Muse

I love a good gas station. There's a great gas station by my house. I'm in there all the time. I talk to the employees. They know me. This just happened. I was in there. I had a weird thing with the woman, the cashier. I bought a beer at the gas station, and the cashier goes, when's your birthday, honey? And I said, November 13, 1991. And she goes, oh, my daughter's on the first. But, you know, different year.

so you're telling me nothing

I said three things and two of them don't apply to your daughter who I've never met what do you want me to say to that get her in here dude I got are you kidding me I gotta meet this girl November what that's insane get her in here

TBTL I consider myself to be an absolutely dead center, normal, average American.

And it's romantic, and it's full of these sort of situations, which turns out to be that it's very interesting, very scary at times, but also a lot of romance and really well made. So I recommend it. Good soundtrack. Good soundtrack. Is there, and I'm just guessing here, some kind of medication that you maybe need a lot of and have taken none of? Or maybe too much of today? Laughter, a sure sign of a good time.

Flashes of Quincy. All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Welcome to the internet. My name is Luke Burbank, I am your host. I'm an activist and house party enthusiast. Coming to you once again from, I think, on the border of London's West End, here in the United Kingdom.

This is special. This is special.

Trying to pick up through context clues what part of town I'm in. And there are some theaters. The Devil Wears Prada is live, is happening not too far from me. So that feels kind of West End-y. But you know me, I'm not great with geography. I do know that I'm very far away from where I typically do the show, but very excited to be here bringing you episode 4,400 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. I'm also very far away from a large suitcase with all of my clothing in it that did not make it out of Seattle, apparently, when I was traveling here on Sunday. I hope you all are sitting down as you listen, because it turns out the process of figuring out what is going on with this luggage has not been easy. I did not let that stop me, though, from having an absolute corker of a day here in London. I went to the British Museum. Sounds expensive. I had a traditional fish and chips meal at a traditional British pub.

Is it too early to get a fish sandwich?

And, maybe most surprisingly, I sat in on the United Kingdom Supreme Court actually hearing a case. It's literally illegal. And went to the gift shop. Yes, they have a gift shop. Yes, I bought a ball cap. Yes, I'm wearing it right now. Which puts me in the perfect frame of mind for doing this show and saying hello to the longest-running co-bro of the program, Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships as I've been out here gallivanting. He's been keeping the home fires burning, keeping the recordings going, the internet profile of the show active, and all of that stuff. Are you sure? Mm-hmm. Okay. And we sure are grateful for it. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Sorry, I ruined that. Hold on. Dang it. I want to greet you. I was looking up how people in England greet each other, and I wanted to give you a proper English greeting. in honor of the situation. Do you want a formal, forget everything so far, I haven't said hello yet. Do you want a formal or an informal greeting?

Hold on, I'll set you back up.

Do you want informal or formal?

Let's keep it informal. I think that's one of the really sort of relatable aspects of this show is how informal it is. Right now joining me is the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. I've been out here blowharding and globetrotting, but he has been at home, locked down to his desk, making sure that the broadcast goes out each and every day. Are you sure? Mm-hmm. Okay. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Hi, Luke. Mm-hmm. That was the informal one, huh?

Informal is hi or hey.

Oh, okay. God, so different over here. Yeah, it really is. That's why I don't know how to relate to any of the people I've been dealing with because of the cultural barrier, things like that. Things like saying hi and hey.

We don't have to get into...

like recreating you know another scenario but just so you know for your notes while you're over there a more formal greeting which you probably want to engage with since you don't know anybody over there is um hello how they use that here as well hello would be more formal and hi or hey would be informal that's what i learned from the internet that's what they said on ask jeeves i'm not proud

of the fact today andrew that i said without nearly enough hesitation or self-loathing in the moment i described something as being brilliant the fact that they had running shorts at unique clo i described it to the person as brilliant andrew and i didn't even i didn't even like have

to psych myself up for it it just felt right well there was another one that you dropped in the intro just moments ago and i already forgot it i meant to make note of it i was doing my internet research on how to say hello to you because i want to make sure we can still sort of connect Yeah, it's hello. Hello. Hello. Hi. Hello. Sorry, I just got caught. Aloha means hello and goodbye.

Goodbye.

Do they use aloha here?

I don't know. You tell me. Go try it. I don't know. Anyway, yeah, you're changing. I mean, I just hope that, listen, I miss the old Luke yay. That's all I got to say.

I have to, I'll be honest with you, though. It is an interesting experience being here because in some way it feels so different to me just because, one, I've never been to the UK before and they drive on the other side of the road and there is some stuff that's different, but the language is English. America is, although it was a long time ago, an offshoot from this place. I'm going into a lot of these experiences like I'm on Mars and I'm just at a place where they might call the elevator the lift. It ain't that... Today, I was taking the tube, and I was really psyching myself up for it. Because, first of all, I'm just horrible with that kind of stuff. I stared at that map of the London Underground for way too long, trying to figure out where I was. Also, my phone had died at this moment, so I definitely felt like I'm not a Martian. I felt like an astronaut who'd come untethered from the space station. Chasmo? I know where I am. We didn't really get to know him.

No, not enough. no but not we wanted to he didn't really want to connect

but um uh but so i was i was staring at the you know and i'm very proud to say i actually figured it out like i actually i mean with the help of the people uh who you know direct you to such things but i was like i walked up to these the two uh london underground employees and i said i'm trying to get to tottenham square and they looked at me so confused i was in westminster by the way i was a i was a cool six blocks away from where i was going but i just also wanted to take the underground to experience it and so i i i walked up and i said um i need to go to tottenham square and the woman very nicely said you've mucked some part of that up and it wasn't but it was delivered with such kindness it was not like she wasn't like negging me she's just like what you're saying sir does not make sense something doesn't connect there

Did you figure out what was mucked?

Yeah, it's Tottenham Circle.

Okay, okay. You did muck a little part of it up. I had the shape wrong. Yeah, exactly.

