was on Webster What was the Dick Butkus sitcom? If Dick Butkus didn't have a sitcom, maybe I imagined it.

Maybe you're thinking, who's the guy from Webster that you said? Because I didn't know that name, but of course that was a former athlete. I kind of knew that.

Maybe he was just on TV a lot doing commercials or something. Yeah, because I'm looking at it. Maybe I was imagining that. I just feel like there was a period of time where there were a lot of former athletes that were just playing a random dad in a sitcom, which is just such interesting casting. like anyway and uh and i guess old um bob euchre was one of them yeah i mean again i kind of bring

that up because well it's a fond memory and but it's also like i didn't know who bob euchre was i would have at that time i would just been like oh the guy who's the dad on mr belvedere right and then i

And then I start realizing like, I mean, you bring up Major League. I wasn't somebody who saw Major League, I think, until I was an adult to like, again, just sort of how, you know, where my interests lay as a kid. But I mean, you literally you talk about a pitch being outside and you just think about the most I have to say just a bit outside. a bit outside like you can't hear those words without hearing bob euchre say them like that is just like it's literally iconic yes that's yeah that is that is probably one of the

most iconic baseball jokes that exists is a pitch being way outside but describing it as just a bit outside we have bob to thank for that that's right thank you for being a 10 All right, let's thank some donors today. These folks are making TBTL happen with their voluntary donation. This is 100% listener-supported podcasting coming at you. We want to thank Rachel and Matt Howell of Broomfield, Colorado.

Hey, Denver friendos. Thanks, Howells. I know that there's a difference between Broomfield and Denver. but we saw them yeah we saw them in denver that's right thanks also to emily atkinson who's in

brevard north carolina we've got a solid distribution today nice nice if we were trying to if we had a tbtl pitch deck today would be a great show i'd be like okay we cover such important topics as the holocaust the film the darjeeling limited the fact that dick butkus was not in any sitcoms uh in luke's youth even though he wished it was the case and look at this distribution of listenership we've got colorado we've got north carolina we've got carmichael california where heather schwamp wilson would you go with schwampy or schwamp there's an e in the end there i think i don't know exactly what to do with that i'll be honest with you the way you said it

at first schwamp wilson sounded right it felt right to me it felt right to me and this is very this is a job again put this in the pitch deck okay from the podcaster's perspective this is something you just have to have a feel for luke that's right casting and make no apologies to me

no you've got to absolutely break off you break off that mirror that rear view mirror because

we're not looking back andrew yeah we're going forward i did that to somebody's car once they were very upset you're not really you know that i've had a crack figure i've had a crack in my

windshield that's like fully become like it was a rock chip that totally did the thing yeah that and i have i've yet to repair it for all these years all these years all these months because they actually the mobile repair people won't come out here to do it and i just remote i guess and i do not feel like driving it to a place and then killing like five to eight hours while they're fixing it and i've kind of gotten used to it now i am a guy just driving around with a cracked

windshield like it's fine um first of all uh take it to safe light repair safe light replace you'll get a free uh three months of satellite radio um and by the way i'm playing those guys like a friggin violin what do you oh how so what do you got going on what's your wait was that the movie

wait who was in captain caroli's violin that was that feels like another brody project i don't

i'm not sure i'm not sure wait anyway sort of scam going on with well not intentionally what

it was was i got like 80 of the way through the process of signing up for safe flight repair safe flight replace and only then did they i was online like here's my kind of car and da da da and then finally they were like oh sorry we can't come out we don't service your area so then i was like well screw that but in their system i'm like a i'm an almost i'm a guy who got like pretty far into the process so they just keep hitting me with like your 400 discount is about to expire and i'm like well i don't care because you're not coming to my house and then about two weeks later, I'll get an email. Hey, how about a $500 discount? I'm just like, when you get it to a 100% off, I'll consider driving this car to Beaverton, Oregon to get this fixed. Oh, I thought

you were going to say that you got your free satellite radio already, even though you didn't pay for the service. No, I'm paying through the nose for that shit. You got to downgrade to the $6 a month account like I am. Anyway, all of that is to say, obviously, thank you, Heather.

And thank you to Kate Bergstrom, who's in Phoenix, Arizona. It's our friend, Dates with Kate Kate.

That's right. Down there in Phoenix.

