Muse

So, Brent, I see from your file you were in the materials business. Oh, yeah. Big time. Strings, cords, vinyl, synthetics, rubber. We do vulcanize now, so that's huge. Plus metals, aluminum, brass, copper. What else? Steel? No, not steel. Steel's a sucker's game. Polymers, coatings, internals. You crack open an HVAC, that is all us. Is there golf here? There frickin' better be.

TBTL! I came here to do two things. Eat eggs and nothing. And I'm not out of either.

The most rewarding part was when he gave me my money.

Beep-ba-ba-ba-da-boe. Thank you for the dough. Do you have any idea who I am? I'm a verified Yelp complainer.

By the way, I'm a dentist. Okay, so I read body language very, very well.

This is the kind of spontaneous publicity, your name in print, that makes people.

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

Two bros, bro, hand it up!

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Your voice is like a combination of Fergie and Jesus. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where

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

We are just in the midst of some absolutely spectacular weather here in the Pacific Northwest. which is nice. Coming back from a trip last week, it was nice to look at the old weather forecast and see that it was going to be clear and cold here. Perched high above the mighty Columbia, we have made it, my friends, to episode 4,389 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. I did do some whale watching out there in Hawaii. What is that? I don't know. What is it? And I have some notes for the people in charge of the whale watching tours in maui which i'll share with all of you i will not be sharing it with the people who run the whale watching tour but i will be sharing it with all of you here on the show uh i'm also in the midst of a real and serious and not exaggerated for the purposes of the show dilemma regarding my cellular phone i'm trying to use that phone which died last night as it's been doing lately so i woke i was awoken by the birds and the sunrise today because my alarm did not go off on my telephone because it's not working and we'll get into that and we'll get into this guy the longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships it's a monday morning and he could use a little positive reinforcement please clap he's andrew

walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke how are you at drawing

eggs draw an egg um like uh is it just a standard like an egg an egg shape or is it one of those cartoons that i used to see in the in the newspaper as a kid where you would kind of like add little like arms and legs to it and do fun things to it if it's any more complicated than

just the shape of an egg i'm gonna i'm gonna disappoint you could add arms and legs and turn into a video game what's the video game you've never been to this level i don't you know i don't know what i'm even talking about here i uh during the intro i heard that drop something from archer about eating eggs um and almost out of eggs or not or not almost being out of eggs all of that is to say i started trying to draw eggs on my notepad here i find it difficult now one should know that i am not somebody who's good at drawing i've never been good i bet you're better at

drawing than I am but that would that would make you a person everyone is better at drawing than I

am but there's something specific I mean it seems so simple right it's one line it's round-ish but it doesn't even have to be perfectly round in a certain way it seems like oh that that you know because eggs are imperfect in their own way they should be easy to draw but it might be something about my age and my my hands the way I grip the pen maybe that it doesn't work as well as maybe it once did but i find it like it's hard to match up where the line the kind of oval the slight

light oval kind of andrew i need you to draw a clock okay draw a clock you want me listeners have reached out to me so doing some cognitive tests here you can't draw an egg we need to move

on to the next level sorry i forgot about that i am i really am doing some sort of cognitive test on you but i it's like where it comes back around i have a lot of trouble i just drew a really

shitty eggs here. Here's my shitty eggs. Let's see your shitty eggs here. This is good. Let's see here. Oh, those are way... How do you like it? I've got to move my coffee. Oh, this is embarrassing. You're going to see just how unclean my workspace is. There's a coffee stand. Oh, there it is.

Oh, yeah. That's... Yeah, my eggs are better. Although, where your line hits... Okay, I'll make...

that the show pick today you and i are holding about our eggs some care options for luke he's he's not doing well he can't draw an egg what if i drew a clock and it was a digital clock that said like 9 17 oh man um how are you on this monday morning are we doing more than the egg talk

i'm sorry i had all i had on the show sheet was egg talk and then we you know we wrap it up you've

No, you've actually led us somewhere, which is that it turns out, apparently, on the island of Maui, where I just was last week, you cannot buy an egg. They are out of eggs.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I mean, that was a whole thing, right? Like, the price of eggs played into the economic woes. But it's been fixed, I assume, right? Day one? I mean, I see all over Reddit people posting photos of expensive eggs.

I filled my tank with eggs for, like, a dollar yesterday, Andrew, so everything's great.

Wow, that is pretty extreme, though, so yeah, because things are even more expensive on the islands where it's hard to get stuff, and now they're just totally out of eggs.

And Becca and I weren't actually trying to sort of get our hands on any eggs at the grocery store, but Scott and Tiff were, because that's the very clean, healthy eaters, and their usual thing is to buy breakfast fixings, and they said they went to like four different stores and could not, literally there are no eggs for sale in the store. And they were, weirdly enough, they were being told that it had to do with some sort of a longshoreman's, some sort of supply chain issues in like California, which did not make sense to me because I believe this is more of a bird flu issue or something.

Oh, I didn't actually even know what was causing it, although there are signs in the grocery store saying because of, you know, whatever supply issues, I don't know if it's supply chain issues, but supply issues.

Yeah, the supply of chickens has gone down because they got bird flu.

Yeah, and it'll say, like, you know, limited, like, four dozen per purchaser or something along those lines. You know, I've picked a wrong time to be eating more eggs than usual. I've been boiling a lot of eggs lately, hard-boiled eggs. I've been pretty proud of this. I used to keep more hard-boiled eggs in the refrigerator, and then I kind of stopped doing it for a while. And then I've been eating salads for lunch, which I love. But I used to put, like, chicken on my salads, and for some reason, something switched in me. I don't know if you're like this with foods. I still like chicken. I still like salads.

You just wanted to have their embryo. Right, yeah. You're like, I still want chicken, but not at this developmental stage.

Exactly. Much earlier.

I want it when it's just a twinkle in God's eye.

Do you have anything like that? I'm sure you do, where you're ticking along. Maybe you've even eaten a certain food for years. Like me making kind of a green salad with various vegetables on it, just typical green salad. And then if I have chicken in the refrigerator, I'll chop it up and throw it on there. That is something I've been doing for, you know, 10, 20 years, whatever. And then the other day, I don't know, well, not the other day, a few months ago or whatever, I was eating something like that. And I was like, I don't like chicken on my salads anymore. Like, I still like chicken, still like salads. And so I'd just been eating my salads without any protein. And then the other day I was like, you know, I could boil up some eggs. And then I've been experimenting. You know, there's the let the eggs get warm in the water when you're hard boiling them versus let the water get hot first, then put the eggs in. There's a whole debate about that. And it's supposed to tearing this country apart. It is. It is the number one issue tearing this country apart as we speak today on the 27th of January. I do think that one is supposed to be better than the other as far as getting the shell off, making it more peelable. For me, the two biggest things about a hard-boiled egg is peelability and the yolk. And I've got to say, I've got the yolk dialed in. It's nice, solid, but bright yellow. I don't like it when it starts getting overcooked and starts turning green.

Can I propose an idea here? Poached eggs.

Oh, yeah.

I like those, but I don't know how to make them. So, Andrew, you know how it's a great place to start the week. You know how sometimes, I don't even know, I assume this is a real thing, although as I'm saying it out loud, I'm already regretting bringing it up. You know how sometimes when women work together, the rumor is that their cycles can kind of align occasionally, or not even work together, but just spend time together. There is the idea that the cycles will align. I feel like there's some weird cycle that you and I are on that aligns when we don't even know it. Do you know that I recently made a salad and put four eggs on it? Four eggs? My boy says he can eat four eggs. My boy can eat four eggs. My boy can definitely eat.

My boy says he can eat 50 eggs. He can eat 50 eggs.

I have also been trying to get more protein in my life and a little bit more vegetables. And so I – the other – and I've also – this is the thing that I've really been trying to do, which is eat the food that is in my house. Like eating out is not only expensive, but it's, you know, it's sort of not – The reason the food tastes really good when you get it from somewhere else is because it's got a lot of...

you know, salt and butter and things going on in it that make it taste delicious, but that make it probably a little less healthy for you. So I've really been trying to commit to, like, eating the food that is in my house. And the other night, I was hungry, and I thought, you know what kind of sounds good is, like, a frisee salad. I didn't realize frisee is a term for the kind of lettuce. Did you know that?

That's what I thought you meant, yes. I did not know that you thought it was a type of salad. I only know it was a lettuce.

I thought frisee just meant a salad with an egg on it.

