Muse

It's weird when you introduce somebody that you say like this is and then their name, you know, like this is Frank It sounds pretty normal when you think about it. This? Walk up with a person and be like, hey guys, this This stuff right here is Frank Excuse me, what is that? This? This is Frank That's what that is, Jesus It's like when you call somebody on the phone, you know, they say hello, you have to say this is. Hello? This is Dimitri. Can't be like, hello? I am Dimitri. But then if you go up to someone in person, the rule flips, then it's the exact opposite actually. If I walk up to you, then I have to say, hi, I am Dimitri. I can't walk up to you and go, this is Dimitri. Hello. Did you say hello? No, I said hello, but that's close enough.

Making friendly conversations like this is a big part of greeting and serving guests. By greeting the guest warmly and holding brief conversations as you serve them,

you say to our guests, we're glad you're here. For one thing, I have no shame before another mortal. All my shame is between myself and Christ. I'll never drop my eyes to another human being.

You guys think I'm some kind of wimp, but I'm not. I am tough and I'm strong, and I love to splash around in chilly water.

You're hungry, you're confused, your face is streaked with dry tears, and you don't even remember when you started crying.

That's a pretty boring story. I wouldn't tell that to anyone else.

Yeah, I can feel it going south as I'll say it.

well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl show that just might be too beautiful to live do you need an extra little bit of loving my name is luke burbank i am your host hi everyone welcome to my farm coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia back home baby bring it back home on a wet gray day but um didn't know you like to get wet though feels amazing to be back here in the comfortable confines of the studio spent of course all of last week uh in england and my flight home which i had been talking about on the show in anticipation of it flight home pretty uneventful ride to the airport on the magic carpet ride eventful and we'll talk about that here on episode 4404 in a collector series let the fun begin also i said something on the show last week that i was able to reconsider over the weekend and i i well i wish i hadn't done that i'm gonna i'm gonna print an official retraction which i i don't like to do on this show i make no apologies generally speaking but i would like to officially retract something from last week upon further consultation with trusted advisors aka youtube uh so uh stick around for that and stick around for this guy he is as you might know the longest running co-bro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he's been doing a lot of work on sort of self-affirmation and this is an actual recording of him getting hyped for the show on this monday morning before we started officially rolling i am extraordinary he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now

good morning my friend good morning luke before we launch into your adventures and potentially i don't know you're skyrocketing to fame late last week um can i just tell you this it sounds on paper like a really bad idea but i think i can make it pay off can i tell you a little story about troubleshooting about technology troubleshooting at the beginning of the show

on a monday is this related to your new equipment it is and i was going to tell you this before the

show i've honestly been struggling with this because this is a story that i wanted to tell you specifically because you kind of you know me very well when it comes to my relationship with technology and sort of systemically like when there's an issue in the audio chain or whatever sort of systemically like sort of rooting it out and then then i slid into my computer chair and

with a few clicks of my mouse i became a mom on the net mom's on the net so uh i will try to

I was momming on that net while I was gone.

Oh, God dang. I will try to make this quick, but not by just trying to talk too quickly. So here's the deal. Without any further ado, as you just alluded to, I got a new computer delivered to my house on Friday. This is the first time you and I are using it for TVTL purposes. This computer is, for whatever it's worth, not a computer that I do a lot of work on. It's not a computer I carry around. It's not a computer that I'm going to be doing a lot of editing on. And it mostly has.

one role has a couple of secondary roles well mostly one role in this lifetime yes this new computer and it is to talk to you via a program called riverside it's what we use to record our show it's a little it's like a souped up zoom right we've talked about that's a great way to

describe it that's precisely what i was trying to explain i'm not interrupting i'm not trying to interrupt your story i was trying to explain riverside to somebody uh in london the other day more on that in a minute but that's a great description souped up zoom souped up zoom that's

why we always have to eat soup during the yeah it's a very weird requirement but you know who are we to question it you do what you got to do in the digital age uh i um so i get this computer and i don't know what you would assume about me you know that i do like my technology and i like my technological toys i like the idea of a new computer you might think that a day when a new computer arrives for me i might be like a kid on christmas just like ripping open the packaging and like just digging into it and trying to get it set up as fast as possible but at this late i mean this might just be another story of low t but at this late stage of my life so many are these days between the two of us i just feel like when a new computer arrives it's sort of exciting but it's also a bit of a like i gotta do a lot of work to get this computer into the shape i need it to be in because, number one, like I say, I'm old. I've been using PCs for a long time. There are just certain, like, setup things that I like to – every new generation of a computer or an operating system has kind of new ways of doing things, and usually they're not helpful in any way. So I have to spend a lot of time rolling back time on some of these technologies.

And this might account for why you, I think, will sometimes – how do I put this gently? You will definitely take your time in replacing pieces of equipment. it's it's you know we fortunately we have it in the budget at tbtb it's critical to our work but the idea that you're gonna have to relearn or learn a bunch of new stuff i could i have the privilege of not dealing with any of this i could imagine it could be a little bit like you know

what i'd rather deal with that next week yeah and it's just so even even if it was just my own computer just sort of getting it set up in a way that i am used to it's almost like um well i think people know this like when you get a new phone it could even be the same kind of phone i guess they're pretty good at like kind of rolling everything over i assume like a new iphone out of the box is almost a seamless experience now with your old phone but anyway i'm currently

ducking a system update on my laptop it wants me to go to like i don't know sierra or some shit yeah it's like no thank you so so i know what you're talking about so anyway i get this computer

and um and i also have so just getting it set up standard for me is going to take a little bit of time but then i've got a you know none of i don't want to make any of this stuff sound like rocket science obviously a lot of people have podcasts and use this equipment and i'm using relatively modern equipment now but i do have various drivers i got to install for my audio boxes and this camera there's a mini there's a mini driver exactly the adam driver he's so moody

luke he sure is but it's one of them sexy it really does you don't you never know uh where

you stand with him but that's why i can't resist that's why you gotta keep on updating that driver So anyway, this thing arrived on Friday, and I think by Friday evening, I'm like, okay, I'll sit down and start working on this. So it's maybe I mess around with it for an hour upstairs, getting it in kind of working shape. It has to automatically do a bunch of updates. You get a brand new computer, and the first thing you have to do is an hour's worth of updates. It's horribly outdated. It's embarrassingly anachronistic. Exactly.

Right out of the box.

You're like, this thing is still warm from the factory floor. Why do I have to do an hour?

I pulled it out of the oven, and it already needs a 50 update.

I can still smell a child's tears on the keyboard, for goodness sake. Ooh, okay. All right, too dark on a Monday. Sorry. Just wanted a reality check. So anyway, then I bring it down to the studio. I'm like, okay, here's the real test. So then I start plugging in the equipment into it and, like, kind of routing it through all my audio stuff. And, like, so far, I got to say, it's taking me a little bit of time, but I haven't gotten to that point where I'm just at loggerheads with the technology. there's always something right like and you're cruising along and you're like ah but this one audio thing won't interact properly with the sound card or i can't get this to route through my board or like there's always just something and it's usually like you go digging in menus

you can't figure it out see this is where you and i are so different and i'm so glad that you have the job responsibilities you do because and this has been you know mentioned on the show a lot of times but the second that i see can like some instruction that's go update the driver i'm out you're just throwing it away you're like i'm honestly i'm getting i'm getting an even newer computer like oh i got this one on friday what if what if a computer from monday doesn't need me to do that and you're methodical about it and you always get to a solution you're like you know what you're like you're like walt reading the instructions on everything my dad who is here right now uh helping out on uh on some house stuff my mom was here last night this morning andrew as i dashed out here to the studio i said okay mom i'm gonna go tb go to tbtl she said all right you know mention me if you get a chance and i said really mom do you think you're not getting talked about on the show enough she goes i don't know it's something to talk about and here it is so there you go mom mission accomplished you got your shout out but anyway my dad is like a direction reader and i always think that's crazy and yet he usually gets necessary information from it i feel like is the in the same way that you in working the steps in working the program working the program it works if you work it that's right you get to a good outcome so yeah