This has probably happened a while ago, and I'm just finally getting the memo that Kate's in Phoenix. Kate was a Seattleite for many years. Hey, Kate, nice to see your name on the list. Appreciate all these years of support from you. And as well as the support we get from Brian Maddox of Albany, Oregon. Wow, what a twist. Yeah. and I'm trying to I'm saying I'm gonna I'm Albany that's what I'm saying Albany Oregon I'm going with it Andrew no regrets as opposed to Albany Albany

I used to say Albany, New York wrong. Albany is incorrect. It's Albany, New York, and I bet it's Albany, Oregon. Yeah, probably. Who knows? And I definitely know it's Coon Rapids, Minnesota, where Leslie Davis is checking in. That sounds rural. That sounds like it is currently under, I'd say, one to eight feet of snow. That sounds like a place where the red fern grows. Can you even see the rapids right now? Are the rapids just frozen over? I'm sure they are. Can rapids freeze over? Leslie knows. Yeah, Leslie. Thank you, Leslie. Thanks to all of our donors for making TBTL happen today. We could not do this without you.

Luke, can I say that I appreciate your discipline because I know that you have a very big, important, personal Blur's Day wish for somebody that you could have wished them yesterday on the show. But you said, I will wait for the official Blur's Day segments tomorrow. And you held off on this, and I appreciate that.

This is a show that is run, you know, by a set of rules and without favor or prejudice. We celebrate the Blur's on Thursday, even if it's our own newly minted, friggin' adorable niece, Gemma Burbank.

Congratulations to David, and congratulations to you, Uncle Lukey.

And to Alicia. And to Alicia. And to the world, Andrew. To the world. Mm-hmm. This baby, well, how do I say this? I send a picture of this baby to my girlfriend, and I hope this baby is safe. I hope this baby hasn't been possibly baby-napped because this little Gemma is the platonic ideal of what a little baby should look like. She might be the cutest baby I've ever seen in my life, And I can tell you that my girlfriend is feeling some kind of way about this baby.

So you're thinking it might be a little Raising Arizona situation amongst the Burbank clan?

I'm just saying I've recently purchased a large ladder.

Call me H.I. You have a panty on your head. Hey, congratulations, Alicia and David, for real. And for real, congratulations to you, Luke. It's nice to be an uncle. Thanks. No, I'm excited. Just letting that really sink in. We got this from Danny in New York City. I'm laughing here because I read this earlier this week, and then on After These Messages, I thought we received an email from Danny in New York City, but we received an email from David in New York City on the other podcast. And after I shared his email, I said, also, congratulations, because I was confusing Danny and David. And so I'm wondering if there is a David in New York City right now who thinks he just had twins because Danny in New York City says, I'd like to wish a happy belated Blur's Day to my newborn twin sons, Ashley and Cameron, who were Blur's on December 23rd.

Oh, my gosh. Congratulations. I got to talk to Danny and his wife at the Philadelphia event. And, I mean, I can't Honestly, Luke and Andrew would have been better names for these kids I think so But, I mean, whatever they want is also good

I mean, Andrew and Luke would even be better It was a long road for your mom and me to start a family filled with setbacks and heartache I read that in a funny way It sounds like the family is filled with setbacks I'm going to reread that It was a long road for your mom and me to start a family filled with setbacks and heartache You see how pausing in a certain place Luke helps? But, yeah, I'm sorry to hear that. But Danny says, seeing your little faces every day and feeling you squeeze my finger with your teeny, teeny hands makes the whole experience worth it beyond what words can express. We hope you never want more siblings because all you're getting is hamsters.

And critically, Andrew, the TBTL audience grows. We have got to. We've got to get some people under the age of 40 turned on to this thing, or, you know, we're going to run out of runway.

Got to find a way to monetize this thing.

It's too good. For real, Danny, congrats. If everyone can have twins and then force them to listen to TBTL and then raise them right so they have good-paying jobs someday and they can keep supporting TBTL, that's...

That's how this whole thing works. I love the twins thing, too. You're right. It's exponential that way. We're doubling it. Yeah, Danny, congrats. Sarah in Portland. Luke, I think this is more of a family affair here. I think this is your Sarah in Portland. My Sarah? Your sister Sarah? Okay. She's in Portland, right? She sure is. Shout out to Cassandra in Victoria, B.C. I'm hoping you have a fantastic Blur's Day this weekend and a fabulous year ahead. Love, Sarah in Portland

Definitely not my sister But we love it Really? Do you think that my sister Is familiar with One of our tens in Victoria, British Columbia

I didn't know why she wouldn't be Doesn't Sarah listen to this show sometimes? No? Her husband, Josh, does

Unless Josh and Sarah Have a wider network of friends Than I am aware

Do you ever use her last name on the show? because I remember what the last name on this email was, but I'm not sure if we identify. You know I love doxing. That came up. Was it Scofield? Oh, no. This began with the letter N, the last name on this one. So I was totally wrong, Sarah. My apologies. You are not Luke's sister. I'm going to remove this note that says Luke's sister. Wow, this is turning into Maury, but it's like a paternity type. You are not the sister. I really thought, I guess I had your sister's last name wrong.

