Muse

Hey, did you find everything you were looking for today? Yes, I did, Kevin. Great. Now, will this be cash or card?

I will not be paying for anything today.

Got it. No charge. Now, will you be wanting the extended warranty coverage?

I won't be talked into any extended warranty.

Got it. Now, if you just punch in your email...

Nor will I be punching in my email address. I won't be talked into any kind of Best Buy membership card or charge card.

Right, but we really do need your email to keep you up to date about promotion. Oh, for the Geek Squad.

Geek Squad. Not a problem at all. Okay.

TBTL.

I say, I say, what up, dog? Let the fun begin. That's a tune-up, bro. This comes out to all the coffee lovers of the world.

Beware of things that cost $1.99. Those are the membership dues for this club that I joined. The Columbia House Music Club Turns out That wasn't really even a club It was just a business for making money Although it is how I found my favorite band Various artists of the 80s

What you listening to? College music Ever heard it?

What is this guy trying to do? Is this supposed to be what Bozo's thinking or saying? What guy? It's Bozo Bozo did it Bozo did what? Bozo did the dub How'd it go?

Well, he's gonna acknowledge me on Instagram So I guess you could say it was one of the best conversations of my entire life.

Please clap. All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. I hate podcasting. It's just ruined my life. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. I've got something to say. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia where we have moved back into cold, foggy territory. Cloud fog. We had a great run there of beautiful days. Now the snow is on the horizon potentially for this weekend. Tonight on the horizon, if you're in the state of Oregon or even near the state of Oregon like I am, how about you come on down to Beaverton where we're doing Livewire at the Research Center. Ricky Lindholm from Garfunkel & Oates will be there. Ira Madison III, Paisley Rechdahl. It's going to be a great night. Reeser, please come see us tonight. Still tickets available. In fact, you just bought a ticket, my friend, for this experience you're about to have, which is episode 4,932. Wait, 4,392. Let the fun begin. In a collector's series. It's very important to read the numbers in order. If you say them out of order, it changes a lot about what you're trying to say. we are going to play a little game today on the show you play to win the game the game is how well does luke remember a specific scene from the steve martin charles groden classic the lonely guy memories are made in in your mouth andrew and i had a long conversation off air yesterday about that movie and now we're going to bring it on air today and see what's going on with that also speaking of movies uh if we have time for this i thought fascinating article in the washington post about a couple of things one the fact that in the 80s there seemed to be an inordinate number of movies that were set like big successful films that were set in the tiny town of astoria oregon including uh the goonies and of course kindergarten cop who is my daddy and what does he do this article in the washington post takes one specific statement from the movie kindergarten cop and tries to find out if it is in fact true or ever was true about the city of Astoria, Oregon. So again, time permitting, we'll talk about that. We will definitely make time for the blurs days. It's Andrew's favorite part of the week and we would never skip that. Speaking of my good friend, Andrew Walsh, longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's also an innocent champion of honesty. He's joining me right now. Good morning,

my friend good morning luke in the immortal words of mandy patinkin uh-huh let me explain

no there's too much let me sum up please let it be mandy patinkin's character from criminal minds or whatever wasn't he eventually on one of those like procedurals he i do feel

like i saw his beautiful beard in some promos during football games i know he was in a show in the early 2000s that was a show called I want to say Dead Like Me where he sort of had a foot in the, do you remember that?

Yeah, were the people dead in the show? Yeah, I think the cover art looks like he was, by the way, he was on Criminal Minds he was on Chicago Hope and then he was on a show called Brilliant Minds which is really See you next time. Brilliant Minds and Criminal Minds have to be from the same Minds franchise, right?

Or they cancel each other out.

Right, Normal Minds. That's where you find yourself between Criminal and Brilliant. I just love the idea of like, because my guess is when you're going to say Mandy Patinkin, you're going to be, it's going to be a Nigo Mentoya territory.

Yeah, that is the quote.

An eminently quotable character from the movie Princess Bride, but it would just be great If you instead loved a very, very forgettable Mandy Patinkin quote from Criminal Minds, where he's just like, obviously the guy was hiding in plain sight, or whatever they say on shows like that.

Right. This is going to take us all night, boys. I don't know what they say in the shows.

Put on another pot of coffee. We're going to be here for a while.

Literally, I don't think I've ever seen one of those shows before.

To quote the great Mandy Patinkin, we need to really secure this crime scene.

Here, this is what I was going for. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Do you remember that from The Princess Bride? Of course. Of course you do.

He's trying to catch Miracle Max up on why they've brought Wesley there in a catatonic state, right?

Well, I would say I've done a great job of both explaining and summing up so far. So far, all we've done is dissected this quote from Mandy Patinkin's character. yes but I do believe that is I believe you have the scene correct that's my loose memory of it we did a watch along remember that

I love that movie that's not a hot take but that movie really holds up for me I have to say

for a while we have that 10 of the week section of our weekly newsletter and we ask 10s to fill out little questionnaires fun little questionnaires so we get to know our listeners better and they get to know each other And that list of questions has changed over the years just to freshen things up a bit. But the inaugural list or the first version of that list included a question, what movie would you make the rest of the world watch if you could, if you could only make them watch one movie? So that's different than what's your favorite movie. It's like, yeah, what can you watch with your parents? What can you watch with your friends? You know what I mean? Like what? And when I wrote that question, I remember this was way back in 2015. I remember thinking, well, for me, it's The Princess Bride. and what do you think is the number one with a sword what do you think was the number one answer from our listeners the princess bride it's such a universal joy well i mean uh works for kids

works for adults is somehow again very family friendly but without being boring or without feeling kind of you know i don't know sort of pedantic in a way or it doesn't talk down to you It also, I'm sure I said this when we did the watch along or at many other points in the history of this program, but the thing that also is easy to forget until you're watching it again is the relationship between Peter Falk's character, the grandfather, and Fred Savage's character, the kid, is so unbelievably sweet and is almost like a different, it's like a different movie, right? You kind of have two movies happening at the same time, and when we think of that film, obviously you're thinking of it in the sort of the Middle Earth part of it or the Middle Ages, all of the, you know, the fire swamp and all the amazing quotes within the film, but it's sort of bookended by this beautiful relationship between a kid and his granddad, you know?

Let me ask you this, and I'm assuming I'm right on this. I'm not looking it up right now, but let's start with this little quiz question. What sports team is Fred Savage's character a fan of based on Chicago Bears? Exactly. Oh, have you seen that?

Is he wearing a Bears? Is he wearing something Bears? Do you have a Bears bedspread? It's prominent. It's very prominent, yeah.

In fact, that sort of ties into the little quiz I'm going to give you right now, which is a one-question quiz, sort of. And we'll set this up in just a second. We're still summing up. But really quickly, another aside, have you seen the Matthew McConaughey Uber Eats commercial? I think it's a teaser for the Super Bowl. It's the first Super Bowl teaser where he's doing Mike Ditka in front of the mirror.

No, but here's what I know about it. I know that there's a new podcast that I absolutely want to start watching slash listening to. I think it's called Casuals, and it's hosted by Katie Nolan. And I believe, I don't know if he is a permanent co-host or just was on this one time, but I believe her partner, her life partner, is the comedian Dan Soder, who I also am a huge fan of. Really, really funny comedian. And she is talking on this clip that I saw about this McConaughey commercial. And her basic point is, I don't need to see a teaser of your television commercial. But that's all I know about it. I didn't even know there was Ditka involved.

Oh, well, Katie, I mean, they've been doing teasers for Super Bowl commercials for years now. In fact, we'll be covering the first group of teasers in this next week after these messages, of course. But this.

particular one for first of all i will say this we and you and i have talked about this on the show a while back too uber eats for a while there i'm going to say maybe four or five years ago was dumping so much money into landing celebrity guests for their commercials but then spending absolutely no money on good creative writing because they were just wasting people like mark hamill and um uh well uh jean-luc picard that's exactly i was trying to think of it sir i'm sorry

Jeffrey. I believe he played Jeffrey in a movie called Jeffrey. As Patrick Stewart famously said in the movie Jeffrey, we need to change these costumes. Jeffrey? I believe he was in an indie film called Jeffrey, Patrick Stewart, and it was a big thing because it was at the height of the Jean-Luc Picard character, but it was him in a totally different light. I think he's playing maybe like a theater director. It's a very queer film. I just remember that was making the rounds in public radio. The promotion of the film Jeffrey starring Patrick Stewart was it loomed fairly large in the world of public radio because it was being promoted on. They were making him available for interviews. They figured the public radio was going to be a big part of their crowd. I remember the soundtrack. I had the CD soundtrack to the movie Jeffrey.