the difference is i do not like reading instructions like i um like that's the only like i i do avoid that like the plague i'm just sort of a i i learn by doing sort of guy so on friday evening everything is working smoothly i'm actually really surprised at how everything is working smoothly i have the computer up and running it's got a new kind of port but i'm i'm excited to see that i can still hardwire in so i have blazing fast internet speeds internet is working it's not the water the uh every everything is just like working really well so i'm online and then i open up riverside now this is the big test right the one role of this computer is to

talk if i remember right you said this is the actual recommended computer for this particular tasks like somebody either in a subreddit or on the riverside website this is like you're buying the the sort of the particular machine that is supposed to work the best with this system yeah

i went on the riverside website before buying a computer because that's the other thing about me and computers like uh when i have a computer that i want to like do a lot of editing and video editing on i know that i need something that is very powerful so i look at these gaming laptops and so but then for this other computer i didn't want to spend two thousand dollars on a computer that's only purpose is to add soup to what do we say souped up um zoom yeah you know just to use souped up zoom and so i so i did a micro amount of research i saw that riverside recommends acer brand isn't they're like if you're on a budget acer is a good brand i'm like okay yeah let's let's go with that for this one computer so anyway i am i have this thing all plugged in i'm on riverside one other thing here is i need riverside before today's inaugural tbtl launch i did need this Riverside to work for Saturday because I was recording Spotless with Hannah. I don't know if you know I use Riverside for that, but now you know. If you need Spotless to contribute to the TBTL budget because I'm using the technology, let me know. But I have a little bit of a conundrum here if this computer doesn't work, which is now it's all plugged into everything. The old computer is ripped out of here, but can I get this thing to work with Riverside? Well, I'm on the Riverside website. I open it up. I log in. Internet is fine. I'm connected to everything, but there's one little step that never even occurred to me wouldn't work which is joining the studio in other words I'm on the website I can see all of our old videos I'm logged in everything is fine but then it's that moment where it's kind of like okay do you want to start a new recording session and you're like yes and it says Luke what does it always ask you are you using

headphones and it's like yeah I'm using headphones dude shut your mouth I'm talking about TBTL we can dig it like we use headphones every day and have been for about 17 years on the show and and

there's no way to remember that setting it's always like are you using headphones and i think it always defaults to the no i'm not using headphones so you always gotta so i'm like okay yes i'm using headphones join the studio i click join and the wheel just spins and spins and spins and then it says cannot connect to the studio now keep in mind i'm online it's not like i can't reach this website i'm on the website it just can't get me into this little virtual room where you and i record and i'm like well what in the world could that possibly be why would everything work and so then it's like if you if you want help with this here's our troubleshooting guide and also click here if you want tech help now i was talking about tech help from this specific company just last

week and you had written them a sternly yes sternly worded letter which may not be helping

your fortunes at this point now that was a little bit on my head uh or in my mind i should say um and i'm like okay well let me first check out like the the troubleshooting and it's like well how do you have fast enough internet i'm like yes i have very fast internet okay turn off any ad blockers or any extensions you might have running in the browser okay i've turned all those off good call i had some of those running still didn't work it says we work in two different browsers both Chrome and Microsoft Edge. I'm like, oh, I didn't know this thing worked in Edge. Let me try it. Same computer, different browser. Same exact process. Gets to that last step, and it won't connect. It's telling me, look at your firewall settings. And I'm like, I don't know much about firewalls, but I go in there. I just turn off all the firewalls. Windows is screaming at me. Don't.

turn off your firewalls you're exposed i'm like i'm just trying something here with riverside all the cookies i'm just accepting all the cookies i'm taking down the fireworks i'm just like taking down my pants in in the town square saying well this work do you love me now riverside yeah so i'm following all of these things and it's still not connecting and now i've been working on it for another hour or two and i'm thinking okay i gotta reach out to support again to tech support from riverside and i'm like i know that no matter how much detail i put in and say i've done all of these steps they're just going to write back here's our troubleshooting guide on this and i'm already getting kind of pre-concerned about this and i'm like composing it's in the back of my head while i'm troubleshooting and i'm like i've done everything nothing makes sense and i just don't want to send an email into the void so it's not the void they do respond usually within a few hours but it's always just the obvious answer of here check our guide on this here and i'm like i just can't i'm not an emotional place to handle that also i'm supposed to record with hannah tomorrow do i have to take this all apart and install my old computer again um and then as i'm just tinkering around and trying everything that makes sense i'm trying everything that makes sense i look in the bottom right hand corner of my computer screen and i notice that that the time is way off right and i'm like okay well this came from a different part of the country or world so that makes sense but it wasn't just off by a certain hour it was just like it was like i remember it was like 6 30 at night and it was saying it's like 10 15 or something you know what i mean like the minutes were off the hour was off and i'm like well that's weird so i just quickly on the computer itself just check the time settings says well it looks like you're set to uh pacific time do you want to turn that off or turn it on i'm like i don't know i'll just turn it off and on quickly see if it resets the clock i switch it off and on it resets the clock suddenly all of my problems are solved i can get into riverside i don't know why the clock setting on my computer like there's no tech no tech help in the world would have said check your computer time see if it's off a little bit like i don't know why but it must have been some sort of a security threat maybe there's something going on with my computer where the machines at riverside was like this is sketchy there's something sketchy about the information i'm getting from this computer we're shutting it down and i could not believe i would have never landed there except i just happened to look down at the time and it was wrong and out of a last ditch effort i just fixed the

clock now we're talking and it's about what time on friday night at this point it wasn't super late

it was like 6 30 at night but i had other things i wanted to be doing you know yeah i mean doing

this i've had something not nearly as sort of important like the entire operation of this show But I've had something similar happen where my computer is being really weird with the internet Like it's telling me that any website including like New York Times is on an insecure network Or and it won't let me get to anything and it had to do with basically my computer not knowing what time it was I don't understand why That is so critical to the operation sometimes like I don't know why it needs to know that but it's even on my Mac That has been an issue. But but good solving. You must have really must have been a relief when you got it all worked out. And when you you knew that we could actually do this show on Monday.

Yeah. I mean, it's still sort of boggles the mind that that was it. And again, like I guess this story is a little anticlimactic because it all just worked out in the end. But like the clock, that was it. And again, like sort of me already pre worrying about not even me sending in my query, but me pre-worrying about the response that was going to come back from Riverside on a weekend if I didn't have to wait until Monday morning or what have you, and then for it just to be a clock. So anyway, first of all, if anybody's setting up a new computer and something is boggling your mind, check your clocks. Hey, everybody, check your clocks.

Flava Flav.

It's daylight savings time.

Uh-oh, did you not watch the Hey Dummies video?

Of course I did. I had to.

Recorded with our friend Bean Baxter. Had to.

Had to or got to? I got to, but I edited it.

By the way, shout out to our buddy Bean from the Cup of Tea in a Chat podcast who I had a little breakfast with there on Friday in London. And apparently I hear through the grapevine that we were shouted out on their show. Oh, good. Which he was off to record shortly after we had our breakfast until I realized I don't know where his co-host, Allie, I don't know where she lives, but unless she's in... Oh, in Maine, okay, that's a lot different then. I assume she might still be on the West Coast, and I was doing the math, and I was like, it's like six in the morning there or something. When they were dialing up, I was like, that is ambitious.

Well, they record very early, or I think very early in Maine time, I want to say. So, well, you would know better, I guess, being recorded after you guys got together.

Well, they were recording at noon London, so just deduct eight hours from that.

So there you go. And I'll tell you what, I subscribe to their emails and sometimes they send out requests for like, hey, join us for like, like they have quizzes on their show. And, you know, I love quizzes. And I don't know if it would be some sort of weird friend nepotism to have me on the show doing a quiz. But I've thought of like, you know, sending a note saying I'll throw my hat in the ring if you ever want to have me on and you guys want to quiz me about something. Let's give it a shot. But the thing is, it's always like, but you have to be available at 6 a.m. on Sunday morning. And I'm like, well, I don't want anything that bad. Like, literally.

I know. For a fact. I was thinking about that. I was like, we're doing TBTL at like 6 o'clock in England when we're doing it. And then, like, he's doing it at noon. And I'm like, I don't – what's the math on this?