I feel like I've made this one of the most awkward Blur's days ever in like at least three or four different ways. But you know what? From a programming standpoint, I don't hate it. No, I think it's been good content, honestly. No, I like it. I'm taking the fall here just by being a dumbass. No, I love it, honestly.

I've never felt more right about things. And on that level, I fully endorse the way this has been going.

I don't want to turn this into a fight, but I'm pretty sure I'm right that this Sarah is your sister.

You know, it's funny because, like, you know how it is with friends and maybe siblings and stuff. There are the people that are kind of plugged into the vibration of TBTL and then the ones that just aren't. And I don't I don't have any difference in how I feel based on that. Like, for instance, my sister, Hannah.

Yeah. What is her last name begin with?

An N.

I think that's what happened. I think this Sarah has the same last name as your sister, Hannah.

And see, now, if you told me there was a Hannah wishing someone in Canada a Blur's Day, I'd be like, oh, that's my sister Hannah.

That is what happened here, Luke. I know I'm making this even more awkward by not saying what the name is, but I'm pretty sure Sarah in Portland has the same last name as your sister Hannah. And you have a sister named Sarah. And I got all confused. I think there's at least a reason to my madness. Happy Blur's Day, Hannah. Why not? Sure. Throw it out there. Hey, for real. Happy Blur's Day to Cassandra in Victoria, B.C. I feel like your message sort of got lost in my stupidity there. Hope you're having a great day, Cassandra. KJ says, to my bestie, Julie, in Salem, who's not Luke's sister, I'm so excited to celebrate you and your 60th Blur's Day in person this weekend. Safe travels, and we'll see you soon.

By the way. I'm running a half marathon in Salem this weekend. Oh, wow. Good luck. I mean, I'm trying. I don't know if I'll finish it.

Do you know what I feel bad about KJ here? I believe, and I.

KJ's my cousin.

KJ's your cousin. I'm pretty sure KJ has been going under the nomenclature KJ for the past year or so, literally because their name is Karen. And the way society has now co-opted the name. And I am not somebody who uses that phrase except for in today's show. I believe I said there was Karen energy. And I hesitated to say that. And now I feel even worse about it. And I'm leaning into how awkward these blurs days are.

Well, that's, you know, I think maybe, Andrew, God, a.k.a. us, could open a window here, which is, can we, is there something else that we can just use in the lieu of that name? Yeah. Or when a person is being, particularly when, yeah, when a person is just being a little tetchy, a little more whatever than they need to be in a customer service kind of experience.

We should just say speak. Earlier I said somebody had like kind of strong Karen energy, and we should have said strong speak to the manager energy.

Sure. I mean, that was a can I see your manager haircut was a thing for a while, which I kind of liked.

Exactly, right. We didn't need to ruin people's lives over this.

No, it needs to be punchy and like one word. It needs to be quick. Oh, it does. Like someone who's being a total something or other.

It has to be one word, huh?

Well, I don't know. It needs to be catchy and punchy. That's why that other one has taken off. But you're absolutely right. We have a lot of listeners that have that name, and they've done nothing wrong.

Exactly, yeah. It's just so odd that I would have actually.

succumbed to that earlier

in the show. Just bleep it out like you did with horse bleep

yesterday. Yeah, did you go back and listen?

No, but our friend P. Fletch reached out and just wrote the word and then laughed and then I was like, oh, did Andrew forget to bleep it out? She was like, no, he did, but it was actually funnier that way. He remembered to bleep it out.

It was pretty funny, yeah. Alright, well, happy Blur's Day, Julie. I'm glad that you and KJ get to hang. And finally, Randy says since the Venn diagram of, this is a long time TBTL listener bringing up the Venn diagrams, I feel like This is the Venn diagram of people that I know who listen to TBTL and also know my birthday shows zero intersection.

No.

I'm throwing myself out here. What really got me motivated was that my birthday, which was last weekend, and my music algorithm got wind of it. Alice Cooper's I'm 18 showed up in my playlist, and with a little modification, it fits me perfectly. And then Randy shared the entire lyrics to the song Which I will not share here But I'll say I'll read this one stanza I'm 68 And I don't know what I want 68, I just don't know what I want 68, I gotta get away I gotta get out of this place I'll go running in outer space Oh yeah Happy Blur's Day Happy Blur's Day to Randy Would you say, Luke, that I captured the essence of alice cooper in my recreation of that song absolutely spirit the energy the vibe kind of

monstrous mayhem of mr alice cooper what do we think alice cooper's real name is it's got to be like it's gonna be like john john huggins or something the most like the most kind of regular midwest guy like real name vincent fernier or there you go vincent damon fernier now this is

one that i guess i was wrong about growing up i thought alice cooper like you know how we as young people referred to blondie as a person but blondie was the band you know headed by um deborah harry uh i always thought that alice cooper was the name of the band but no alice cooper was a nom de plume it looks like for a person yes who is uh the godfather of shock rock is he the godfather of shock rock that's according to wikipedia with a raspy voice in a stage show that features numerous props and stage illusions but uh alice cooper also played or is also the author of um a wonderful song that our friend dur's put on a mixtape for me years and years and years ago i feel there's great musical he has amazing musical taste and he put together by the

By the way, I think you saw this, I've readmitted him to my life now that we are post Seahawks football season. How would I have seen that? I posted it to the criminals. I said, life finds a way, and it was a screen cap of my phone saying that I had readmitted him to the conversation.