Wow, I don't know anything about that. That totally, totally missed me. Let me back up here. We are so far away from what we need to be doing today. This is not why people tune in. People tune in for efficiency, getting to the point, in and out, tbtl five minutes you're done and rodents of unusual sizes i don't believe they exist by the

way patrick stewart was not jeffrey in the movie he was sterling steven weber was jeffrey steven

oh steven weber oh my goodness and from the remake of steven king's the shining uh-huh the bad one

the one where the hedge monsters come to life okay so let me back up here for a second though i'm

I'm going to give you some background on this Uber Eats thing. So they were dumping tons of money on huge names, but the writing was just terrible. We just couldn't believe how bad those Uber Eats commercials were, let's say, maybe three, four, five years ago. Well, about, I don't know, maybe let's say the middle or beginning of this football season, there was a commercial that I really, really liked. I think Genevieve showed it to me. It's Christian McCaffrey of the 49ers sitting on a couch watching a football game at some sort of football party. And Matthew McConaughey happens to be there, too. There's an Uber Eats bag and a bunch of food on the table in front of them. Have you seen this commercial, Luke? Do you know what I'm setting up here? I think I might have seen it with the sound off. Okay, it's actually quite good. It plays into, because like, okay, they landed these big names, but can they do anything with the writing? I think it's really funny, and it leans into McConaughey's sort of conspiracy-minded characters a bit, so there's something there. And I will mention, this is a long one. This is a minute long. At the end, Jerry Rice, we learn, is also at this party and sits down next to McConaughey. That's going to be key to the joke at the end. Take a listen to this.

Why am I still hungry? Because you're watching football. The whole game is basically an elaborate scheme to make you buy more food. And it's working. What are you talking about? Think about it. Turnovers, pancake block, scrambles. Oh, I just scored. Feed me more. Come on, McConaughey. Come on, McCaffrey. Julius Peppers, man. C.J. Ham. Slather on some Gerard mayo and you got yourself a sandwich. Refrigerator Perry was not his real name. You're being serious. Yeah, they got you where they want you. I don't think football's trying to sell you food. Really?

Okay, we see the TV and one of the players just got a...

That refrigerator Perry line got me. It's not his real name.

Now he says he just points at the TV and somebody just scored and he's doing the like feed me feed me thing as more evidence and now i think jerry rice is

gonna walk uh walk in come on man can you go stanford i really don't what are you eating

jerry rice jerry's eating rice his performance is so good at that that's really good that's

very funny and you you love hearing him in on the joke of his persona a little bit exactly now this

next one isn't quite as long and i apologize it's very visual but i'm just playing this for you luke this is just you and i here a couple of guys cutting it up uh this one had again this is clearly a teaser something is coming up for the super bowl but in this one we just see mcconaughey in apparently his own home or somewhere standing in front of a mirror and he's dressed head to toe like Mike Ditka and just does this.

The Bears. Sounds good, but not the man. The Bears. Here we go. The Bears. The Bears. The Bears. Oh, getting close. The Bears. No, no, no. The Bears. The Bears.

The Bears. The Bears. The Bears. The Bears. It's an incredibly visual joke, so I apologize. I just wanted to give you a taste of it. Keep an eye out. If you're watching TV on mute and you see that, try to unmute it because it's worth the whole experience, I feel like.

Also, that Da Bears, Mike Ditka, as filtered through the Saturday Night Live kind of treatment of Mike Ditka, It's a very easy impression to do. It's almost harder to come up with 10 ways to say, duh, bears, wrong. Right. You know what I mean? Like, what syllable are you putting the emphasis on in order to get, like, that's actually a hard job. You know how, like, creating true randomness is actually kind of difficult at times? Yeah, right. Because things naturally sort of fall back into a pattern of sorts. It's hard to say, da bears, as wrong as many times as Macon. I mean, I get it. You don't have that many options. That's the joke.

Yeah. And again, that's very it's really the physical comedy in there that really makes me laugh. So it doesn't work here. And also, I don't know that I stop on that commercial. I don't know that I take up 10 minutes of TBTL to tell you about that commercial if it isn't for the commercial that we previewed first. Like they Uber Eats won me over with McConaughey's role in these things. So that makes me perk up for this one. And it also sort of gives me the halo effect for this one as well. You know what I mean? Like, you and I lived through an era where, like, the idea of saying the bears was so hacky. Just because of the popularity of that SNL sketch, I never thought I'd laugh at somebody saying the bears again. But, you know, time, was it time plus distance equals comedy? Time plus tragedy equals comedy? Yes. So there you go. All right. Should we get into what we're supposed to get into today? We sure should. So do we need a little setup on this? Yeah, let me go back to the beginning. Let me explain. wait no too much let me sum up um a couple of weeks ago on the show i mentioned how hard it is for me to wake up from naps why i don't like taking naps is because even if i only nap for like a half hour or something i wake up and i just feel like i'm so disoriented i'm disoriented for like an hour it's just such a terrible feeling waking up from a nap and you mentioned plus who wants to wake up twice like with all the bad news of the world like who wants to wake up twice in the same day and have to like kind of make that realization of the world you're waking up into. And so somebody and I searched high and low in my email this morning. I cannot figure out who sent me this. And maybe they sent it in some other fashion than email. But one of our listeners says, oh, wow, that's that's just like this clip from a 1984 movie called The Lonely Guy with Charles Grodin and Steve Martin. And they sent me the tape. But unfortunately, the tape was like somebody filming their tv with their camera it wasn't really usable for our purposes so i told you off-air the other day that i uh spent hours and hours trying to bootleg the movie which and then i'm just like wow how is this not streaming on any of the platforms i pay for and then eventually i'm like you know what you have four dollars and forty cents just rent the damn movie and grab the damn 20 second audio clip and so that's what i did the other morning you might have turned on tbtl and heard this as the intro tape this is uh charles groden and steve martin sitting on a bench they're both down and out quarter to the floor i'm gonna take a nap or

something i don't like to take naps i don't like to wake up more than once a day because when i first wake up i get that shock of who i am and everything i really don't like to do that more

once a day yeah that's it that cost us four dollars and forty cents although now worth it two dollars and twenty cents each time i play it yeah it's all about amortization my friend and roi so i was telling you that little story off air like hey luke i i grabbed this piece of tape it's a little confusing but this is it i was just telling you how i rented it um and then you told me that you've actually seen this movie before i was telling you i couldn't believe i'd never heard of it i love charles gordon i love steve martin like this it's a mid-80s like it's so up my alley i'd never even heard of it before but you told me you've actually seen this yeah i

had a weird way into this movie which was when i was a kid i was definitely not going to be allowed to watch uh you know a steve martin movie or anything but my dad's sign shop was like two or three doors down on aurora from a place called erickson appliance which later became a jack roberts linwood home appliance and which later and now became like an aikido center or something

uh where they would do yeah there's like two i believe i know exactly the building you're talking about that right now is two different martial arts studios owned by the same person right next to each other with different disciplines right next to each other at 77th and aurora but

that like when i was a kid now for literally 40 years ago it was um it was called erickson appliance by the way when it became the aikido place

there was i remember this like weird moment where i was walking by the the you know the the store had these big windows and i i remember i think i i was being eventually i was shooed away by an adult who was there because what they were doing at the aikido center was a self-defense training where the person teaching the class was, I presume, a man, but he was wearing crazy padding all over his head, arms. He had on this, like, do you know who that, oh, forget it, whatever. There's a DJ Marshmello or something. There's a DJ who's popular who wears kind of in the way that that other one DJ who you never saw, a dead mouse, you know, you never saw a dead mouse's face who's wearing that Disney thing. i remember this guy was wearing like a dj marshmallow weird head thing and his job was the exercise was for him to uh put these the people taking the class were women put them into a position that they might find themselves in in the real world where they have to defend themselves and their training was to use every like claw scratch elbow go for sensitive parts of the body gouge out eyes like do whatever and i think also in the midst of it either they were screaming uh expletives or maybe the person kind of threatening them was was saying some things that were like upsetting i just remember somebody telling me this is not for kids to watch you were walking by or i was walking by and i think and i think i just i have this distinct memory of somehow it being it being sort of made known to me by some adult in the situation that this was not a thing for me to watch because this is adults developing these you know self-defense skills but It's going to get messy, and you're going to hear some stuff that maybe is not for your ears. Okay, but long before that—