It's crazy. Yeah, very early.

But it was really fun to get to see our pal Bean. And we talked, of course, all about the podcasting industry and the radio industry and what have you. And I don't know, maybe the time got away from me a little bit, Andrew. or I don't know, just I somehow, speaking of time differences and speaking of not watching one's clocks, my flight from London back to Portland was scheduled to leave at 2.20 in the afternoon, England time. And you and I had done some pre-taping, so I basically, all I had to do Friday morning was go for a little jog, get a little coffee with Bean, and then make my way to Heathrow. And I thought I had it all worked out, and somehow I didn't because, well, first of all, it took a little while to check out of the hotel. There was a bit of a line and then a slight snafu with the bill, which we got all worked out. And anyway, so then I call an Uber, and I go out there, and I get into the Uber, and there's a very nice gentleman. Simon is driving the Uber. He's waiting for me patiently.

Simon, is there a more British cab name than Simon?

There probably is not. And it was super nice. i got this one oh by the way because of my uh super heavy luggage finally arrived i've now got that in tow and simon's hoisting it into the uh the back of the of the cab and and we jump in and we're off and i look at the on the back seat of both the driver and passenger side it's got a little qr code and like a little like logo and it says ask your driver about the about the uh taxi chronicles podcast and i was like uh so i scan it and then i i say to the driver uh hey can you tell me more about the taxi chronicles podcast and he says absolutely i do a podcast in this cab would you like to be on it and i was like uh sure absolutely and of course somewhere in the back of my mind i'm like this guy has no idea that he has just stumbled into a podcast with a professional podcaster like what a lucky day and then he says are you using headphones did he ask you are you using headphones this would be one of the times i wasn't but he of course he says like literally he goes oh i had a vlogger in here earlier i was not even the first content creator in his cab

that day and i'm just glad to hear that we're using the term vlogger still i wasn't sure

in the tiktok i actually you know what i'm paraphrasing he might have said he might have use another term but what i knew was that i uh what i learned was that i was not even the first person who does some version of this in the cab that day being on the podcast so you know i say to him uh you know we we uh we start chatting and we're talking about podcasting i'm telling him about tbtl and then at some point and it's all very casual we're having fun again in the back of my mind i'm thinking boy this guy just really this guy just really lucked out he hit the jack He doesn't just have any old any old passenger back here He's got like a guy who really knows what he's doing and then my eyes kind of drift down I think maybe to the clock on his this is all being filmed on his phone By the way the technology these days Andrew, I don't know the audio I don't think the show's been posted yet, so I don't know how the audio is there was a little microphone that was attached to the phone kind of like a really small little shotgun mic and and then the camera on the phone was set up so that I could see Simon and myself and what was happening behind us. It looked really great, honestly. What you can do now on these phones is pretty remarkable.

Have you gone and listened to any of his other earlier podcasts just to get a sense of what it sounds like?

That's a really good point. That would be an easy way for me to understand what's going on. But I didn't, I think, to do that this morning.

I'm on the YouTube page now, just so you know I've been clicking around.

so here's what happens though i'm i'm broadcasting away from the back seat of this vehicle and i'm giving it my all and my eye drifts down to the clock and suddenly it it occurs to me in the moment that i am in real danger of not making this flight like i have somehow through lollygagging and military time or whatever i mean is it always called military time that the sort of 24 hour clock? I don't think so.

I don't think they call it it military time in other in england we call it military time here just international time international yeah yeah and of course listening to the bbc it always confused me because they'd

always say oh 800 mean greenwich mean time well whatever you calls it it was confusing me i guess because all of a sudden i realized and also i looked down at the you know the the uber app is saying like here's when we're going to be dropping you off at heathrow and i realized that that a number is like 136 the flight takes off at 220 so that is far less than an hour for an international flight which of course has a few more hoops to jump through he throw a nice

small little airport i'm assuming it's a little regional thing it's mostly puddle jumpers kind of in and out of there you know john wayne he threw airport it's a super duper cash kind of a

and uh so now i i'm but i'm still podcasting i'm still being interviewed about like what kind of mics do you use for your show and i'm like at this point i have completely my brain has completely bifurcated itself from talking about tbtl and the industry and whatever it is i'm talking about at one point we start talking about like ivermectin andrew i'm not even kidding you which was not where i saw this going but i assume you led the conversation in that direction as i as i always do you know it's one of my hobby horses it's actually how i so i deworm my hobby horse ivermectin so but the whole time i'm like you know what it reminded me of i guess maybe with slightly lower stakes this is a speaking of intestinal distress this is a weird place to take it the time when i was doing wait wait don't tell me live on stage but was also extremely uncomfortable in my stomach region and somehow was like I guess I have no choice but to believe I was just making noise with my mouth it was somewhat relevant to what we were doing but I have no memory of what I said and I had no memory of being in my body because all I could think about was that I was very close to having a number two accident on stage in front of everyone at the Chase Bank Auditorium this felt a little bit like that in that I'm I'm still trying to kind of be in on this podcast but i'm mostly just like you know how much is it to rebook an international flight am i going to stay overnight at heathrow uh becca and i had a valentine's day plans on saturday night like including reservations am i gonna miss that like i'm just i'm spinning through how did i end up in this situation i had plenty of time this morning how am i how is it this close to the flight like what did i do wrong but meanwhile i'm still podcasting away and i wish you would

have brought that up i wish that's the part i'm telling you oh sorry yeah like just just that seems like an interesting part of the podcast when the person is just like stops talking about mics and is just like wait a second i'm gonna be late for my flight home it's literally exactly what i

did i've i reached a point where i was like i cannot keep this under my hat any longer like and even if it ruins the podcast or even if it uh means the podcast is over i have to speak my truth here which is hey simon i think i'm gonna miss this flight and that is when simon who i learned is ex-british military goes into what i can only describe as some sort of a mission impossible style evasive action military trained driving protocol that becomes let's just call it extra legal and we're still podcasting we're still talking so i'm like he's he's going around these trucks he's going into all the here's the other thing that adds to the my feeling of of kind of um apprehension is you know the lanes are different there obviously it's like you're in the left lane and you're um the driver's on the other side and whereas when you and i were driving in australia and that is also the case mostly you and i were just on that big long stewart highway just kind of driving and driving and driving when you're in london you're constantly like in the left lane and then you sharply if you're simon you're like sharply swinging left into the left lane again so you're taking the left into the left lane which my american brain is trained to think we've just gone into the oncoming traffic you know and we're doing we're going around these roundabouts and we're like and again i'm very appreciative of the fact that this has kicked simon into another gear because this is really helping me but again we're still we're still podcasting along and i'm like i'm all i really want to talk about is am am i going to make this flight or not but we're again we're we're continuing talking about the podcasting industry and how do you stay motivated and we're so we're just podcasting away uh until and i'm watching obsessively the drop off clock you know like when you gain a minute again this is very i think outside of your experience because you just don't cut things close like this and boy was i wishing that i was an andrew in this moment andrew i was like god why why do i have to be this way but like if you have been in this kind of situation before you know the the app of the ride share will tell you when you're like estimated drop off is and it becomes or you know if you've ever just been driving in your car with ways on or one of these things that obsessive thing of like are we gaining time is this thing counting down you know like in other words it was 136 is it 134 now is it 133 are we are we speeding up this process or are we losing time at some point he goes what terminal are you in and i was like ah he throw he goes no there's like a big difference and i go okay i go he goes is it terminal two I go probably so I go into my British Airways reservation and somewhere far in the info

it's like it's terminal five and I go it's terminal five he goes that's not good I'm like oh no I go how much time does that he goes I don't know maybe 10 minutes and we are not in a mode Andrew where we have 10 minutes to mess around with like it's already a pretty unlikely scenario that we're going to get through all of this and so I switched the drop off amazingly it doesn't actually add as much time as as we're thinking maybe it adds three or four minutes um on the like estimation but the the the sort of end of the story is we pull up to terminal five i am i'm i think it's at that point maybe we've gained five or six minutes let's say it's it's i think it's like the 50 minutes until my flight now if i'm at sea tech i'm fine with this i'm cool as a cucumber this is okay but i'm not i'm at he throw i have this massive bag which is another thing the irony is if i would have just not gotten that bag i could have just sprinted right to i had to go through you know the the check-in i have to get rid of this bag and this is where i lost all chill andrew like i just threw myself at the mercy of british airways oh by the way another thing and this is the world we live in the car is pulling up to the terminal or whatever and because of the Fractured media environment where it's ABC always be contenting Simon hands me his phone like he's like, okay, well, we'll say goodbye to Luke. Where can we find you tbchell on that? Thanks everyone and he hits end and he goes he hands me the phone and he goes well first He he takes a picture of us like I guess for the thumbnail of the podcast and then he hands me the photo He goes okay, and he starts the video just do one quick promo where you say who you are and And and where you're from and what we talked about and now the car is parked It's here, and I'm like, hey. For some reason, this is stuck in my mind. I don't know if anyone will ever see this, but I'm like, hi, it's Luke from tbtl.net. Have you ever heard us identify the show as such, Andrew? Where did that even come from? It came from a very feral, primal place of I'm going to miss this flight and have to pay $3,000.