Oh, okay.

Because that's the only kind that I've had. Occasionally on a menu you'll see a frisee salad, and it'll have a poached egg on it.

Oh, okay.

Which I really like. So I didn't have that. I had some other stuff, and I had some shaved broccoli and other things I picked up at Trader Joe's. I live in the kind of town that doesn't have a Trader Joe's, which means I'm the kind of person that when I'm in the big city, I'm like, I better stop at Trader Joe's. I know you're not a TJ's guy. No. But I get it. I'll stock up at Trader Joe's because it's like, yeah, we don't have that kind of cool stuff out here in Cowlitz County. But anyway, so I got the greens out, and then I used to know how to poach an egg. I used to be really kind of into this, and you boil some water, and then you put a little tiny bit of vinegar in the water.

Okay, yeah, I've heard of this. That's right, yes.

And you crack the egg. You spin the water. Spin the water, yeah. You crack the egg in, and then in the spinning of it, it sort of poaches it. and I did not trust myself to try it. I had four eggs left, and I wasn't going to lose one to my attempts to poach it, so I just cooked them, like, you know, over easy. But they were pretty good because, you know, you crack the yolk, and then the yolk kind of becomes part of the salad. It adds a real, like, nice savory element. It was delicious. I just think it's weird that you and I, without checking in on each other, without coordinating this, have both been doing a salad. We're really leaning into our inner Frasers I think is the takeaway from this

Is that a direct thing? Are the Frasers into eggs?

The theme song is Kelsey Grammer singing Give me those tossed salad and scrambled eggs They're calling again

That is one of the worst theme songs The only theme song I think I hate Thank you Seattle Is the Monk theme song Because it's what's his name Is it Tony Shalhoub? No it's the I Love LA guy Oh, Randy Newman? Randy Newman doing the Monk theme song. Do you know it? Let me see. No, I don't.

How about Randy Newman doing the Frasier theme song?

For some reason, they occupy sort of the same space in my brain, and I don't know why. They're not really similar. Let me see if I can even get this to play.

Is the theme song Police Detectives Got No Reason to Live? Yeah.

I would say this is the biggest gap between a show that I enjoy and a song that I hate. Yeah, I can't think of any songs with the greatest disparity. It's not my favorite show in the world, and it might not be my least favorite song in the world. It might be. But it's definitely like the furthest gap between the two.

Do you know that I had a real... You okay over there?

Yeah, it's been... Oh my God, dude, we just got to get to Tuesday.

having a monday man um you know i had a really i had a time where i was very into the randy newman song i love la which i don't really stand by like as a life choice for me or even as a song i know that you know he did the uh the the you got a friend in me song from toy story and a lot of people love that and i understand that that song short people got no reason to live is i guess probably supposed to be a sort of arch right like is there some is there i've never understood is

there some story behind it i don't understand i don't understand it's just mean i don't know i don't think i don't think it's just mean because that would just be mean right like i'm assuming

because randy newman has not been rejected by the by the larger culture there must be some story behind that song that i don't understand that he's explained in an interview or something but like that song again it just seems mean and uh and then the i love la i loved it because and i know andrew this is i'm about to send you into a john boys-esque trolling situation with me with the words i'm about to say by which i mean last night i was so worked up about kansas city winning that i decided to go and get into it on the comments of a guy who we both like on the internet who was just saying he likes the Kansas City Chiefs. But anyway, I loved the song I Love L.A. because they used to play it after each Dodgers victory.

I mean, it is a – I know that people who love the Dodgers love that song, and also I see both of those as much as I really don't like the Dodgers, and I like them less with every passing.

day and every passing signing you hear they just got mahomes yes but they don't have like let's see let's see we're gonna i don't know we're we're gonna start him at third base but they

they only have to pay him one dollar a year for the next 30 years he's deferred a billion dollars yes exactly it'll be sometime in the early 3000s i believe all of that is to say i am i i guess i don't know if the word is impressed or i recognize or i appreciate the way the dodgers are truly a stand-in for L.A., sort of. It is, like, something that everybody comes around that logo, even if they don't watch a game. Like, there's something about the Dodgers logo that is so part of L.A. culture, and it could be, like, the old Latino man who was smoking cigarettes with his little mustache sitting on a wall near the grocery store that I would pass on my way home from the grocery store, or, you know, just some young hottie in the club, you know? You can tell I'm young the way I talk, but that logo and that symbol for the city writ large, and then you sort of tie that Randy Newman song into that. I don't like that song. I really dislike Randy Newman's sound, but I kind of get that, and I begrudgingly have to respect it, I feel like.

When I moved to L.A., first of all, I lived probably six blocks from Dodger Stadium, and also the Dodgers had been bad for a long time. so this is what you know this is before the the current era of the team when i again i'm with you i don't find them very rootable but at the time it was like they're in echo park well more or less that's where i was it felt like a scrappy neighborhood at the time they felt like a scrappier team because again they were not dominant and i my friend kevin arnovitz had season tickets and when he couldn't find anyone fun to go with he would ask me and then we would sneak in Heineken beers in a Subway sandwich bag. I love that.

I think about that every time I look at a Subway sandwich wrap up.

And the Dodgers, like when they would win on the occasion that they would win, they would play, it'd be sunny, and they'd play that Randy Newman song, and I was a whole new person down there, you know? So it was a whole thing for me. Looking back on it, though, or looking back on the music of Randy Newman, I'm not quite sure what all the hype is about.

Well, now you just love that Macklemore song. Oh, yes. The ceiling can't stop us If they play at Mariner's games

Firecoats be damned

The ceiling is

We refuse to let this ceiling hold us

What is it the sprinklers aren't working I can't remember Somebody actually sent me a I'm not going to play it Because I do feel like it's a little bit cruel I'm not a big fan of Macklemore I do think that he's I know from people who've met him Like you And people who know him even better That he's a good man He's a good person Very good person

A force for good in the world And so

I don't want to dunk too much But I also just find i just find his his his art just so cringy it's like really he's like the common of rapping is that a show title or is that but yeah i honestly it's sort of yeah no i mean honestly common a hundred times over macklemore um somebody sent in and it turns out it's like five years old five years old or something it was like um funny or die i think video of a like kind of a make-a-wish is a fake make-a-wish thing it was really well produced and pretty long but it was a little boy just saying that like all i want is for macklemore not to visit me actually while we're here should i just like look it up and play it for you it is

we've already offended we've already already offended a lot of people we're really we're coming out hot on this monday morning randy newman fans chiefs fans macklemore fans yeah

this is from a listener bill i'm sorry i know that you actually have a lot to talk about after coming off a vacation. I'm making you draw eggs and talk about salads. But here, take a quick listen.

When Mateo Cruz was diagnosed at the age of two with a rare blood disease, doctors said he wouldn't make it to his fifth birthday.

All right, blow out the candles, buddy.

And yet here the miraculous Mateo is, six years later.

Look at those dogs. When we heard Mateo's amazing story, we knew we wanted to make his biggest dream come true. And he knew his wish right away. He didn't even have to think.

My wish is that I don't want to meet Macklemore.

Family and friends were immediately touched by Mateo's dream.

I mean, what can I say? Our little guy just can't stand Macklemore. And it's not just his music, either, as Mateo would say, you know. He just hates the guy's whole vibe.

I don't like his songs, and I don't think I'll like him as a person. I don't ever want to meet him.

Okay, Chip. You're gonna see what they can do, okay? No promises.

When we heard the wish, we weren't sure it would be possible. Macklemore seems like a pretty nice guy and surprising sick-

kids at a hospital seems like something he'd want to do we were just hoping and praying that when he saw just how little his music meant to our son he'd understand i can't play this whole thing he's holding up is that from the onion it's from um comedy central i think i slated it as a funny or die um and i think that is just is so funny if somebody did if somebody and it would never

happened if somebody created a spoof like that but at my expense i would honestly never recover like it would end me so i want to just acknowledge that but that is really well done

what were we talking about whale watching yes uh whale watching and hummingbird unfreezing by the

way a shout out to my buddy evan who heard the show last week where i was talking about um the hummingbird water getting frozen here at the Madrona Hill studio, and he sent me a hummingbird feeder heater. Did you know this is a thing they make? No, I didn't.

