Muse

All right, movie first. The one first movie we're going to talk about is Zero Dark Thirty, which is a documentary about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, one of the original bad guys in cinema and in the world. And as we all remember so many years ago, a couple years ago, we had the death of Osama bin Laden, killed in action after we spent years hunting him for the murder of 9-11 and who is responsible for terrible terror and about the men and women who did take him out and killed him and all the work that went into going through that with the Navy SEALs and the attack on his compound because of where they knew where he was. TBTL!

Their program is loose, but it is prepared ahead to be casual with heavy references to sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

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Hey, Time Bandit, you're listening to TBTL from the past. It's just not real.

Well, all right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL. It's an audiophiles nightmare. The show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. It is our turn. Coming to you from an area perched high above Onoloa Beach in the far northwest corner of the island of Maui.

I'm sorry, I'm tan. I like to be tan. It just feels good.

It sure does. We got here yesterday and it was torrentially raining, which is always a treat when you've traveled halfway across the world to try to find sunny weather. But today looks like it's going to be blue skies and sunshine and just an absolute treasure of a day here on this episode. 4,387 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

I've traveled all the way here to Maui, but my animal empathy, my intrusive animal empathy, has apparently found a last-minute standby seat on the flight out here because we were here for, I don't know, an hour and went down to the beach and I was immediately googling is it okay if a sea turtle beaches itself?

I like turtles.

We may get into that. But also, an 11-year-old kid has pulled, that's the term they use, has pulled what is currently probably the most valuable baseball card in the world.

Because I've got a golden ticket

and i want to be clear this is not a story about baseball this is a story about how i may get into collecting baseball cards because of my love slash problem with gambling this is a simple game you throw the ball you hit the ball you catch the ball also it's a thursday aka blurs day so uh we'll do the blurs day messages and we're going to talk to this guy longest running co-bro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships after a series of hr meetings he's finally got his attitude in order i agree with everything that you said he's andrew walsh and

he's joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke hope you're having a nice quasi vacation and i realize looking at the show sheet and all of your field notes from maui that today

is i love that that makes it sound like some real some real darwin shit some real important scientific journaling as opposed to me just writing out my my various annoying thoughts

especially if you have to sketch them first in a moleskin little notepad doesn't that make you just want to do things doesn't having a moleskin make you want to fill it up it does and yet i have

so many and so many have the first three pages filled with like the dimensions of a window that i'm thinking about buying curtains for as opposed to like a a cool rendering of a dodo bird or something no it's just kind of like wait what's the opening for that sliding glass door that's the kind of field notes that I tend to create you know I tend to have a little notebook in front of

me when we do the show although I'm noticing now that I don't have any oh here's one um but uh I have a little like kind of spiral notebook with the spiral like the really cheap kind you just get at the grocery store like literally you can slip it in your front pocket your front like breast pocket.

and it's got a spiral at the top and i will just like you know mine they're not worth saving because they're just like scratched notes of things that i'll write down like if i want to remember something you said and i want to come back to it or something but usually you look down at it it's just gibberish at the end of a show if anything and the other day i was telling hannah this but this happened during tbtl i looked down after a recording of tbtl and the only thing on my notepad was the word podcast and then i struck through it and i have no idea i have no idea how is that not the show can that be today's show because i don't think i realized until afterwards oh hey but i did want to say getting back to notes we don't have to get into this now honestly if you don't want to we should check check in with you and what's going on out there but i do want to say at some point i don't know if it's tomorrow or early next week when you're back i almost hit back in the states uh when you're back in the lower 48 um we have to talk about chris hayes on the dan levitard show did you have a chance to listen to that yet um i uh watched a clip of it

and uh and and actually i ended up watching a number of clips of it so i i haven't listened to it all the way through but what i saw and listened to was spectacular i mean that's just two great tastes that taste great together but i will say this not we don't have to have this whole conversation right now either but i did say i texted to chris directly i said nice job on levitard and also i think you unlocked something inside of andrew that andrew didn't know was there because and i don't even know what i mean by that but just this collision course so to speak of these two things that you really really love like i your reaction to it was it was very was a strong

reaction stronger than i expected it and i mean this is no disrespect to chris because chris did wonderfully on the show he really did i mean he i will know he's perfect for that show like his

sports knowledge his political knowledge is just being down and able to have conversations is

ideally suited for that i mean that's the thing he can just hang in any conversation which is amazing so what i'm about to say does not take away from any of that but the thing that was blowing my because i've heard chris on other i've heard chris talking to seth meyers another even on this show even even on this show you usually don't let me talk during those segments that's okay um but anyway no but of course we we know and love and i agree with everything that you said but what was blowing me away is my relationship with the dan levitard show has gone very far and very deep over the past i'm going to say five to six years to the point where and we've talked about this a lot on the show and we'll revisit it when we really get into this conversation but i i mean you want to talk about a parasocial relationship like when i listen to the levitard show now i don't even know if i like it but i can't stop listening you know what i mean it's like i'm i'm it's like i'm always bickering with them sort of in my head especially dan or put a

slash through listen and substitute with donate and you've described our pitch for the next tv telephone right you don't know if you like it but you can't stop donating no i do like it of course

but i it's a you know it's a show that is very kind of personality based and those personalities are a group of producers and hosts and people who come and go on that show and you sort of don't realize how you start to feel like you have a personal relationship with all of them until one of them asks a question to chris hayes and you're sort of on the edge of your seat like

and i don't even know who i was nervous like don't embarrass us don't embarrass us in front

of chris or or i mean but i don't even yeah there is a sort of a that gets close to it but not quite the sensation but here's the here's where i will end this conversation now so we can move on to hawaii talk but putting a pin in this because i would really like to return to it in fact i'm going to pull a piece of tape because there's a specific piece of tape where and i say this with humility and i say this knowing chris will hear it and i think that he will agree um there is a moment where you and i are in that room now i'm not saying we get a shout out or anything like that but there is a moment that i will play for you where we are 100 in that room a moment happens on that that does not happen if chris doesn't know us and i will tell i will play that tape

oh and you are going to delight in it adjacent you are loving adjacent to talented people doing You know, my experience with that, I was texting with our friend P. Fletch the other day. Howard Stern was trying so hard to reference a story of mine, I think, the other day, and just either couldn't or didn't. And I was telling Phyllis that if he would have just said the words CBS Sunday morning, my heart would have thrilled in a way that maybe your heart is thrilling to hear Chris maybe using TBTL language or being somehow TBTL influenced. They call it being TBTL pilled. The thing with Stern was he was interviewing Nikki Glaser after, like, the morning after she had hosted the Golden Globes, and it was clear that he had watched the Sunday morning profile. One, because he's known to watch that show, I think, pretty religiously, and two, because he kept citing things from our story as far as, like, I know how you practice these jokes by going to these clubs, and he was almost verbatim doing the kind of script. And he goes, you've been doing so many interviews, and I've just been watching interviews with you.

And all he needed to complete the sentence was on CBS Sunday morning. And then, Andrew, my life would have had some meaning.

Not even mentioning your name, but at least getting the outlet and just verifying. But, you know, like, you know, right now, sitting here today on the 23rd, that he saw your piece. There's 99 percent.

I would be shocked if he didn't because. Yeah. And he's citing again, he's citing specific things about her process and her like her longtime partner, etc. that were just literally lines from our story so i'm like this is you're all the way there you're 99 of the way there just go the last one percent and say on there's no way he's going to remember my name that's okay but he could just say on cbs sunday morning and i would i would feel validated but now i have this to look forward to on monday is hearing about or even tomorrow andrew we don't have to wait don't delay joy this could be a friday topic for us but i want to say also like

i may be exaggerating a little bit i don't want to get your hopes up too high he doesn't say big he doesn't say big ups to my business boys at tbtl.net well then why even play the tape had i known this is one of those things i didn't know that he doesn't give us mega booyahs he does not which i that was one of the big if there's a moment and again i don't want to give away too much we'll talk more there's a moment where dan levitard says is there anybody you'd like to give mega booyahs to and chris mentioned to kate somebody i don't know who that is but i was really disappointed. I don't need it. It doesn't ring a bell. I was really disappointed. Okay, I will put a pin in it. I want to set expectations a little bit. I mean, the only people who would understand what I say when I say you and I were in the room would be you, me, and Chris. And I guess maybe the listeners of the show to the degree that... And the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit. So just understand that when I say that, I mean that it's a pretty specific, insider-y kind of thing. It's like Chris's reaction to something that I know he's reacting to because of us. So we'll talk more about that. How is Hawaii?