It's not the worst instinct, though. If you don't have a lot of time to say what we are, just tell them where to go, I guess. And also .net gets funnier every day.

so i'm like it's luke from tbtl.net i just got done talking to simon here on taxi taxi uh chronicles i keep wanting to call it taxi cab confessions right although i will say his most

popular videos and this is what you're up against here is um season seven episode 68 so by the way he's cranking this out he really is a true foot fetish that was that's a popular well wait till

He posts our episode. A lot of it was about foot fetish.

Life of a dominatrix. That was season seven, episode 72. And season 11, episode 85, National Indian Squash player Abhay Singh was in the... I mean, can you compete with this?

I don't know. We'll find out. We'll see what the views and the likes are like, if and when our episode ever goes up. But anyway, so I...

I will say this, and I'm not saying this to diminish your experience or Simon's experience, But this is a rare case where I am very relieved to see that the numbers do not dwarf ours. Let me just put it that way.

Well, that was a big part of the conversation, which I don't know, again, how much of this will end up on the Internet, if anyone will watch it. Again, I was in a fugue state, but a lot of it was about me weirdly kind of turning into a pod bro who's hyping people up, like, you've got to be consistent. you gotta rise and grind and saying kind of like hey if you want if you're trying to do a podcast like i don't know who i think that the um potential audience is but it was a lot of me being like if you're trying to do a podcast focus on narrow casting and make sure you do you're consistent you gotta like if you say you're gonna post every week you gotta post every week and he was saying simon was yeah that's something that i keep kind of messing up at like he's like i kind of and he was like and i tried this other podcast and didn't really work like he was very like sort of self aware about the journey and he was like, yeah. And then I was like, it was a certain kind of podcast. and didn't get a lot of traction, so then I was like, well, I'm in this Uber all day, so at least, you know, the content creation is while I'm working anyway and stuff, you know? So, all that is to say, yeah, it would have been a certain kind of experience to go to the website later and realize, like, oh, man, this is crushing something that we do five days a week professionally. Yeah, I was

curious. I'm like, is this going to be one of those just, like, thousands upon thousands or millions of views? It's not, but I will give him credit. he's got uh 1300 videos posted so he's cranking them out yeah i forget what he there was oh the

other thing i yes he's got and he's got a bunch more that i don't know if he's even posted like episodes of basically what he said was and this was i i was relating uh to him our conversation at some point on tbtl about the hbo show taxi cab confessions which my initial memory of it was well that's gotta all be faked and then it like maybe there was some fakery but it actually was less faked than than than i had thought he was like oh yeah yeah people got get really real in the back and and and i was like well because they probably had a few drinks like no no i don't interview anyone who's been drinking which is probably a good ethical like a bright line but he was saying like he was telling me that people have like confessed to like killing people like that like he was like the like it's wild what people will sort of admit to in the back of a cab to a virtual stranger um so that was just kind of made me think well maybe the taxi confession thing was on to something you know as far as like the wild stories that i thought were probably just like faked but maybe people just there's something about it feeling semi-anonymous and people have

stuff they want to get off their chest or whatever but um did you admit any secrets like the fact that your co-host uses shotgun microphones instead of studio mics i admitted that uh my co-host

usually has to spend at least one night setting up a new computer right for doing the show for doing very simple i get to the british airways get to the british airways like check in to go to check my bag and i just throw myself at their mercy and i just say to the person like because there's like a there's a line it's not a crazy line but it's not no line if that makes sense It's like, I want to say, eight people with their bags. They're waiting to snake through. And I just say, I am so sorry. I am about to miss my flight. Is there any way I could see a baggage agent? And this person looks around very sweetly and goes, yeah, go up there to like whatever, 14 or something. So I'm like, thank you so much. Thank you so much. So I go up and luckily there's like a potted plant that's kind of obscuring me from the people that are waiting in the real line. Is there a guy with binoculars and a fedora? hiding behind the plant what is going on so i'm like i'm doing this move where i'm like i'm kind of hiding behind the plant because i don't want them to see that i'm just fully cutting the line and i don't want them to be like but i'm also like ready to just as soon as the people that are being helped at position 14 are done i am like beelining it so that no one from the real line like comes in front of me and it actually worked out sort of perfectly because nobody saw me when I was in the in the jungle that is Heathrow until those folks left I beelined it for 14 and I just said to her as I was getting close I was like um the woman at the front said it was okay if I uh you know if I if I went directly to you I'm about to miss my flight and thank goodness I got a really nice British Airways baggage person aren't you glad I got you that uh camo colored

browns pullover sweatshirt now it really made this mission you just you couldn't even see it

under the ghillie suit i was wearing and people have often asked why do i wear that ghillie suit now you know the airport it's like for moments just like this um and uh so i get the like my whole thing was i was like if they will let this gigantic ass suitcase that's caused me so much hassle this trip with very little payoff if they just get this on the plane if they'll agree to put it on the plane then i know i'm in okay shape because that means usually the cutoff time for the luggage is before the cutoff time for the humans um and so again this person was really helpful and she's like okay you have about and luckily like from when i finished cutting my promo for the show to when i'm talking to this person it's been like i don't know two minutes like it's been very fast and she says okay you have about 50 minutes but you got to take a train it's in b47 yada yada so i'm like okay well she checks the bag and i'm just like you know i'm i'm i'm sort of cautiously optimistic where i'm not walking but i'm not sprinting i'm like sort of i'm speed walking i'm like cutting around people i'm walking you know i'm going down the escalator that's already going down but i'm walking down it trying to get to the train i hear somebody mutter when this train pulls up somebody says to their friend this train takes about 20 minutes and i'm like no way like is it even possible it didn't thankfully it took Let's go.

90 seconds if that to get to our thing although they did a security sweep i've never seen this before like when you take those you know at sea tack or anywhere else a lot of times there are these little underground trains or trams that are getting you from one terminal to the next and the train pulls up and i'm of course like watching every second and then it just here like the doors open everyone gets off but the doors are on the opposite side so the doors that are front of us remain closed we cannot access this this tram and then it just says security check and then we're just waiting and waiting for what feels like an eternity i'm going to say it was maybe three minutes but it's just for this random guy who let's just say didn't seem to have a real fire lit underneath him he's just kind of walking through each of these you know there's maybe five or six of these cars just like looking around making sure nobody's left anything weird there's nothing weird going on just kind of checking it checking it and then he finally gets off and he like hits some button or says something on the walkie and then finally it's like the other far doors close i'm just like and then like 20 seconds later our doors open so it was like it just i was like please don't let there be a security event please don't let someone have just accidentally left like their bag not because of anything terroristic but that like shuts down the trams that he throw or the whatever i get to the i i get to the the b terminal and i'm walking and a guy goes sprinting past me towards the gate that i'm walking towards and i'm like that's not a great sign he's he's probably on my flight but he is he's not being a cool chill guy like i am he is like in a full dead-on sprint and i finally get to b47 and there is no one there which is also never a great sign because we're still at this point 35 minutes before the flight is supposed to take off so again under normal circumstances this is a long long time under international circumstances maybe not so much but like i get there they like i scan my ticket i get them everything's cool yeah go out there down this escalator i get onto the i start walking up i get to the jet bridge i get to the back of the jet bridge huge line of people still waiting to on the plane and i'm thinking i could have waited another 20 minutes i could have i could have probably you know had one more cup of coffee with bean or whatever because it went from my whole life is flashing before my eyes to are you kidding me with this line are you kidding me with this this is this is how you treat us british airways so suffice it to say i got on the airplane what

is security what is what is their version of tsa like is it very similar it's it's very similar in