Tottenham Trapezoid. Uh-huh. And so then she said, oh, yeah, yeah. And I go, I know it's like two stops away. I didn't get into the fact that I was like, I'm making a list for my friend Andrew of things I've done today in London. Taking the tube seemed like it should be on the list. And so she said, yeah, you take this, you go one stop up to Embankment, and then you get on the black line going north and then you'll be there and again my phone was dead so I was like well we'll see and I was doing this from memory Tottenham Circle or as I called it Tottenham Square Tottenham Quadrangle

one of my favorite Tottenham Rhombus

so I go down and oh man let me just tell you Andrew they have really really made minding the gap a serious point of emphasis. I don't know if in the owners' committee during the off-season they decided to make it. They got Gene Sterritore in there. They said we need Minding the Gap to be an area of emphasis for the new season. I don't know what's going on. They would not shut up about it. Everybody knows this about taking the London Underground that it says Mind the Gap. I could not believe how much it said it.

How big is the gap? I'm not even joking. Is it significantly different than Light Rail?

It's so small. It's, I mean, it is not a gap you could fall into once the, I mean, I guess you could maybe trip on it. It is not like there is like a two-foot gap between the tube, the train, and where you're stepping off of. It certainly is not anything that is more noticeable.

than the subway in New York or the metro in D.C. or the trains in Chicago or whatever. Maybe they don't want you to trip on it, or maybe they don't want you to fall into the... Does the gap mean... The gap cannot mean the entire track area. It's, I mean, literally from... First of all, it's in the tile in the ground. So if you look down, you are seeing the words, Mind the Gap. and as the train is pulling in it's saying mind the gap and as the doors are opening it's saying mind the gap and as you get on the train it's saying mind the gap i i don't know how did millions die not gap minding at some point in this country because it was like we get it england

maybe the gap used to be bigger i'm looking online now it like what is it saying well i'm just sort of looking at photos of the gaps you're right it doesn't seem now it is well let me say i haven't I've started a lot of sentences. I might finish some. We'll see. Cliffhanger. He started 17 sentences. Which one will he finish? We could place bets on that. Love it. DraftKings Sportsbook. I'm seeing different sized gaps here for starters. It could also be that the gap was traditionally bigger at other times. But I was going to say I do see a difference here, at least in one photo that I'm taking. And again, there are, you know, I have no idea how many stations are in England, quite a few. But the photos that I'm seeing here, it's not like here where you could just roll a rolly bag. It's like you have to take a step up, at least in this one photo that I'm looking at on Wikipedia. It says, mind the gap on the floor. Then the train is there, and it looks like it's a step up to the train. So there's like a little gap there that would be trippable. Is that what you've been seeing?

Well, I can only speak to the two stations I was in, which was Westminster and then Tottenham Circle, a.k.a. Tottenham Square, a.k.a. Tottenham Triangle. And I did not notice that to be the case. But I mean, I'm sure there's a good reason for it in the beginning. And now, again, it's like the branding for the thing. But I just wasn't expecting it to be happening so much. Also, and this is a huge credit to the system here. I waited I as I was going down the steps there was a train and their doors were closing and they were leaving the station and I was like well I wonder how long it'll be before the next train uh one minute and 50 seconds and in that time they must have told us three times to mind the gap in in the very brief moment between the one train leaving the other train coming that being said had a wonderful experience I felt very um international and cosmopolitan and like a big boy because i was not able to use my telephone for any of this i was hoping that i had remembered the the the station the underground station that i had walked past in one of my many journeys trying to get clothes this morning but i was not going to know until i emerged at street level and when i came up at street level andrew i knew exactly where i was and i knew exactly how to get to i still needed to go to unique glow for one more thing and i knew where that was related to my hotel i was very proud as far as this micro district i'm in i can get around now and um and that made me feel oddly uh less shame i can't remember the last time i've gotten on any kind

of transportation specifically i guess or particularly public transportation where i haven't had a phone or a map and it does remind me how like i'm trying to think even in in boston we took the the train a lot they call the t there took the train a lot of different places and this was before you kind of like common smart smartphone activity right like and or at least for me i think i had a flip phone maybe at best when i was living in that region so um you know we knew that the trains were less scary than buses because the places trains could go were finite you know what i mean like they're not going to skip the rail and just decide to go somewhere else whereas you get on the wrong bus you could like you know oh i was supposed to get on the 48a and i instead i just got on the 48 and like the next thing you know you're like in a completely different part of town but you don't know that you're even heading into the wrong part of town because you're not a blue dot on a phone that you're looking down at you know like right i remember buses and stuff like that being very scary and now i am a more familiar with public transportation or at large but b i'm always triple checking on my phone like where am i and am i getting on the right thing so you know this is going to sound like um critical i don't mean it that way but i'm actually kind of surprised that your phone was dead i don't know that doesn't sound like something that happens to you a lot we kind of joke around about you maybe i don't know breaking technology or losing a phone here or there or something but like you're not somebody who seems to be like stumbling around life with a dead phone at least that i can pick up on generally i don't i

think a couple of things one there is something i think weird about remember um i was i might i can't remember if I was saying this on air or off air, but like I was feeling very optimistic. coming here with my, you know, my cell phone is now the, I pay the Xfinity company for this cell phone service. And initially when I went on their website, when I was back in the States, it said, Oh, your phone will work in 200 countries. And I read it to be, you don't even have to do anything like where, when I had Verizon to turn on this like daily plan, right? You know, it's like 12 bucks a day or something. And so when I got over here and I landed and I tried to call to figure out where my baggage was or oh no i was trying to call the hotel to ask them to keep my room i immediately got an error message you don't have international calling so i had to interface with someone at xfinity and say can you turn this on and sure enough it's basically exactly like what i had with verizon except this immediately uh like within an hour of being in the country they told me i'd reached some kind of data limit and they were downgrading me to like 2g um and so So I don't know if my phone is working extra hard to try to figure out where it's at. What I know is that it was fully charged when I went out and about this morning at maybe 10 in the morning or something. And then I came back to the hotel. I was making a bunch of like – there was a whole variety of complications. I almost got kicked out of the hotel today, by the way. How did that not make the intro? not kicked out of the hotel but there was some weird thing with my reservation where basically in using this system that we use for this kind of stuff for CBS television it somehow something got some wires got crossed and they had me checking out today and boy is if this isn't the most British thing Andrew I'm sitting here doing some work it's like I'm gonna say like 12.01 p.m. local time and I get a call and remind you that one of my bags is is still missing it's still in the wind the bag that has all my clothes in it and I get a call from the front desk a very proper British accent saying do you need help with your bags and I was like wait did you do they have my bag she said I'm sorry and I was like oh you know because they've lost my bag and they were supposed to deliver it and I hope you guys are looking out for it and I'm having this whole conversation with her at no point in my understanding what she's trying to say is sir you need to leave the room oh do you need help with your bags oh my god like we do not we i understand we do not we would never call you mr burbank and say hey it's 1201 and checkout time is 12 and what are you doing in the room still we would just say is there anything we can help you with oh my gosh that's so passive and i am like thinking we're totally i'm like you know assuming that i'm locked in and good to go until friday and that you know we're having this other conversation about my lost