I saw that our buddy Larry sent us a photo of his hummingbird feeder, and he just hung one of those kind of construction work lights, light bulbs on it just to keep it warm. But yeah, it makes sense that they would make

a fancier version of that. And it is a light bulb, and it's kind of this inverted like plastic lampshade and you can attach it to the bottom of the hummingbird feeder which by the way the hummingbird feeder comes with a thing for this like it's got these little kind of group not grooves but little a space around the base of it which i think is designed so you can hook one of these kinds of things on and it was very cold here last night and i came out this morning and there was perfectly non-frozen hummingbird water that the birds have been greatly enjoying today so fantastic thank you uh evan for that and uh you're welcome birds um yeah the uh at the end of friday's show i was racing out of there because we're going to go whale watching and uh we uh we did we were on one of those kind of larger ships i did not buy any alcohol or dramamine um but uh it was really fun we saw a lot of whales uh we saw the you know I guess there's a sanctuary there in Maui, that kind of main bay. Have you and Veeves been out in Maui for whale watching?

Yeah, a few times.

Okay, so you know the drill. You've probably done this exact thing.

Yeah, did you get out in Kihei? Is that where you went?

We were near Kihei, essentially. We were in another little bay there that I can't remember the name of, by Sugar Beach, for what that's worth. But anyway, we saw the mama whales and their calves were all out there. I guess they'd come from far away to give birth. We learned some interesting facts, such as the mother whales will not eat for like three months. Yes. And they'll go from like 80,000 pounds to 50,000 pounds or something.

Can I say something just for my own sake and maybe the listeners who care? Lahaina. I meant lahaina, not kihei. Sorry. We often will stay in Kihei, but it was always a tradition. I think we've done it like three times. We drive to Lahaina, and that's where that big banyan tree burned. Like in the news stories, you heard a lot about Lahaina.

Yeah, we were staying in Lahaina officially, although not obviously in the part that was destroyed by the fires, but we drove past areas that were ruined by the fires. It was pretty intense out there. So we had gone more down towards the Kihei area to do this whale watching thing. and um yeah it was it was uh it was really cool we got to see uh a lot of um uh the whales just kind of i don't know trucking around and then occasionally like the at first the big thing was i really wanted to see a a fluke you know i wanted to see their tail i want to see them dive down because that's like the iconic that's the iconic picture that you see with whale watching or the other thing is when they jump out of the water when they breach and we finally saw a couple of those events too where like we weren't super close to them but like where a whale literally jumped all the way out of the water and then crashed down I'm guessing you saw that

as well yeah I've seen that before as well

that was freaking sweet but the thing was our captain Captain Kiwi was he was great at driving the boat he knew some whale facts oh really but really he was working on his I think stand up comedy material which was not we were a hundred percent needed in the moment he was like um he was giving us some useful information about whales but a lot of just like weird attempts at comedy which then nobody laughed at because we're there to see whales and then he would say like basically like oh i guess you guys didn't like that joke and it was like this is the second time that beck and i have gotten somebody leading a tour where it was like they were Thank you. they clearly thought that they were very entertaining but they were not and it made the tour a little less fun the other time was in san antonio we went on one of those like on the san antonio river or whatever the river walk is that little man-made thing that kind of goes through town and our uh our tour guide would not shut up and he kept saying people keep telling me i should be a comedian and we were like like we went by these gargoyles on something and he said like something the effect of like you can see and some of the gargoyles looked sad and some looked happy and he was like that one is a guy who's married and that's a guy who's divorced like the happy one was like a divorced guy or something it was so weird

that guy should be a comedian it was brutal that is so so cringy yeah i gotta say the worst you know what i was recalling because i knew you wanted to talk about this today and i think maybe from talking on friday i was just i had it on my mind and i was going through old photos so i could find that one of genevieve that one from the show pick from last friday i think it was genevieve of seeing dolphins off the coast probably exactly where you were that was in maui but um i uh i realized and i don't know i i definitely have not been on a kind of a boozy cruisy kind of one i've been on bigger boats back in the day where maybe they had a little snack shop or something but i was recalling how nerdy the last one we went on we had to sit this was in mexico we sat in a tiny room where they set up chairs and like a thing like we sat through a class about whale migration for like a half hour before we got on the boat. I would freaking love that. And I don't even remember what I learned because I just learned that I hated the guy behind me who was immediately teacher's pet. It was so crazy how you immediately get back into like, once you start sitting in chairs facing a teacher, everything comes rushing back. All of the bad feelings. I immediately started, like this guy's like, he's jumping onto his hand. He's like finishing sentences for her because he's so worldly. He's been on so many like whale watching things. And you can tell other people there have been as well. They're just not as, like, showboaty about it or whatever. So all I learned was that I didn't like one of my classmates. But anyway, yeah. So it sounds like yours was a very different vibe.

It was absolutely different. There was no class beforehand. I was saying to Becca later, I was like, all this guy needs to do is fill his head with interesting and useful facts about these whales.

All this whale watch guy needs to do is learn some things about whales.

and like not he kept just saying things and he's like you probably he also he was from like australia or something so he had an accent which i'll spare everyone but he he kept saying things like he would say he would say something into the ether no one would respond and he goes you probably think i'm making that up am i making it up i might be he kept saying you probably think i'm making that up that was like one of his go-tos when he got no response from people which i was like we're not at zany's in cleveland right now we are on a we're looking out at the pacific ocean trying to see whales i'm sorry we can't give you more auditory response to one of your by the way at one point vaguely sexist jokes i forget what he said he said like a nice tail on that one or something he said something that was just like a real kind of like old man dumb joke about like the female anatomy and the woman taking pictures on the boat who beck and i agreed should have been the tour guide because she knew everything about whales and was really smart and helpful while she was also taking pictures of everyone who was i learned later not associated with i think that there's like a freelance position where you basically like you get on one of these boats and you take all the pictures and then you try to sell the pictures to people when they get off the boats but you don't work for the company that runs the tour if that makes any sense it's kind of a sort of a freelance position she was literally like she was taking a picture of something and i heard her say under her breath what is up with this guy that must have felt good though just to

know yes i'm not losing my mind yes yes this this type of cringe i i honestly think i would have ended up in the drink i think they say that on boats i'm just trying to sound pretty cool i robo tripped so much drama but i uh i swam home god i i'm just remembering that i got into that on friday's show yikes um but uh anyway yeah i i can't stand that kind of cringe but just a tiny sliver of somebody else feeling your pain sort of goes a long way and by the way this is not me this is not me at all reprimanding you or anything but just so you know I am on the line with zanies in the flats to see if they'll sponsor the call in line so just a little careful on the zanies

we got a caller on the zanies Roxino line absolutely tread carefully on that on the chainmail addiction line but so the other thing was he was uh he kept saying that uh there was going to be a prize this is this is a view into my girlfriend's brain you want to talk about like everyone kind of reverts back to their school age version of themselves he said like if you want to come up and ask a question because he's like driving the boat but he's got this microphone he's like if you want to ask a question there is a prize at the end of the tour for the best question from an adult and the best question from a kid.

And so Becca did ask a question, a reasonable question, which was why he said, oh, you've got these male whales that are chasing this female. And Becca was wondering, why would the males be chasing the females when the female is there to have her calf? She either has her calf with her, so she's probably not fertile, or she's about to have her calf. And he basically didn't have a great answer for it. He was like, because they're crazy. I was like, okay. But for the rest of the trip, I kept going, so how about that prize? What's going on with that prize? I love that. And literally the next day she brought up, she was like, you know, I don't want to make a big deal out of it. But he never followed up about the prize. There was no prize. No prize was awarded for best question, both in the adult or juvenile category. And to this day, I think it's not sitting well with her.

Maybe I just have that Comedy Central sketch in my head. But I love the idea of a little kid just raising his hand and being like, why don't you know about whales? That would be the best question.