In fact, I don't think it's called TSA, probably it's called BSA, British Securities, I don't know. It was, for all intents and purposes, the same thing, same kind of machinery, same kind of, you know, whatever, and again, I got really, really lucky that, you know, considering it was a Friday afternoon, it was not one of those kind of weird days where, for whatever reason, there's a ripple in the system, and, like, you've got, if anything had gone wrong in this process, like, if any of these lines had been, like, blown up, it would just be, it would have been game over. And again, I don't know what my recourse would have been. I already had enough trouble dealing with this whole situation of trying to, because to stay, to get further into the weeds quickly, like the ticket was purchased by through American Airlines, but through the CBS travel tool. But then they put me on British Airways. So kind of nobody was in charge of this. It would have been a absolute nightmare to try to rebook this if they would even let me. I don't know. And I would not want to deal with Larry Alardo over this. Like, he's like, really, really? You missed your flight? So, whew, it was a major relief. And that also, the nice thing about that was...

Was your hotel too close to European Disneyland for his taste as well?

It's by, you know, it's one channel ride from Euro Disney.

Flag it. Same guy? The guy who kind of overstays these things?

Well, yes, but it was someone in the chain of command who had flagged that. I see. But good memory. But then what it also did was, remember last week I was like obsessing over the chess game of where am I going to sit on the airplane? And the, you know, I was like, am I going to be in a window seat? Because I was in bad coach. That never changed. I remained in bad coach. But am I going to be in a window seat of bad coach, but maybe someone in front of me will lean back and that will be terrible? Or do I pick an aisle seat at the front of bad coach from our leg room or whatever? Luckily, the whole— Isn't it bad coach port of call? It's great, Harvey Keitel film. Incredible.

I know we already did the T. Nelson joke, I think, on Friday. I don't think that worked. I think yours was better. I had a weekend to think about it.

I like yours better. So the good news was that just the very act of being allowed onto the airplane was such a relief that I immediately lost any apprehension about where I was sitting. I was like, I just want to be on this airplane. And so I get to—this was the—

Weirdest thing though, I've never experienced this before, it turns out the seats on this flight, Andrew, did not reflect the seat map that I had been looking at for this flight. Because I was deeply aware of the exact seat that I was in, which was 30H, and what that was was the middle section of the front row of Bad Coach. It was on the aisle and I would have rather have been over on one of those side section of the same area Like in other words closer to the window In in the little side grouping the far right of the airplane. I would have rather but that was all taken when I made when I Was moving around my seats, so I get To my row 30 and there's an empty seat next to a woman and her very cute daughter The woman also is wearing Courtney Barnett t-shirt, which I knew we were gonna be fast friends. I I sit down in the seat, I'm kind of unpacking my stuff, getting ready, I'm super stoked just to be on the plane. And the flight attendant very nicely comes to me and says, you know, what's your seat number? And I'm like, 30 Hetch, I'm trying to fit in. And she's like, oh, that's actually over here. And it was literally the seat that I was hoping to have been in the whole time, which it said was taken on the seat map, which was in the exact same row, but over closer to the window of the airplane. And in a better spot, because for the vagaries of this airplane, And what I had basically was, I'd say, 15 feet of legroom. Like, it was the exit door. So basically, it's like my seat, a middle seat with no one in it.

Jeez Louise.

The window seat that had a very nice, very mellow dude that was reading Foreign Service magazine. And then, you know, the emergency exit window and, like, the restrooms. But in front of me, seriously 15 feet, like, no other seats. Like, I could have. And it was perfect. It was not an overpacked flight. In fact, most of the people in the other—almost everyone had, like, at least an empty seat next to them or room to spread out or whatever. It was like a very—

Not a lot of people trying to get back to the United States these days. I wonder, Andrew, if that might be maybe a supply-demand issue.

Not as much demand and an overabundance of supply.

Yeah, how are the flights out of this place, by the way? Packed. Are those pretty packed?

People are, like, climbing into the wheel wells.

Yeah. Yes.

Anyway, so here I am. I'm back. I'm home. I'm excited to be here It is really nice to get to do the show From here after a week Of being on the road Just with all my Kind of the proper equipment And you know Just the comforts of home So I'm very happy to be back And I barely made it I will see if TBTL gets a bump From whatever Taxi Chronicles drops Although, I'll say, Simon Talking to you, Simon was promising me Up and down he was going to post the show By Monday so I could promote it and I have yet to see it.

So your move, Simon. I'm also like, I haven't even seen yours yet, and I'm already kind of worried about the production quality of this. I see some people get in the front seat for this.

I didn't do that, but I centered myself. Not only literally, but figuratively.

Some of these look like, oh, if you're in the front seat, it looks like it's a pretty good interview. Some of these look like, and again, I haven't seen yours yet. It's not posted. But I just worry about this shot. It's like kind of a close-up on him in the front seat, and then we're picking up the person in the back seat. I'm hearing, I haven't even clicked on these yet, and I'm hearing a lot of car noise. I'm worried about mic placement.

Wait, you haven't clicked on it? How are you hearing car noise? In my head. Why don't you click on one?

Okay, so let's try, well, the dominatrix one.

Click on a recent one, which I'm assuming will be the same equipment.

Yeah, that's what I'm looking at now. I'm looking at the most recent ones. Here we have, I'm going to go with somebody in the backseat. This is two people in the backseat. Okay, let's hear.

Yes, we're back with another rider, another episode. So today we have Tiffany and Frank, all the way from America, from Philadelphia, that place where Tom Hanks did his famous movie. Frank is an engineer and Tiffany is a teacher. So what brought you to England? Vacation. Yeah, but you could have gone any place in the world. What brought you to England? This is true.

This is very true. i want to say now this guy in the back seat the the philly guy frank frank he's holding he's actually holding a microphone simon gave him an actual microphone i don't we didn't do that for

me he had a shock so in other words that's already not a um that's not a useful comparison because what we had during my session andrew was like i said a little kind of directional very miniature shotgun microphone mounted on the telephone yeah which is in the front seat pointed at him right No, it pointed actually more towards me, and I want to tell you, I was positioned right in the center of the shot. I was kind of sitting in the middle seat now of the Uber, and I was projecting heartily. So if there's a chance that it was going to work out, I was giving it my all, but who knows? I've yet to see the final product.

This might be a better example, and then we can move on, but this is from...

From Hula to the World Stage, One Hawaiian Dancer's Inspirational Journey.

I was, like, maybe a young teenager. I actually started when I was much younger, but then I stopped until I was a young teenager. And basically, I was forced into it.

That's not bad. No, it's not too bad. I mean, it sounds like you're in a taxi cab, right?

So was that your parents saying, you're going to do this? My aunts, yeah.

Your aunts? Yeah. So he is quite a bit louder. I was kind of thinking about that if the microphone is closest to him.

Well, I did the majority of the talking, which you'll be really shocked to hear, Andrew.

Do you think that he does he want to send me the tape and I could sweeten it a bit?

Like what's your how's your new computer? Sweetening.

Yes. Did he? Oh, did you mention to him Riverside? You must have. I think when I was literally story, I'd say, oh, yeah, I was evangelizing.