bag and she's too proper to again just be direct with me and it take it take us like it took us like 10 minutes to figure out that she was trying to kick me out of the room it was just because of some paperwork thing essentially something some snafu and basically what i needed to do was rebook it, but I needed to read or add the dates, but I needed to add it through this whole CBS system because CBS gets a deal. So they get a corporate rate, which basically if I just asked the person at the front desk, can I just stay here until Friday? It's going to cost one thing. Then I'm going to get yelled at by Larry Alardo. So I have to log in through Concur and book it myself so that I'm getting the preferred rate of CBS so I don't get yelled at by anybody. But so that was the point is there was a lot going on today. But I remember the last time I left the room, the phone was adequately charged. I think there's something, it's a combination of probably I'm roaming. Like my phone, I think, is working extra hard to roam. Because literally, I walked, well, first I went to the British Museum. And that was really fun. Got to see some antiquities and the like. I got to take what I thought was a pretty great photo of the Buddha making the exact expression that I do when I accidentally FaceTime with people or if at any point my camera phone is on unknowingly. Like, if you're feeling too good about yourself, just remember to accidentally activate your camera phone at some point. And, like, look at it when you are in a totally relaxed state, like in what you think is an unobserved state, and then you look down and see your phone. That's just, it's brutal. But anyway, and in fact, you know, I was trying to upload that fire blue sky post from the british museum of the buddha of me saying this is what happens when i facetime people on accident and my phone was like sorry we can't do this like you couldn't even upload it that's how slow it's moving and it was already at like 25 percent power and here was the thing i was launching unbeknownst to me on just a day of so much london sightseeing these are the things that i saw andrew already uh aforementioned the british museum wow i also saw a guy who said don't play the sound effects that loud i saw a buckingham palace i saw Westminster Abbey. I went for lunch at a British pub and had fish and chips.

Is that like a British bell? Is that why it sounds like that? What is this bell? Yes, it is. It's rough.

It's what... Listen.

Can you turn it down a little bit? This is how we do it over here, Andrew. I'm trying to advocate for the listeners here. Just turn it down a tiny bit or something.

It's brilliant, Andrew, this bell that I'm playing. I saw Big Ben.

Oh, good.

I saw this was maybe my favorite part of the whole thing. I literally walked into the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and watched them hearing a case.

What is democracy like?

I mean, I don't know. Let me put it this way. I don't know anything about this court and its recent history. They may be as rotten as the majority on our Supreme Court. And in fact, wasn't the most diverse group of dudes I'd ever seen? But it really pulled them right out of central, old, bald, British guy casting, except one woman named Lady Rose, who was like, it looked like she was kicking it with what's her name from Downton Abbey, the Dowager Countess. Like, there was, it didn't, it did not reflect the culture that I'm seeing in London when I'm walking around, let's just say, in those hallowed halls. I did like the fact that I'm walking over to see Big Ben and there is a Andrew, a sandwich board that says United Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. And it was like basically saying, would you like to watch them do their thing? I was like, I absolutely would. It's like I go in there, I get to the first security guard and I go, am I allowed to watch the Supreme Court? And he goes, yeah, those are the people that can tell you about it. And then I go, I am, I can't overstate this, minimally screened by security. like they do have a metal detector but nobody seems all that worried i've got like an umbrella that's like you know from amazon basics because i am kind of a basic b when it comes to amazon products but boy that could have had something going on in it i guess i mean it just seems suspicious it's this like black barrel shaped thing anyway they let me through security i'm kind of like do you want to like i dinged going through security they were like it's fine i go I think it's my belt. I go, probably. And then I go upstairs, and then there's just like a security guard. I look through these doors, and there's the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. They're hearing a case between somebody who suffered a sort of medical event at a hospital, and they're suing the hospital. And this was it was a procedural. It had somehow gotten to the Supreme Court, but it had to do with if this if the appellant in this case should be receiving compensation for the period of time in which the trial has been playing out. In other words, does the meter keep running for what they are owed during the time that it's being going through the courts because it's years and years of working through the courts. But anyway, I'm just like, I've never obviously been to a, I don't think I've ever been to the United States Supreme Court, but I can't imagine it's this, I can't imagine it's a sandwich board. And the guard is like, he opens the door and he's kind of whispering, he goes, I go, is this the Supreme Court? And he goes, yes, it is. And I go, am I allowed to go in there? And he goes, yes, but make sure your cell phone's off. And I go, it's off. And he goes, do you want to double check?

Nice. I like that. Can I help you with your bags?

I don't think he said double check. He probably said something more. He said, hello, hey, would you like to double check?

Oh, formal and informal greetings. I like that.

No, but it was like, I was like, you know, that's actually, you're being really good at your job. Yeah, it is. My phone was dead at this point, so we were not in any danger of it going off. But that's a good question to ask if you're doing that job because there are probably a lot of people who go in there thinking that their phone is off and it's not. So I sat in there for probably 45 minutes, an hour, and watched this whole thing. It was fascinating. I did hit the gift shop on the way out. I bought some Supreme Court coasters, bought a few of them. Santa might be giving you some United Kingdom Supreme Court coasters, Andrew. Just think about it.

It did not occur to me that the Supreme Court would have a gift shop. That's pretty cool. Now, I do have a question for you that's going to sound silly, but I'm actually being serious. You mentioned that the people, I guess, sitting on the Supreme Court were mostly old, bald men, and I was curious about that. Were they not—this is serious—they weren't wearing, like, the barrister wigs or whatever they're called?

No, I was kind of hoping they were going to be—

I really thought that was a thing. I'm not trying to be a dumb American here. Like, I really thought that that was a thing.

I think that's the House of Lords.