Well, that was the thing. Finally, at the end, they came around and they handed out these comment cards. Now, I was I was planning on tipping on my way out because I do know that, you know, and by the way, welcome to Vegas. We haven't even gotten into that. This whole no this whole no tax on tips thing that the current president is trying to push. like has anyone thought about the economic implications of that which are businesses will just pay their employees less and will offload more of the responsibility on us to support their employees with even more tips has anyone thought this through it's just such obvious bullshit but and i you know i say this with peace and love to people that are servers they deserve to get paid a living wage and they should make more money but i don't think it should be it should be passed on to us even more so because now it's all tips well that was we got

into this kind of locally and i remember i was on that um i guess i was on kow on the radio side on the weekend review and this sort of came up and i i don't know if quoting myself is the classiest thing here but i just remember kind of saying at one point like it sort of seems like the argument for from business owners about like the the issue here i'm going to make this too complicated but the issue here in seattle was more of a minimum wage issue and they were saying you know if we run a small restaurant like we can't pay the minimum wage we need to have the tips subsidize the our employees essentially otherwise we can't afford to pay our bills and pay our pay our employees essentially and i'm just like so we've really come fully around then it's not me tipping for service and i know we're a long way past that too i'm not trying to do a reservoir dogs thing here but like we're no longer even tipping for service we're tipping i get to be mr pink we're not tipping the servers we're tipping the company yes because they can't we're now subsidizing the the employee's payment for the company so basically i'm tipping the owner so that they can sort of like not pay their employees that's sort of what it felt like it became here or

that's what that argument here is and i do think that that will be the case i i mean i just i Again, I want everyone to get paid a living wage But I would like us to be more clear about Who's subsidizing what But anyway, I was planning on tipping When I got off the ship I've been on tours like this before And generally speaking The folks who are running the tour will kind of line up To say goodbye to you Which is also a casual way of letting you know That a tip would be appreciated But this was different They passed out Like at a restaurant, like when they bring you your bill in They passed out these comment cards. They were like, we're handing around these comment cards, which when I opened it, I realized, oh, this is just a very formalized way for you to get the tip from us. Which, by the way, I thought it was interesting. It said on the thing, I'm not kidding, suggested tip $20 per person. I was like, oof, that's a healthy tip. The ticket was $50, and now we're going to tip $20, or it was, yeah, it was like, yeah, $20 per person.

What were you thinking before that? Maybe I'm just really cheap. I was thinking especially for this which doesn't sound like a super personalized experience and also not very informative i would have probably just you know either genevieve and i one of us would have given the tip you know and probably just i'm i was sitting here thinking like probably ten

dollars total i don't know if that makes me sound i think i was thinking 20 if i had a 20 on me yeah because i'm it's i'm assuming it gets you know it gets distributed throughout the crew Yeah. And everybody seemed nice. Even Captain Kiwi didn't seem like I want to be clear. He made one mildly like off color joke. That was that was it. It wasn't like it. It wasn't a, you know, a barrage of that kind of stuff.

He was mostly just you should go on after dark tour and he really lets it rip horse. I'll be once a week. I say it and once a week you bleep it and it makes Phyllis laugh.

So that's why we do it. But the comment.

card i did write in is he making this stuff up and did you give him the 20 did you give him the

suggested 40 for each of you no i gave him 20 i gave him which i was planning on doing yeah but

i was like i wonder if this is going to get back to him and i wonder if he is it i wonder if this is actually going to ultimately push things in the wrong direction where now he's even more adamant that he's is or isn't making things up he just kept saying it was like his verbal crutch you probably think i'm making this up i might be making it up i don't know and i was like don't make things up just he told us like one fact about whales which i still remember which i already quoted to you which is that they come in weighing 80 000 pounds and they can lose 30 000 pounds during their time they're traveling they're feeding their young etc that was the one thing he told me it was like water in the desert for me i was like all you need to do is is just learn everything about whales oh and also do give out a prize for best question because it's really

bugging my girlfriend you should follow up today i would say if i mean i know that we're we actually tried to see if genevieve could join us for this conversation today but apparently she's an important person with a lot of important meetings but um if you ever find yourself in a situation again like maybe when you're in london where you find yourself maybe in a place where you could go whale watching cheerio and again not to not to force the issue but if you enjoyed any part of this it sounds like it was such a bad experience ask genevieve to like kind of guide you maybe i I mean, I know that you didn't book this last time was a group activity, blah, blah. But if you sort of got a little taste of it and you saw what it could be, she could probably help guide you to the type of, you know, because ours has sort of evolved what we go on.

And like, it's really like, yeah, you're literally in Greenpeace now.

I mean, but it is more like science.

I'll make the same joke I made on Friday.

You can like, and I'm such a, you know, I'm so immature. Like I'm half paying attention. I'm just sort of like letting the water splash. I just like being out there, you know, and I've probably heard some of the same. It's like kind of lessons over and over and over again. And, you know, like it doesn't really stick to me that well. Genevieve is absorbing it like you'd expect, like there's going to be a test at the end. But like there's a – and again, it's not uniform. But I just think about some of the people in the last few that we've gone on and their absolute – I'm appreciating this more now that you've told me your story. Their absolute, like, love of the game and, like, they're actual scientists and their care for the creatures and how much they, like, live it. And, like, they're real scientists. Like, a couple of times, I was on a boat where they'll drop down. I think you would love this, a little microphone deep, deep, deep down into the water. We did that, too. Oh, did you get anything?

Not really, but I'm going to tell you this. It was, like, there was one moment where I heard one whale song come through and I almost started crying. i'm being totally serious like like and it was it was like my like audio my audiophile brain was kicking and i was like i think there's a better way to do this because they were like they had this microphone which had this like tinny shitty speaker which they were holding their re-52 that

was then coming out the pa system for the bigger yes but it was like i was like there's got to be

a way to line this directly into the av of the boat like i was like there's a better way to do this but like for one second and it was kind of getting windy towards that part of the day there was one moment where this jank system actually delivered to my ears an underwater sound of a whale and it hit me like it's some deep primal part of me i believe that yeah i can

and also just because you're an audiophile as well and the technology is kind of cute and cool

like it just it does it it reminded me though of the do you remember the far side comic where they were dropping one of these hydrophones down and the whale is singing Louie Louie

oh now you say that I did forget about that did I tell you I did buy myself my dad last year as a surprise kind of like a I don't think that I don't think he realized how much it meant to me that he happened to be at Costco or something in late 2023 and you saw the old far side off the wall calendar which they started reprinting we talked about it a lot at the beginning of last year and I hadn't had one of those since I was a kid I used to get that every Christmas for a while there I love the far side page a day calendar essentially then they started reprinting them with with old ones with old cartoons and uh i loved it it i loved just tearing that just like what do you got for me today gary and like sometimes it's completely incomprehensible so i ended up buying my own this year i'm like i don't know if dad plans on buying it for me or not but i i don't want to start january without my own page a day far side calendar so i'm back in it baby never never missed a beat i i had such

good time out there considering the fact that it was pretty light on the sort of informational content i had such a good time and i totally i think i'm going to go on the same journey that you and vives have been on of getting into smaller and smaller and more scientifically based vessels i will also say that i don't it didn't seem like our guy was in any way worried about any sort of um sort of issues around how close to the whales we could get but the fact of the matter was we were in such a big boat that even if they wanted to get too close to the whales they couldn't have i could imagine that yeah you just kind of like see them somewhere at like one o'clock and then you'd you'd go over near them but you they'd be gone by the time you'd be getting super close so it wasn't really an issue but i mean again i was i was super now here was the incredible thing that night we were uh we had been spending the day hanging out in different parts of uh kihei and we were driving to get dinner and uh this was scott and tiff and becca and i and we just happened to be driving along this kind of beach area when the sun was setting and it was like so perfect as it is in hawaii and we jumped out we went to look at the sunset and i think tiffany said wouldn't it be amazing if there was a whale just breaching right now and i swear to god andrew a huge ass whale breached four times or four huge ass whales breached i don't know as the sun was setting imagine a a sunset the sun is is is touching now the the sort of horizon the water and in front of that sun is a giant whale breaching it was like some kind of incredibly

shitty art you'd buy at the mall i was gonna say it's like the uh what was spielberg's early logo for his films the amblin entertainment i'm getting an amblin entertainment dude it was like

exactly the kind of nightmare thing that your aunt who has more money than taste would have bought from the mall in maui and brought home but but in real life and it was stunning that is and so just

to be very clear though this is you having dinner at a place where this was not this was not the

whale watching excursion but i'm saying is i had never in my life until friday i had seen zero No whales ever in real life leave the water and crash down. And by the end of the day, I'd seen it like 10 times. It changed me.

Yeah, I believe it. So how did you feel about the length of the trip? You mentioned just sort of offhandedly a couple of times, like what a short trip it is to go to like paradise and back so quickly. Now that you're back home, like, do you feel like, God damn, if I could have just had like four more days there. or are you kind of glad you're able to go on a small little jaunt and swing right back into a Monday?