I wonder if I somehow missed that one, or maybe you sent it during a flurry of texts that I wasn't keeping.

It was during, I believe, it was in the aftermath of the Vikings' loss to the Rams. Can I just say one thing about that? Because we're at the way end of the show.

You can say more than one thing about it. You can talk as much as you want. Okay, thank you.

This is, I mean, you know, this is just, as Mr. Collard used to say, fun times. I think we've done a great show today. We've celebrated the blurs days of so many fine people. And now it's time for Andrew and I just to kind of, like, alienate anyone who consider themselves a Los Angeles Rams fan. I was working that night I was out filming in San Diego And I didn't even realize That game was happening I'm so bad at tracking the playoff football schedule When the Seahawks aren't involved I mean I knew that the Rams and the Vikings were going to play But I didn't realize it was a Monday night game And so I got back from the shoot And I was eating at the hotel restaurant And they of course had TVs And I looked up And that was about the time I noticed That people were in the text chain basically consoling our friend the stew bot saying we're so sorry and i looked up and that you actually you know what i want to i want to amend what i was about to say because they did move the game so it was in glendale arizona i guess this explains part of it but i looked up and there were still four minutes left in the game and the stadium was 90 empty yeah and i took that to me now i had forgotten that this wasn't that they had moved it from from sofi stadium in la because of the fires and stuff so this might explain part of it but i will tell you this looking at a at a game where there's four minutes left but it's not really in question anymore the rams were winning pretty handily and then there's like 80 of the crowd is gone that's a perfect perfect description of the rams fan base to me now i do think that like my critique doesn't work

because they weren't playing in los angeles not only were they not playing in los angeles but if you're a los angeles sports fan you have bigger things on your on your mind during that game than than be at the game clearly so also that good yeah yeah so i i won't dunk on that but yeah i will say that that was that was a huge disappointment to see not just to see the the 14 and three vikings go down like that luke did i hear i remember counting up to six sacks but i think i heard on the radio yesterday i think it was eight right i think it went up to nine or somebody misspoke on the radio yesterday nine sacks so anyway yeah that was a really really tough game and also it's like it there is i'm not a i'm not a fan of that los angeles team and you know they're a division

it just feels yeah i mean i i will say this like i i don't know why i need to end things on a negative note but it's like i mean obviously i have a lot of feelings about the la rams because they have been besting the seahawks now for a long time and that's frustrating but i also just feel like it's the ultimate astroturfed team like they've just they were the la rams when i was a kid and they had like eric dickerson and jim everett and then they stan grunky took them back to st louis and then they were the greatest show on turf which is you know i don't begrudge people in st louis who were stoked to have a football team that was really good with like kurt warner and marshall falk and all of that but then they go back to la and now i feel like the fans what i feel like is they are similar to the Lakers in that there are maybe a few people that have been fans of the team forever and ever but mostly what they are is a thing that you can kind of embrace when you move to LA I was interviewing someone a while ago about an unrelated story in fact it was the Metallica story and it wasn't one of the guys in Metallica it was somebody else who's associated with their world and it was just like you know well I was like oh where are you from they're like oh you know Connecticut or something and I was like oh and this guy is in like the sports like marketing world or whatever i'm like oh so you must be are you a jets guy or a giants guy or patriots you're in connecticut you fall kind of in between all these teams like no i'm a rams guy like i don't know how long have you lived here five years cool and we're yeah i went to the super bowl oh the the pandemic super bowl that they won that probably should have been played yeah man it was incredible okay this pretty much checks out of my my and again this comes from my Own disappointment about The fact that the Seahawks can't seem to figure out the Rams Even on years when the Rams aren't that good I feel like I can't figure We can't figure them out so I don't know It just feels like a real astroturf Situation to me and the fact that they beat The Minnesota Vikings who Are now if I understand this right I didn't realize That they've never won a Super Bowl

I didn't realize it until I think I heard that recently

That's wild to me they must have won Something that preceded the Super Bowl Yeah, like the Browns.

I don't think the Browns ever won the Super Bowl either. The last time they won a national championship was pre-Super Bowl era.

Yeah, it was whatever they used to call it. There had to be.