Really? So it's not part of the judicial system. Okay, I must just be thinking old-timey stuff.

Listen, this is the only part of the British judicial system I have ever observed, but nobody was in a wig, and I was pretty bummed about that.

Because you were. You were the only one in the big white wig.

I was cosplaying.

You're like, I just want to blend in as you walk in, and you're like... three-day-old black sweater that you put on in seattle i'm i'm concerned about your bag situation this really sucks like i will say i haven't had my bag lost i'm pausing here because i'm trying to think if i said this exact same thing in yesterday's show but when you were talking about your bags being lost i was thinking about my own experiences with it my bags have not gotten lost very much in my life but that's also because i don't check my bags very often it my bags have been lost twice or at least like temporarily misplaced by the airlines and both times were flying internationally once in australia with you and once in um in coming back from croatia but the key thing there for me is they were both on the return trip so while it sucked i was coming back home where i had all of my other stuff i hate the idea of you wandering around there this is technically you've woken up there two mornings now you've been there for like two and a half

days or something and you still don't have your bag correct and it is i allegedly it is right now on its way from seattle to new york it has not even left the united states it landed in new york like an hour ago and then it's going to take i guess the same like red eye to england that i took allegedly so i guess by tomorrow morning it may be here um just in time for me to be in liverpool

so they gave you misinformation because i think you specifically said yesterday a couple of times that the bags were still in new york they weren't even in new york yet yes i didn't find that out

till later i was told originally that they didn't get out of new york they didn't get out of seattle and this is a big part of the problem is you've got these two systems you've got the alaska airline system that tracks it and you get the british airways system and that is so basically at some point it's something the alaska airlines can't tell me anything about because it's in the british airway system and vice versa so i've been trying i was on the phone with both entities today and also calling some weird 206 number at jfk that's supposed to be just the guy that works for alaska

at jfk a 206 so that's the seattle area code but he's got a cell phone that he took with him out

to new york apparently because like and the person in alaska who i talked to today was said yeah sometimes the bags will just be down there and somebody needs to tell them to go put them on british airways i was like this cannot be the system i'm calling the guy in the basement at jfk on a 206 number to try to light a fire under him like you know again i've been in my life the beneficiary of a lot of lucky breaks and a lot of people looking out for me and i don't have very much to complain about but it seems like a very knowable thing what luggage what piece of luggage is where at any one time like there just seems like there's so many scans and checkpoints this is why a couple years ago when all those suits of mine went missing from like I don't know if it was FedEx or you know UPS or whatever that I had I made the mistake of having an intern from a large software concern mail them to me because I was thinking I was some kind of a big big timer who has people do stuff like that for him but i i remain shocked at how something in this day and age could go missing missing something like that because again it's all everything's getting scanned everywhere it shows up and then when it leaves it just seems like you know it's that these are these shouldn't be mysterious things and yet they kind of are really what seems like it might happen is by the time it goes from new york to heathrow and then somebody goes and picks it up from Heathrow and then drives it out here. If I'm lucky, I'll get it Friday morning before I fly back. If I'm not lucky, I will get home and I will be waiting. I'll be trying to call the same guy in the basement of Heathrow being like, can you send that thing back, please?

Oh, I hate this. And I hate the fact that I think the future is you and him living in that basement together. That's all I can picture. I got to go where the clothes are, man. It's like 30 years from now. You both have very long beards. your friends you bicker sometimes now you but you've bonded and this is this is your final

resting place it's a real samuel beckett play waiting to happen um but uh i did get to i woke up this morning oh by the way i was i would i was talking talking such a big game yesterday to you andrew about how like once we were done with the show and i had a little dinner i was just gonna like hit the hay and sleep all night and i was gonna be unaffected by jet lag and um i jinxed that because at about three in the morning i just was like fully awake which is rare for me and starving i'm like digging out leftover lebanese food from the mini fridge in here i'm eating like cucumber and yogurt and um like a falafel or not falafel but what do you call the bread pita pita bread i'm eating like i'm like scooping cucumber yogurt on pita bread into my mouth at 3 30 in the morning while i'm scrolling tiktok like a totally normal uh middle of the night event for me so anyway all that to say i got up this morning i actually felt a lot better like i think my internal clock has kind of adjusted now and i was very very excited to see that there was a tj max around the corner although they call it here a tk max i was dying to find out

if that was a typo or not i thought it was not a typo but it wasn't until i was sitting here talking with you because i was going to ask you i was like is there any chance that you meant tj

but you accidentally wrote tk on the no it is tk max okay and it is it's it's funny it is very similar to a TJ Maxx but it also is very different one of the things that I noticed was I was looking for some underwear and every single almost every single box and you know how you've been in like one of the like a Ross or a TJ Maxx where they've just got like I mean it's a perfect place to go if you just want some like cheap men's boxer briefs or men's you know yeah boxer briefs I guess what they're called that you know probably say like uh echo on them or like some weird you know what i mean they probably say like like uh not not even like you know eternity or not even calvin klein they're like some like you know kevin klein or something like they're just it'll be like hey i didn't know that gatorade made men's underwear but i guess they do and they sell it at this tj maxx like maybe you don't buy your underwear from tj maxx but i have many times in my life gone in those places because they're pretty cheap so it'll be these boxes and what i'm noting always is that none of the underwear it's never just like a box of three rolled up black boxer briefs which is what i would want uh it's gonna be one that you want right that is black

but then one will be some weird pattern and another one has fish on it absolutely and i mean the band Trey Anastasio and it is not flattering they have a they have a partnership with TK Maxx by the way can I tell you a quick dazzling detail that I think I've confirmed in a couple of different places online the reason it's good you do you have any idea why it's called TK Maxx and not TJ Maxx over there because there was our obviously TJ Maxx TJ Maxx the King Maxx the King Maxx that's what it stands for obviously it's an American company that started on the east coast here i think up in massachusetts but when they expanded over to the uk they had to call it tk max because there's already a place over there called tj hughes and so t period j period is already sort of taken and so they didn't want confusion with tj hughes and tj max

tk max the what i noticed was almost every single one of these boxes of like underwear were opened and then like closed and kind of ripped and then like the underwear shoved back in and i was like i don't like that and the actually i have to give the i have to everywhere that i went today i found the staff to be incredibly helpful i gotta say like and i don't boy why do i have to take it to this negative place about the u.s what i noticed that was interesting was there were people of older generations um in positions that like at tk max I mean, there was a young guy who was really helpful, and there was also a middle-aged guy that was really helpful. And I feel like sometimes there's certain kinds of work environments where it's now mostly young people, and some of them can be great, but some of them can just be probably how I was at 20. But I kept having people who were a little more my age, if not older, who were really on their game with this stuff today, which I was kind of interested by.