This was something Becca and I were talking about on Saturday before our flight home, which was the many similarities between the two of you and the many similarities between Vives and I. And one of them is that she also needs a buffer day. I love a buffer day. So we could have flown home on Sunday, but the only flight available would have gotten us back at midnight last night. Oh, boo. And she was like, absolutely not. So we came home on Saturday

She's got a real job Well that was part of it And a big week

You can't just roll out of bed and do this bullshit Talk about Randy Newman Draw an egg and talk about Randy Newman And call it a day

Sometimes I think about people with real jobs And I feel so guilty

Hold on I gotta take my 15 Andrew So yeah we came home on Saturday night And you know what and this is I mean I should I should just uh be sort of grateful for this it felt like the right duration of a trip which is kind of strange because it is a pretty far flight but like this might just be where I'm at in my life or how things are going here at the Madrona Hill studio but like and also it seriously helped that I was coming home to a week of blue skies here in the northwest I think if I would have been coming home to just like sideways rain maybe I would have felt differently but i was like like i got to you know go out yesterday and go on a nice long run i got to make a very mediocre gumbo last night here at home and watch the football games and get into it with kansas city chiefs fans online like i had a nice sunday that i was kind of looking forward to having so it was the exact right amount of time i i don't think i wanted to stay in paradise for an extra day which is very strange to say you know i'm just thinking as i'm

sort of like now living sort of vicariously through your short trip there i'm remembering various things about maui and i'm coming up with a theory right now this is hot like this is hot

love it right we're getting to see this is we're getting to see the process of working it out here

yeah peel the curtain back dude but i would say that the maui airport is one of the best airports to arrive at and one of the hardest airports to leave out of because you land and like there's so little there's so little barrier between you and paradise already like the moment you land isn't like half the airport like just outside basically yes exactly under canopy trees or whatever like yes there's a burger king there but like i mean it's just like it's so porous

i love that you mentioned the burger king when we landed beck and i were gonna have a flight and a guy just just said to his wife i'm getting a whopper i could see i could see that became our catch phrase for the rest of the trip it was the weirdest thing to say upon arriving at the airport i'm getting a

whopper but it could be part of his little tradition you know what i mean i've known people that have very like good taste in food but still are kind of like oh well this is my this is my one little like i just love that you literally sighted the burger at the maori airport which was on our radar but anyway you know what i mean like so when you land there you're just like oh my god this is gonna be the best week or whatever it is in front of us but then you show up at the airport you're like i gotta leave this place like can't you just make the airport like the outgoing airport like more dismal to like ease us back into can't you just sever me to put me on a people mover that severances me oh god are you now two episodes into that i have not seen any of the new

season no no i uh i was meant to watch it last night but i was too busy burning my rue and then and then going to sleep oh dude have you made gumbo have you tried to make gumbo no you know

I get it confused with jambalaya I have a jambalaya recipe that I make but I don't think that maybe that's what I should have made I don't think what I make is as complicated I don't think

I've ever I mean it was like everybody on the recipe sites was like you know you got to really babysit this thing it's flour and oil basically and you have to stir it continuously for like 30 to 45 minutes because it's it instinctively and inherently it wants to burn and you're trying the whole time to make sure it doesn't burn and i still had a slight slight kind of uh essence of having ever so slightly burned there was nothing burned on the bottom of the pot i don't know what i did wrong i was cooking at a very low temperature i guess i could have cooked it at even lower temperature but like it was so much work i had to go to three stores trying to find beyond sausage uh italian you know i got this uh i got this idea yesterday as a kind of a a nice cozy football sunday thing to make but like i don't know um i think that i don't think i don't think gumbo's gonna work for me it was so much work for such little payoff also when you make rice what is your water cup of water to cup of rice ratio what do you do it's less than what they say on the

package as far as the amount of water to put in with this thank you lesson i just recently had

to relearn because take that Padma Lakshmi who led me wrong the other day randomly on on like

Instagram or something the um I stopped making rice for a long time just because I didn't like cooking on our old stove and it just limited the amount of things I cooked and so it meant I wasn't like making meals that needed rice so whatever long boring story there I used to make rice a lot more frequently and I think I even like humble bragged on this show or I guess just brag bragged on the show they're like I've always been pretty good at making rice like it seems like something that is somewhat temperamental but it comes out okay for me and i think it was maybe after that brag that uh as i like to say luke god said ha because my my first batch of rice one guy show on that i'm thinking about it as long as nobody's got the right um god just dropping julia sweeney jokes like we are on it today but just keeping it current but anyway i followed the directions on this inaugural pot of rice that I made a few weeks ago. I just followed the instructions on the back of the bag like I usually do, and they always say, like, two to one, right? No, way too much. They say, yeah, one cup of rice, two cups of water. I think I do that, but I cut back by a quarter of a cup or something like that. So I think the last one I made, and now we're just really getting into details, but I just cut it back a little bit, yeah. So it's, like, maybe one and a half, one and three-quarter cup of water to rice.

I made a bunch of rice a couple weeks ago in my Instapot, and I – again, not only am I looking up baked potato recipes, which includes put olive oil on it and salt it and cook it for an hour. That's the recipe. I'm also looking up Instapot rice recipe, which is just basically put it in there and hit rice on the Instapot. Oh, it has a setting?

Oh, that's cool. Because I was going to say, I don't know how to – We have some device that I've talked about that is like – I call it the air fryer, but I guess it's got a million different things, and it's also like a pressure cooker. Genevieve has a special lid that she pulls out and clamps on it to make rice and hard-boiled eggs, I think. I'm just like, I've never messed with that before. I don't know.

So the first time that I did this, I just hit the buttons. I read the recipe, and I hit the buttons, and then it was like – it gives you these confusing messages. It has to do with pressure cooking. It's auto, but then it says, like, L-O-O, and it's counting down. I think that might be, like, letting the steam off. All I know is that the first time I did this, at some point I was like, this seems like it's been long enough. I could smell that the rice was cooking. It smelled really good. And I just let the pressure off and took it out, and the rice was perfect. But I don't really know what I did. Like, I interrupted the process, but I just got lucky that it was at the exact right moment. Then I was watching some Internet thing, probably TikTok. And Padma Lakshmi, who I'm a big fan of Was making rice in her kitchen and she was like you know you got to wash the rice and she was like you know two cups of water one cup of rice so then last night when i was making my rice for my gumbo i was like well padma said two cups of rice uh two cups of water to one cup of rice i do that in the instant pot i put it on auto whatever it finishes it is porridge just like it looked like matt it was like the consistency of mashed potatoes it was such a bummer so i threw that out and then i made a new batch oh you did okay good where i did one cup of water to one cup of rice and it's great

One-to-one. Okay, well, then maybe I'll even try.

Maybe that's just my Instapot. I don't know.

Well, the Instapot might help, too. Yeah, but I could maybe even try backing off the water levels as well. I was actually very curious because I told you that sometimes I make jambalaya, and I'm probably not even pronouncing that right. I sound very Midwestern. You've got to say it with a little more New Orleans. It's the economy, stupid. Wait, what? I've got to pull out of this fast. Bontong roulette. I've got to pull out of this fast. But anyway, I guess they get to the donors.

I want you to I want you to say something Cajun to each donor today.

OK, I will not. But it says this is like the AI answer to the difference. It says both are very similar. I know I probably shouldn't be going to this, but it says they're very similar with similar ingredients. The key difference is gumbo is typically a super a soup or stew served over rice, while jambalaya is a rice dish where the rice is cooked directly in it. And that is what I do. And I do remember now the last batch of jambalaya that I tried to make on my old stove. I also messed up the rice. I didn't cook the rice enough on it. So we had this really, like, good-tasting jambalaya. But the rice was, like, I, like, we're just doing the, we're just doing the, you got to chew the rice, Dad. You got to, I mean, it's got to give a little bit. Dr. Katz. Dr. Katz. But it was just, like, hard rice. And it was, like, really ruined the whole, it's amazing how, like, one little mistake in a pretty simple dish like that can really ruin an entire pot of jambalaya because the rice just wasn't cooked through. And it was like it was past the point of reheating it to a certain softness. You know, it just sucked.

Well, yeah, I think it was my one and only foray into gumbo territory, which, you know, lesson learned. Thank you for being a 10. Hey, let's thank some donors. By the way, a quick housekeeping mention here at the top. We have emails going out to folks who are a dazzling donor. Our guy, Mr. John Sklaroff himself, is reaching out to get those dazzling donor messages. So if you see that in your inbox and you feel so inclined, feel free to get back in touch with us. And if you feel so not inclined, feel free to not get in touch with us. It's your money. Do whatever you want. Don't feel pressure.