it's um it's actually really really great i was this is a very short trip uh yesterday was becca's birthday and uh we're coming back on saturday so as i mentioned uh on the show the other day it's like kind of like it's a weird experience to travel this far for just a few days but it was how the schedule worked and i'll tell you sitting here this morning uh looking out at the uh ocean and the uh the the the blue sky and the puffy white clouds i am extremely glad that we jump through the hoops to get here the problem with being here is that it really highlights one of my worst and I think like most uncontrolled deficiencies by uncontrolled I mean a deficiency that I have not in any way been able to figure out how to fix which is my sense of geography and space like I have a huge problem with spatial reasoning I have a huge problem with remembering what any of the names of the hawaiian islands are or what thing is on what island and a lot of that's on me i think some of it's on the naming convention because the big island i believe is also the island of hawaii right but then you've got oahu is on the big island but the island's not named oahu correct is that or is there an island of oahu becks okay like we're we're on maui which has kihei but does not have it's just the what i can't ever keep straight is is what kind of notable place is on which one of these islands and also the fact that one of them is called the big island but its name isn't big island its name is hawaii but that means big island this is for some reason is information that my brain cannot keep track of to the degree that years and years ago when flying out here for a wedding i booked the tickets to the wrong island like to the wrong place because i i mean i understood these were distinct islands but somehow i thought it's just called hawaii we're going to hawaii so the way that this really showed up yesterday was when we when we got here so we're staying at a little airbnb in this um like kind of gulf uh complex out here way in the northwest part of the island of maui becca's brother and uh his wife are also out here they're doing something Andrew by the way that I kind of want to talk about later which is they are legit in a news blackout like when we got here they all came over last night to where we're staying and we went out to get some dinner and stuff and like it was kind of crazy to talk to Scott and Tiff and try to explain to them without giving them too much information that like what Elon Musk did and like the executive orders and stuff because they came out here on sunday or saturday and have genuinely and intentionally not consumed any news from as you called it the lower 48 well it was like we found like two like like two david bowie's fell to earth and we're trying to explain to them what planet earth is like they are totally

completely out of the loop and i was kind of envious now i mean you sort of said you want

to talk about it later i don't know if this well that's what i wanted to say i was envious of their Thank you. follow up here thoroughness of their news blackout because there's a difference between a news

blackout and saying like i really haven't been paying attention i've been even saying actively blocking it out and you know nothing is seeping in and that's a whole thing but then are these folks also sort of asking or at least implying that please don't break the wall or break the facade for us a little bit like in conversation are you sort of of like like if i had the like if i had the browns game taped you know like and i'm gonna be i'm gonna ask you to be careful about not giving me any spoilers right i'm not trying to make light of the situation because it's pretty serious and i understand people trying to protect their mental health um it's been just a really horrible week honestly to consume the news and just the absolute plus wordle this morning becca said i need to ask you about that oh yeah i did mine i was up late last night so i did it late last night i did survive though it was a sixer for me though it was a sixer yeah yeah it was down

to the wire here in maui andrew but survived we got six but survived okay the streak that's the streak i think most people who i know who are serious about this they can track their streak

back to what corer yes yes well these and i both busted out on the same day about uh well less than two weeks ago so i think i'm on a 13 day streak or something so but yeah core remember what that word was i don't but i know that it was one of those that wasn't a specifically difficult word but it was one where there were just too many options like all of almost everybody got the last three letters right but then just like punted punted punted until like they busted out because they were just yeah i don't know what the construction was at the time but anyway all that is to say you understand my question though yeah are these folks like kind of like hey don't let me know too much or they're like no no i mean we can have a conversation about this we just have successfully sort of come into this conversation without a lot of knowledge well no it's that's

actually a really good question because i didn't stop last night when they got here i was excited to see them i was excited to be here together to celebrate becca's birthday and i didn't actually ask myself the question do they want to know this like they've been avoiding it am i the person to tell them that elon musk did the nazi salute twice like i thought it was once you told me it was twice i have to just believe that and now i'm telling now i'm putting that evil inside of them about that now no i believe you but i'm saying i haven't even i've never watched like like you're like you're the you're the first writing on the carbon copy thing and then i'm the next sheet down and now scott and tiff are the third sheet down so it's like by the time they're like to

quote our friend chris hayes that's a dangerous game dano precisely so you're right i didn't i

didn't stop to ask are these people um you know sort of engaging in a self-care out here that i don't need to be the person to bring i don't need to bring this i don't need to paul revere this all the way out to to maui um they didn't seem they didn't like put their fingers in their ears and and and you know start singing so they seem to take it you know as well as you can take that kind of information and they were genuinely shocked but it was yeah it was just kind of interesting to because they're both very plugged in they're both very aware of the world generally speaking and to be like the person delivering this information however many days later you know three three whole days later it felt weird to be the the the town crier on that well the fact that

you traveled with that bell that big claimy bell that you clang and a scroll politics

hear ye hear ye and uh i un i unscrolled it and then i i read i read them the news was one of

Those things where you unscrolled, and we thought it was just going to be maybe like, I don't know, two feet of paper, but then you unscrolled it and ended up being like just like a mile long length of paper that rolled down the stairs. And I realized it was actually a CVS receipt. Yes, nice.

But so, okay, so back to the geography thing and back to where I really need to learn how maps work. um so we knew that they were staying down in the kind of the the slightly more i guess you know populated and active part of the island of maui which i guess is sort of called kihei i mean there's a few different spots but let's just let's just call it kihei and initially becca and i were going to stay in a hotel kind of down in that general area but uh i thought i was looking at the hotel i was looking at the aerial photos of the hotel and it was like one of those ones where it's not actually on the beach it's kind of in like a big parking lot with like a you know some sort of laser spine specialist you know located not far away like it seemed like it was surrounded by a lot of stuff that didn't feel overly tropical to me unless they put a lay on you while they're doing the laser spine specializing like it just didn't feel i don't know i just at the last second i panicked and i got onto old airbnb and i was looking around for like a affordable airbnb spot that would be uh you know know have at least kind of a view of the water and would seem again more tropical less uh laser spine surgery specialists and I found this place and I looked at it on this map and I I'm not kidding you my thought was I was looking at like a map of the island of Maui I was looking at the town of Kihei and I was looking at where our thing is and I thought that's about six inches away my brain like I understood it wasn't but I thought how far could six inches be like that's I'm looking at this and i can see both of these places that's not it's an island it's not very far away of course it's like an hour plus away from where they're staying because i you said you're in the did you

say north um eastern because wouldn't that be that would northwestern oh okay so you're just north you're just north of kihei you're not north i thought you were like literally on the opposite

end of the island we're not on the we did not take the road to hana to get here but we're actually on something we're in some complex that's kind of known as uh Kapalua which is another thing which is this is really funny this is I guess you could say this is a weird indication of where my life as an adult has has brought me versus my life as a as a child and by that I mean when we pulled into this place because again we're just renting this for three nights or whatever I didn't know and I didn't, it didn't say when I rented it via Airbnb, the actual name of this sort of like larger complex. We're in some subdivision. We're in like the Bay Villas of whatever. Right. But when we pulled in, I stopped and took a picture of this sign of this golf resort. It was like, you don't understand Becca. This golf resort has been my constant companion because why? Because my dad used to wear a t-shirt from here because my parents had been here. No, because my mom got it at the lakeside school rummage sale and my dad probably wore this Kapalua t-shirt for 15 years of my growing up years and I don't think I even knew it was a real place I just knew that my dad used to wear this shirt that said Kapalua and it had this butterfly with a pineapple in the middle of it I don't think he even thought about it but I just it's one of those childhood sense memories and then pulling in here and being like oh this is actually a place that's where this shirt was from and now we're staying here now we're not buying a place here we don't come here regularly we're just air we're just pretending to be the kind of people that come to this golf resort but something about coming to this place that was visually part of me growing up but in a but not in a very sort of specific way it was kind of a weird it was a

weird experience for me it's a weird way to find out your parents are swingers the pineapple was upside down just saying i don't even know just saying there's by the way

becca is over there like doing a wordle with apple airpod max is on and still gave me a look about that swingers joke i don't even understand how she understood that bad joke you just made

sir i know i don't even like to make that joke because of course like i don't whatever i think there's a lot of like for a while there everybody's like oh pineapple swingers i'm like i think this this uh trend or this joke or whatever it is has gotten out of control at one point a pineapple might have meant something in the community it maybe still does but it was sort of like the broader society heard about it then it kind of got over reference and i'm yeah but it does remind me

of a story that my mom has taken time out of her schedule to clarify with me that her and my father are still into it so that's kind of on her if we get a little you know racy with the joke yeah i

shouldn't um i shouldn't bring your parents boudoir into this but it does remind me when okay so can i tell this story without hurting anybody i think so um so imagine right now you are in sunny kapalua and i'm gonna take you though to when uh 2002 a winter what a time in boston or maybe cambridge and uh me and my small group of close friends are having drinks and one of them recently went through a divorce now this is rare in our friend group for somebody to already be going through a divorce this early on i'm i might obviously before you had met me

where i would really really blow up the curve on that friends of yours who've been divorced

this is like i mean because we're we're you know pretty fresh out of college and everything and um i'm leaving names out of this i'm there with me and veves and a group of close friends and then sort of a a friend that i i know but is more of a friend of a friend and it's this friend of a friend um who i think has he already gone through a divorce i can't remember exactly the details around this but basically he sort of casually says that the somehow there was some sort of transgression that ended up happening and involved a firefighter and like something outside the marriage and it was casually just mentioned that well you know how firefighter communities are they're all swingers and this was one of those things that Genevieve and I puzzled on for so long first because we're just like did did he just say that like you know like not there in the moment but as we like as we went back to our respective corners we're like is that a thing like were we supposed to know that and is that a thing we can look up like is that just like firefighters and i think maybe for a while we're just like well you know firefighters they're all swingers right like one of those things that looking back doesn't i don't think holds up to scrutiny

at all certainly not it's not a like a trope that i have been aware of before this conversation

and i think that this might have been and again i want to be gentle here and also i probably have messed up a lot of the details here it doesn't really matter for you in the listening audience really but there are some people in my life who might be hearing this and recounting this in their heads in a very different way but i think my takeaway is this person was cheated upon and as As part of the as part of the coping or explanation or something, they were maybe really attaching themselves to this idea of like, well, it's a firefighter. What are you going to do? You know, like it's man's search for meaning. Like I don't know how much I just remember Veeves and I for a big chunk of our young adult lives were just kind of like firefighters or swingers. Like, are they swinging in that firehouse right now? Turns out we live near a firehouse now. I believe no swinging goes on some pickleball goes on. But as far as I can tell, no swinging.