This might be a dangerous question because neither one of us probably know the answer, but to what do you attribute that? Do you think it's maybe because those jobs—

Universal health care.

Do you think that those jobs are better paid? And so there's not such a gap between a good middle-income job like that?

i am i am talking so so far out of my sort of backside here and i have done no research on this and i'm sure our listeners in the uk would know the answer to this and this is totally

anecdotal my guess would be bum by the way you could say bum or arse there i'm trying to look

up uh british thank you yeah yeah i'm talking out of my arse here andrew but what i would what i The most positive spin on it that I could make—this is based on three interactions I had today and no research into the economics of the United Kingdom, although I did audit the Supreme Court today, which is not nothing—my guess would be that in a society that is even a little bit more sort of—and again, I don't think that—I mean, England's—like, you look who's been running it for the last few years. It's not like it's been a liberal haven per se, and London is not a cheap city to live in would be my assumption. I just somehow attribute it to a slightly less messed up system of the haves and the have-nots. I don't have any evidence for that, but it's like I'm just running into people that are doing jobs, and they seem to be okay with this being.

their job and they seem to be really poised and like in positions that it seems like in the US we can't staff with people of a certain age because they've got families to take care of. So you can only either not have someone doing the job or you can have somebody who's maybe a bit younger and who knows, maybe they're really good at the job, maybe they're more checked out. I somehow attribute it to the fact that they do have free healthcare here. Again, based on no research. But the guy comes over, he's being really helpful he's like, I'm like, do you guys I need a box of underwear. He's like, over here and then i'm looking and then he goes up and does something else he comes back over he's like you're finding everything and i was like well these boxes are like all opened what's he opens one of the boxes in front of me to show me something well that's why we have some drunk boxes seriously and i go i go a lot of these boxes and you know it's underwear i really i go are these have these been have these been returned are these used and he goes no people just open them to take a look and then they put them back in i was like okay that's a difference between a tk max and a tj maxx because i feel like in the states for as much as you know there can be times where being in a ross or a tj maxx or one of those kind of stores can be feel a little grimy i don't think that most of the boxes have been opened and we're just going with the honor system that people put the underwear back in and also didn't go try it on or something like it was a he was surprisingly lax about the fact that oh no these have all been opened because people wanted to get their hands on the underwear but now they don't want that underwear so now we'll sell it to you

I feel like it's not unprecedented, though, especially in stores like that. I feel like I can very much picture what you're talking about, but maybe it's like maybe it was shocking because it was the majority of boxes. It was so many of them.

I thought maybe the script that I wrote in my head was like, oh, maybe over here, if you return because I think something like underwear, my sense is if you return it to the store, like and it's out of the box or the box has been opened. And my guess would be there's got to be a law against putting that back out on the floor, right? Like, at that point, the store is just eating the cost on these underwear you're returning. Or maybe some places are like, if you wear them, you can't return them, I guess. I guess I just, you know, I was there thinking, well, maybe they're like, maybe they don't care about that here. Maybe you can, like, buy a box of underwear from TK Maxx, take it home, take it for a test drive, decide you don't like it. Sort of not even convincingly put it back in the box that you tore open like a werewolf. One of my exes said that that's how I open most things, like a werewolf. She's not wrong. But I think it was just the fact that it's not frowned upon there. I think opening those boxes is itself a transgression. I would never open one of those boxes unless I was going to buy it. To me, it's like you can see. You can look in there and see what the size is, and you can see that it's some weird-ass color with the guys from Fish on it. What do you need to open it for? Don't touch it. Get your grimy hands off of my underwear.

Do they have a need-a-knicker-take-a-knicker? system there is have a knicker and leave a knicker he pointed me to the uh doubloon section wait

that's the money what's the well no pantaloons i was confusing my pantaloons and my doubloons

i'm looking everything up here but knicker is a good that's a good word too for for yeah don't get them in a twist andrew no i'm trying get them twisted and by that i mean knickers that is a brilliant yeah brilliant yeah uh so you were you able to like successfully get like some i'm really obsessed with this idea of just like i just the idea of like wandering around a foreign city um just wearing just clothes that are again like i just keep on thinking about how you were saying like you got done doing a gig in seattle put on some clothes eventually got on an airplane and like as of yesterday you were still wearing those clothes even though it feels like you had crossed oceans of time i just feel like um i just am very invested in you getting like a having clean underwear on not just clean underwear but just like the whole thing like you know just like You take a shower, you come out, and you have a bunch of clean clothes to wear. Were they able to provide, like, did you get yourself a top or a blouse or anything?

Oh, in, like, Saskatoon? Yes. So, well, this is the classic Burbankian move when things like this happen, which is I walk into this TK Maxx. I look around. It's like, do, you know, is this the underwear that I want to, you know, share my life with for the next many years? No, but it'll do. and then I so I grabbed a box of whatever it was umberto echo or something I'm like they're still making this and then I they don't have just like normal t-shirts I just wanted to get like three black t-shirts because I will usually wear I have a couple sweaters with me here I actually had a different one in my like my go bag the bag that made it here so I have two sweater options I thought three black t-shirts that I can wear under these sweaters will be sufficient the sweaters don't get that much wear and tear they're worn over a t-shirt but they don't at the tk max they don't just sell black t-shirts everything has like hugo boss on it but like it's a weird raised piece of metal or something you know what i mean like it's just like it's this and also i'm in england so it's probably a whole different like people are into different branding so

So it's like I'm going around this whole store just trying to find three like T-shirts that don't say some wild shit on the back of them.

You know, like you don't like you don't want to look like the guy. You don't want to look like Dan Levy from Schitt's Creek.