The leather helmet bowl.

Exactly. The smoking at halftime bowl. The YA Tittle bleeding bowl. I will.

Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I was going to say something. Oh, nothing.

I just saw somebody saying this. I'm just repeating something I saw online. But, like, the thing that's so crazy about the Minnesota Vikings is they are the best team ever to have never won the Super Bowl. Like, their actual record—you have other teams that have never been to or won the Super Bowl, but they are also teams that have lost more than they've won. They just have generally had a hard time being competitive. That's not the story of the Minnesota Vikings. They are the story of a team that has excelled in the regular season. and they also have this weird thing where they bring in older or what we're seeing as washed up quarterbacks and those quarterbacks have a career year and this is like a like Rodney Pete had a career year after I think retirement as did believe it or not Brett Favre's best QB rating ever was at 40 years old as a Minnesota Viking as did Case Keenum as did I'm forgetting some other ones where it's like somebody was just listing these quarterbacks who've come in in the way that Sam Darnold did and they've been kind of like an afterthought and what it seems to be the case is that Minnesota Vikings are draft really good when it comes to receivers and running backs they create a system that's really really good for the quarterback and so they bring in these quarterbacks who all of a sudden everyone's like oh my god they're so good and then they always seem to return to earth at exactly the wrong time for the Minnesota Vikings and it's a heartbreak to me. Because if the Seahawks aren't going to win it, I would

love it to be the Minnesota Vikings. I am just realizing I'm realizing something. I got a problem. I got a real problem here. Problem or a blessing? We've been talking about how I caught a little bit of NFL playoff fever this year for some reason. And last weekend only stoked it more. I thought last weekend was a really fun football weekend. Even that loss, you know, you and I talked a little bit about that Buccaneers loss to the Yeah, to the commanders. The thing is, like, because I was rooting so hard for Baker Mayfield, you would think I now have a bad taste in my mouth for the commanders. But that is not even true. I was thinking about the command. they're playing the Lions I'm like oh that's gonna be such a good game I had never seen what Jaden Daniels play before I mean they I can't remember if they played the Seahawks or not this year but I must not have watched if they did because I swear this is the first because I kept on hearing the name Jaden Daniels Jaden Daniels I knew he was a rookie good like whatever but there was I mean watching him play really did seem like something special there was something about him connecting with receivers that seemed like they had magnets built into them or something just like these passes and I don't know I don't know enough about football to explain why it was so magic to see him connect but how do they work how do they work anyway all that is to say like i'm seeing the commanders are playing the lions this saturday at five like i can make my schedule work for that but the jewel of the playoff season if not the jewel of playoff seasons of the past five years or so is the ravens bills match up on sunday that's gonna be that is going to be it's gonna be so good and i'm looking that's the one game that's on when i'm supposed to be volunteering and i'm just learning this now and i know that my partner anna who's who's there at uh well more like fomo my friend anna who i volunteer with and she is there every single weekend just like me i know she will be hearing this but i might see if i can finagle my way like maybe i can just make the coffee and hot chocolate and drop it off and then make my way back home like But I don't know how I was about to say. I deserve it.

Anna, do you want to do this in lieu of a donation this year?

Well, Anna's going to be out there no matter what. I'll just be just a lazy bones making her do all the work. So anyway, I am tempted to maybe see if I can sneak home to see that Ravens-Bills game live.

This is where for us, by us, television on your phone is just an absolute game changer. You could just be out there slanging coffee and food to folks. while i mean i know you want the experience you want to you want to like you want to start making some garbage food at some point or heating up some kind of uh what do you what do you go what's the for you the like perfect game food that's interesting you know it has sort of been a

while since i've had like a sit down and watch football in the afternoon kind of thing it really you know what i'm gonna do is and this wouldn't work for this sunday anyway because i would still have to do other things but if i were to wake up on a sunday and have no other responsibilities other than watch football that begins around one o'clock in the afternoon i am waking up and i'm saying i'm going to the freezer section of the local grocer right i'm driving down to that qfc on holman road and i'm going in luke with an open mind i'm going in with some notions but i'm going in with an open mind now it's going to be limited options but i am going to be looking at it's basically the rpo of snacking exactly are you gonna you're gonna

You're going to see what the defense is doing.

The round pizza option? Oh, it's the best I could do in the moment.

Show title, honestly, this is actually genius because you've incentivized people to listen this far into the show to figure out why we named the show Round Pizza Option.

I feel like I could have done better there with a little bit more time. But I am going to be looking at Buffalo Wings. I am going to be looking at, and this is-

Frozen Buffalo Wings.

There are certain brands that are better than others. I mean, some are definitely wrong.

And you're going to bake these or you're going to fry them in a pan with a bit of oil?