I mean, yeah, like I said, I was, I was out of my body for a significant part of the drive after I realized how, how dangerous this was actually for me in terms of missing the flight. But I do think I was talking about Riverside. We use a program called Riverside and, and how, you know, it really does allow for, um, doing a lot of stuff that used to cost a lot of money and be prohibitively expensive in terms of equipment and everything. my point being it's much easier to do a podcast now from a technical standpoint than it used to be which i was again somehow i got it in my mind that his audience is a bunch of aspiring podcasters who just don't know what to do and i don't know where i got that from but that was the thrust of what i was saying it was like a it was like a really ineffective ted talk aimed at the aspiring podcastant and you know again we've already blown through one deadline which is supposed to be posted by Monday so maybe we'll never see the light of day I don't know

well don't take that as a reflection on my performance

I never do I never do

we was hoping for some razzle dazzle razzle dazzle that's right man razzle dazzle on your mark get set now ready everybody razzle dazzle

All right, let's thank some dazzling donors. That's right. We have entered our dazzling donor era. These donors are donating a dazzling amount of dough. And I also think I tried to explain the financial structure of TBTL to Simon. Again, I don't know how interesting this was to the Taxi Cab Chronicles audience, but it's very interesting to our audience, I think, because it's really how TBTL exists. We want to thank Stephanie Lee in Brooklyn, New York.

Stephanie Lee. Stephanie is personally responsible for getting the song Gloria in my head, like nonstop for a couple of weeks.

Like the Van Morrison song?

No, the disco song. Gloria. Laura Branigan was her name.

I think you're thinking Zap Branigan.

Sheepdog? Yeah, Stephanie said that she had heard In a 10 of the week form Had mentioned hearing Gloria on at the salon And I was like, I know that song I've heard it a million times in my life But I've never really paid attention to it So I found the video link for the newsletter And I watched it And then I just became entranced with the lyrics I'm still a little confused as to what's going on in Gloria But I spent a solid two weeks Listening to Laura Branigan's greatest hits, Luke That's not somebody who I thought I was

It's interesting that the G-L-O-R-I-A, Gloria song was already out, but what was her name again?

Laura Brannigan.

Laura Brannigan and her co-collaborators thought there's still some desire in the marketplace for another song about someone named Gloria. You'd think one would probably, like, you know, sort of slake that thirst.

Yeah, and it's a really good song. I don't go for music of that kind of era and genre that much. I guess maybe the genre more than era, because I don't know if it's disco, but there's a disco ball in the video, so I'm going to put it in the sort of disco era.

Yeah, I think if you were to wake me up out of a sleep and say, where's that song, where's it fall in the genres, I would say disco as well.

I might listen to it again today.

Stephanie Lee's in Brooklyn, New York, and says, hello, Imaginary Friendos. My message is promoting my financial coaching and tax prep business. This is such a great name. Frequently taxed questions. I love it. Shout out to my 11, Peter, my chief marketing officer in chief, who came up with the name, Peter. Peter. Solid. My friend, you've earned your paycheck for the week. That is a solid, solid name for a tax advice operation. I offer coaching on money topics like budgeting, using tax-advantaged investment accounts, and how to self-prepare your own tax return. I'm all about a DIY approach to financial empowerment. This year, I'm also taking on a small number of clients for traditional tax prep.

So if you have a simple return and are looking for a tax preparer, I hope you look me up. This is the website, FrequentlyTaxedQuestions.com. I will say this, by the way, Stephanie continues, I welcome and want to work with diverse clients of every type and have a strict no-judgment policy regarding personal finance. That's huge. There have been multiple points in my life, and I assume will be in the future, where I was honestly a little bit embarrassed or worried to go to a tax prep person because of just maybe questionable financial decisions or maybe not filing for a year or two back in the day and just being like, this is embarrassing to me and I don't want someone else to like, you know, see the skeletons. And then when I went to a professional tax preparer, I always felt a lot better about it. It's just like anything, it's better to just deal with it, but it can be intimidating. It sounds like Stephanie is running a very no-judgment type of operation.

Is that when they told you, Mr. Burbank, Playboys are not tax-deductible? You cannot write these off? You, like, have a quarter of your personal budget. But what about the articles? What about that's what I get it for? It's not—you can't write it off.

This was when I went to this accountant named Jamie something—I forget his last name—in Glendale, California. i think i told you first of all i literally had like not done i had like not filed taxes in a couple of years this was in my early 20s like i had taxes were being withheld from my like w-2 jobs but i hadn't filed my personal tax return if that makes any sense i mean which was really silly because probably i would have just written in zeros on everything or whatever you know what i mean like if you have only one job but it's w-2 and they take the taxes out it's not a very complicated process but i just was disorganized and then i felt worried and embarrassed etc but he really i mean he he knocked the taxes out it was great and he was like oh actually there were some taxes i thought i owed he was like we can actually work that out through the playboy deduction mostly he wanted headshots really wanted to get head oh this guy right but it was i was like i was like i'm a public radio i'm a booker for a public radio they don't give us headshots This is not a headshot side of this whole operation right now. He said, yeah, but someday you're going to be on Taxicab Chronicles. Exactly. You need to have your headshots ready for that. Well, Stephanie says you can also check out my free weekly newsletter about taxes, investing, and keeping things tight with your money. It always starts out, hi, friendos. My homage to TBTL. I hope the business boys don't mind. Power out. We do not mind. And the other thing about this, Andrew, is the fact that Stephanie is taking on a small number of clients for traditional tax prep. About this time of year, it starts becoming nearly impossible to find anyone qualified to jump in on your tax situation. Because if you've ever been friends with a CPA or anybody who does tax preparation, you know that things are ramping up. Things become totally insane. So what a lucky thing that Stephanie is still taking on potentially some clients as of this airing. So go to FrequentlyTaxedQuestions.com. Stephanie, thank you for the support.

And I would just say it's not a coincidence that Stephanie's message here is leading the pack because we did want to get them in in time because now is the time to be thinking about that stuff. I'll say maestro.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready.

Ready.

Go. We've also got to thank Nick Sleeveys Now it's just Nick Sleeveys The Perfect Ten, our friend Nick Armies He's entered the world of having a totally made up name on the show Which there's a few other people in that world Nick Sleeveys, because we can Despite all that Nick has done for the show, and it's a lot Somehow I still forget how to say his last name Nick is in Stafford Springs, Connecticut, and says, I've been waiting for this moment for months, and it's finally here. Shout out to the perfect daddy, who is now a married man. That would be Jake. Jake in Chicago. That's right.

Yes.

Nick says, I love this show. I love you guys, and I make no apologies for leaving as many voicemails as I do.

That's always good to hear your voice.

That's more your department, Andrew. Can you confirm? Is Nick Sleavy leaving lots of emails?

Yeah, a lot of just check-ins, you know, and I think a lot of them Nick doesn't expect to get on the show. You'll just be wandering around town on this Bluetooth or whatever, just sort of checking in on things we've talked about.

Absolutely a service that we provide here for folks, for any of the listeners, but particularly folks who've been as, for folks who've showed up in a, what was it, a hot dog suit outside of a Waffle House once for us. Nick says for all those in the Cleveland Pittsburgh Philly area please consider visiting Chula it's a fast casual restaurant my wife works at and the food is amazing if you're visiting those areas it's definitely worth the trip to stop in for a bite what you do is so important thank you so let me unpack this a little bit in the cleveland pittsburgh philly area this restaurant shula i'm looking at it now i'm looking at their map is there a location that is kind of uh located between these areas or are there multiple locations around these different areas there

There are multiple locations. It looks like a small regional chain. Luke, I am not joking when I say it. I don't want to give out too much information. Forget it.

I'm on the website, Andrew, and I'm way ahead of you.

I don't want to give out too much information. There is one literally half a mile from where my parents live, if that. The mark on the map is almost exactly if my parents are.