Somehow for this person, that being the case might have emotionally blunted some of the pain for whatever reason. So that that was that was the reality that they were embracing because it helped them probably get through this experience.

Or they're just sorting things out. Yeah, I don't know. God, I mean, this is, again, one of those memories where if you tap me on the shoulder then and asked me if I was an adult, I'd say, are you kidding me? Of course, I'm a full grown adult. Look at me. I'm drinking I'm drinking zombies at angry yees like of course I'm of course I'm an adult and now I look back and like I was a child you know what I mean like pretty fresh out of college and and we're all just still figuring things out then too maybe we are our whole life maybe that's the whole

point you know speaking of pineapples we do have one here it's right side up by the way Andrew but we picked it up at this cute little local store yesterday on the advice of the person who was flying next to us out here who was well-intentioned but i believe becca sort of described her when we got to the airport in hawaii as kind of the person you don't maybe want to get stuck flying next to

they were in your row like right there with the two they were in our row and the first thing that

happened was when so we had the window seat in the middle seat okay well the first first thing that happened was we almost missed the flight which was ridiculous because we were there plenty early but because through a series of unfortunate events which involved me not putting becca's tsa pre-check number in the reservation we show up at that tsa pre-check line the the normal line i guess was kind of on the longer side the pdx employees were were helpfully saying uh you go here and not there because that line's really long and uh so we go through the pre-check line and we get up to the front and i have the little check but but becca doesn't on her ticket like she has it in real life but i had forgotten to enter the data oh no and the person who like

sometimes they have somebody who's standing at the front of the tsa pre-check line to make sure you're not even getting in that line if you're not supposed to yeah they didn't look closely

enough they they weren't even there that was nobody in fact you know i usually find that mildly annoying because i'm kind of like um to use the riverside parlance andrew that only you'll appreciate yeah i'm wearing headphones yeah you know what i mean like yeah of course of course I wouldn't be in this line.

The program that we use every day asks, are you wearing headphones or not? And it's a legit question because a lot of people use this program to record. We've had Nick Jarn on the show who joins our Riverside just by using his phone. Yes, just by using his phone and no headphones. So it's a legit question, but there's something about asking us every day as you and I are in our quasi-professional radio studios putting on headphones. It's like, yes, I'm wearing headphones. Have I ever said, no, I'm not?

But in this case, it would have actually been kind of helpful for that person to be standing there. It would have saved us from going up and getting in the line. So then now it's like, OK, we were a little more than an hour early for our flight. Our bags are checked through. And now the question is, do we just go get in the regular line or do we go back to the Alaska Airlines folks and ask them to please reenter the information? and so we decide i think i decide and again this was just a serious there's like three to four bad decisions by me in a row starting with not entering the info in the first place then thinking let's because i want to mention the general the regular boarding line wasn't one of those crazy things that you see on the tv news like when it's thanksgiving yeah it wasn't even that bad but i think i'm so laser focused on this idea of we've we've we've maximized the efficiencies of everything with this pre-check like this we're gonna race through and we won't even take we won't even take our shoes off can you imagine taking your shoes off that takes over one hour to take off your shoes and put them like somehow in my mind it was like there was probably 15 to 20 people in the regular line like we could have just walked over gotten that line it was fine i'm telling you it was also kind of early in the morning i don't think my faculties were fully engaged so it's like all right we're going back to the airline so then we go back and it happens again, Andrew, there's the, um, like the, the line, uh, to get help at the airline desk where you are like a, you know, premier, whatever, like I am. And then there's the regular line. Well, the regular line looks like it's moving faster, but I'm like, I'll be gosh darned if I'm not going to take advantage of, you know, all of the miles I've put in. So we get into like the fancy line, which sure enough takes longer than the regular line. This is of course, part of a pattern of behavior for me of thinking that there's something, something better about the more special kind of like a premiere anything. So we finally get up to the front and the woman who actually had checked our bags in the first place is trying to fix this on Becca's ticket, but it can't be fixed because we're now we're getting close to the flight. Now we're 35 minutes out from the flight. And I am saying to the woman who's kind of on the older side and maybe doesn't didn't seem like a digital native, if you know what I mean. She's like, I can't get it to go. And I'm like, well, if we're going to miss the flight, can we just go get, we'll just go get back in the general and she just keeps like getting becca to give her the pre-check number again and again and she's going i don't know and i keep saying well if we're gonna if it's not going to work we'll just go get in the general line because at this point now i'm starting to get worried that we're going to miss the flight is this like when there might be like let's say like

a small audio problem like a small crackle in the line or a hiss on the line and i could probably just use a different like probably just move something over on my board and deal with it later but i cannot do the show until i've gotten everything squeaky clean and in order well listen Is this woman Andrewing you?

Well, first of all, I don't agree to that premise because I think that the fact that you care about that stuff is a big part of why TBTL is listenable. So I am not trying to tell you not to approach your audio life that way, despite the fact that I started today's show with a drop of Kyra Isdall saying it's an audiophile's nightmare. In her case, it was she did seem like kind of a dog with a bone. And the bone was, which again, that's a can-do attitude that i'm usually looking for you know yeah if it was two hours before the flight i love that this woman is willing to move heaven and earth yeah but right now i i'm worried that we may we may win the battle and lose the war yes getting on the flight and so finally she's like okay well i checked her out of the flight and i'm like that doesn't sound good she's like but that's the only way that i could get her on the pre-check and i was like okay so she prints the ticket out and now now we're like legit stressed we go back to the the gate or rather to the pre-check the pre-check is now way longer than the regular like orders of magnitude like there are uh you know people that are being um wheeled in wheelchairs there are people with babies there's the other thing about the pre-check line at pdx is it's also where they kick was that I'll listen to those Hawaiian birds. You heard that.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

Yeah, they're, we, hey guys, you're on, you're on.

Go.

And go. You're live. And action.

Line. It does seem like they shut up. They shut up the second we lay out for them. The line is tweaked.

So one of the things that I learned actually from our friend, listener Mark, the master of transport mark who is who's worked professionally in just about every way that you can move across the the planet uh when i was telling that story of the flight attendant that was sitting next to me at lax uh who was had brought her was she wasn't working but she was traveling you know as a you know as basically a normal civilian but had brought her own alcohol in her water bottle which i found really like kind of annoying only because the number one thing they tell us is don't drink your own alcohol on the flight mark uh said oh yeah that's you know they don't they don't check our water bottles when we're going through the special security line but there's also a randomizer for the the airline employees meaning sometimes if you're the airline employee and you're going through the special airline thing they'll kick you over to pre-check like just your number comes up and you don't get to go through the regular fancy i work for the airlines you get moved over to where we are and the tsa line at pdx that we go through is where all of those airline employees and it's a lot of them it seems like if five of them go through it will be like three of them all of all that is to say there was a real chris sullivan choke point and now andrew i'm sitting there which it's it's now 20 minutes to the flight it's actually i know the exact number because i said to becca the doors close in 12 minutes because we we jump over to the general boarding. Now peep the irony on this. We are now not. doing the tsa pre-check we are going through the regular thing that we could have gone through now 30 minutes previously and we go because it's just it's the only it's the only chance and we go through it and i get my uh my bag and i put my shoes on and i'm ready to run and they're conferring the the the people that are looking at the scanner or whatever and i here's my theory i think there was some sort of security breach or protocol where all of a sudden my bag made it through and didn't get like a secondary screening all of a sudden every single container of stuff that's coming through is just going into secondary screening like like like there was something had been some security had been breached in such a way that none of for like i don't know 10 people none of those bags were going to just come out to you or you grab them and you keep going they we're all going to go for, like, a closer look. And that included Becca's stuff. And there's, like, five or six, you know, trays in front of her. And there's, like, one not particularly hustly TSA person who's supposed to come over, get the tray, walk it over to the other place, take the stuff out of it, search through it, wipe it with that Stridex pad that's supposed to tell them something, and then put it in the machine and then clear it this has to happen like five or six times and that's when i looked at my watch and i said they're closing the gate in 12 minutes the door