It did stick with you, I've got to say. It sure did. But I've got to say, when an adult says, like, turn away from this— Yeah, forget it. You're already seeing something weird. Laser-focused. You're locked in. I always think in the movie Quick Change, where they see two men in a back alley bicycle jousting, I believe, and they're just like, just turn away. This is just two men working some things out. And it's just like—

Is that where Bill Murray is a clown?

well he's dressed as a clown to rob a bank it's a heist movie but it has um who's like the most problematic actor before a lot of guys turn problematic the guy the star whacker guy um oh oh oh randy uh quaid it's randy quaid he's like what are they doing and bill murray's like just turn away it's just two men solving their own problems or something like that and there's something about that like it just will live with you like you were already seeing something so surreal and violent and weird and then somebody said turn away this isn't for kids Of course you're going to remember that.

It's interesting that this physical location was where I observed two things probably before my time based on age and maturation. Because the other thing was the movie The Lonely Guy starring Steve Martin and Charles Crodin. And that was because when it was Erickson Appliance, it was your standard like 1980s appliance store. They sold dishwashers. They sold stoves. They sold microwaves. They sold all of it, including Laserdisc players. And I remember that you could buy a TV there. You could buy a Laserdisc, the whole thing. And I remember they had Laserdisc, the sleeve, you know, that a Laserdisc would go in. They had them lining kind of like an upper part of the wall of the whole appliance store. And so a lot of my theories about movies that I'd never seen were based on the Laserdisc sleeve cover of that movie. Because I used to go down and hang out. They had two kids that were roughly my age, the people that ran Ericsson's, people that owned it. And I would hang out with those kids. They were like neighborhood kids, even though they lived far away, but they would come to work with their parents. And, like, for instance, the Clint Eastwood movie Escape from Alcatraz. I remember vividly the Laserdisc cover for that film. It's like Clint Eastwood, he's holding up, like, an improvised, you know, tunneling device or something. I didn't know what the movie was about. It seemed scary to me based on the Laserdisc cover. Anyway, they had in the back room somewhere, like, a couch and, like, a Laserdisc player and a TV. I don't know if it was, like, proof of concept. In fact, you know what, the more that I'm thinking about it, Andrew, I think we might have been, I told you this the other day, that we were, I thought we were watching this in the back room, I think we might have been sitting in the middle of the showroom.

Okay, to watch this thing?

Because they had a laser displayer set up, they had TVs, I think that they used to let us, on like a slow afternoon or something, we'd just watch, this is also the place where I watch The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, which I was pumped for until I found out that it's really kind of more of a musical and there's not actually very much you know there's not as there was not nearly as much risque behavior as I was like very much looking for but I think we might have been watching it like literally in the show and because I remember a different time we watched a Cheech and Chong movie I don't know if it was like up in smoke or I don't remember which one it was it was a Cheech and Chong movie where there is some moment where two of the characters are are known to be having sex but they do not show the characters they show a string of things that are similar to sex like an oil derrick going up and down like a rocket taking off all of these things that was the joke and i remember yes train into tunnel all of it and i think i remember looking around and thinking we're going to get kind of in trouble for watching this on the showroom floor of erickson home appliance so somewhere in that building whether it was on the showroom or in a back room i watched and i would have never picked this movie at the time it just was the laser disc we had access to and it was the lonely guy starring steve martin and because it was probably up to that point maybe one of the few steve martin movies i'd gotten to seen i'd gotten to see it really made an impression on me i thought it was a really great film and and now is this where i tell you the scene that i think i remember and we're going to play it well

yeah let me let me um let me do this first of all um i do want to give you early points for describing properly the Escape from Alcatraz laser disc cover it is it's Clint Eastwood like kind of looking through a crack of block almost like here's Johnny style from like the shining second shining reference and he is holding like a little pick thing in his in his hand he clearly has like cracked through this thing so early points given for that right thank you that and I will say that um when you were telling me when you were recalling this childhood memory of of watching the lonely guy you did tell me about one I think you said the only thing I actually only I can tell you about this film by the way and I will say it's a I watched it last night it's a pretty horny film it's like it's the tone is very different than I thought it was going to be it's it's slapsticky almost to the level of well it's like a melt it's almost like a Mel Brooks movie it's very broad it is so broad I thought it was going to be a little bit more mature like well the jerk is very broad in its own way too but there's something about like almost airplane or Mel Brooks where it is it is ridiculous like it is just totally slapstick ridiculous then it kind of gets caught up in its own plot a little bit too much and it does change tone a little bit but it's very much about this guy who's um you know girlfriend leaves him or his partner leaves him or whatever now he's a lonely guy and he's trying to meet women and so there's a lot of proto incel culture it's what i did say to genevieve i'm like a lot of this launched a million mig tows but um anyway so i'm just saying that so like as you're describing sort of watching this movie as a kid who is pretty sheltered anyway yeah like it begins with a with his his lover in bed with a new lover and she's wearing like basically see-through negligee so like it was like right off the bat like it's a pretty ooh la la situation in the words of mandy patenkin in the cisco morris biopic ooh la la oh la la oh my god mandy patenkin playing cisco morris he can do it he could do it First of all, he can do anything, Luke. He can literally do anything. But that would just be the best. So what was the one scene, recount for me again, the one scene that you think you remember from The Lonely Guy?

This scene has stuck in my head for whenever this movie came out. Well, whenever I saw it, I honestly think I might have been eight or nine years old, if that. So 40 years, four decades, I have remembered a scene where he, because also in this movie, he talks to the camera directly, right?

I did learn that. I was not expecting that. It begins with, this is how broad it is. It begins with a different narrator voiceover. Like, since the dawn of time, there have been lonely guys. It starts off like a fake documentary. And then at some point when Steve Martin's character is introduced, he actually says, I'll take the narration from here. So that's how broad Fourth Wally it is. So he does. And by the way, so far, yes, he's talking to the camera here. He's talking to us directly.

And he's standing on a street. This is my memory of it. He's standing on a street and he's about to go into an establishment. In my mind, it's a bar, but it's some kind of a place where he thinks he might be able to meet some women and impress them. And he is wearing like a kind of a running outfit because he wants it to seem like he's just been exercising. And that's where he says that's where sweat in a can comes in. And he's got like a, you know, like a spray can, like a, you know, Aquanet or whatever, but it's got sweat in it. And he's going to spray himself down with it so that he gives the impression that he is virile and exercises a lot and has been working out. And this is the part that I think anyway really jumped out at me or really stuck in my brain. But I could be so wrong about this. I could be so loud wrong. My memory is that he says something to the effect of they got this sweat from the Boston Celtics after a double overtime game. And then he sprays it on himself, and then I guess he goes into the bar. I don't remember anything else. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Okay. I pulled this tape yesterday. I need you to realize that I cannot offer any more context than the 20 seconds that I pulled because my rental has expired. But you didn't watch it.

Did you watch the film? I watched the whole film last night with Genevieve.

So you've watched it more recently than me in that you've watched it in the last 40 years.