Can you get Bob out there to order you some chula? This looks good. I also like their website is very intuitive. They've got some facts, some frequently asked questions. Like, for instance, where does the joy come from? They've answered that question. Is chula spicy? Answer that question. What if I'm vegetarian? They've also got that answered for you, Andrew. What makes it so good? It's a question we're all asking, and now we've got the answers at the chula website. That's, golly, that has got me real hungry for Indian food. Now, I was just in a place, London, England, That is known because of the Indian diaspora for, and frankly, the diaspora from Pakistan, India, that whole sort of region, for having incredible, like, food from the subcontinent. And I'll be honest, I did not manage to get to any of that, and I regret that now. We're in a little bit of a desert for that kind of food out here at the Madrona Hill studio, but I don't know, next time I'm down in Portland. Here's the thing. I think I brought this up a while ago. becca claims that she is totally like one of the world's number one fans of indian food except she's literally never agreed that it's a particular night to go do this yeah which at some point you know when they tell you who they are answer you got to believe them yeah it is a joke on 30

rock that like i think jack donaghy is trying to have a very non-sexy date he's trying to cool off a relationship temporarily with with a very um with a very sexy lady and i think part of his plan to cool things off is to have a a big indian big indian yes exactly just that's the kind of

meal that like let's say if you do have the opportunity to have you know sleep in separate bedrooms or maybe you know uh give each other a little space that's that's when you can really go ham like for instance on saturday so i did make it home and on saturday night uh beck and i went out to a local restaurant in portland and they there was this focaccia bread that we ordered it was so delicious but i don't think i've seen this to this extreme there were so many whole cloves of garlic baked into the focaccia have you have you experienced this before i have seen

them i don't know if i've seen too many of them but they were falling out oh yeah that's i mean

listen and i said to becca i was like if i was by myself if i was eating this meal by myself i would be horfing down these cloves of garlic but as uh as a responsible partner who will also be occupying your apartment later i'm gonna go ahead and try to like kind of doink these out onto the plate so i'm not just eating like what would have amounted to maybe two entire head of garlic yeah

that is a lot i am i am probably i'm still on this website i think i'm probably getting indian food tonight you know you mentioned something about spiciness before this is a different kind of cuisine, of course. But I wanted to say I am somebody who growing up, we were a household that sort of liked spicy foods, generally speaking, Eastern European background, a lot of peppers and stuff and various dishes. I thought I grew up to be somebody who likes spicy food. And I don't know, you know, it's all relative. I don't really know. I don't. I feel like maybe when you're younger, you are having more conversations with your kids, with your friends as kids. Like, is this too hot for you? Like, how long can you keep an atomic fireball in your mouth? That kind And I think I don't really do that with my friends anymore, so I kind of don't know what a baseline level of spiciness is. But there is a Thai street food place that's kind of newly bought and renovated right here in Aurora, and they've done such a great job with it. It's really, really cute now, and I love going in there. I like supporting them. I want to make sure that they're there for a long time. And I took Genevieve there for the first time the other day, and I got something that I think you usually get or you've mentioned before, I think, which is larb. but it's like just salad with some like kind of crumpled ground chicken. Yeah. I think I got ground chicken and they asked for the spiciness level and it was out of five. And I think I went with four. Oh, and it came out because usually I'm like three or four and I was looking, I was remembering back. I think maybe the first time I did something like this, the woman talked me out of it. It's spicy. But this time.

the server didn't, I think in the past I'd been served by the owner and she had talked me out of it and I'd sort of forgotten about that so I'm just like, I don't know, four, four is good and so it comes out with the ground meat in a separate bowl kind of warm and then like kind of the cold lettuce or whatever. Were they holding welding gloves when they brought it out?

Was the first indication that something had gone very, very wrong?

They did that thing, they flipped their head down and the helmet came down. I don't know why

the welding helmet had like an American eagle on it but it was like a flag

Yes. It was a black and white flag. It kind of gave me a bad feeling. But Luke, I don't think in my adult life, in years and years and years and years and years, I ordered food that I wanted to eat, but it was almost too spicy to eat. Now, I was hungry. At first, I was kind of like, I took one little bite, and I didn't want to, I mean, it was literally so hot, I started coughing. But I remember, I've been in this place before, and one time I did that, and the woman came out of the back and was kind of like, are you okay? Is it too spicy? I'm like, no, I just don't know how to eat. And so I'm coughing. But this time, I literally started coughing because it was so hot. And I was just like nibbling at it and trying to get as much lettuce on, like a tiny little crumb of meat with as much lettuce as possible.

It doesn't have rice in it, so there's not a lot to cut it with.

No, and Luke, I was just like, it was so, so unbelievably hot. I did end up bringing some home, and I think I ended up finishing it eventually, like one bite at a time.

You're poor. Guttie works. Guttie works, and also the exit point.

Do you ever, this is going to get really, really gross, but after eating something very, very spicy, We all know that later on when using the restroom, there can be evidence of that spicy meal in an unpleasant way. This is not a, this isn't, that's as gross as this question gets. But one of the effects for me in that moment is on the toilet.

Extreme horniness.

Just extreme isn't even a strong enough adjective. Raging hormones. No, I get cold. Like, my skin gets cold, and I get goosebumps.

That sounds like a survival instinct kicking in on some level.

It's so hot that your skin goes cold. You've never had that? I don't know if that's just a me thing.

I'm not eating fours at most places myself.

So, anyway, I do recommend it, though. I think it's just called Thai street food.

Well, I mean, I will say that, like, I definitely, like, enjoy food that has some spice to it, has some kick to it. but I, maybe it's just old age or what have you, but I'm, you know, I can't remember the last time that I messed with a three. I might mess with a three if I was feeling, I guess, adventurous, but never a four, never a five. I, I'm definitely a two man though because I'm not a one. I'm not a wuss.

I don't know who are the five people, you know, I don't know. I guess people,

I don't know. Maybe somebody who grew up eating it. Yeah, that's probably true. And somebody who's, I mean, there's certainly plenty of people that you see online, particularly on places like Tik TOK, we're just sitting there like dipping a Carolina Reaper in something called like Satan's bunghole and then eating it. Like, I don't know if the rest of their life, they're like trying to consume things that are that hot, or that's just a stunt to get the likes. But like, I'm definitely like, I'm a two man. And I, I don't even what I, I mean, I would like to have the perfect amount of spice, which would be some amount of spice. But the problem is if it's too much, Like, what you just described, I would not have finished that larb. I would have just – or maybe I would have made a bunch of rice when I got home and then tried to just, like, you know, change the ratio so that it was kind of, like, not so spicy each bite.

You know what? We did – that's exactly what I ended up doing. I didn't make special rice for it, but coincidentally, Genevieve had made white rice the night before for something that she had been cooking. So I literally did mix up the ground meat with rice, and I think that helped. That must have helped a little bit. It did, yeah. And it is funny that I even brought it home. Like, why not just leave it? It wasn't that much. But it was also really good. And I just want to point out here, like, I'm definitely not, I don't know why I need to point this out, but, like, I'm never ordering, like, spicy food because I think in any way it's impressive to the people around me. You know what I mean? It's not like, oh, man, I can eat fours. You know, like, that's not. Who's that? I don't know. Who's that guy across the restaurant ordering a four right now? Yeah, right. Easy, ladies, I'm taken. Exactly.

By a woman who uses a separate bathroom.

Who's that guy sweating into his larb?

Who's that guy crying, not so softly, into the lettuce cups? Anyway, thanks, Nick, for the donation. Appreciate you.

Check out Chula.

Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right, a top story from this weekend, Andrew, in my life, which was? When I got home, I was, I had recorded the Super Bowl, right, you know, on my Fubo. And because the way that I watched the Super Bowl and the halftime show and all of that was very disjointed. It was kind of like on the airplane with limited access. It would come through for five minutes at a time. And then when I got to the hotel, I tried to kind of go back and watch some of the ads. It was a very odd way to experience all of this. And I said something to you, maybe it was on the Monday show, that i said i was you know i'm i'm overall obviously very in favor of kendrick lamar and the music of kendrick lamar and i really like you know a handful of his songs a lot but i said that halftime show for me the very beginning of it was the sort of spoken word part of it i said wasn't really hidden for me and you said that it was really hidden for you to the point of almost it being an emotional experience if i'm if i'm remembering this accurately well

Well, I remember my heart was racing because I just was so excited to see what he was going to do.

I thought you said you understood it on a deep level that almost no other white person did.

That was what I heard.

I remember using the term getting it and being down.

I had written that in my blog, but that was not. No, I really did. I'm a fan of his, and I've been following the drama around everything, but I was also deeply interested in it from kind of a protest performance kind of point of view.