Exactly. It's like I don't want something that appeals to a 19 year old Brit of like what is like, you know, Rick's bail bonds on the back of this like Hugo Boss shirt for some reason. Because a couple times I had one, I was like, okay, good, this is subtle, and I'm carrying it somewhere, and I look, well, let's check the back. Uh-oh, no, no, no, there's way too much happening on the back. So I find some, I buy these shirts, I buy some socks, I buy the underwear, and I am leaving the TK Maxx, and I'm walking back towards my hotel, and I look over, and what is there to the left? A unique clow, which is exactly the place I needed to go in the first place.

This is a place you've heard of before, because I think I'm being taught it for the first time now.

It is a chain, I think it might be originally based out of maybe Japan, somewhere in Asia. And its entire vibe is very, very basic, like, basics, essentially. So, like, they sell everything you could need, but it all looks vaguely like you're in a cult where you might be trying to ascend at some point. Like, they probably sell Velcro sneakers. like it's very like solid colors like no patterns no um you know nothing that's cut too tight per se everything is kind of flowy but it was exactly what as the drop says exactly what america needs because what i really needed were just some black t-shirts that didn't have any funny business on them and some some some some boxer briefs and some uh other things and that is exactly what i got from unique glow so then i brought it all back to the hotel room i tried on the unique glow stuff it worked great i then took back the tk max stuff this is what i'm telling you i had a busy morning you did i was i was wearing a path between here and the various places and now andrew ask me if something inside me didn't shift when i went in that unique glow i don't think i'd ever been in one before i knew about it as a thing but like i became a new person going in there i saw the future of the kind of clothing i'm going to wear you're gonna smurf closet this i can tell and when i got out of the subway out of the underground today came up at tottenham uh dodecahedron uh i walked right across that uniqlo and i bought two pairs of pants that are my new two favorite pairs of pants they're just khakis that are not quite so slim fit actually chris hayes and i were having a conversation about this backstage at his book event that like and he said something very funny he was like he was like we've lived through too many pants revolutions of our generation he's like i just can't i can't do another one but i don't know if it was the kendrick bell bottom

because you were wearing some pretty wide bottom i mean not yes you weren't wearing bell bottoms but you were wearing pretty wide bottom pants i'm a big legged i'm a big fan of wide leg pants it's like usually i'm out of touch with the modern trends but every now and then like like gears and a giant clock we just happen to mesh together for whatever my taste is. And people are always surprised when they hear that I have any opinions on fashion. But I do. Just because I don't look good doesn't mean I don't have opinions on what does. And so I like that. I like a nice kind of a tube pant. I'm sure it's probably, by the time we're getting on this train, it's probably already on the way out. But I do like a wide-legged pant.

I was spending, so I was in there today. I went in this other store called Mooji. Do they have a Mooji in Seattle yet?

You're asking the wrong guy. I don't know. I haven't heard of it.

Muji is kind of similar to Uniqlo. And I do know for a fact Muji is Japanese. And it's, again, the same thing. It's like Muji is a little more towards the like they have like the coolest thing ever to put your toiletries in when you travel alongside like a very, very unassuming kind of sweatshirt that has like nothing noticeable going on about it. Like, again, everything way understated, everything very muted tones, you know. But between being a funny business, as you said.

I want to start a clothing store that just has a bunch of shirts that say no funny business. I think that's my idea for a store.

You see a store that sells shirts like this and there's guys in there fighting over them, you're going to go in.

Do those guys look like you?

So I think it was also, it was just London, Andrew. It was just the fashion of London. It's a very fashionable place, as you might have heard. There was something today as I was walking around in what I had, like a fool, like an absolute idiot, what I, up until nine this morning, had thought were reasonably proportioned jeans. There was something that I was walking around in the British Museum and all these other places and seeing all these people in their 20s and 30s just stylishly dressed up in, you know, that's kind of a certain look that seems to be really happening here right now. And I was just like looking down at my Levi's. they're not you know like skinny jeans but still just it's like can i do better and so i i went the other thing about these and this is the scourge of like i guess you could say sort of fast fashion we're not talking i mean these pants at uniqlo are 20 bucks or something it's you know which unfortunately is only sustainable through some sort of misery somewhere happening but like i got these pants and i'm gonna wear them tomorrow on my shoot and i'm uh i'm gonna be a real cool guy with and again it's no kendrick where they're not bell bottoms and they're not even like they're They're not super exaggerated, but they're just a little, this is what happens. This is how you turn up the water on the frog. There's just a little bit, a little more room in there for me, a little more room than I would have thought was cool four years ago, that's for sure. And this is how it happens. But all that is to say, I am annoyed about the luggage situation, but I'm feeling like I'm in a good place because I have, I've got clean underwear, I've got clean T-shirts, I've got a couple of new pairs of pants from Uniqlo, And more importantly, I'm going to have a complaint lodged with one of these airlines. They've got to pay for some of this stuff because, like, I mean, I was not going to not wear underwear. At the very least, they've got to pay for the underwear and the T-shirts, it would seem.

Yeah, it does seem like a raw deal. I don't have more on it than that.

There's officially a system. Well, here's the thing. The person at British Airways said you can file something to cover. she said something like a reasonable amount of clothes you have to buy and i was like well we all have different ideas of what's reasonable like it should be a number but and there there are you know i this is i'm already sort of i'm like um what's the word i'm looking for i'm like before i've even engaged in this process with one of these airlines i'm already kind of like annoyed about it and i'm already feeling like i know how i know exactly what's going to happen which is alaska airlines is going to say somehow it's british airways fault and british airways He's going to say sometimes it's Alaska Airlines' fault, and I'm just going to be some sort of Elian Gonzalez of underwear, trapped between entities and countries and air carriers. And then I'm never going to get anyone to give me the $40 for the underwear and the T-shirts.

Is it fair to blame this on Brexit?

I would say it is an element of it, and I tried to take this up with one of the barristers at the Supreme Court.

How did that go over?