Oh, no, no, no. These are going to be like air fried probably. Oh, air fried. Oven or air fried. But I'm trying to remember which brand it is. I don't think it's the TGA Fridays ones. Maybe they're the Fridays branded ones. You buy them in the freezer section, but the sauce is separate and you heat up the sauce separately. So you can either eat them as good little kind of dry wings, but also you can either use it as a dipping sauce or you can, like, if you're somebody who likes to sauce all your wings, you can do that. But I'm somebody who, like you, doesn't like to make too much of a mess. And there's one good – there are some bad frozen buffalo wings out there, but there's some good ones, too. The air fryer gets a good crisp on them. Yes. A good crisp on them. Okay, that's important. That's what it does well. So anyway, I'm going to be looking at wings. I'm going to be looking at – and this is one thing I love. okay just cancel your four o'clock the one thing i love specifically about the holman road qfc is that and i don't know if other stores have this they have a section for frozen pizzas but then they have a section next to that called pizza snacks and pizza snacks is such a good word for describing category it is and it's so smart it's right because you know the pizza rolls you can get your totino's pizza rolls there you can get your french bread pizza rolls there or pizzas there you can get your hot pockets there also and i think this is smart you can get your um mozzarella sticks there and by the way you do want to probably try the the tgi friday brand mozzarella sticks those are the ones that come out they're kind of like um they're not round they're more like kind of like flat you know what i mean have you ever had those kind of flat style

ones probably at a tgi friday

Okay.

At some point in my life Probably with you

I don't know if we've ever done the front

What's the one that we go to when we're in Eureka

And I'm not joking Chili's came up for some reason in the news recently I don't know why Literally they might have been putting one in an airport somewhere Or Chili's is back somewhere

I think the story was Chili's is back In the airport? What I saw was this TikTok commentator Who I really like Her name is Mads We've played her on the show before Oh, she's so funny. And all I saw was her saying, Chili's is back. Honey, it never left, basically. That's my knowledge of this story.

Okay, well, anyway, but I was thinking of you. I was looking at Chili's food online for some reason and thinking, me and Luke have got to get ourselves to a Chili's fast. I don't know why I can't just go to a Chili's without you now. I love it that that's our special place. I did once in Arizona. I got those riblets, and it was awful. Remember my terrible riblet story?

This summer, when we're out and about gallivanting, you and I and possibly John Sklaroff, that's our love language. We need to do some damage. But so you go in, and you just kind of look around, and you kind of see what is striking your fancy in that moment. You'll bring it all home, and then you air fry most of it, right? It's all air friable?

Most of it these days I do. The pizza would go in there, then.

The pizza products.

The full pizza would. Pizza rolls, Totino's are great in the air fryer because everything's going to be a little bit crispier that way. And also now our oven is an air fryer, so the lines are getting a little blurry. But we call it freezer feast, borrowing that from some friends who call it freezer feast. Their whole thing was like on some night of the week, they would just open up their freezer and they'd have a bunch of remnants of this kind of stuff left over. They'd say they want to have a freezer feast night and they would just put it all together. I am more intentional with my freezer feast. I go, by the way, I left something off the menu here, which is another just again, if you're just talking about the options here, frozen meatballs. Now, this is not something that a lot of people are going to be serving at their Super Bowl parties, probably. And I'm not talking about the kind that like Swedish meatballs, which are also good. And I could get into that. But when I make them, I will just buy a bag of like Italian style frozen meatballs, put them in the oven. And then, especially if I have guests over, I will get the cutest ramekins I can find in the house and fill one with, like, a spicy mustard and one with a barbecue sauce and one with maybe even a –

I'm hungry for ramekins.

Yes, I know. And maybe even, like, a tomato sauce or, you know, like a marinara sauce is the word I'm looking for there. And anyway, yeah, so you can have fun with meatballs too, Luke. So, yeah, there's a lot of options. But you've got to just, like, kind of go. And I'm not joking when I say this. The absolute best part of all of this is the moment I'm in the grocery store because it's all potential. And I swear to God, it's never as good as I – and it's never bad. Well, sometimes it's bad. I know what you mean, though. I mean, it depends on how the Browns were doing in 2017. Maybe it's bad. But, like, honestly, it's just like the waking up or even maybe going to the store the day before and just being like, tomorrow, I don't know what it's going to be. But I am loaded for bear. The freezer is filled with shit. I'm going to start with a Bloody Mary. Everything is in front of you. Everything is in front of you. Exactly.