And I told you, when you described that scene to me, I said, well, I'm going to try to watch this movie. Thank you, by the way, for your commitment. Sure. Well, I mean, I honestly, Vives and I actually had a rare evening last night where I brought takeout home for dinner. Very rare. But what happened was, here's what happened yesterday. I'm going to just try to make this show as long as possible today. I don't know if this happens to you, too. But I have my little lunch routine. Usually I go up in the kitchen after TBTL, make a salad or maybe a sandwich or something like that and go on with my day. But every now and then I'm tempted to go get some teriyaki or something. But one thing I'm really realizing in my life is I got to resist those urges, not just for health purposes, but because if I eat a big thing of teriyaki, the rest of my afternoon is so low-key. You know what I mean? The rice gets you? It's the rice, dad. It's just so heavy. It's just like I lose energy. I lose creativity. I lose the momentum of my day if I eat too much at lunch. So yesterday I was just getting done with the show. I was just going upstairs to make a salad. And then some nincompoop on Blue Sky posted a photo of a delicious-looking rotating gyro. And I said, I mean, literally seconds. Well, that's not teriyaki, though. No, it's not. But a gyro. I love a gyro. And I saw it.

Are you allowed to eat gyros at lunch?

Well, I'm just saying any food like that. I traditionally do eat stuff like that for lunch. But just like I am now at an age where I'm starting to realize how food is affecting me, not just while I'm eating it, you know what I mean, digestively, energy-wise, whatever. We could be euros just for one day. I feel like I'm making this more of a theory. I'm actually saying this out loud for the first time, I think. This is not something that I talk about a lot. It's just something I'm sort of realizing sort of now that in the past, I don't know, maybe a year or so, I've sort of realized it.

Your blood sugar slash overall experience is impacted very much by what you're putting in your body at any given time.

And it probably always has, and I just am noticing it more. I don't know. But I just, like, I think because I stay up late, I run the risk of, like, eating a big lunch and then thinking I'm going to go down to the office and get more work done. And then I'm going to be, like, so low-gy and so tired and just trying not to take a nap or whatever, you know. And I'm just like, I don't like that feeling. And it's unlike me to try to be responsible about any kind of intake. So whatever. I'm making too big of a deal of that. But point is, I get up, and I'm just like, ah, shit. I'm going to go get a gyro right now, aren't I? Like, you can't put a picture of a gyro in front of me when I'm hungry, Internet. Yeah. So I leave my office. Checked off gyro. And she's working at her desk. And I say, Vives, I just saw a picture of a gyro. I don't know what I'm going to do. She's like, oh, I'd love a gyro. And I was like, how about this? How about I don't get it now? How about I just go have, like, a moderate lunch? But then I bring us home gyros for dinner tonight. And she said, good. And there's something so cozy about bringing home takeout, and I so rarely do it. like i used to get delivery quite a bit but now that's actually quite expensive but i don't do that lately you know if i'm having andy times i just buy a bunch of frozen crap in the you know like pizza related snacks or whatever and i cook it up in the air fryer it's so rare that i'm just like i'm gonna run out and grab some i don't know indian food chinese food euro food whatever bring it home in a greasy bag and i just mention something real quickly about this i i want to

be very careful about getting into talking about right or wrong decisions around food or good you know good job doing this versus bad job doing that but i have to say i think what you've described here is a pretty great solution to the situation which was maybe we don't have a euro for lunch but we have a euro for dinner yeah and it gave me something to look forward to you look forward to it you got to sort of scratch that itch uh you ended up having a you said a reasonable lunch like Like, maybe it's not, you know, it's not zero tolerance on everything. Maybe it's like we're never having another euro, but we're not having it for lunch, we're having it for dinner. I mean, that's a pretty good solution and kind of a middle road that is a good one to follow that I have struggled with in my life because I am very binary. I am very, like, either I'm only drinking water for the next two months or I'm just consuming every single thing that appeals to me. It's like I need to – that's a really good solution to the sort of feelings you were having, I think.

Yeah. And I mean, I think our goals are different, too. Like, I'm not I'm not in some sort of mode where I'm trying to shed pounds or lose weight or anything like that. I'm not trying to overblow this. You're saying I need to lose weight. No, I'm just saying that I'm trying to stay awake. Like, Luke, I didn't want to say this part, but I'll just say this part. For the first time ever the other day, this was maybe about two weeks ago. For the first time ever, I fell asleep in my chair editing TVTL. i had lunch before like i think i we stopped recording i don't know what i had that day but i i'm i stay up way way way too late anyway but i came down and then i'm gonna get the show posted and my my hand is on my mouse and i have the audio file in front of probably warm in the studio it's especially warm in my studio where it's like kind of like the heat kind of It's true.

in here and the next thing i like airplane slept for a while probably like for 10 minutes or something i just sort of like airplane slept that is not a great feeling and so anyway it is there

is something very i would say apt about the fact that this show that puts so many people to sleep when they listen to it was also putting you to sleep as we distributed it it was a weird thing

I think the reason was I was looking for it. Like, usually if I'm – I do very little editing on this show. Like, just – you can tell. Honestly, I could use more. Proof is in the pudding. But I think I maybe was like, oh, there was something in here I want to listen back to. And I think so – I kind of hit play on it, and I think I was listening for a while. And sure as hell, we do put people to sleep, even ourselves. So all of that is to say, yesterday I come home with a greasy bag of gyros. Yum. And I said – A side of fries. We got one side of fries to split. You got to. And they're pretty good there, that Euro place on the coin.

Dude, honestly, I think fries at Euro places is very slept on. It's also one of the things, because I don't eat a ton of meat anymore, you can do a veggie Euro with the fries that is, like, available often in late-night greasy situations. That's on my, like, approved list of fast food kind of stuff I can eat. So I put down a significant amount of that every year, and I will tell you that the fries are always a delight.

And do you ever go for falafel? Because that's vegetarian, right?

Yeah, I don't. I'm not crazy about the consistency of falafel. I'm not a big chickpea head. I don't love hummus. So they're fine. If that's what they have, I'll take it. But sometimes I'll just get everything in the euro except for the meat part, which, believe it or not, is not terrible. Because for me, I really, really want the falafel. I really want the lettuce and the tomato. And I really want the tzatziki sauce. Like, you get that going, and it's 80% of the way there. Anyway.

I skipped the tzatziki sauce, actually.

Well, yeah, you don't like that white sauce stuff.

Yeah, I used to get it. I don't mind a little bit on a gyro, but I feel like they're putting too much on these days. Oh, they can't.

You know, I bought a tub of that at Costco.

Oh, yeah, I think you mentioned that.

A recent trip, and it is really coming in handy. Anything I'm eating that's like, you know what would really kick this up a notch would be a little tzatziki sauce. Oh, would recommend. Okay, so last night you're sitting down to watch The Lonely Guy, a bag of gyros.

And Veeves is like, what do you want to watch? I'm like, I don't know. I turn on my TV, and I do love these smart TVs. It's like, do you want to continue watching The Lonely Guy? You have like 15 hours left on your rental. I'm like, oh, my God. It remembered that I downloaded that on my computer, and I grabbed a piece of tape from it. But then my TV in the other room was like, hey, don't you want to finish watching this thing? I kind of love that side of modern technology. So I'm like, Veeves, let's watch The Lonely Guy. She's like, all right. and so we watch it immediately the tone is different than what we thought it was going to be as you mentioned like he's talking to the camera at times he's doing the voiceover it's incredibly broad comedy generally speaking I liked it I'm glad I watched it I think I'm a

better person for it but then uh you're a better podcast for it we get all this content out of it

keep in mind I still have not seen any scene involving fake sweat I'd only pulled the naps audio and so i was like okay you know is this going to be there was a chance you were thinking of a completely different movie like i mean you could have been not it would not have shocked me it would not and so i'm like telling v it's like look for a scene that maybe involves fake sweat and luke was very specific i think it had something to do with overtime in the celtics and she's like all right okay and again i don't know if she was really listening to me um and then uh and then we get to this scene um he is having trouble as you say meeting people and then he sees uh an attractive woman jogging by in the park and so he and groden look at each other and they're like hey they without saying it they sort of exchange this look that says maybe if we jog we'll like meet more women and so the next thing you see is steve martin and he is jogging and he jogs up to the

camera outside of a cafe i'm not really jogging i only ran about 50 yards this is not real sweat either i sprained it on they sell us at sporting goods stores it's made from the actual sweat of professional athletes this was taken from a boston celtics basketball player immediately

after a double overtime game oh my god i am so proud of myself what wow all i can say is

Double overtime Celtics. I mean, I was trying to – I want to give you as many points as possible. You're getting one point for the Alcatraz cover, which wasn't even supposed to be part of the game. You said he goes into a bar. It's actually – I'm giving you a half a point on that because it's like a cafe that he stops in, and he sees a woman in there, and that's the woman who wins it.