I'm just so impressed with you right now, Luke, because John sent us an email late last week asking us to put that message in there. Then another one this morning I'm like yeah of course we'll do it And that was the furthest thing from my mind right now I would have never remembered You could have given me to the end of the week And I would have forgotten every day I don't know why my brain is so bad that way So thanks for reminding everybody Keep an eye on your email inboxes If you're a dazzling donor Because we're going to start reading your special messages on the air Very very soon And thanks to everybody who donates

If you are a new listener This is your first episode First of all welcome It is a lot of Randy Newman talk generally

Draw an egg. If you're a new listener, draw an egg.

The listening experience starts with drawing an egg each day. This is fully listener-supported podcastery, and it's thanks to donors like Lavinia Axel in Hammond, New York.

Nice. Thank you, Lavinia.

I don't know where Hammond is, but I'm going to guess that Lavinia was sad that the Buffalo Bills did not prevail.

I think you're absolutely right.

Hammond sounds like Bills Mafia country.

Is that where the Hammond organ comes from?

I'm going to say yes. Yeah, I'm going to say yes. I'm not going to look it up. I'm just going to tell everybody that. Yes. And Aaron Lowenson of Santa Monica, California, don't you dare correct us. Although, actually, you could if you want. You've been donating to the show. You have certain rights and privileges, and they include correcting us. So feel free.

Do you think that's the same Santa Monica that Everclear sang about?

Swim out past the breakers, watch the world die. I love that song, actually, by the way.

Me too. That song slaps. I never even considered it. It was just one of those songs that was on all the time in the 90s, and I don't think I liked it. And then one time on TBTL, we had Camaro Kev on. I was joining you from Santa Monica, I believe, because that's where I worked at the time. And maybe one of you mentioned that song, and then you played it. We played a little bit of it. I'm like, yeah, why have I never considered how amazing this song is? And ever since that day in like 2014 or 2015, I would die for that Everclear song.

And yet, if I never hear the Weezer song Beverly Hills again, I'm fine. Oh, I don't know that one, I don't think. Weezer definitely, let me say the most uninteresting thing ever that's been said a billion times. Weezer has some really good songs, and then some...

songs that i just don't need in my life and like beverly hills that's where i want to be living in beverly hills is one of the songs that i'm i can miss i don't i literally even yeah i don't think i can't believe you haven't heard that song that was like weezer is hugely popular song well there you go and somehow like a lot i mean weezer is seems like

it'd be especially right in my right in my wheelhouse right like kind of indie rock from that era like so many people i know love weezer i mean i hear about that blue album as just being like one of the best albums of sort of that musical generation and it's just like for some reason never heard the whole record never kind of got into weezer that much know the sweater song i think i kind of disliked the sweater song when it was new and then i think i came really i think

that's uh i feel like weezer is just is a is a is um kind of a unique you were talking about like the Monk theme song being maybe the song that you like the least for a show you like the most and Weezer to me is such an interesting band because I think they did really cool stuff and then at some point I don't know what happened they just said we just we really want to be the soundtrack of a budget rental car ad like just the music became to me so unimaginative but so catchy and so widely played and so like widely embraced but just zero nutritional value that i don't know just it's it's just weird because like rivers cuomo used to be this kind of weirdo this kind of interesting weirdo and then he just became an uninteresting norm in my in my estimation again i would just say if you're listening to the show today and you hold anything dear buckle up because this is going to be the show where i make you mad at me by saying mean things about it anyway i would never say mean things about ashley renner of everett washington or the things that ashley loves everything you love ashley is perfect and the best okay unless it's the song beverly hills by weezer um ashley everett i i'm i've embarrassed myself again i meant ever sorry to correct you like that publicly i'll clean it up no honestly like we uh it's all about accountability on this show andrew and i You wouldn't be a good friend to me Oh my god, Andrew Something incredible is happening Birds have freaking figured out For the first time That stupid high-tech bird feeder of mine Not the hummingbird feeder Which is also high-tech And that it's now being warmed by a lightbulb But the other one that has a camera on it That thing has been sitting there forever With zero interaction from the birds Except for right this moment Do you know what kind of bird it is? They look like a sparrow, or like a starling, but with a red breast. So imagine the shape and size of a starling. Those regular-ass starlings that are just usually hopping around on the grass doing God knows what.

But those starlings are beautiful, too, right? They're blue. Don't starlings have big streaks of blue? I don't know much about birds.

The ones that I'm thinking of are a very kind of brownish color with points. No, brownish color. That's a kind of a—they're not a particularly beautiful bird. But these ones, the ones that are coming over to this bird feeder, look like that except their breast is more red. You know what? I may have a photo to send you later, Andrew, if this thing is working. Yeah, see if you can make that happen. I'll also send it to Anne-Marie Kugelman of Seattle, Washington. Anne-Marie and I share many bird pictures throughout the year. It's our love language. Let's keep it clean. Thank you, Anne-Marie. And also, Anne-Marie donating to the show is another love language. That is a huge love language. I love having this job. Anne-Marie makes it possible.

People giving me money is my love language.

That's right. My favorite part was when Anne-Marie gave me the money, as well as the time when Sam Viner gave me the money. Sam Viner in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Thank you, Sam. Long time. Sam, are you taking, are you accepting, and I'm going to use the proper phrase here, proper term, are you billeting people right now? I.e., can we come live with you in Canada, please?

Oh, billeting. Is that where you put somebody up? Yes.

I know that because in high school choir, we would travel to Canada to perform our Jesus songs, and we would billet with people. We would go and stay with people who would put us up in their homes.

Maybe we just draw that little Canadian boundary a little bit soft.

Just ease it down to the Mexican border. That's right. And then over east to the Atlantic. Yes. police i have never had this thought before i'm not how do i say this andrew in a way that doesn't sound totally glib i've never kind of wanted our country to be taken over by another country as much as i do now like i was always like that would be a bad thing except recently i thought well maybe that's the maybe that's the uh as they say it.

exogenous event maybe some other better country takes us over i would be fine with canada taking over the u.s right now i mean that not jokingly yeah no i i and i've never that's an i've never had that thought before we need we need other parents to come take this thing over i'm not

going to explain the backstory on this because i just know that you have read the news so you know what i'm talking about um and if we get into details we're really going to spiral on this ship but i'm just going to say that before i woke up this morning and i saw that the colombian president had kind of backtracked after the tariffs were threatened yeah on columbia i was like last night i was thinking like well we all have to buy columbian flowers this year for valentine's like i was just kind of like okay like we we need to start the campaign right now we need to keep because because this president is just asking for us to treat people with human dignity they are the good guys and we are the bad guys and we need to make sure that these tariffs don't work

By the way, Columbia, a place historically like a narco-clepto state.

What a world is it that I'm spiraling out of control in my kitchen last night just being like, well, how are we going to save the Colombian economy? Like, what is going on? I am not.

Columbia, would you consider taking us over?

I am not well. I am not well.

Thank you, Sam. Thank God we got Thomas Seagrove of Spring, Texas in our corner. Yes, Spring, Texas. Oh, Thomas, thank you. The donors today, you're the only good thing happening in this country that I can think of right now. We appreciate you. Thank you for making TBTL possible, even in these trying times. Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right, Andrew. If I seemed a little, I don't know, behind the eight ball this morning when we dialed up, it's because I got off to a weird start. My alarm did not go off on my phone. I was uh luckily I don't have any curtains yet in my bedroom that's not true I do have curtains I just never they're like um blinds and I never pull them down so I had that very unsettling experience this morning of like the daylight coming into my room and hearing birds chirping and going like I should be this time of year I'm generally awake before the sun is up that sounds extreme it's just that the sun comes up at like seven or something I had this very unsettling experience of being like why am i not awake yet and why is it totally bright outside and it was because my phone died because the little uh charging port the port on my phone where you plug in the the lightning thing or whatever they called on the iphone the older version doesn't work very well it's constantly it it comes disconnected if a strong breeze blows on it it'll be connected and then it'll just stop charging for some reason or if i'm in the car and I'm trying to play something with Waze on my car system, it'll just stop for no reason. It's basically busted, and last night I thought I was charging my phone, and it wasn't charging, and it died overnight.

So did you end up, maybe you said this and I missed it, did you end up sleeping later than you usually would? Like was it a real, like you woke up like, oh shit, like you didn't even know what time it was?