That's the best feeling. It's like I used to always say that the best part of the vacation is actually right when you're clocking out. Ten minutes before you're clocking out of your last day of work before the vacation because that's when you have the maximum amount of vacation still.

the best part of the vacation is the one day that you built in at the end of the vacation between the end of the vacation the buffer you know who's you know who's like that andrew by the way

uh becca yeah is not a like let's let's get home sunday night at 11 and we'll just kind of monday is just gonna suck for us but we'll have one more day at the place she is much like you she is she needs to settle in probably but but it's like do a crossword like okay like needs to just kind of get back into her zone get back into her routine uh but you know just get get her real life ready to go in a way that i mean ideally i would have that buffer day too but if i have a choice usually between one more day on the vacation or a full day home buffering i i usually go and stay a little

veeves and i i think are wired that way yeah very much so by the time we're in the like last hours of the vacation i just want to get a move on i just want to and i just you know i love being home You know, I mean, there's in a certain way we joke about me being a hermit, but like in a certain way, like it really is like the reason I enjoy a day at the end of the vacation is because even a vacation, as much fun as that may be, like I really love being at home and settling in and puttering and coming home and doing laundry and just like, yeah, getting my life right again and kind of getting my. time back and just turning on the tv or the computer or whatever it is and just being being and i think in a certain way as silly as it is and again i'm sort of the butt of a lot of jokes about being a hermit like there's something nice about liking your life like

there's something nice about liking home you know yeah no i mean i'm out and about doing all god knows what because of uh inability to be alone with myself at home with my darts with your darts I'm not kidding though. I hear what you're saying though. If there's going to be something that you like doing, it's good that it's being in the lovely home that you and Genevieve purchased and that you've put a considerable time into setting up how you like. It's a lot better than the alternative, which is I hate being home.

yeah yeah and i do i mean and i don't think that people who have the travel bug hate being home i you know i wouldn't i wouldn't cast that aspersion but like it is i maybe i'm just spinning it for myself i'm like you know what i'm gonna stop being so self-deprecating about this and don't get me wrong i mean you that could slip into a type of a type of um you know you you need to leave the house every now and then you need to take a walk you need to you need to smell the air but um like smell the air that's what we're doing to the air right uh we're smelling it we're sniffing it in a while but you know obviously you can be too reclusive and that's not that's not great but

uh no there's i saw you went out with my good friend and your good friend john goodwin i was

gonna mention yeah i saw that you made it out it was during that we watched that game together the

one that got us i was managing his expectations on that if you don't mind me telling you about my social skills not your social skills about your wanting to leave your house because he said hey I'm going to be in Seattle, I'm going to see if I can get Walsh to come out. And I said to him, if he passes, please don't take that as any sort of personal reflection on you. I said, he's been really leaning into his basement darts lifestyle, which I was just trying to, I was actually trying to take some pressure off of you in case you were just kind of not feeling it that day or whatever. But then I was very pleasantly surprised to see you out and about in the world with John watching some football, even though it didn't go our way.

Yeah, well, no, that's an easy hang. I love John and also like meeting up with somebody to like watch a football game that starts at five o'clock over a couple of beers and some crinkle fries you know that's a pretty easy get for me if you're trying to get me that's a pretty easy good to know I think that's the thing

that's the thing you want to place under the box that's got like a stick holding it up that's an

Andrew trap exactly you put a little put the ballet under there you're not catching me you

put a little bit of bleachers never catch you'll never catch an Andrew that way by the way I heard

The Coindexter's is closing. Do you think they'll make it the crosswalk again? Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?

Well, I now do. So that's what the crosswalk became. Was it basically like some kind of a video game parlor?

Yeah, basically. And it's still there. And I don't know. This is rumor, by the way. I just remembered that we're not talking on the phone, that people are listening to it.

We've gone to that phase of today's episode where it's literally just me and Andrew talking.

But when I met up with John, the reason I bring this up is that we met at this place called Bleachers, which is right in the main strip of the Greenwood neighborhood. And there's, you know, various bars around there. The Baron office is directly across the street, which we've talked about on the show a lot. And about one door or two doors down is a place called Coindexter's, which is like a bar that, yeah, as you said, Luke, it's like a lot of video games and pinball machines in there. And it used to be this bar that I used to like. It was a dive bar called the Crosswalk, which I always liked. But I swear to God, the woman at Bleachers who told me this, the bartender who's been working there for, I think she's had 20 years or something. And Bleachers has even moved locations in that time, but it's always been kind of in that area. And I mentioned like, oh, I used to love that bar when it was called The Crosswalk. She is somebody who has seen some things in her life and does not seem like she would cower at the idea of a dive bar. She grimaced at the idea of hanging out on The Crosswalk. I'm like, everybody, like, I remember taking friends there. I remember meeting up with friends, and one of them was pregnant, and she met up with us there. And I look back at that place, and people refer to it as a very, like, there are dive bars, and then people say that that is a stabby dive bar. I want to say, I never saw anything stabby going on in that bar. I liked it. I liked the floors. I thought the staff was very nice there. But anyway, it closed down years ago. It became Coindexters. and now apparently Coindexters this is just a rumor maybe on its way out as well which is kind of a bummer for that area I had just finally accepted the fact that the crosswalk is now

Coindexters and I started frequenting it well I've still never accepted that uh the uh like whatever this is now I'm looking at it I think it's like a maybe a some kind of a mini mart or a cannabis place or something let's see if I can get closer to this oh uh whatever Verity is Is Verity, is that a credit? I'm not sure

Where are we looking?