Because it would be weird to go in – I mean, honestly, it would be weird to go into either one post-workout. I mean, that was – looking back on it, that's kind of where – that's where the scene slightly has a misstep or a bit of a stumble. that's for phyllis um which is that would you really want to stink like you've been working out when you're going into a social environment it almost would have made more sense if he did that you know as he was coming into the gym or jogging in central somewhere where you know but all that is to say um uh what you know what's also pretty why i think my brain uh sort of stored that as one because long term or like long term memory is an interesting thing you know one of the things we know when people do go through you know memory problems and things is that oftentimes it's their oldest memories that are that are still around newer memories can be more difficult um i also think because it's sports adjacent like because i had a sense of the boston celtics as a kid it's this is basically more of a sports it's more of a data point of sports than it is a steve martin scene because if you asked me to try to recount like the part in the movie the jerk where he markets that thing that keeps your glasses from sliding down your nose, the OptiGrab. Oh, the OptiGrab?

Yeah.

I'm sure that if you asked me to try to recount specifics about the OptiGrab, I'd be just wildly off and wrong. But maybe because this involved double overtime in the Boston Celtics, my kid brain that was also obsessed with sports kind of somehow filed it away in a place where I was able to recall it many years later.

Definitely, yeah. I think that, I mean, because of your connection to sports or your love of sports I mean obviously that's the reason it stuck with you I will say that and I'm sorry I don't have the tape of this I considered grabbing more but I had a like half eaten burrito in the other room or gyro in the other room yeah um but uh it is funny because she he goes in and he kind of sits at the at a diner stool sort of in this cafe next to this woman who's like reading her book one of my least favorite things he's like oh what are you reading I've seen so many guys do that to women in bars it drives me crazy but and yet no one's ever asked you what you're reading in the bar that's not true no unfortunately they sometimes do and you the second if somebody asks you that you know you don't want to talk to them i can't explain it but like um anyway uh so he's sort of like hey what are you reading and she's just like she immediately identifies that it's not real sweat she's like that's not real sweat she's he's like how how do you know he's like you're right how do you know she's like well i i was married to a lonely guy for a while and so i sort of know she's like i know i know where all of the I know where you can get that at the lonely guy store. It's actually, the movie is better than I thought. When I realized, oh, this is going to be a movie about a guy trying to get laid, usually that's not my favorite genre. It's set in the 80s. It's set in the 80s. I mean, there's going to be a lot of problematic stuff. There was not, it was not, given all the context I just said, like, honestly, the thing about the movie that is, like, you would never see today is how much suicide talk is in it for, played for laughs.

Because the idea that you're so depressed that you want to end your life.

But they're constantly jumping off of, would it be the George Washington Bridge? No, what would be like a big bridge in New York City?

Well, the Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn Bridge.

I think it's the Brooklyn Bridge. There's all these scenes and guys are, while one of the characters is inevitably trying to stand on the ledge, you see other lonely guys falling from above. In line. Yeah, I'm sorry to laugh at this. I know that this is triggering for folks in 2025, but it's just like, I'm watching, I'm just like, they're just playing suicide for hugely broad laughs and coming back to it again and again i'm like you would never do that the sexism is actually much more less of the

issue than the way they're talking about mental health yeah um but anyway uh i actually did sort

of i did enjoy it but let's go back to this so alcatraz point bar i'm giving you a half a point on it was a cafe uh talking to the camera is a good detail i'm giving you a full point on that can of sweat obviously you got that celtics point double overtime point am i missing anything here That's at least one, two, three, four, five and a half points.

You're being generous giving me a half point on the cafe because I did think it was a bar. But, I mean, again, I usually take the road of self-deprecation, but I have no choice here but to admit that I freaking rule. I mean, I want to say something funny here that is full of humility, but you're really setting me up for failure tonight on Livewire because I've never gone into that show with more confidence. I feel 10 feet tall right now, my friend.

You're going to be going in there like, do you guys all remember that scene from The Jerk?

I've been looking for what I'm going to talk about with the crowd tonight to warm them up there at the Reser. Maybe it'll be like, yeah, it'll be how I just got a huge W today on this. So thank you, Andrew. Thanks for making my Thursday. That was fun. Thank you for being a 10. Let's thank some donors who are keeping TBTL rolling. I actually just literally, before the show today, had an Instagram message, a DM, from an old, old friend of the show. Remember? I don't know if you were listening very regularly in these times, but we had a pal named Nicky with two Ks.

Oh, yeah, of course.

Who I did like a push-up contest against Sean Dottori, Japan's number one mixer. and

And, you know, I ran that marathon with me and that guy, John DiLoretto. Anyway, a really kind of fun and engaged character on the show in the early days. And literally got a text or a DM that said, hey, it's Nikki with two Ks here. She had seen, I guess, a clip of us doing the show, right? Because now that's one of the things we do on social. Sometimes John will identify a piece of tape. He will send it to us and say, is this okay? You and I will both die a little inside when we realize how we look. and then we will say sure works for me and then it will go out on the internet and i guess nikki saw this and she said something like uh it was so fun to uh find you on here and see that tbtl is still cruising along indeedly do and it's like yeah because of folks like carissa carpenter of denver colorado i mean this is it must be a kind of a crazy experience for somebody who used to be on the show and listen to the show uh you know 12 13 years ago to kind of look up and realize Oh, no, it's still happening five days a week. Here it is.

But also looked at me and said, God, Jen looks terrible. What is going on there?

We don't like to talk about bodies on this show, but Jen, we need to. Let's cut back on the euro consumption, please. No, this show is still here because we have donors. And these are people who like this enough, who tolerate this enough that they know the only way it can happen five days a week as our job is for it to be an actual living that we make. And that's because of folks like Carissa Carpenter in Denver, folks like Christopher Gay in Halifax, Massachusetts. Did I do this last year when we got to Halifax, Massachusetts? Listen, I can remember details from the lonely guy. I don't know if I remember that there's a Halifax, Massachusetts.

I don't recall either because that would be – you're thinking Nova Scotia, right?

Yeah, that's where Halifax usually resides in my mental map.

That makes sense to me. I also, like, so far we have a Carissa, a Carista-fur. Can we keep this going?

We can to Kristen Kelly. Love it. Who's in Willoughby, New South Wales, all the way over there in Australia.

Is our Australia contingent growing? I feel like I used to name all of the buff dudes in Australia who listen to our show, but I feel like we might be.

I feel like, yeah, one, I think we note it. We note it because we have a little bit Now an ever more distant connection to Australia In that we went there I had a dream the other night That I was explaining our trip in Australia to somebody And I was so proud of the fact that we actually got it together To go to Australia and drive to the friggin Pink Panther pub In the Northern Territory And in my dream, as I was explaining where in Australia it was This person who was a native Australian was cracking up, like, you went up the Stewart Highway? You went to the Northern Territory? I was like, yes, we did. So anyway, I think we note when we have someone checking in from Australia. I'm guessing it's more than five but less than ten. Does that sound about right?

Yeah, that's probably about right.

Also, this is a very knowable thing. I believe we have this in a spreadsheet, right?

I have a friend, a good friend of mine who I knew from New Hampshire who lives in Australia and has lived there for, I think, maybe 20 years now or something. Wow, how time goes by quickly. But she's a really good friend of mine. I've mentioned her on the show before, also a broadcaster, Beverly Wang. And I think I'm just starting to realize now that she was texting me maybe around New Year's saying Happy New Year's or whatever, and she's like, when are you coming to visit us? She's like, maybe this time don't stop in Cooper P.D. for so long, or Cooper P.D. And I kind of realized, oh, you know what? The opal capital of the world? I spent too much time in Cooberpedia, not enough time visiting her in, I think, no, not Sydney. What's the other really big city? Anyway, I'm ruining this, thank you. Melbourne? Melbourne. She's in Melbourne, yes.