I didn't know what time it was, and I couldn't even check on my phone, and I don't have a clock in my bedroom. Like I literally had to go out into the living room and look at my good old brick and mortar clock. Uh-huh. I mean, it wasn't crazy late. It was probably seven in the morning, but it was later than I usually sleep, and it was just that feeling of being like, I don't actually know what's going on right now. Other forces that I'm just very habituated or very used to my alarm on my phone waking me up in a certain way five days a week. It didn't do that, and it was a little unsettling. And this is part of a larger pattern of my phone's that little input not working, And I've been needing to get a new phone forever And when Becca and I were driving around Hawaii And trying to map things So we don't know where stuff is My phone was constantly Like it would show us on the Waze You know on the little display in the Jeep It's like here's where you're going And then it would just stop talking to the car all of a sudden Because of problems And she was like this phone is really kind of BS I was like yeah it is And you know me I am not the kind of person Who ever denies myself Something that I think I need like a new cellular phone this is not the kind of thing i think long and hard about but for whatever reason cell phones are this odd thing where i'm not obsessed with the whatever the newest coolest version of something is like this phone other than this charging port or this input or whatever you call it other than i would i have no problem with this phone it's an iphone it has the stuff on it that i need it generally works like i'm not i think it's a 12 and i think they're on like 16 now I think they are at 16, yeah. But here's the thing that I realized. So I kept saying to Becca, I'm like, one of my big things for this week is I'm going and I'm getting a new phone from somewhere. Because the newer iPhones use USB-C, which is also just going to make my life so much easier. Because right now I'm toggling between most of the stuff that I need to charge.

or interface with is USB-C, including my computers. It's just this one thing that has this stupid, now non-functioning little lightning port deal. But here's what I realized, Andrew, last night. If I get a new cellular phone, I will not be able to put TikTok on it.

This was news to me. You put this in the show sheet, and I told you before the show, we didn't talk much about it, but I said, oh, I really want to talk about this story, because I'm curious. You know, obviously, I knew that TikTok went dark temporarily before Inauguration Day, then kind of came back online. But the original story was, oh, TikTok will still be there. It's just not going to be available for people who haven't already downloaded it. And it won't have updates and it could get glitchy over time and sort of die over time. And I always knew that that was the story. but then the sort of taking tiktok down temporarily to cause this sort of panic totally obliterated the rest of the story for me i stopped thinking about what the original plan did i and so when i saw on the show sheet today that you wouldn't be able to download the app on the new phone i was like is that true i had to google it i was like oh yeah like it is not in the android or apple stores anymore like it is it is gone now i still believe it's going to come back um but i think the interesting question here is maybe where we left off on friday because you were talking about how because you were on vacation and you know you were staying in paradise you weren't as drawn to opening up TikTok as much and at one point you even said you had a moment you're like oh maybe I should see what's going on TikTok and you're like no why would I do that why would I why would I open up this k-hole you know like yeah to drop down where are you now were you like on the plane kind of getting back into it or what I did get back into it on the plane in a way

That I don't feel great about because I brought Two books with me that I needed to read for work And I had my laptop I was going to try To do some like expenses some travel expenses For CBS Becca watched An entire movie which looked really good Called like Between the Temples or something It's like it's Jason Schwartzman And a bunch of other really great folks And at the end of the trip She goes were you on TikTok The entire time and I was like I also Checked some emails Which it was like a Saturday night At 10 p.m. I promise you very few emails were coming in uh so i kind of got back on on the plane i kind of didn't feel great at the end of the flight about that i was like i did nothing productive and i think where i'm i think where i'm going with this is that i am going to get a new phone this week and i'm going to not have tiktok on it and i think that's going to be kind of good for me yeah it might be you know i do feel like there is a very small professional element to this for me which is Like the whole way that I got into TikTok low those many years ago was because I kept seeing funny things online that had the TikTok watermark on them. And at some point, you know, this was as the pandemic was was sort of raining down on us. I thought, well, I should just see what everything funny that I'm seeing says TikTok on it. That must be where that's the kind of origin point for this. Let me see what's really going on there. And then it was just like, man, I just fell down a well with it because of its, for whatever reason, its design is perfectly suited to my broken brain and my ways of needing to distract myself. And so, you know, I got obviously really into it. But then also I do find stuff on there that does come up on the show, whether it's audio intros or just I find out. It's where I find out about a lot of things now. You know, pre-election, it was where I was getting a ton of, like, I've mentioned him before, but, like, the really great writer and sort of political scientist Jamel Bowie, I love this guy, and he just does these great TikToks where he's just walking around, I think he might live in, like, Charlottesville, he's just walking around talking about what's going on in the world, and I find it very informative, and I don't know, that's probably also on Instagram, maybe I just have to follow him on Instagram, but, like, there is content that I get on TikTok that I do think is actually kind of useful for me. um so part of me doesn't want to totally uh lose access to that but i i really need a new phone because my phone literally doesn't charge right i mean it can charge if i put it down on one of those contact chargers oh yeah right yeah but i i this is this is a very um this is very much a luke story but i bought of course i didn't just buy any content charger or contact charger i bought This like fancy one made by a company called Current but it's spelled like British like C-O-U-R E-N-T Okay like instead of current C-U-R-R-E-N-T but it's a Like charging company but I got this very Handsome beautiful like Kind of it's covered in like pebbled Leather and it's like a little Um a little thing you might have

On your nightstand that you could put your keys on And you could put little like things in There's like a little dish and then next To it is where you're supposed to place your phone to charge and it is a beautiful item that does not charge my phone for shit because it's so well made and looks

so nice that it's not functional for the thing it's supposed to do but it also doesn't solve

your problem with the car thing you know the attaching to the car yeah there's so there's so

uh many times when i need this little input on my phone to work and it just doesn't so i need to get a new phone but um but yeah it will be at the expense of tiktok but i just i feel like what i'm what i'm trying to say andrew is you need to be our eyes on tiktok right yeah exactly i guess i

do have it on this phone although quentin not unlike our egg cycles our phone cycles may be lining up as well because i've been actually last night i was watching that game and seeing a lot of commercials for the new google pixel i've been using a um samsung like phone for i don't know the last three or four generations of my phone i think i have a galaxy s9 right now um but that thing is getting pretty old but i'm like you even though i do like new technology i love playing with new things but like until my phone is actually not working for me anymore if it slows down to a point where it's like essentially not working i just don't think about it that much and i will say this this is one thing i was thinking about last night is and this this is not about tiktok but it's about ownership i guess is when i get a new phone i'm so excited to have the new phone but I'm also paralyzed is too strong of a word but the phone owns me more because I'm constantly worried about it I'm worried about dropping it or I say I'm constantly worried about it is a bit of an exaggeration but I have to think about caring for the phone in a way because if I happen to drop my phone today there's a beauty in having an old phone that still totally works for me right now but also I probably should replace it because if I drop this phone right now, I don't care. It's like, ah, good, I needed a new phone anyway. And there's something so freeing in that. But if I get a brand new Google Pixel and then it gets a tiny little scratch in the top right-hand corner, I'm going to be so pissed at myself for like months. You know what I mean? And there's something about like having something brand new that is almost, it's, I don't know, it traps you a little bit.