Well, I watched it as God intended, which is to say on a giant-ass television in my living room.

A week later. Yes.

And it was amazing. And I absolutely retract. First of all, actually, that opening bit, the scansion of it was better than I remembered for what that's worth. Part of my little bit of taking a, I don't know what you want to call it, a jaundiced look at it was it felt, the first time I watched it, which again was like probably on my phone or something uh it felt a little disjointed to me or like there might have been a few words that were i don't know i i it didn't hit for me the first time just from a kind of lyrical standpoint i'm talking about like literally opening 20 seconds but when i watched the whole thing in its entirety from the very beginning to the very end and also in light of all the things that you were talking about last week which is just like in the political climate we're in to have something that's so extremely centering the black experience on a national stage like this um i absolutely loved it and i totally and completely retract my statement about thinking it was fine or the beginning was a little mid or whatever

i was riveted absolutely riveted i also think and i'm not the one are you happy i yeah i don't say this to indicate that i'm somebody who knows all the ins and outs i feel like so like kendrick has created this entire world that like so many references in his music and visual references and stuff too are all kind of part and parcel of this sort of broader universe he's created like that car that he was on i know is like that's the gnx that is on the cover of his latest record like that's obvious but i'm just saying that like i'm not saying that i get it but i just like i almost kind of like feel like oh there's so much going on here and i'm only getting like into the tip of the iceberg of a lot of these references and stuff so i don't know i think he's a he's a really really smart guy and yeah it was an exciting I was telling you I think on the show I mean this is maybe just the stupidest talk radio thing to do but like thinking about like ranking Super Bowl performances and I when I rank them I'm thinking of just in the era that I've been watching them which is a very you know like what 15 years now or something and look out Katy Perry because I I mean, this is the problem. I loved Katie. For the longest time, Katy Perry's halftime show was my favorite. Like, Left Shark, the whole thing. I just love the visuals of it, the colors of it. Like, just everything. Very poppy and pop-arty.

Can I just insert one little quick thing on that? If you would like to know more about Left Shark and also the amazing history of Super Bowl halftime shows, check out Jamie Loftus' podcast called 16th Minute of Fame. check out the Left Shark episode it is phenomenal and involves Elvis Presto the ushering in of the modern Super Bowl halftime performance era anyway so worth

listening to. So now I'm struggling though where to put like Katy Perry because first of all like Katy Perry's kind of latest ventures kind of retroactively leave a bad taste in my mouth which is not exactly totally fair but like how could I possibly

Boy, that album did get really, really kind of roasted, right? I didn't listen to it, but is it just that people didn't like the music or their bad takes? What's going on?

I mean, I don't know that much about it. All I know is I was driving with Genevieve, and it was a rare moment where, like, Kixi wasn't on. We just had on some pop music station, and we both heard. for the first time when it was new, her first single off of her latest record. And it was like some sort of like kind of a girl power anthem sort of, but it was so bad. And it was, I mean, it was really, really bad. Just like, just the most thin veneer of quote unquote girl power. You know what I mean? But just like so, so just shallow. And then I, then the kind of scandal was also, yeah, and she's doing this with Dr. Luke, like a known predator produced this girl power song for katie perry and it's just like it did it just was so it was such an immature outing of somebody who like i don't turn to katie perry for like kind of deep thoughts about the world you know what i mean like i don't expect much of her just like you know i i enjoyed the pop music that she makes and that's fine but it was like just a combination so i remember just hearing it and hating it and then reading more about like kind of like how it's pretty it's pretty distasteful sort of all around and so yeah that that's all I know in fact I was at a I was at an antiques mall the other you know like a couple months ago and Genevieve was in a different part of the mall I'm wandering around by myself but they were playing great music that is now oldies and I didn't realize like stuff from like the 2010s were oldies but it was like all this like or 2007 or whatever not oldies they didn't call it that I'm just saying that, like, it was all this music from a very, very specific era that is already an era past. And it was the first time I realized, oh, all of this music is sort of, like, old now. It felt like modern pop to me. Anyway, and I'm literally listening to a bunch of Katy Perry as I'm wandering around by myself just thinking, like, what a shame that, like, retroactively this other music doesn't hit quite the same way. And I'm passing a woman talking to, I don't know, her friend or partner.

Was it the same person who was also mentioning going home and listening to Kixie or something?

Pardon me? No, no, no. This is at an Antiques Mall.

Oh, that was not the place on Aurora where you, somebody, I thought you had gone to a place also somewhere up north where two people were discussing Kixi in line in front of you or something?

Yeah, that was at a record sale at an Elks Club. I get around. This was at an Antiques Mall down in Soto. But anyway, I passed this couple or this couple of people, and I'm listening to this woman saying, it's such a shame. And she's like, I hear her. I'm like, are you talking about Katy Perry? She's like, yeah. And then we had kind of a moment, but I think I scared them. I probably jumped out too quickly and said, are you talking about Katy Perry? But all of that is to say Super Bowl performances. Katy Perry, maybe not number one. Kendrick Lamar might be number one or the one from a couple of years ago that was like just a celebration of Compton with like Dre and Kendrick was out there and Snoop and all those folks. Like, I don't know.

Throw everything at the wall and have 50 Cent doing inverted sit-ups, I believe.

That's right, yeah. But there was something about the stage setup of that that was really cool, if I recall.

Because I think that was in L.A., right?

Yeah, it was a celebration of Compton. So anyway, I don't know, but Kendrick's is up there.

I have a pretty uninteresting take on that, which is, for me, it'll always be Prince outside, because I did watch that one. And I remember at the time being like, oh my God, this is so friggin' amazing. And that's not me trying to flex, but that one's going to be pretty hard to knock out of my top spot, but I would definitely say that now having rewatched it the benefit of a little time and with the benefit of watching people who are mad online about it um i definitely am putting kendrick's way up there like somebody's been doing this move on tiktok where they're playing like it's like a clip of kendrick's performance and then it's people from facebook and other social media just being like worst worst performance ever and then it's a picture of the person's profile who's saying worst performance ever oh that's yeah yeah and it's just it's are you sitting down Andrew it's exactly who you'd think it's a lot of guys like speaking of Punisher it's a lot of guys with a lot of and women with a lot of like uh you know Punisher related uh MAGA type uh coded stuff going on on their social media page it's very predictable the kind of person who would be especially put off by Kendrick Lamar's halftime performance well I'm glad you liked it and uh yeah I did

It's definitely one of my top five.

You were right. I was wrong. Don't get used to it, I think, is the big takeaway from today's episode. Oh, and also, if I can, I've got to wish a happy Blur's Day to my actual human child, Addie, who turns 31 today.

Oh, wow. 31 years old.

You know, membership has its privileges, and my daughter gets a special shout-out on the actual day of her Blurs. And she'll never hear this, so that's the good news. We'll see if I leave it.

I mean, we just have we have rules like Thursdays are our blurs days.

I mean, I love it. What if what that would be? That would be such a there'd be such a power flex that I would never hear because I don't think I even would make it to this.

I certainly don't think Addy is making it this. Oh, God.

Oh, no. Stop listening years ago. So anyway. All right, everyone. Well, it's nice to be back. This was fun. Sorry if I.

was kind of bouncing off the walls the other thing about my folks being here is my coffee consumption weirdly goes up because like i'm hanging out with them in the morning early before the show and we're just drinking coffee and and yapping so i think i i usually like two cups of coffee i had like four

today so anyway i always wonder about that you ever read the girl with the dragon tattoo read any of those books i didn't no it doesn't seem like up your alley but like that's they're all oh i'm gonna be wrong about this norwegian or something but they're constantly drinking and making coffee like that's sort of like the little puttering language of the books they're always so we put on another pot of coffee but it doesn't matter time of day time of night it's constantly and i always just think aren't they just jacked to their gills at all times so eventually they're

just like on the ceiling yes um interesting he remarked from the rafters of the building as his The body had levitated, yeah. As it vibrates with the universe. I have figured out that the absolute most number of the coffee that I can have in the morning is four. We've hit it, we've learned from it, and we're going to come in with maybe two tomorrow. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We will see you tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

Power out.

You