Andrew, how could you expect, how could anyone expect us to short shrift the opal capital of the world where we were staying in an actual underground hotel in those cave rooms, which were pretty dope? And we met a spaceship. We sure did. I believe it was a prop from the movie Chronicles of Riddick. Thank you.

I was Googling it. I was over here Googling it so quickly. I could not remember. You know what? You just got another point.

God, I'm on a hot streak.

You've now got six and a half points.

Incredible. Let's give a point to Eric Orvik in Philadelphia, PA. Fly, Eagles, fly.

Are you cool giving Eric one of your points? Yes. You know what? You're down to five and a half. I will.

I will happily give Eric a point. Eric has been giving us money, and that's almost as important as these arbitrarily decided upon points.

Eric's been giving us points on the back end. That's right. So we appreciate giving him a point on the front end.

Absolutely. Nobody deserves it more, except for maybe Pat Rowe, who's in Seattle, Washington. Hey, I know that place. I like this distribution. Colorado, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New South. wales seattle washington and then scott decay in a place in washington that i don't know if i've

ever heard of oh are you suggesting that scott has made this up because scott doesn't want us

to know where he lives i am i am uh clayton washington i am just surprised to reuse the workaholics format you just did that this buff dude escaped my radar i thought i knew all the

towns in washington it's an unincorporated community so it must be very i thought i knew

all the unincorporated communities oh you know it's in stevens county you know what it's yeah it's it's up there in the far northeast corner of washington well not the far northeast but right on the oregon idaho border and i will tell you that this this is a bit of a blind spot for me oh although it's near chowela and colville oh well please i know chowela i've spent i've whiled away more than a few hours at the chowela casino oh i'm looking at that now i would i would

never have known that's how you pronounce that i would have said chuela what for a couple of summers

now years ago i was i got into this mode of of renting a lake cabin and doing the show from there sometimes boy the technology was not as good as it is now for this and um and you know getting the family out there and have an addy there and everything and uh would always go to this general area of washington state because that was where we would go and stay we had some friends who had a cabin and so we would go, our huge ass family would go stay with these people at this cabin that had like one bedroom at Deer Lake outside of Spokane and so that imprinted on me that that's where you go in the summertime to enjoy Lake living and

Did you go to Monica's Buttermilk Kitchen?

I don't think I've been there but I do remember going into town, into the big town of Chawila And there was outside of Chihuahua on the way there or somewhere nearby, there was also a casino, which I did roll up on a time or two. So, you know, anyway, all that is to say, thank you very much, Scott, out there in Clayton, Washington. Appreciate you and appreciate all of our donors today for making TBTL happen. Hello and welcome to Top Story. I thought this was a really well-written piece in the Washington Post recently by Andrew Van Dam. You know what I have to do generally, Andrew, is I log on to these websites like the Washington Post and the New York Times, and then I have to scroll very quickly down below the digital fold. I've got to get right past the top eight stories because they cause me great, great mental unwellness. And then I get down to the really important stories like this one headline, the real single parent capital of America. And I believe Andrew Van Dam is part of some sort of a data department at the Washington Post. Maybe he's a little like the Gene Bulk.

I'm getting major Gene Bulk vibes.

Yes, because he starts the piece by writing here at the department. We just can't turn off the overactive swath of gray matter that sees data stories everywhere, even in situations where no self-respecting gray matter really should be activated, such as re-watching Kindergarten Cop. The rickety Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle from 1990 is a goofy film from tip to tail, but one of the most questionable moments in our eyes came when the young and buff Arnold, playing police detective John Kimball, admits in front of a parent at Oregon's Astoria Elementary that he's not married. Welcome to Astoria, the Arnold-addled mother responds breathily, the single-parent capital of America. Now, I have to say, I don't know if I've ever watched the movie Kindergarten Cop, Andrew, but it was such a big deal in the culture, and there were so many quotable moments, such as It's Not a Tumor, and of course... Who is my daddy, and what does he do?

We're going to play a little game called Who is my daddy.

there's so many moments in the movie that became quoted and became kind of part of the pop culture that like i feel like i've watched the film although i've never watched the film i had no idea it was set in astoria oregon and i feel like astoria oregon is such an odd place to set both the goonies and kindergarten cop and for me to catch a coosh ball that my sister threw off the

Astoria Column. A lot of play

for Astoria on the show of late. And in this article, Andrew Van Dam goes in to explore this question of if Astoria is in fact the single parent capital of America, or was. And even, he said, it's notable that that's in the trailer. That line is in the trailer for the film. They felt it was that critical to the plot. And of course, I believe it's being played in the film based on context from this article, as a kind of, maybe this woman's hitting on Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I'm wondering, I saw this movie probably not in the theater. but probably around the time that it came out on VHS. You know, I saw this movie on cassette when I was a kid at some point, and so I don't remember a lot of the details, but I wonder if that's a big side plot because he is obviously a very well – is he attractive?

You'd have to – it's in the eyes of the beholder. Yeah, I guess so. For some people, he's as attractive as it gets, and for some people, not so much.

But I was going to say, it must be like a side plot of the movie that maybe some of these single moms are really into this really well-built new teacher in town. Right, slash cop. Wait, he's a cop, though. Does he have to teach? I believe he's a kindergarten cop. Is he a substitute teacher? Okay, here's what I think I know about the movie. I've always wanted to do it.

It is called Kindergarten Cop. I'm pretty sure that he goes... How did I think he wasn't a teacher? Is he undercover?

I thought he's kind of undercover as a kindergarten teacher.

That's my... I mean, it's called Kindergarten Cop. If he's not a kindergarten teaching cop, then I don't know what this world is coming to. But also, I haven't watched the movie, so I guess it never occurred to me that that's what they're referring to.

I think that that's the case. I know he's in the— You know what's the—I believe that the— Okay, here's what—I'm kind of piecing this together just from context. But, like, when I hear the tape, we're going to play a game called Who's Your Daddy and What Does He Do?

Who's my daddy and what does he do? Oh, of course. He's trying to figure out, like, where the bad guys are.

I think he's maybe thinking that maybe it's the parent of one of these kids is the person he's searching for, maybe.

Yeah, that totally makes sense. You know what's crazy? Having not seen this movie, but having known that there's famously scenes where he's melting down in front of a classroom of kids, it's still never, and it's named Kindergarten Cop, and it never occurred to me that, like, oh, he's an undercover cop who has to teach a kindergarten class, which is just like a perfect 80s, you know, fish out of water. this hard-boiled cop is going to have nothing in common with these young children. You know what I always

thought it was? And size. Think about the comedy of size. You know, he's such a large man around all these very little kids who probably hang off of him

at some point. I believe they do. I believe it might be the cover of the movie of the DVD. Don't risk

any of your points. Do you want me to look this up? Yeah, I'm willing to say

there are kids hanging off him on the cover of I don't know a lot about movies, but I know a lot about movie covers.

Okay, I'm going to look it up. I feel like

There are children hanging off him, and Kindergarten Cop is written in kind of little kid crayon font.

Yeah, you're definitely right about the font, and he's definitely surrounded by kids. Yeah, they're pulling him down. I'm giving you—they're hanging off him.

Can we count pulling him down?

Yeah, there's a bunch of them. There's about one, two, three, four, five, six, seven kids. Some of them are pulling his shirt. Some of them are pulling his jacket. He's holding a couple. I'm giving it to you. I'm giving you another—you're back up to six and a half.