Well, can I tell you, can I tell you legitimately what happened was I was like, I could not believe that they let you go watch the Supreme Court. I was really excited about it. There was a piece of paper explaining what the case was. I read the piece of paper. I listened to them for like maybe 15, 20 minutes. And then I started thinking, how, when can I leave this?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Because, listen, I'm going to be honest with you. It wasn't Dobbs. You know, it was, it was like a. sort of a matter of like it's basically a you know it's tort it's like a question of of how how much compensation is somebody uh you know entitled to in a specific moment of a larger issue of this particular lawsuit where there had been an agreed upon payout etc it was very technical it was not nobody was inheriting any of the wind in there but i'm looking around and i'm surrounded

by school kids although by the way i was literally going to ask that were you were you joining school kids there that's what i was hoping yes it was me and a bunch of high schoolers and they're like

they're like you know civics teacher or something awesome and actually it was i found it to be quite charming because the kids were all like dressed really well like they had you know suits on and they were really clear the teacher had said like get dressed for this you know and i'm in there in like a weird jacket i bought from quaker marine supply that's just the only thing i have to wear in england right now um but uh so then i was like i can't leave before these school kids leave like there's no way because like i wouldn't even say i was bored i just wanted to see other things in england yeah at this point like i had got i wanted to be in the room and watch it happen and i did for a certain amount of time but then i was like i had to wait for one other person to leave you know i couldn't be last one in first one out because i then i feel like they know i was american right away even with even with me saying hey and hello to everyone that's exactly where my

brain went too it's like i think even if you were a local whether this was happening over here or if you lived over there like there's still just sort of a social sort of contract or something that would make you feel somewhat uncomfortable getting up but then i immediately right before you said then they'll know i'm an american i was thinking yeah because you're also sort of representing a little bit you don't want to be i i use this word too much but you don't want to be like a boorish

american right i just don't want to be again there there were literal i mean you could say literal children who were having more of an attention span with me that's not true they were just waiting for their teacher to say yeah they will they would have all left and gone to the arcade if they could have but i didn't want to go in sit down and then also leave and that would have been like a closed loop of activity like no one else so then eventually the school kids got up and left and then i left with them 30 to 40 minutes you're crouching down i'm dorfing on golf straight up tim conway with my baggy pants just like

trying to sneak out of there like one of the students yeah and then i hit that gift shop baby

and it was actually pretty awesome do you think the united states supreme court has a gift shop

That's you and I. We're about to ask each other the same exact question. It never even occurred to me before.

Like a ball cap? I mean, that's, again, I bought it because—

They hand out little crosses at the U.S. Supreme Court. Yeah.

Oh, my God. I mean, why am I— Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry. Why am I—no, no, I'm the one asking a question, and the only real answer to it is life is hell, is what I'm doing here. But I did buy a baseball cap from there, which I do think is kind of funny to wear. Like, where's that cap from? The United Kingdom Supreme Court.

Yeah, right? Is it sharp? What does it look like? Hold on. We don't have the cameras on today, I should tell the listeners. Usually you and I can see each other while we're doing this, but because you're so far away and the internet's a little shaky, we have to know. Sorry, I was just grabbing it out of the bag. No problem. I was telling folks that we don't have visuals on this today.

So it says the Supreme Court on it, and then it's got like their logo is surprisingly like agrarian i'm sure there's a story behind it but it's got like a flower kind of like a i don't even know what is a greenish flower with then with a green like stem and then a purple top and then another flower and then it's all surrounded by what i think of as the like omega sign the greek sign for omega yeah i can picture it like a horseshoe sort of yeah exactly with some little feet coming off of it so that's kind of what it It is. It seems jauntier than like a United States Supreme Court. You feel like the U.S. Supreme Court hat would look very much like the NFL hat that Rob Lowe wears. Yes, yes. Except it would just say Supreme Court.

A shield, yeah. This is why I'm looking at it online. It's more floral. Okay, you can see it, right? It's more floral than I would have expected for sure.

Right. For like a court, I would think there'd be some scales of justice or whatever. Maybe that's just how we do it in America. But it's kind of surprisingly jaunty for what they're doing.

Yeah, it's quite nice.

All right, let's thank some donors. We're getting down to the end of our daily donors. We're going to be kicking into dazzling donor territory here pretty soon. If you've got an email from us, from TBTL employee numero uno, John Sklaroff, about your dazzling donor message, if you care to. Again, there's no homework on this show other than telling me my pants look fly when you see me. But if you do want to send something in for your dazzling donor message, as you are so richly deserving of, make sure you do that. In the meantime, we've got to thank Annie Johnson, who's in Seattle, Washington.

Thank you, Annie. I was going to thank you anyway, but when Luke said, we've got to thank you, I knew I had to thank you.

Well, here's the thing. If not for Annie Johnson, we don't get to do this for our job. I don't have the money to get, you know, because right now I had to pay for the underwear and the T-shirts. I may get reimbursed. I may be able to trick CBS into it. But in the short run, I had to go out and buy this. And I only have money because this is my job because of people like Andy Johnson.

You know, not to, yeah, bad idea on my part, but I was texting with a friend of mine today, a close friend of mine who also listens to this show, so I don't want to misrepresent what they do, and I'm not going to attach any names to this, but they are a lawyer, they work in law, and they work in a division in Ohio, but that has directly to do with Medicare and stuff. Their world is so uncertain right now because of everything that's going on in the United States with these institutions just being absolutely dismantled. And she's just like, yeah, I got Doge breathing down my neck, you know, and this is just some like this is just, you know, a friend of mine in Cleveland, Ohio, who's just living her life, working hard, raising a family. And now suddenly, like the tentacles of what's going on, it's it's it's you know, it's it's very real and present for her. It's not just an existential crisis. It's also an existential crisis, but it's not just an existential crisis like it is for a lot of us. And so anyway, I will just say the reason I'm bringing this up now is just to say as rough as I personally have been feeling lately, and I know a lot of people have been feeling that way, I had a moment of like, my God, my friend has to go to do work today in this uncertain world, and I get to dial up and find out if you got your luggage in England. And so it made me very, very appreciative of people like Annie for supporting this show.

Yeah, that's a really good perspective. Thanks also to Christine Mello, who's in Wiley, Texas. I don't know if we're going to get to it this week, Andrew, but there is a story out of Texas that I have way down the show sheet. I don't want to promote it and then not get to it as my custom. so many things but there is a story out of texas that i i i can't quite believe it happened it is crazy i don't think it happened to wiley texas but i just you know just trust that at some point we are going to tell you about this thing that happened in texas it's not political either it's about the astros it involves animals okay and not just the animals who cheated to win the world series andrew but no actual animals that like live in the woods and it's a crazy story Anyway, thanks, Christine. Appreciate you. Thanks to Carmen Marshall, who's in Edmonds, Washington.