rather so i was like i'm going i'm going to the gate and i'm going to plead with them i'm going to i'm going to if i have to throw myself uh you know in front of the the the door and stop them from from shutting us out of the flight so that's what i did and i get there and uh i'm like you know how I was talking about this the other day uh with some other thing when I'm going into a customer service interaction like this and I have a little bit of time to prep I'm like getting my whole shtick together and I'm I'm playing through the different things do I tell the Alaska Airlines gate folks that the TSA is a complete shit show and that they don't know what they're doing because maybe they have friends that work there that might alienate me so do I go with that approach do I go with the could you be a hero could you be my personal hero and not close this door please before my girlfriend has arrived like how am i going to play this and i get there and i'm like oh man i'm so glad that i'm so glad you know you're still here we had a kind of a hold up at the tsa i think something in the machine was malfunctioning so i was trying to make it a machine issue not a person not an hr issue um and and i'm telling them the whole story and they're being very nice and the guy goes oh no problem he goes you have eight minutes before we closed the door and i was like no no that you don't understand i have as many minutes as we need before my girlfriend gets here so we can get on the flight to go to hawaii all he was telling me was like she'll probably make it you have eight minutes and i was like no you don't i was like you don't understand i am here to i am here to expand that window i have the rest you don't understand i have the rest of time i have i have until tomorrow morning when i have to dial up with andrew to do tbtl uh to keep this you know plane here sir like that's like you just heard my whole spiel and my whole spiel was please don't leave without my girlfriend or in that case without us and he smiled and was very nice and basically said well if it's he said effectively if this is going to take more than eight minutes you're not leaving i was like but luckily okay luckily becca did get there uh in time we of course get on the flight and when we get to our seat which we have the window in the middle the um the woman who's sitting on the aisle seat she stands up and she says I have a very this is a very important part of the flight or I have a very important thing to ask you and we're both like we are literally the last people on this flight like it's one of those things where everyone's like what went wrong in your life that you're just now getting on the plane and I'm like what and she says like um um do you do you want the window seat and I'm just like darn tootin I do like I'm a big window seat person and she's like just because um you know when people get up to go to the bathroom I don't ever go to the bathroom on flights and i'm like yeah we're gonna need the window in the middle she's like okay so we get the window in the middle and then you know this is a six hour flight or something and and it turns out that that she's this person is actually very well intentioned and nice and chatty and obsessed with making us eat the snacks on the flight and drink pog which is the like fruit juice from hawaii that you apparently only get on flights to hawaii they have these special what is it

Is it pomegranate and is there orange juice? Maybe orange and mango? No, that would be palm. That would be palm. Maybe that's what I'm thinking of, though, actually. Maybe it's guava. But, yeah, she's like, so we had both fallen asleep at some point, and we woke up, and she said, they have special snacks on this flight that are only on this flight, and I made them get some for you while you were sleeping, which was actually really thoughtful and sweet. And then she goes on this long, long, like, basically, she's looking at us, waiting for us to eat these special snacks because of how good they are and she's like i just love snacks my whole life is about snacks and then and then she's ordering pog and she's like telling telling becca you got to get this pog and becca's like i'm good for now but i will probably at some point and anyway this woman was was very well intentioned and was giving us all kinds of advice about where to go and where not to go on maui and passion fruit by the way i i said

passion fruit and i'm like that's not the right color and i don't see how that i don't see how that goes together well it's passion orange and guava my apology actually that sounds really good

I'd go for some of that right now. So it's just kind of that thing where she's just a fire hose of information. And there's only so much of it we're going to be able to use in three days. And she'll put her headphones in and put her mask back on and start re-watching her show. And then she'll take her headphones out and take her mask on and go, oh, and one more thing. You've got to go to the aquarium. She was describing this aquarium like it was, I don't know, some combination of NASA and SeaWorld. Like this dome, this white dome that you see from the road. and inside you watch 3D films of whales and stuff. When we drove past it, Andrew, when I tell you we laughed our ass off, it was barely something you would find in a strip mall in Cleveland, and I say that with peace and love. It was not what we were expecting based on the description. She was like, I don't like getting in the ocean. It's so cold, but I love looking at pretty fish, and this is where this aquarium comes in.

Here's the thing about this energy. First of all, I think that I've seen, Or at least like I've sort of witnessed the sort of energy at airports before even going through the security line. And I think I've maybe even gotten in conversations or Genevieve has with like people who have the we've been going to Maui, you know, every year for 30 years. I remember one woman talking to her, I don't know, maybe a friend or somebody she just met in the line in front of us talking about how she and her husband always came. And this is her first year going without her husband. Like, I feel like specifically there are I mean, to a degree, I'm sure this is universal people who vacation in the same spot over and over start to feel a sense of ownership. But I feel like specifically the relationship with like kind of maybe older people who've lived in the Pacific Northwest most of their lives and have been going literally to like the same island like almost every year. And there's something really beautiful about it. They're so excited to get on the plane because they're going on vacation. So they're amped up and they're in a good mood. But then also, like, they just do feel a sense of ownership and they want to share that with you. And I understand, by the way, I'm not usually super interested in that either because I'm like, I don't know. I'm probably going to watch Don't Look Up in the condo while I make myself some eggs and sausage. Like, don't waste your breath on me. But there is something sweet about that. I understand. Yes.

And this woman and her family had lived actually in Lahaina, of all places, which, of course, was really, really destroyed by those fires. And so she had lived here, too. So she was really, really, really insistent upon, again, from a good place, trying to help inform us on what to do. But most of it was just stuff that Becca and I kind of knew instinctively was not really for us necessarily. But here's the thing, and I didn't realize this until later, and this is when I became retroactively a little sore at this woman. At some point, I think when Becca, you know, like hours into the flight, needed to go and use the bathroom and ask the woman, Can you mind if I step out or whatever She said something to the effect of Yeah that's why I was asking That's why I was asking you If you wanted me to take the window seat In other words This woman's whole thing is And she literally said at some point That she eats extra salty food on the flight So that she won't have to urinate Which is a I don't know if that's even medically a thing That really Because what I've learned from jogging is I can be sweating like a pig and still have to pee really bad i don't know if our bodies like if taking a salt tablet will will divert the water away from your bladder or not maybe it does maybe it doesn't but basically what she was saying was she was kind of negging us saying like this is why i wanted to sit at the window because i didn't want to stand up during the flight because you guys have to pee because i don't pee on flights this is interesting too i don't like that i don't like that approach

no no i mean this is like a misunderstanding i mean it's her misunderstanding of how things work because in her head it's it's a very clean solution right she's like i don't pee i offer the people to i'll sit by the window because to her that's the main thing probably about sitting at the window is you don't have to disturb me and she's sort of like passive aggressively in hindsight sort of indicated that to you at the beginning of the flight i'm not taking her side obviously people can sit in the seat that they bought because i mean yes the choices yeah buy a window

seat yeah buy it to buy the window you'd like to be uninterrupted be the early bird you know

whatever it is and like we nobody gets everything they want on airplanes unless you certainly if you're not traveling first class so yeah i under i both understand how this woman sounds like she's pretty set in her ways and has a system and thinks that system works and so therefore other people should her system but she doesn't understand that like the sitting in the window seat is not just a bathroom issue it's a view issue it's a personal preference issue and it's a leaning against the wall to sleep issue yeah and there's a lot of reasons people choose the seats that they choose on airplanes i don't think i mentioned this to you it well it doesn't matter just me complaining about um airplanes but i the trip back from philadelphia and if you recall i had gotten sick in philadelphia or on the way to philadelphia or whatever who can forget the whole thing was sort of a somewhat like rough trip andrew of the opera and i had gotten a seat that was i think i got an aisle seat and it was all the way in the back of the plane all and it was one of those things where seats in the back of the plane are not that great because people line up next to you to use the restroom and all all this stuff but when you get a seat in the all the way back there's a better chance that you're not going to get a seatmate in the middle seat yeah that's really important to me and so oh and maybe it had to do with i specifically picked a row where i knew the row in front of me couldn't recline that was it i knew that my seat i picked a seat that on paper looks like a bad seat because it was almost all the way to the bathrooms if not the last row but i had seen when i was signing up for it or buying it or whatever it said that the row in front does not recline or maybe I clicked on the row in front and it said warning the seat does not recline I was like hell yeah so I go one row behind it and I had that booked for you know a month or whatever I knew my plan I am at the airport leaving Philadelphia Genevieve I knew was not going to be sitting next to me she already had her own seat somewhere Genevieve's already in front of me in the line somewhere she's on the plane I get up to the place where they check your ticket the final person to look at your ticket before you get on the plane right i've gone through every other process yeah it's not until i am literally boarding the plane that the woman scans my ticket she says oh yeah your seat's been moved like what do you mean my seat's been moved she's like yeah

we moved your seat and like that was it and i was so taken let me guess let me guess did they think