Scott is holding strong at one point. You're welcome. You're welcome. Happy birthday. But the crazy thing is, Andrew, in my mind this whole time, I have just thought this was all from a scene where it was like, bring your dad to work day, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, his kid is in the class, and he is just there telling him that he's a cop. That is, my brain constructed that scene out of nothing, out of whole cloth, as they say, because I've never seen the movie. Anyway, in this article, they go on to investigate the question of if Astoria, Oregon, is or ever was the single-parent capital of America. And it turns out, no, not at all. In fact, it has pretty strong stats about two-parent households. What they end up finding out is that, you know, a single parent household strongly track along with other economic indicators having to do with education and poverty and things like that. And for whatever reason, they decided to use this line in the movie, but they can't figure out who actually wrote the line. He goes on to interview one of the screenwriters or one of the producers who says it was already on the script when we got the script. one of the screenwriters has passed away also this movie was originally written to be in another city altogether it was not supposed to be set in astoria why is it in astoria do we ever because i

didn't read this article do they do we ever figure that out like why they never get a they never get

like a because again too many of the people that were associated with those decisions have since past. They can never really nail it down to why Astoria, but let's see, here's what he says in the article. They're talking about this, one of the writers of it, whose last name was Salem. He says, it's possible that Salem wrote the script with another city in mind. He reportedly was inspired by a kindergarten teacher at his 20-year high school reunion in a declining Rust Belt town in Ohio. And this is another producer named Medjuk confirms the original script may not have been set in Astoria. So it's possible that this was written about a totally other place and then just moved to Astoria at the last second for whatever reason I do think there must have been some sort of tactic

benefits uh that the state of oregon was offering at the city of astoria it also appears in this article that the movie the goonies legitimately helped revive the city of astoria now that doesn't

surprise me and it also that that even though a story may seem somewhat random the fact that the goonies takes place i don't know if i knew this before now but the fact that a story like the goonies takes place in the pacific northwest the sort of like that sort of makes sense to me because there's more of a kind of a darkness and a, like, what's the word I'm looking for? Is there magic in The Goonies? Like, it just seems like, you know, kind of setting in a place where weird things happen, not on, like, Twin Peaks or something. That makes sense. Kindergarten cop seems really random, to put it that way. Yeah.

Right, almost like maybe with the success of Goonies, because Goonies was made first, right? The Goonies was made first. I would assume, yeah. Maybe with that success, there was some sort of a move to try to attract more of that kind of business because here's where he goes into the article he interviews some old timers from astoria first of all astoria has a fascinating story you know it is the uh it was the first city i think i mean it's named for john jacob astor and i believe john jacob astor or at least this this outpost of astoria oregon which at the mouth of the pacific ocean was uh i think to some degree funded and paid for by the john jacob astor company because it was a way to move beaver pelts which was how he made a lot of his money early on before he got into owning like manhattan he was a beaver guy he figured out how to hunt beaver and he helped popularize like beaver hats for men and stuff so he needed but they were starting to kill all the beavers that were near the like east coast so they had to come out here to get them and they had to figure out get them back to the east coast and somehow this outpost of astoria oregon was critical in that so it kind of was one of these it was one of these um places there are many places on the west coast in fact i've lived in a number of them a store i haven't lived in astoria but certainly port townsend is one of them there are these tacoma is one of them i haven't lived in tacoma but like there are a lot of stories along the a lot of places along the pacific ocean that the story is this was supposed to be the next big place and it ended up being san francisco like there are you know like port townsend was supposed to be the san francisco before san francisco became it you

know and tacoma was supposed to be seattle until before the train the story goes that the train

line went to seattle so then it you know tacoma didn't quite flourish there are lots of towns up and down the west coast that all for a period of time were supposed to be the next big thing And Astoria certainly was one of them. The interviews, folks who have been in Astoria for a long time, including the woman at the Clatsop County Historical Society, her name's Lisa Penner, she's the archivist. And she says, I believe, I remember many empty stores that were here in the 1970s and 80s. For a long time, it appeared Astoria was just going to fold up and blow away. It's so different now. The younger generation has found all kinds of ways to bring businesses to Astoria and the county. And this seems to actually be borne out by the data in terms of Astoria, Oregon, was very close to kind of going away after the decline in the timber business and the fishing industry. It was one of those places that there wasn't very much happening there. And then they made this movie, The Goonies, there, and people started coming out to look at where the scenes were shot and then also thinking of the town differently. And I can tell you from personal experience, Astoria is kind of booming right now. they have very cool little hotels they've got lots of breweries and lots of interesting restaurants opening a lot of young people like it is a weirdly thriving place which seems like it needed something to get it through the kind of like 80s and 90s and it seems to have been the goonies and to whatever degree maybe on a much smaller level kindergarten cop

you know what's really cute i'm on the um oregon subreddit right now and somebody posted that's it and somebody posted the question I recently re-watched The Kindergarten Cop after many years I completely forgot it took place in Astoria my question is are there any Astoria locals that were extras in the movie did you get to see The Terminator this was posted a year ago and this is filled with a bunch of people who are or were locals sharing their memories the first response is so adorable it says I was in this movie along with my brother and cousin I was seven at the time we had about three days of work it was pretty neat they had a few big tents with all sorts of food once or twice i remember arnold coming out to the coming out of the tents with a big old cigar and letting the kids climb on him like a jungle gym five or six yeah what the hell i'm in a generous thanks god you're really in a good mood yeah during the scene where they march on the playground i got and then there's a this person like took a little just taking a photo of their phone you know of their tv with their phone just the most a

adorable little kid wearing an overcoat i guess that's the person who posted this and all these people are like oh i think my uncle was in a band scene at the end of that my dad was at a was working at the grocery store and got to see arnold it's like all these people sharing little memories of just like when when arnold came to town and when the movie and so many of these kids

were actually just like locals it looks like um you know this actually might be enough to motivate me to finally watch the movie Kindergarten Cop because I'm I'm I'm not I'm not super similar to you Andrew in that I will watch movies well I don't want to put words in your mouth or describe your experience but I have the sense that a lot of times you'll watch an older movie just because you're kind of like and by older I mean 80s or 90s because the look of the film or the vibe is just kind of comforting to you is that what is that a fair statement yeah yeah I was hoping you

weren't going to say that I like to get and we just talked about this recently I don't like to watch purposely bad movies to make fun of them i don't like to cringe i'm not like in the camp or just like that kind of thing but i do love an 80s or 90s movie that maybe isn't like the best made film in the world but it just like sort of connects me to youth even if i haven't seen the movie before it can give me sort of nostalgia for for that time it's very comforting for me at a certain time and sometimes i just put them on in the background anyway right and so now that i know

that this is also in astoria now that i also know that arnold schwarzenegger seems to be one of the few people of his age cohort to be on the right side of history who who'd a thunk now when he

i was leading i was after we get done with the story talk i wanted to play a piece of tape for you that i heard on lebitard yesterday regarding the other muscle-bound action movie star of the time sylvester stallone which seems to kind of go in the other direction sure does but i didn't realize he was that i didn't realize that that's his that i didn't realize that stallone as problematic i've only heard this tape which is ridiculous it's basically him talking about how people aren't tough enough these days which is just so stupid but he's such a moron he says the most accidentally ridiculously funny thing in this and so it makes me mad that guys like him are walking around with these thoughts that like you you gotta make your life harder on yourself it's just like such a stupid philosophy but one of the quotes he says in this piece of tape i want to play for you is it just exposes him as the biggest idiot in the world what i mean what an

interesting thing the divergence of these two guys to where you know arnold schwarzenegger is just living with donkeys literally he has these like donkeys that run around his house putting up these videos and has become and is and is regularly releasing videos that really do push back on the trump agenda like hard yeah i mean the guy was a republic he was the republican governor of california i mean he was like the guy who was famous for driving a hummer around like i'm not he's not pure as the driven snow but my god he's at least able to look at this current version of our politics kind of for what they are and uh and to have stallone because the funny thing is the knock on arnold would be this guy's kind of a meathead and the story on stallone was he wrote rocky they were going to pay him all this money for but they weren't gonna let him play rocky but then he just held on and like I always had this narrative of Stallone has actually kind of actually got more on the ball mentally than people give him credit for because he was apparently when he was born I think he was oxygen deprived so part of his face is paralyzed which people kind of read for some sort of him not being intelligent but it was more just physiological like I was going around with this narrative that like boy Sylvester Stallone's got more on the ball than you thought and that's really evaporated in the last five years based on his turn

can we hear the tape yeah you want me to just do this now so again like because this is coming from the perspective of somebody being like yeah you know we're all too soft these days obviously i hate that i don't want to bring that toxicity into the show but also he's just such a moron okay i'm gonna do my best not to just re-quote what they said on levitard after this tape but take a listen to this so he's i i don't know why he's doing this for some sort of social media thing by the way the camera angle is so bad whoever whoever is taping him here has done that thing where they're holding the phone you know up and downsies as you do but they're centering his head right in the middle so there's just so much head space above him i don't know why nobody hates negative head space what are we doing why why are we why do we need all that head space we don't need to see your drop ceiling in this case we see his office um he's holding a pair of gloves that were I don't know I think they were probably used in the Rocky movie but they're boxing gloves yeah and apparently like these are not the type of gloves gloves you're allowed to use legally in the ring these days now take a listen

they don't even allow these today because they're so dangerous but that's what they used when I did the film they're barely six ounces they're Reyes and they're literally lethal so i still have them because it's a time when people were tougher sorry they were uh life is just getting a little easier and easier and easier oh that's great it's wonderful but it's not when we force ourselves into tough situations that's what the human creature is supposed to do they're not supposed to have wheels on their suitcases it's a kid like i wanted to say

As somebody said, of all of the things that are taking America down, suitcases with wheels really caught astray there, right? Like, man, how did wheels with suitcases get involved?