Beautiful Edmonds, Washington. I've been getting a lot of emails from people in the Edmonds, because I've been Edmonds curious for so long now. I've been getting emails of recommended places to spend time in Edmonds, so I might be putting together an itinerary sometime soon.

Edmonds is, I've said this every time it comes up, and you know what, I'll say it again, because Dave and Aaron Goulet are also from Edmonds, Washington. We're in the Edmonds portion of the show. Edmonds is just about as idyllic a spot as could be, as can be. Is the light rail going to run out there? Is it already running out kind of close to out there?

Edmonds, I think, isn't Edmonds just a little bit too far west? I don't know. See, this is where my— I think it could—Linwood is the stop.

I'm out here minding the gap in London. I don't know much about your—I don't even know what you call it over there anymore.

I think it's more Linwood is what you're thinking of, which is slightly more east, I think. Although, boy, me trying to talk about this stuff is really going to expose my terrible sense of direction.

Well, you think that Arby's is in Edmonds, so that's all you need. That's all anyone needs to know about your capacity for this. That's all Dennis Harvey of Kirkland, Washington needs to know. Oh, remember we were talking to our friend Neil? I don't know if you were in on this conversation, but I was bragging to—oh, you weren't. You weren't there Saturday night.

Yeah, this was this weekend.

Yeah, yeah. Who was that? not even a no thank you just uh is it because i didn't invite you that you didn't come or say

no thank you no i didn't uh you i i hold on actually let's talk about this for a second because i was i had plans on saturday i told you that i was hanging out with my buddy i already had like plans we're gonna go see a show but we ended up not seeing a show but we were hanging

out um but genevieve no i i did not invite you because okay i didn't know you had plans but i just didn't i didn't want you to feel like not that you really would do this but i i guess what i assumed my friend was andrew would much rather be doing something else than coming to this event of mine you know you get plenty of me during your week and i didn't even want you to have to like go to any trouble to turn it down so like i just didn't even invite you but it's funny because in a different universe that's kind of insulting oh no no that's like an insult from me but i i just

was like for a moment there was to do i thought you were really you were just teasing there because for a second i was totally teasing i thought like maybe you did because genevieve said oh i got it are you going to this thing tonight i'm like no i'm hanging out with paulie and then she's like oh you so and i was like i didn't get the text and i like i wasn't insulted i just thought because i'd mentioned on the show on friday that i had plans on saturday i thought you just left me off it but just for a moment now i got a little bit worried like you had oh no no i was and i totally didn't respond that not responding would be a shitty thing if somebody invites you to and i

didn't want you to be in the position where you even had to be like i'd be honest with you but Regardless, I just, you know, I thought I was sparing you. But here's what Neil was saying, and I'm thinking of this because of Dennis Harvey in Kirkland, Washington. I was bragging on how I, for the first time in my adult life, have my own Costco membership.

Oh. You were supposed to mention, I think I saw this on a show sheet maybe, or maybe you mentioned this in passing.

No, I think I wrote it down as a subsidiary of some other topic that, like, I basically, what happened was, well, they opened a Costco not super far from my house, a brand new Costco. It still has that new Costco smell. And I needed to get Addie this particular kind of birthday present that I had been wanting to get for her, but it was something that nobody—I'll just tell you, it was a Dyson vacuum. Wait, seriously? Yeah, seriously.

It's just so funny because your whole story, your whole drama about a Dyson was also connected to Costco last night. Totally.

This was like a newer one than that. I'm assuming I either got a dud or maybe whatever went wrong with mine has been fixed in the iterative process. But I knew she wanted a vacuum, and I figured I would get her this nice one. But you can't just, like, buy a Dyson vacuum on the same day that you want to get it most of the time. Like, if you try to go on Target's website or any of the places, maybe there's a Dyson store in, you know, downtown Seattle. But I wasn't able to locate anywhere that just, like, we have these in stock. They were all like, we can have one tomorrow, you know. except Costco. And so it just so happened that there was one on my way to where I was going. I was going up to meet Addie at this place, the Southwestern, and so swung through Costco, got a membership, and it was, I feel like an adult, finally. It only took me living two-thirds of my life to get to adult status. But Neil was saying, our friend Neil, he's got... a lot of family in mexico and on the subject of kirkland he they they were all like when they come visit him they're like they're like i don't want to mess this up but he was basically saying in their minds they just want to go to kirkland washington it's like a it's like mecca for them because it's on so much costco shit like they're like can we go to kirkland when we come visit you he's like yeah because they just see it on like oh not even to the costco but just to kirkland itself oh because they have costco in mexico like they the vodka is kirkland the jeans are kirkland they to them kirkland is a is a fantastical place that's on all of the stuff they buy at the costco in mexico can we go to can we go hang out with dennis harvey and kirkland can i go to the supreme

court of kirkland oh what are the hats like hot dog on them they say kirkland probably yeah right

And then we've got Andrew Kugelman in Seattle, Washington, rounding out the list today. Andrew, thank you so much. Thanks for supporting the program. We couldn't do this without any of you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you from the bottom. Thank you from the arse of me that is currently swaddled in clean underwear. How's that?

That was awful.

I think that means probably, honestly, for my emotional well-being, we should wrap the show up here, Andrew.

That sounds good. I'm sorry if I was a little distracted there. I don't want to spoil anything. I know everybody tunes into TBTL every day to find out who the donors of the day are going to be. But I was just looking ahead at tomorrow's donors of the day. Heavy hitters. And there's a shocking revelation that I will be sharing with you tomorrow.

There's a revelation that will shock you?

There is a revelation that will shock you. So sorry if I was a little bit rude.

Now I am extending the show because we know this is one of the longest drops in the TVTL library.

It's really good. I was trying to adapt. I love it. They're British. No, it's really good.

You do well over here, Andrew.

Thank you. I appreciate it. I hope you do well as well.

It's a very polite group of people. You would like the politeness factor. Truly.

Okay, tomorrow you can tell me about people's situational awareness because that's one of my least favorite things about America.

I want to talk about that with you, So seriously, because I was doing a lot of bobbing and weaving. And also, I want to talk British pub fish and chips.

Oh, yeah. Sounds great.

Tomorrow. So, yeah, everybody, if you can, join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Power out.