it was an upgrade no i think that there were two because i when i got on the plane i look back to what my seat should be and i'm pretty sure they were the very last row so i knew what it was now I was maybe like eight rows ahead or something so like within eye contact distance as I'm boarding the plane I shot daggers to the two young women who were in my seat and I think what happened was they were probably flying together and they said hey any chance this is my guess they probably said hey you know we have seats that are separated any chance we could fly together the they saw me the airline saw me as a solo traveler because me and these didn't book our tickets at the same time I'm like oh yeah well this guy is way in the back we'll just move him up same exact seat that's right because i didn't get a window sorry i'm making this so long um but basically i had an aisle seat but it was an aisle seat that i chose very specifically and was very much looking forward to because they could not recline their seat in front of me and that's a real issue for me because my legs are made weird um and so they're like oh we'll just move this guy up eight rows who does who doesn't want to be moved up eight rows who cares like they didn't even probably think about it and then they put these two travelers together but then i ended up having a row where the person put their seat back in front of me and I was so furious because I was like I bought that like I went online I specifically chose a specific product that is offered and described in a certain way on your website and you're just going to move me and you don't even like I didn't even have a chance to make a stink which I'm not great at making stinks anyway they become very bizarre very quickly it's not right it's not right as they drag me to the TSA dungeon but it is both that's right that is very much my energy but i'm just like i this woman just took my dick and said we moved your seat and then like i'm halfway down the ramble i'm just like what is happening to my life anyway so i get very angry that's so wrong you buy you should if they're gonna move your seat check with you first like is there a reason you pick this seat like yes because well anyway

i'm sure that in their mind i'm not defending them in any way shape or form andrew because They should never move someone before asking them Because people have, like you said Myriad reasons why they want to be where they are I'm sure that they looked at this And thought, oh, from row 28 to row 18, that's a big Or whatever it was, I bet you that they were like Why wouldn't this person want to be closer to the front of the plane Like, he's in one of the Worst seats on the plane, he would never be Complaining about moving up, except you had a very Specific thing going Now did the person, if you remember, did the person in front of you

actually recline on the flight i in in my retelling of the story i just indicated that they did i gotta be honest i don't totally recall in spirit they did in my soul i did i think no i think they probably did and but i probably just survived it i mean you survived but i'm with you that you

this is this is an unpleasant enough experience as it is they cannot not move people without asking them because because of exactly what you're describing

when they charge sorry i was drinking a sip of coffee but when they charge so much extra for all these different things that used to just be part of flying like well okay like we can charge you more to be in the um exit row you know or what have you it just sort of seems like it's a really big like um breach of faith to do that but anyway okay so i do i want to mention something about your story i don't know if it's fully wrapped but i and this is i i gotta say i was thinking about this earlier um there's something i like about your story in the way that you depict it and now i am going to make it like the biggest backhanded compliment and force you to talk about something but when you were first rejected by the tsa person so you went through the tsa line the short line tsa pre-check i should say you get to the front of it you obviously have the pre-check number on your on your boarding pass and becca doesn't are you tempted to get sassy with this person who's like not allowing her to go through because i do think they have that power there have been times maybe not recently but there have been times where i've flown with genevieve and she's pre-check and i'm not so they just like say i'm good to go because why would she be flying with a terrorist like whatever and so i was wondering did you get shirty at all or did you get tempted to get shirty with this person i'm glad to hear that it doesn't sound like that was a huge point

of only stress for you only because i don't think i knew that was possible like i don't i've certainly i don't think i've ever like gotten you know becca through minus the the pre-check at that level i assumed i did not i did not think that that was a thing they were allowed to do

maybe they're not maybe in my cases that when they printed out the tickets they just included me on pre-check that could be the case i don't exactly know how much flexibility they have but the fact that you didn't even question it i still think is is still growth surprising yeah yeah well

again only because that's one of those things that i assume i assume is ironclad you want to talk about petty one of one of the just one of my pure joys in life is watching people get turned back at the which is ironic considering how this went one of my great joys in life is watching people get turned away from the TSA pre-check line because they don't have it because let's just say there's not a person guarding the opening right and there's like a big long line in the general and then there's the pre-check line and and you know this is a thing that like initially to get this I had to go to some weird office at the Costco in Soto or it was near the Costco in Soto in Seattle and sit down there and I mean this is years and years ago i think it's easier now but in those days you had to go to this weird random like office and basically swear you're not a terrorist pay all this money to face scans it was a whole thing and i did all of this so that i would have this green check mark and when when there is a long line again this is gross of me because it's not hurting me people i you know i don't want people to miss their flights but when someone gets in that line and i know they know they don't have it and they get to the front and the person is like you need to have pre-check to be here and they're like they're like what is this this isn't a general it's like no you had to go through a whole cattle shoot to indicate this is pre-check i find that very validating that i did the hassle of going to that place in soto and so all that is to say i've seen a lot of people get turned away there and i love seeing it and somewhere in my mind i assumed this is immutable this is iron clad it did not even occur to me to try to sweet talk him probably for the better um but now that i know that there's even a small chance i could i will i don't know i mean now i put that evil in

you yeah i do think that it might have been more in the days of printed out boarding passes because as i'm thinking about it i have not gotten looped in with genevieve in a while and i well maybe it wasn't printed out boarding passes but i feel like there were times where if genevieve booked tickets for both of us at the same time and she's tsa pre-check in fact i'm not even 100 i'm assuming here that she still is TSA PreCheck. If we were traveling together and she booked the tickets together and punched her number in, sometimes that number would also be printed into mine because we're traveling together. But my guess, now that I say it out loud, my guess is that was sort of predetermined on the boarding pass itself. I don't recall. I can't say for sure that there's ever been a time where an actual agent face to face said, ah, get out of here. You're not a

terrorists go ahead i did have a moment and we should thank some donors and do some blurs and all of that but i did have a moment when this is how this is how insane my mind is when we were now 12 minutes from the flight door closing from the the gate closing and i was watching the guy who was studying the bags coming through the x-ray and i realized that he was sending everything for secondary screening. I wanted to say to him, this, and I'm going to use a swear word here, this isn't the freaking carry-on. You're not Taron Egerton. Calm the hell down. This was what went through my mind. Now, let me unpack that.

You're not who? Who did you say?

The guy who is the star of the Netflix movie, Carry-On. So, I don't know if we actually got into this on the show or not, but like, there was this movie that kind of was sort of on Netflix and kind of around the holidays and became like the number one movie on netflix for a little while called the carry-on and it's like a kind of like it's like diehard in an airport it's basically like jason bateman is the bad guy um and he is trying to smuggle some sort of a you know world ending weapon onto a flight for some bizarre terroristic plot that i don't know if we ever really get the the whatever the full explanation on but it really centers the real the bruce willis the john mcclain of this movie is a guy who's a tsa agent and he is there it's his first day on the scanner and he ends up you know inheriting this very very terrible situation where he's got to try to save uh the world as it were and it's such a weird movie because it it's both trying to i mean the premise of the movie is that this guy is a tsa agent because he's kind of given up on his ambition but they also need to make being a tsa agent a high risk high reward kind of quasi you know like they they both they both need to sort of denigrate the job so that it it it it works with the plot of like what he really wants to be as a cop right and he he failed the cop test or something and so now he's kind of lowered his ambition that's part of the plot but then also the part of the plot is you know that like all of the like they have a pre-media the dude from breaking bad that walter white's brother-in-law From Breaking Bad I don't know that guy's name

Oh yeah I can think of his name But he's a good actor

And The Shield and stuff He's always Yeah he's always Kind of a hard boiled dude You know He's like in charge Of the LAX TSA And they have one of these Like it's just I kind of wish you Watched this movie Because it's just This classic like Set up piece For the For the movie It's like The TSA All hands meeting Before they get out there And get after it And he's like It's like you see this In every movie Where it's either A military force or firefighters who are swinging or any kind of group of folks who are like, all right, you be safe. He kicks some ass today. And they're like going through all... And everyone in the TSA, by the way, is like cool and interesting for different and diverse reasons. You've got the guy who's trying to get his rap career off the ground. You got this ex-Navy SEAL. You got... It's like, man, the multitudes that this TSA crew contains is... Let's just say I haven't seen it borne out in my experience going through the actual TSA. Sure, yeah, yeah. But and so anyway, I one of the things that struck me about the movie is like, what must it feel like to watch this movie as a TSA person? And does it it must be inspiring because, again, you know, they're they're held up as a kind of like a critical and important tip of the spear to keep people safe in the skies, you know, which which in a generous interpretation, I guess you could say they are. but also has it now made the people that are sitting on the scanners take it 5% more seriously than they should. And that was what I was puzzling through at 6 40 AM yesterday, standing in Portland international airport being like, it's not the carry on. Just it's a water bottle that's been empty. Just let it go. Right, right, right.

Well, I don't know how much flexibility they do have there, but I regret putting the idea in your head that you have wiggle room there. you've definitely

my friend, you've just dropped a depth charge that's going to explode at some point in the next three to four years

it's not going to explode on me, that's the problem I did it to others yes, you did thank you for being a 10 alright

let's thank some donors these are the truly spectacular and generous folks who listened to a thon I don't know if it was many years ago I don't know if it was the most recent one and we implored them to support TBTL financially so that this can be our job so that we can do it five days a week and they didn't wait for somebody else to do it they said yeah okay I'll help out with that and we really do appreciate it and we want to thank Bill Woitra of Seattle, Washington

that's my wife Bill Woitra

Bill I hope you I hope you take it in the spirit it's intended But, man, does your last name sound like that dropped to us.