You know what's funny about that specific statement is I have had on more than one occasion the actual thought, I am so glad I have wheels on this suitcase. Like, I literally have had the thought, like, this is one of the biggest advances in human evolution and technology Because I, like, the first time I ever went to Europe, it would have been in 2000 And the suitcases that we had, the suitcases I had were some just hand-me-downs from my parents So they were suitcases, they were, like, big, vinyl, like, probably didn't, zippers probably didn't quite work well Definitely didn't have functioning wheels on them And I just remember that that whole trip It was a struggle To get anywhere Because I always had all this heavy shit And I just went to Europe last summer With my bags, that wheel And there were so many times where I was like This is so much better Like this is Where was this all my life Like this is a game changer And the idea that he would think that's the issue It's really one of the best improvements we've made to modern life

But I mean his whole We're not done with the tape we're not even to the best part yet but i just think that is so funny because he's saying the human creature i believe as he describes humanity is built to force themselves into tough situations like do you drive anywhere like does he drive anywhere because if so that's the easy way out why would he not just walk or run anywhere like of course the human condition is like we're not trying to force ourselves into needlessly tough situations i mean no we actually

In fact, we seek the opposite.

Yes. Now, some people push themselves to find solutions to the world's problems. I think he's confusing a drive to be better versus making life harder on yourself.

Like an evolutionary or natural selection kind of tendency.

So anyway, I'm sorry, suitcases. You're taken astray here.

Oh, that's great. It's wonderful, but it's not. When we force ourselves into tough situations, that's what the human creature is supposed to do. They're not supposed to have wheels on their suitcases. It's a convenience, no question, but it just makes things easier. Now, with AI, you can literally put your brain in the pickle jar and have that machine do it.

I want to read that quote in case you couldn't hear it. The actual quote is, with AI, you can literally put your brain in the pickle jar and have that machine do it. okay so literally i don't think that holds up you're losing the sylvester salone is losing a

point for that and secondly yeah because what the idea is if the idea is ai is if ai is replacing your brain function that's what he's saying right but then also i think he's conflating a couple of things which is this idea that we could like kind of live forever because our brains could be separated from our body stored somewhere like in the steve martin movie the man with two brains where he takes a brain on a romantic i believe boat ride in like a central park i haven't seen all of that by the way he's like i remember him like rowing a boat why is today all steve martin memories for me but anyway like i think he's he's blending together various uh like you know like future and what would he call that like futurism of like you're you won't need a body anymore because we can save your brain and then we can build some sort of a simulation that your brain gets to live in that – but that's different than AI, which the argument would be AI could replace brains because AI, it becomes itself sentient. And in that case, your brain in a jar working with AI would kind of make no sense.

It is. I mean, you're giving him so much credit even trying to make that make sense, I feel like. But what I love about it is people of his generation and his outlook on the world, Like, A.I., yeah, he's talking at us like he's talking down to us and telling us what the world is like while just putting his stupidity on full display, but having strong opinions about A.I., which he believes means you can literally put your brain in a pickle jar and have A.I. do it, whatever it is. Yet he's going to have a cabinet position by the time we're done recording today.

There's a right way to rock and a wrong way to roll. You can't just listen

to your soul just remember that life is number one you can be having so much fun just remember that life is much fun you can be nothing but one

it is time to blurs if you'd like to wish somebody a happy birthday or blursday email me andrew at tbtl.net put blurs day in the subject line here's a note we got from alex who says i'm very excited to wish a happy blurs day actual blurs day this year on january 30th that's today to my partner and co-listener christina i hope this message finds you way i hope this message finds you well wait this is not chat gpt so i hope this message brings you a bit of joy when it feels like it can be hard to find. I love you. Happy Blur's Day, Christina. Golly, man, their brain's in a jar, man. Yeah, it's literally in a pickle jar. AI's doing it. Amy in Minnesota. This is our friend Amy, the Pandrumic drummer. Happy Blur's Day to my husband, Chad. Oh, Chad, we love Chad. Put that wolf whistle away. They're happily married, Lou. Don't get fresh. Amy says happy Blur's Day to Chad. Today is his actual Blur's Day. Look at that, two actual blurses. This is going to be a big year. Chad graduates from seminary in April and will be a Unitarian Universalist.

Whoa, congratulations, conchadulations.

Minister. I'm so proud of him, especially now when we really need people committed to creating new, inclusive, loving, and just communities. I love you, Chad. I hope we'll have a slightly more. I hope. I'm sorry. I am really ruining these today. Chad, I hope we'll soon have slightly more time together to watch our geeky TV shows. That's from Amy to Chad. I got in the way there.

That makes me long for us going back to the Minnesota State Fair. And we've talked to Amy and Chad, I think, in a few different locations and moments, but I remember specifically at the State Fair talking to them. And that was really fun. Is our bridge so thoroughly burned with Minnesota Public Radio that they would never host us again?

Well, I have a little intel on that that I can tell you, is that we, or I got a text message from our friend Amy Wu, who was visiting the old mothership recently and sent me a photo from inside the lobby where our cartoon visages remain on the big screen TV advertising our podcast as an APM product. how do we feel about that?

My initial thought is sweet. We'll take any extra promo. And we love that. I wouldn't say that we're so fondly remembered there, but that no one remembered to take us off of the slideshow.

We were so unremembered that they don't even see it. It looks like nothing to them.

They don't even know we're gone. That's kind of cool. On the other hand, if they're monetizing us in some way, if there's a parallel dimension where there's a Carvana ad playing on tbtl right now i don't know how i feel about that i don't think it's that i think they don't have

as many um podcasts as they used to have well maybe staffers and they certainly don't have as many podcasts as they used to have so if they need us to fluff up the slideshow a little bit

actually you know what i've got to be i got to actually got to watch myself here because i just remembered you're trying to get livewire on there yeah we're in discussions of doing livewire in the twin cities this fall because we are on minnesota public radio so in a roundabout way i guess i It still sort of worked there. Yeah.

I don't give a shit.

All right.

I don't have any projects I'm trying to get on Minnesota Public Radio. William says, happy Blur's Day to listener Laura. A decade ago, when you first told me about TBTL, I had no idea that I'd become a full-fledged 10 myself, listening every day while driving Quentin to daycare. We love you. Happy Blur's Day, Laura. And that is it for the Blur's Days this week.

Nice. That's a good amount. That's not like one. One is a lonely number, but it's not like 600, which is a crowd.

Exactly. And anything in between is sweet.

Exactly. And we just hit that perfect sweet spot.

586? Fine. Three? Okay.

Yeah. I think that was in a good zone for us. What a way to wrap up this Thursday episode. Guess what, though? We've still got more TBTL coming your way this week. Do we? Tomorrow morning. Are we doing it tomorrow? We sure do.

Really? We are. I thought we kind of nailed it.

We kind of nailed it today. Heck or high water. I do think today was a good show, but mostly because I scored eight points. You, well. I'm currently leading.

No, I think you're seven and a half. You can't round that. Well.

I'll take it. You beat the spread. Hey, seriously, if you're looking for something to do, come down to Beaverton tonight and watch us do Livewire, please. If you're looking for something to listen to tomorrow, tune on back in for TBTL. We will be here with more imaginary radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Thursday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Wow. Wow. All I can say is wow! Power out.