Yeah, that's definitely, I've had that thought with this phone Cuz like yeah when you drop a phone particularly if it goes jelly side down Mm-hmm, and it's just like that is there a longer there are two the two longest Units of time are reaching down to pick up your cell phone To see if you cracked it and then the other is when you're at the airport and you're taking off a sweatshirt And it pulls your t-shirt up that's underneath it

I would never even dare pull that literally happened to me in Maui

Oh really I would never do that i was sitting in one of those massage chairs but not paying for it while becca was using the

restroom and i was like a little nickel tied to a string that you were putting in there

were we in the minnesota airport when it started yelling at me i don't think i was with you i think you just told me about it it traumatized me for life i'm so afraid to sit in those chairs now because some of them have an alarm that if you're not paying for it it just starts like they don't want people using it like a chair now if i ever sit on one of those i'm like is this gonna go off on me but i was sitting in that thing and now we're in hawaii so it's a lot warmer than portland which we had left at like 6 a.m and i'm like this sweater i'm wearing is too much but i'm like but i know what's gonna happen i'm gonna take it off and that t-shirt's coming with it yeah and i tried my darndest to not do that but that's exactly what happened and i boy that was it was a long tenth of a second anyway all that is to say i know what you mean like the nice thing about this phone is that i kind of don't care what happens to it although the other thing and i think i talked about this before on the show this is not very interesting we should just get to the emails but like um i switched my cell phone service from verizon to actually believe it or not comcast you did that i remember

there you were like canceling your cable and they're like yeah but we have a pretty good deal

on cell service and you're like i'm listening and it's been fine it's like cheap it's the same I mean, I can't tell you any difference in terms of my, like, bars, my number of my amount of coverage. Like, I have no problem with the cell service, except when I went in there, the woman who was switching my plan over basically told me, like, oh, we're having some sort of a deal on, you know, you trade in your phone and you get the new iPhone for whatever. And I was like, yeah, I'm fine with my phone for now, I think. And this was before it started acting up. And I assumed that those promotions were just total BS, like that they're just always running a version of that. But then I went back down there later To say like hey I am going to get that new phone And they were like that promotion's over Basically what I did that was really dumb was I signed up for this new service and I didn't get a new phone At that moment so now the problem is I'm already they have no reason to try To like sweet talk me so Now I'm going to have to pay full retail For my phone or like do some crazy shit Where like add a line You know to get the whatever It's like I just assumed I love it.

cell phones i mean i know they're not free like i understand that it's all built into the thing but i assume that you just basically when you want to get a new cell phone you just add another year

onto your contract and they kind of give it to you that's i mean yeah i buy them so infrequently

that's how i thought it worked still too but now i'm cursed to wander the earth with a cell phone that i need if i want to get a new one i kind of like pay re it's like 800 bucks they're very

expensive i have i have a thought that this probably doesn't work in reality but just hear me out because i'm thinking about um me getting a new phone and how like one of the reasons why i've been reluctant to get a new phone is i have i know that this is the last phone that i'll ever own that has an actual like old school headphone jack on it and i actually use this it's a little bit complicated because of all the ins and outs of various aspects of podcasting there is a moment on one podcast that i do once every two weeks called spotless at the very end of the show i I need to play audio both from my computer and I need to layer something on top of that and send it down the line. And because of my setup in here, I only kind of have one input. So I always play the spotless outro off of my phone. I have to have it sitting here, aux cable plugged into it. And so I just like this is such a small thing. It's so tiny. It's not the reason I'm not getting a new phone yet. But I do think, oh, if I get a new phone, then how am I going to play the spotless outro, right? I got to get an adapter. I'm not saying it's stopping me. I'm just saying it's just one of those little things that's hiccuping in my brain. And then I thought to myself, well, honestly, this phone still works like it could just literally have one function of my life, which is it plays when I need to play audio out of my phone and into a board. I play it off of this device. My current phone just becomes a playback device for Spotless. So turning that back to TikTok, is there any world because like your phone is not functioning in the world when you need to plug it into your car or whatever. maybe you go through a period where you get a new phone but you keep your old phone with the tick tock charged up it's got you know you don't need a cell plan for it you just keep the wi-fi on and it might sort of almost be like the regulator that maybe you need to sort of not get too obsessed with it like tick tock blowing my mind but you sort of it's almost like back in the day when we we would sit down to watch tv in the room with the tv in it you know what i mean like i say yeah it's tick-tock time I'm gonna go grab my phone which is charging on the wireless charger and still functional but you can go grab it and sit on your couch and go through tick-tock a bit but it's not like kind of constantly in your pocket it's not the one that you're carrying right it's not run out to the

grocery store or whatever exactly Wow Andrew I mean that is a really and in fact that that that would make this whole fact that I missed the window to trade my phone in kind of an advantage because I got pretty much got this thing anyway it just put it on the Wi-Fi at my house put it on the pole and then just use it for tiktok but but not every moment of my life in every airport in everywhere i go yeah or you could because i'm not going to carry two phones that's the other thing i'm not going to like bring i'm not going to bring the tiktok phone with me to the airport which is one of the times that i just really just absolutely melt my brain with hardcore tiktok viewing is anytime i'm in a boring environment somewhere out in the world so maybe uh that's a really interesting idea i don't think i realized that was possible i guess i thought when i got a new phone this one just

gets bricked or something but it doesn't have to no you won't have cell service on it because you don't want to pay for cell service for two phones you can still do wi-fi so anywhere you have wi-fi which would be on a plane if you would you know i um but i'm not going to bring this phone with me

so the new phone the real phone that i use won't have it on there uh at least until it's re-added to the app store then the question is do i re-download it ever i don't know yeah because

Well, I do think it'll be available sooner rather than later, I'm guessing, for better or worse. Your buddy, John, your colleague, the producer, John from CBS, he and I were having drinks a couple of weeks ago. He was up here in Seattle for covering something. And he's, as we just said, producer for CBS. And he has two phones. And there's just something about that. I don't think I ever had a job where I needed two phones. I think I was always able to just use my phone for my work phone. but there's just something about that that i can't explain it to you like it exhausted me to my core like just seeing him like having to like kind of battle like he was like texting his wife one thing but then also like texting the crew about the interview with bill gates the next day or whatever and i'm just kind of and there's just something about that i'm just like great dingus password yeah no it's okay um but there's just kind of like something like oh man you're hustling you're hustling and i mean when i say exhaust me i just mean like how deeply lazy it made me feel that this this guy you know like there's still people out there who are just like chasing stories and stuff and i'm drawing eggs here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not from a female all right emails or vmails yeah

play a quick voicemail here for you, Luke. This is in regards to, and I have no idea how or why this came up on the show last week, but we're talking about sometimes little rodents like mice or rats can get up into cars. Oh, I know because I think you saw a feral cat that was warming itself underneath your car right after you had parked it and you felt so bad for the cat that was out in the cold weather. And I was saying, yeah, but sometimes mice can get up into your car either into the engine area or or in this cabin filter area and um i think we even started talking about how maybe it could be cute if you had a little mouse living in your glove box who could like kind of hand you over your like uh license and registration if you get pulled over um this maybe take a field sobriety test for you exactly but maybe blow to get the car started whatever you need that mouse to do um this is from listener abby hey friendos uh this is listener

abby from columbus ohio and i am calling to you from my car on my way home from the repair shop i'm listening to monday's episode where you're talking about animals living inside your car for warmth and the reason my car is on its way back from the repair shop is that a mouse took up residence in our engine compartment and then decided to chew our entire wiring harness to the tune of $2,000 worth of repairs. So I would say, while I can understand Luke wanting to have Gus Gus helping him with his insurance and registration, the risk of having your wires chewed to bits by a mouse is not worth it.

So power up. Two grand. A little mousy. Two grand.

Wow, two grand. And you know Gus Gus is going to chew those wires.

Where did Gus Gus come from? I don't remember. Did you give the mouse that name? He's one of the mice.

Gus and Jacques are like the two, they're the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern kind of of the Disney Cinderella movie.

Oh, okay. Gotcha. That's right. You went on that whole Cinderella thing. I didn't remember that. When Abby said Gus Gus, I wasn't sure if Abby was just giving the mouse the name Gus Gus or if I was missing or forgetting a reference. Okay, gotcha. Yes, yes, yes.

They are, I'm trying to find, uh, see if I can find a little tape, they are, if you ask me to imagine a cute mice, I immediately imagine Jacques and Gus, uh, who call her Cinderella, as we mentioned on the show the other day, they are the, um, they're the platonic ideal of cute mice to me, let's see here, oh no, oh, get out of here with this.

Somebody remake it?

I believe, yeah. No, thank you. I'm looking, I think, wait, am I, yeah, this looks too new. I think they must have rebooted it or something.

You're allowed to make new Gus Gus as they just can't eat spinach.

No, you're not.

That's a great joke.

Anyway, yeah, I was trying to find some of the original Disney stuff with them, and I'm finding like a new version where they're calling him Prince Prince. I don't like that. That's like, it's too much of a good thing. We like that they call her Cinderella. We like that they call him Gus Gus. We don't call him Prince Prince.

We don't like change.

Get down from there. Come off of there.

You know this. You know this, Disney. We don't call him Prince Prince. All right.

That feels like a good place to end things. Jesus, Louise.

Matthew Barry.

I think the problem today was that this half and half was really on the line. Oh, no. And I may be in some kind of mild food poisoning, which is causing me to be extra weird. Oh, great. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for all of you. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Monday. I apologize if I yucked any of your yums today. We'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio. Please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

This is all very amusing, but I have to be going now. Power out.