That's right. That's my white truck.

Yes, it is. And, Bill, thank you. Appreciate you. Also, thanks, Eric Hosempa of Longmont, Colorado.

Nice.

I'm trying to think if I've ever been through Longmont.

I think I can say that I have not.

You feel confident you can say with certitude.

You have not personally visited Longmont. You didn't drive through it, maybe either on your way to or back from Denver.

Well, that's a good point.

I think that I've misremembered the timeline on your window crack. Yeah. I thought that it happened. I thought you drove all the way back worried about it, but it happened somewhere on the way back?

Yeah, it happened somewhere on the way back. So on the way to Denver, I rented a car, and I just took the smallest one in the lot, like a Simpsons-esque small little car. In fact, if you want to see it, I think if you go to the About page on tbtl.net, you'll see the photo of me. My profile photo is me leaning up against this car, which looks like a Matchbox car next to my hulking frame. And so that created a lot of anxiety for me going through the mountains because I didn't realize that you can't drive through snowy mountains. in a matchbox car and so then that's when you and I got in the car and then drove to the rental place at the airport outside of Denver and you were like we're gonna get you an upgrade and they were just like no there are no upgrades it's a holiday weekend it was like Memorial Day or something I think and they were just like straight up no and you were like straight up I'm not taking no for an answer like you like in the airport yesterday to the gate agent and so I know he

He doesn't have pre-check, but you have to give him a Scion.

Or a Kia, and they gave me a Kia, and I love the Kia, but within three hours of driving back to Seattle, I had this huge crack in the windshield when a pebble hit it. And it was such a big crack. It grew into a crack that crossed from top to bottom within hours. I'm just watching this thing crack in front of me and just wondering how much glass will eventually be in my face. And will I get fired from American public media when they realize that I I have taken over the entire in the dark budget with windshield replacement, safe light repair, safe light replace?

Exactly. Oh, I can't wait for baseball season. I can't wait to thank David Young in Golden Valley, Minnesota. How do you know they're going to be boys?

Golden Valley. It's probably cold. Got a note from our friend John Sklaroff. I'm sorry, our business partner. And compatriot John Sklaroff yesterday Indeed It was something like 14 degrees in Minnesota But his phone made sure it said Feels like 2

Oh, the feels like temperature Sorry, buddy Hope the feels like temperature is good for you, David Where you are Also, Patty Struck Feels like is in Kent, Washington

Oh, yeah Now, I've been through Kent, Washington, my friend

You certainly have, my friend I'm trying to think If you've been to Sir Mix-a-Lot's house

I think you've which I know you know I have no nope I haven't definitely been through Kent Washington you know you're confused I went to Kent State University which people oh yeah yeah okay like kind of casually refer to as Sir Mix-a-Lot's house but it's a different kind of

house I see got you thank you Patty thanks also to Andrea Denison of Lake Forest Illinois I almost said Park Lake Forest Park Washington no Lake Forest Illinois that's Chicagoland area Andrea

is a long, long-time listener and part of the TBTL fam. Thanks, Andrea.

And then look who it is. It's Dan Poss in Snohomish, Washington. Dan has been an awesome supporter of the show, a friend to me, and a photographer of many cool-ass things on the sidelines of the Seahawks games.

Oh, really?

And sometimes I'll see Dan. It'll be a thing where the ball goes out of bounds, and then I just see Dan over there with his camera and everything, and I'm like, man, that seems fun.

Interesting. Now, do you know Dan through TBTL, or did you know Dan from TBTL? I believe so.

I believe so. But yeah, so Dan, thanks, man. Nice to see your name on the list. Appreciate you. And thank you to all of our donors today for making TBTL happen. It's sometimes on days like this when it's like maybe Becca and I are doing something together. So she's here and she sees me setting up this little microphone and this little laptop. And I'm like, yeah, I got to work today. Okay. So just like, you know, and then she sees what my working is, which is talking to you about TSA issues. I realize how lucky I am to have this as a job I realize how lucky I am that this is the work I have to do today so it's only thanks to people like we thanked today who have donated their money to this show so thanks very much

All right, it is time to wish some people some Blursdays. If you want to wish somebody a Blursday, email me.

Andrew at tbtl.net and put Blur's Day in the subject line. I'm getting a note here from our friend Levi asking me if I saw the story in the Seattle Times today, Luke. And I did. I almost suggested as a potentially a top story. But did you see that they got Jesse? Get Jesse is now going to be part of the state government looking for inefficiencies.

I was I saw the headline. Well, first of all, and boy, what a weird place to take this for the blurs. Well, when I saw when I saw Jesse Jones in the headline, I was like, I hope he's OK, because I know he had been through some health stuff years ago. And I thought I saw his name and I was wondering if it was going to be an obit. And then I read the rest of it. And I was like, really?

Like the government, like kind of you feel like I'm assuming that some is.

Well, I guess I don't know enough about that program. It's I guess it's it's statewide. So this isn't officially part of the dogefication of the federal government, which is to say Elon Musk coming in and firing a bunch of people under the sort of headline of quote-unquote efficiency. If this makes you feel better— Is this a Bob Ferguson thing?

Ferguson appointed him, but if I read the paper correctly today, which I think I did—I don't know how deep I got into this article—I'm pretty sure it's a program that's been around that Inslee created in 2013. Well, okay then. So, yeah, and I trust Inslee and I trust Ferguson, too. So just appointing him to it. And I was thinking about that, too. Yeah, because you think about government efficiency and what's that code for and everything that you just said. Yeah, that sends up my antenna. But here in Washington, I think that we have some good people. And I was legit happy for them. Like, yeah, you know what? I mean, nobody wants to see inefficiencies. Nobody wants to see, you know, why give people like the late Dory Monson more fuel to point at programs that might not be as, you know, ship shape as they should be. so that they can leverage that and try to make broader points out of it. Okay, well, that's a positive. Let's tighten it up. Let's get Fergie. That's what I call Bob Ferguson. I came up with that now. Let's get Fergie. Let's get Jesse, and let's do it. I don't know what I'm doing. Your voice is like a combination of Jesse and Fergie. All right. I promised you a Blur's Day, and here it is. Happy belated Blur's Day to Eric from Walla Walla, Washington, as his mom says. Eric is the first 10 I met in the wild. He's the son of a good friend of mine. I hope your blurs was wonderful. This is from Fluffy. Pronounced Fluffy.

Okay.

Gabriel Iglesias, the comedian, is a listener. Amazing. As far as I know. There's also a regular at Teddy's whose name is Fluffy. And he's a golfer, a guy probably maybe 10 years older than me.

That's really funny because Tiger Woods' caddy for many, many years was known as Fluff. Really? That's a real thing. That's a real thing. He was like a guy with a kind of a big old John Bolton-style mustache. Is that the best reference for that stache? He was like a guy with kind of wild hair and a big old mustache, and his name was called Fluff. I wonder if that's a golf thing.

I wonder, yeah. It does sort of seem like a kind of a nickname of a certain type. I feel like you've described this before sort of too, right? I'm not speaking of Fluffy who sent that in, but maybe this guy that I used to know at my old watering hole. Like, he was a very, he was exactly what you think of as a, he's just like a kind of an older guy who can bro down, but he wasn't super bro-y, you know what I mean? But you just feel like, oh, yeah, he could golf. I feel like there's something about golfing and golfers that they can just sort of hang, sort of, you know what I mean? There's a certain sort of casual culture. My Uncle Bob was a big golfer, and he's the type of guy who would just sort of ease into a room and be like, Bobby's here. How you doing, Bobby? There's something very cool about golfers.

Being out here in basically golf land USA, the reason that maybe a typical person would come stay out where we are here on Maui is because they're really into golf. We are enmeshed in golf courses. We are not golfers, did not bring any golf clubs, they're not doing any golfing, but I can kind of see the appeal of it. Particularly you see a lot of couples out here, maybe older couples golfing together, getting some exercise, hanging out. But, like, I mean, again, high level of privilege if you can come golf out here. Like, you've already probably won the financial lottery of some kind. But I was like, I kind of get the appeal. And also, this is kind of a dumb place for us to be staying. Like, it's like, I don't know, staying somewhere where the entire point of it is one thing and you're not even engaging in that thing.