It's directly across the street From like bleachers That used to be

a mcdonald's when i was a kid whoa i can't picture mcdonald's in the neighborhood i don't think

you're allowed to put mcdonald's in those neighborhoods and that mcdonald's that thing that's it's a yellow building it's 8533 greenwood that not that building but like in the footprint of where that used to be it was a mcdonald's and that was where i would climb up in that weird hamburger jail thing and stuff like i loved that mcdonald's when i was a wee a wee boy so it's just something odd not even odd but just something interesting about like so much of your adult life kind of your experience happening in a place where i had so many like childhood experiences like this little stretch of i mean you know and i also had a lot of adult experiences here too but like this is really i say this a lot but this is one of the places so the cradle of my youth we used to go to that fred meyer a lot you know me and my buddies and

stuff this was this was our hang down here yeah i'm looking at the building that used to be a mcdonald's it is sort of on a corner sort of like a pedestrian corner we'll call it for the sake of

But see, that middle area where there's kind of some bushes, that used to be, that was the playground. That was the McDonald's playground back in the day.

So it had a bigger footprint. Now, was the Baranoff the Baranoff when you were growing up?

Yes, it was, and I was scared of it. That was where some of my friends' mom's boyfriends would come home from smelling like cigarette smoke and anger. Yes. I'd be like, Terry was down at the Baranoff, and I'd be like, I'm going to probably ride my bike home now.

This is a good strip, though. I'm looking, I'm taking a little virtual walk.

That's old school Seattle, I mean, in a way. I mean, you know, there's a lot of it is also kind of new school, but I feel like that little strip of Greenwood, stretch of Greenwood, has retained the vibe of Seattle that I remember from my young, I mean, other than McDonald's is gone. Like, the Baranoff is very much like 1980s Seattle in my mind. And, you know, it seems to – it hasn't been overly – I don't know if I want to use the term gentrified or not, but it just – it seems like it's retaining some of the qualities that I identify very closely with Seattle of my youth.

I'm seeing – okay, we've got to end the show now because now I'm just telling you what I'm seeing on Google Maps. I'm looking at bleachers from the outside, and I'm zooming in on it, and I realize if you zoom in enough, you can see the reflection of the Google car that is taking the picture in the windows of bleachers, if that makes sense.

Oh, how about this observation, Andrew? If you keep going on Greenwood, you keep going south on Greenwood.

If you're doing the street view. Yep, I'm going. Keep going south on.

But just barely, there's some cars that were lined up on Greenwood Avenue about to cross the street, I guess. So they're on the other side of Greenwood Avenue across 85th, right?

Okay, but they're not on 85th.

They're not on 85th. They're on Greenwood Avenue. Oh, now I'm seeing them. Look at the second car. Is it a chance that's Camaro, Kev? That might literally be Camaro Kev.

Is it possible Camaro Kev was captured by the Google? Can we? Wait, if I go another one, the way the sleeves are rolled up. No, the arm looks different. And if you've gone another click forward. He's not wearing a pride hat. And he's not wearing, is that the pride?

It's one of the kick-punching things he's into. It looks like a different arm.

Yeah, and you can see this person's wearing shorts. I can't picture Camaro Kev in shorts. Are you in the view now where you can see down into the window? Yeah, I'm kind of getting all up on this guy's legs.

How great would it have been, though, if we had just captured a Camaro Kevin the Wild? Oh, man, so good.

I still want to send it to him and check. Anyway, happy Blur's Day. How do you guys find something to talk about every day of the week?

Well, sometimes we can't get to the top stories, Andrew, like today, because we have important business. What are we doing? Street viewing people in cars that our friends also own. Oh, my goodness gracious. Let's get out of here. You know, normally I would apologize now, but we've decided no apologies on this show.

No, this is... Ever forward. That's right. We are the bad boys of Babylon. We sure are. The bad boys of Babylon.

And we've got an episode coming your way tomorrow. It's our final episode of the week. And you already know part of the show. It'll be some of the top stories we didn't get to today. And some other cool stuff, actually, that I do think you're going to enjoy. We're launching a brand new segment tomorrow. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Thursday. Take care of yourself. Be safe, and please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

One thing I can promise you is the sun will come up tomorrow, and we'll be attacking it with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.

Power out.