Hey, I did want to pivot here. By the way, we only had one Blur's Day today. I think that was historic, maybe. of a single blurs a single blurs day day but while i have the mic here i want to share this email and i'm hesitating here because i just read this during the show and then i wrote to the person who sent it in to make sure that it's okay to share it on the show but i think it is this is from listener mary who you know mary mary and her daughter kelly both listen to the show mary is um yes famous in in my world for being um the person who often writes into the seattle times rant and rave column and often basically a celebrity she's the ronnie the limo driver of rants and raves exactly in fact we i think we need to probably get mary on the show at some point to talk more rants and raves or something um mary also one time wrote in to give me advice on how did like you know tips and tricks for getting published in the rant and rave column which i appreciated well she was inspired to write in after hearing a couple of conversations we've had about uh air travel recently and i felt like this was fitting for today's show the reason i was hesitating was because i wanted to make sure it's okay to share this and i think it is i'm gonna have to write back to her and say ignore my previous email i read it anyway um but uh regarding bringing booze onto airplanes you know i was a little confused because i remember being at the airport and people always saying you know you're you're not allowed to drink your own alcohol on airplanes but I kind of guess I never really examined it like does the TSA not let you bring the booze on or if you have them in less than two ounce bottles is that fine and if you get through with it you just need to sneak it onto the plane and like just make sure nobody stops you because I know it's an airline rule to not drink your own booze on a plane yeah I don't

want to take any of the I don't know what I don't want to I don't want to sort of cannibalize what you're about to play for Mary but our friend Mark the airline pilot said basically there's not there's nothing illegal about bringing your own alcohol onto the flight it's just you're not supposed to consume it so like if you were going somewhere and you wanted to bring a bunch of airline bottles for your final destination maybe a golf resort in on Maui you could bring it you

just aren't supposed to drink it on the flight yeah not only and you to even you say illegal is probably just the policy of the airline and maybe partially, you know, a good policy so that people can, you know, the professionals on board can monitor somebody's alcohol intake so you don't have a problem, but also because they want to sell booze is probably partially it as well. I mean, there's probably a lot of, but I bet you it's not illegal. It's just, it's the same way. It's not really illegal for me to sneak booze into T-Mobile Park during a ball game. No need to get the cops involved. I'm sure it's just like the policy of the place, you know? So anyway, all of that is to say, Mary says, I still bring my own airplane bottles in the regulation plastic bag. You know how TSA after 9-11, you're like, okay, you can bring two ounces of whatever as long as they all fit into this little bag. I still bring my own airplane bottles in the regulation plastic bag. I get through TSA. I buy orange juice at an outrageous price. I add vodka. I order one Bloody Mary on the plane. Then I use my own bottles the rest of the time. I really hate flying. Addressing another episode.

Is it the hangovers? Yeah. God, flying gives me the worst hangover.

Whenever I fly, everything is really blurry, and I find myself very funny. Let's see here. Oh, and I had mentioned being in – Vives and I traveled down to Mexico. It was maybe last winter, and I had said that I had brought some, like, you know, edibles with me, little gummies, little weed gummies. And I wasn't too nervous about it, but I was, you know, a little bit. When you have to go through customs and they have people in, you know, when they have literal soldiers, you know, like kind of checking your bags as you enter another country. And you're kind of like, well, I'm not really supposed to be sneaking drugs into Mexico. And I also mentioned that in that same exact line, I saw a very obvious like gummy wrapper on the ground. I pointed out to Genevieve, said somebody before us had to had to eat what they had. But anyway, Mary says, addressing another episode, my daughter Kelly, you know Kelly, talked me into taking some weed gummies on a flight to Costa Rica a few years ago. I had them in my carry-on. I was standing in line waiting to board, and a man with a German shepherd came walking down the line of passengers. Oh, that's right. I had mentioned, Luke, too, that I know that these dogs are usually bomb-sniffing dogs. In the U.S. In the U.S., not drug dogs. Yeah, because I was listening to another podcast and they called them drug dogs. I'm like, TSA doesn't have drug dogs. Anyway, Mary says, I was holding my breath when the dog went by, but they passed me by because I don't think before I talk. I then said aloud, I'm sure glad that wasn't a drug dog. Someone on the plane later told me that the dog was actually looking for cash because drug trade is big in Costa Rica, I guess. And this is where it gets interesting, Luke. This is the final line of Mary, who knows how to write into media organizations like TBTL and the Seattle Times, says the drug trade is big in Costa Rica, I guess. Talk about Kohl's to Newcastle. Have you ever heard that phrase before? I had to look it up and it's perfect for what I was saying about sneaking my own drugs into Mexico.

Kohl's to Newcastle. Can I try to guess?

Yeah, I mean, I think from context, you probably have a chance.

Well, yeah, I'm guessing that Newcastle is a place that has a lot of coal and its idea of sneaking something into a place that already has a lot of the thing.

Exactly. Yeah. I don't know much about the background of it, but the dictionary definition is just it's used in reference to the supply of something in a place where it's already plentiful. And by the way, now I realize that, you know, I'm joking here. I'm not trying to imply that Mexico, of course, is just some sort of drug-filled, awful place as it's being portrayed in the national conversation by some pretty awful people right now. So take it all with a grain of salt. But anyway, that's what I was teasing Genevieve about is that we are sneaking gummies into Mexico and taking coals into Newcastle.

Yeah, I feel like you could have, I remember, I think I talked about this too, years ago, but I went to Tulum one time during a little TBTL kind of winter downtime in Tulum, Mexico. And coming back through the airport, I felt like I owed it to myself to buy every single thing in the airport pharmacy that I would need a prescription for in America. Right, yeah. It's like stuff I don't do, like, oh, Mexican Xanax? Hell yeah. Do I still have that? Yes, I do. Andrew, have I taken any of it ever? No. There was something about the fact that it's like I'm they're just going to sell it to me and I'd have to jump through a lot of hoops in the U.S. for this. I better get it here. Like that's that's how my brain works.

You know, I like the availability of drugs myself, and I got to say, I really wussed out, and when I say wussed out, I was careful. The last time I was in Mexico, like, they have all those little pharmacies all over the place, and in the past, I might go in and get something that's maybe a little relaxing or something. I don't know. I never went overboard with it, but I always loved the idea of it. But this last time, it just looks like Vives and I were looking it up, and somebody had just recently done, a legit news organization, I want to say the Washington Post, had done an investigation of fentanyl, and it's like, oh, it is just so cut. And we're just like, we don't need to come down to Mexico to get fentanyl. We live in Seattle. I would not describe that as wussing. You have fentanyl at home.

Yes. That is so not wussing out, Andrew. That is wanting to stay alive, because it is a dangerous, dangerous world out there. And I would probably never ingest anything that I wasn't extremely sure of the origins, regardless of what it looked like, what kind of a blister pack it was purchased in. It is rough out there. And I'm personally glad that my more experimental days happened back when the worst thing would have been some laxative or something. You know, like, you know, the stuff that was being put into stuff that people might be taking was was mostly to try to thicken it up and extend it and step on it and not, you know, something that would just kill you immediately. Like, yeah, I'm glad to hear that you're not getting experimental south of the border.

I'm sorry that they were stepping on your ex-lax, man. That really sucks.

It's like, I keep taking this ex-lax and it turns out it's just drywall. I'm literally more backed up than I've ever been.

Actually, oh, you mean in this scenario. For a second, I thought you were being serious. I thought you were just like throwing in a truth bomb there. Because I do know some people who travel that does it to them. But you travel so much.

I know those people are called every woman I've ever been in a romantic relationship with. Really? And also my sisters. I don't want to over-gender it, but this is a report that I've heard many times, particularly from the women in my life. And I'm happy to report to all of the listeners that everything is flowing smoothly here in Burbanktown, per usual.

That's never been an issue for me regarding travel or life. But I will say the one time it happened was when we landed in Croatia. And so that was like, whatever, was it like a 13-hour flight? No, it was maybe 11. I can't remember exactly. But it was a long day of travel. And I don't know what to attribute it to. but i went i went a couple i went a few days i want to say or maybe a couple of days without going and like that is just like i never think about that it's like i don't know what happens when it happens i never think about it yeah and then um so i was like wait it's been six weeks since you looked at me and uh no i was and then i and i we guess we shouldn't get into it but like it when when the dam finally broke and it was it didn't break in like in some sort of like um super high volume fashion or anything i don't want to make it sound like that but it was just like the absolute worst timing i put it up with one of the worst craps i've ever taken in my life let me see if i can describe this and then we'll get out of here because i'm really taking the show literally into the gutter here but so we arrived in um Thank you. not komiska that's the island where we spent most of our time but um uh why am i blanking on the split thank you i knew it was very how can i remember a name like split luke anyway when we

arrive it is it's unique there's not a lot of places called split america true but it's also

it's monosyllabic though it's not like trying to remember like the the the native names of you know dubrovnik or something right or even you in in hawaii you know this it is sort of hard when you don't you know when you're not a native hawaiian speaker or whatever like you don't it's understandable why some of these names would sort of blend together for you as you're trying to make your way around the islands or what have you but split seems like it's a pretty easy thing for me to remember all of that is to say um it was the day that we we had spent like a day or two in split where we landed and then it was time to get on the ferry and head out to where we're spending most of our time on this island of paradise and um but it's a it's super hot there right and we're rolling around our luggage because it's like kind of a travel day a couple of days in and like oh i think we had to check out of our room and then we left our bags like in the base sort of this downstairs area of this super super super old hotel we were staying at and um they wouldn't like sort of check them for us or something we just kind of piled them up with other people's bags or something oh that was a really that's right it was a rough day for me for a bunch of reasons i chipped my tooth eating the softest scrambled eggs i've ever eaten i still don't know what happened there i was just sort of out of sorts and then we also by the way your body

was kind of also still not a hundred percent right in terms of the kind of you know rheumatoid stuff

and so i guess the thing is we're catching a fairy later on in the day but we want to all go out to some breakfast or do some more like kind of roaming around split or I do some tourism. So we dump all of our bags. We just kind of pile them up in this hotel where we'd been staying, but we're checked out. We go explore the town some more. You know, maybe we're out for a few hours, but like we're kind of hustling around. I'm pouring sweat. It's really hot. And then we come back to the hotel to grab our bags so that we can then head to the ferry again and then drag of these we're all dragging our suitcases across cobblestone in the blazing sun but before we get to that i'm like i'm just gonna stop in here and use the restroom there's like a very old school sort of like single occupancy bathroom down in the basement of this super super old hotel i mean literally like the walls were made of stone that's how old this hotel is and i go in this tiny little room and i'm not a super comfortable like these are friends who will call you out if you're in the bathroom for too long sort of this yes this is a group of friends that like to talk about poop i'm very shy about it despite the story that i'm telling right now and they're all like right outside this door and they're all waiting nobody said anything but the whole time i'm in there i'm like if i take too much time in here first of all the jokes are going to come and secondly i'm going to make us miss the fairy like i can't settle into this but i haven't gone in like a couple of days and i go into this hot room and i sit down and by the way the bathroom is fine it's

very clean it's in a very old historic by yourself you can close and lock the door yes in fact there

was even a like there was a chamber you walk into where you can wash your hands and then a single like a single fully closed stall with an actual door door to the left and one to the right and i believe one of my friends goes into the right i go to the left so there is a door go all the way to the ground yes it's a full it's not a stall room it is a tiny little room and again not bad for a facility if i had more time and i wasn't sweating and i just sit down the toilet and i'm sweating and i feel like i'm like i feel that it's going to have to happen now but now i have this other thing going on which is people are right outside these doors and they're waiting for me but i gotta i gotta do something here it was just like you know and i did something there and And, you know, I didn't do everything there, but I did something there. And then, you know, I just felt awful for a while after that. And by the way, do you know what broke the spell for me? I'm just realizing I've left out the most interesting part. Trevopabee? No, a bookstore. Of course it was a bookstore. OMG, it doesn't even have to be English language books. No, Luke, I'm telling you, we were out and we were, like, kind of going around. We went to some candy stores. We did this. We did that. And then the last thing I did is my friends were sitting at a table. I'm like, I'm going to go check out that bookstore. I go into the bookstore and all of a sudden I'm just like, I'm back, baby. Where are the restrooms in this country?

That is your that's your go to my, you know, my version of that, which was I could say in some ways better and in some ways worse than yours was Becca and I were in Paris this summer. We had gone to Italy, we're on our way back And I'm glad that in this phase of my life This stuff doesn't happen nearly as much as it used to I don't know what has

adjusted or settled down but when i was you know younger you know particularly in my my 20s but also my teen years i would very regularly find myself in a moment where i went from not thinking i had to go to the bathroom to thinking i'm about to have like an incident like zero to 100 in terms of progression it doesn't happen to me as much anymore but we were out walking around in paris and it was one of those things where it just started raining out of the blue and we had like one tiny umbrella that wasn't quite sufficient and we're just getting rained on and we're kind of walking and it's kind of getting unexpectedly miserable. And, and I had, I forgot what I'd eaten, but I'd eaten something that didn't quite agree with me. And all of a sudden I realized we're out in the middle of randomly places in Paris and I am, I need to be using the bathroom like, you know, right this very second. And so we duck into this like very, very crummy, like weird cafe bar and they it's literally you have to pay to use the bathroom and you i have to go up and get change i have to go up and get change from the guy and pay him so that he will let me he'll give me a token or give me a code or something so that i can get into this tiny room where there is andrew no toilet seat on the toilet weirdly a thing we saw a lot in europe like Porcelain bowl, no seat And then just like the thinnest Kind of worst Ply toilet paper squares And like it's a million Even though it's raining, it's a million degrees So it's like It's a wet heat It's a wet heat It's like a wet heat The least Hospitable toilet I could be sitting on My girlfriend, who I'm trying to preserve At least a tiny amount of mystery still around these matters even years in i just you know it's not it's not the it's not the sexiest thing since the toothbrush uh for me to be in there and it's like a pay toilet it's like people are i don't think anyone's coming up and knocking but it is the only in this entire little weird bar cafe it's the only bathroom and like and i can also just tell this is where it gets really specific i can also tell that this is not going to be like if you're at your own house let's just say you're alone your stomach's not feeling great Genevieve's at work or gone you can go in your bathroom and you can give this the amount of time and energy that it deserves you know that this you'll go in there it may not be pretty but by the time you emerge you're going to feel a lot better it's going to be handled mostly this was like how like how much can I take the edge off of this situation in the next five minutes while then get out of here and then figure out how to get back to the hotel stat you know what I mean like I knew I wasn't going to solve the problem I was going to just try to avoid the worst case scenario. Like you leave the bathroom not feeling actually better, better. The crisis has been reduced by 30%, which is meaningful, but you're not back to zero.

That's just the worst feeling that we just walk back out of the steamy Paris rain and then walked up to the Sacré-Cœur, which is like 600 steps straight up.

And yeah, so you're you're really understanding the exact vibe I'm talking about in this scenario. And there was one other thing that I want to mention here, which is because this was an old building and we were sort of in the basement of it. You know, it was the Alamo. The more I think about it. No, we were in the basement of it. Right. It the the odor mitigation was in the negatives. In other words, it almost enhanced the odor. Like, again, I brought this up, and I want to tell this story because it's my truth, but I also don't love talking about this stuff. But, like, it was also one of those things where I was like, oh, no. It's like not only is there not a window to crack, somehow the hundreds of years that this building has stood, I am now releasing the odors from – like, I rolled back the rock. The stone has been rolled away The stone has been rolled away We've unlocked the spirits of the stone And they're swirling around I'm like how am I going to open this door And then close it so fast And you know it's funny because At least I'm trying to think At least one person on that trip Will probably hear this story I don't think anybody was the wiser I think I was relatively speedy But I don't know

100% I promise you This is the plot of a Nicolas Cage film During his kind of lull His career lull when he had to take every job offered It's a movie About a guy who visits a castle But has to use the bathroom in the basement And then the severity of his dump Unleashes Some sort of Otherworldly creatures that he then has to defeat

It's like looking in a toilet Only not Is that even Nicolas Cage's line In that movie? I don't see you as a big

face off person no and I have to be honest I don't that's one of those movies that I think Now, if I were to watch it, I would watch it with the burden of history, which is people loving Face Off because of how bad it is. You said this, I think, yesterday on the show or recently on the show. We're not big. I have a hard time engaging in content because I know how bad it is, except for The Room. I have no problem watching Tommy Wiseau's The Room, so maybe it just has to be a certain level of bad. I guess. I couldn't tell you much about Face Off.

I think The Room, you were in the ground floor of The Room phenomenon, and I think that if you heard about The Room now for the first time, you'd have no interest in it i think maybe so like and because i'm you and i are very similar that way in fact like i don't like face off that's like john woo right like i don't like action movies and i i really don't like watching movies because they're bad or campy i just don't get that um i appreciate people who do and did i ever tell you the way i saw face off was in la and this is both like one of those things that i loved about la but also this wasn't the room for me which is it's interesting how in la people will just hold little events when a store closes or you know i mean what was what i mean famously what was the what was the venue in the back of the comic book store um that launched that very yeah sure that dan harman would do his show from yeah and like i'm you know and there were little spaces like that and i remember we met some friends or we met some friends of friends and the fourth of july fireworks thing and we kind of hit it off and they said oh you know next week you know we're hosting a viewing of face-off in the in the back of some store somewhere i can remember where it was maybe it was even the front of some store and we got there like okay that sounds fun there were maybe like i don't know 10 rows of chairs set up and a group of like kind of nerdy people who wanted to watch face off and everybody um just made fun of it the whole time it wasn't like non-stop jokes but everybody in the room just like oh and like laughing and then like but you know total blank check on just like saying Something funny if you want to try to make the room laugh Or whatever wasn't for me Movie wasn't for me and just like Watching a movie with a bunch of people who You know want to make jokes about the movie That's not that's not how I watch a movie

Meltdown That's the comic place

Yes yes yes yes that's right

That's my contribution to the show today is my Broken brain somehow

You did get there you weren't googling it

No no no no No that is all natural baby No no enhancers no performance enhancers here as becca will tell you um but that was the name of the show so that was that

was jonah and kumal nerd melt was the nerd melt yes okay yes and then the meltdown was the show yeah and jonah ray uh all right there we go okay are we done here you're the one who actually we should keep these shorter sorry you should be out enjoying no no that's okay that's you know what

becca is uh is lounging in the sun and i'm here toiling away over a over a hot podcast mic like Like a real hero. So no complaints from here. I still, as is often the case, I still can't ever bring myself to say on Maui instead of in Maui. But that's the report from here in Maui. All right. Guess what? We're going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio from right here on Maui. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Thursday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Power out.