Muse

You know, there are no secrets in a town like this. I know all about you, former Detective Adrian Monk. Heard you're asking about me. You want to ask me something, you go right ahead. Okay. What's back there? Let me guess. Fields of reefer. Fields of reefer? What kind of cop were you? You know what I mean. Ditch weed.

Boo.

The old Alibaba. What makes you think that I'd actually... Magic Dragon, Bumbalache, Yellow Submarine, Black Bart, Dr. Giggles, Kentucky Blue. You know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about railroad weed. That's right. The Devil's Parsley, Skunk, Splim, Splam, Mooster. TBTL.

Well, well, here we are. I want to congratulate you for being on time.

I would just like to start by saying that I don't even care how this turns out because I'm just going to eat hot dogs. And so that's all I really care about.

56 pounds of beef, that corresponds to, I don't know what, five or six-year-old kid.

For the sake of customer service, try to chill out, my mom.

I'm the scat man. Skibby-dibby-dib, Yoda-dub-dub, Yoda-dub-dub.

What kind of disco dancing nonsense is going on here?

well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live here we go again my name is luke burbank i am your host the word that comes to mind is ludicrous coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where it's still raining out here but um you know you like to get wet though We are apparently reaching the end of the atmospheric river that's sweeping through or flowing through the region, maybe. And we are looking forward to some warmer weather soon, soon and very soon. We will be springing ahead. The sun will be setting after 7 p.m. It's going to be a whole new world around here. And I promise you, I am ready for it. Hope you're ready for episode 4409 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. I sound a little loopy this morning, a little more out of it than normal. I started a new weight routine this morning here at the Madrona Hill Studio. Really? I'm trying to build my beef castle? It has me feeling very, very exhausted. Exhausted in a different kind of way than I might normally feel after some exercise. So anyway, I'm going to push forward and tell you about my weekend. Maybe part of it is because I was under the weather this weekend, actually. It's a little feeling kind of not so great, and that allowed me to reconnect with a television practice that I hadn't done in years. I love television. I've got to have that thing on 24-7. I love the patter. Frankly, it was a really, other than being sick, it was a really fun Saturday, which we'll talk about. And we'll talk to this guy, longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships.

Hello. Did you say hello? No, I said hello, but that's close enough.

He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I need a ruling on something on some of my behavior this weekend.

Okay.

But first, I'm going to give you about 5,000 words of, I guess, working the refs to win you over to my side. Setting me up. Gotcha. Luke, I didn't tip yesterday, and I'm feeling feelings about it, but I think I'm in the right. I'm not going to say what the company is, but let's just say it.

So we're back to when we talk about tips, we're back to talking about tipping.

Yeah, well, were we talking about tips last week? It wasn't tipping over things, was it? I think it was. I think it was tipping something over. Yeah, I was like, finally, the kind of tipping everybody wants to hear about. Oh, it was lawnmowers. Oh, right, tipping lawnmowers. Yes. Exactly, which does sound like a band from the 90s, if you didn't already remark about that. They opened for Soul Asylum.

I saw them on First Avenue.

Tipping lawnmowers. Oh, God, they had that one hit. Like, most of their stuff wasn't, for me, a little too bass-heavy, but that one hit that was so fun.

Now, that's what I call music to 90s editions.

Right.

Has that industry been decimated? And by industry, I mean that one. I mean, somebody made a lot of money off of now that's what I'm calling music. And it's just completely, it's been totally sort of, I guess, what's the word I'm looking for? Invalidated or rendered unnecessary? Like the compilation CD, is it just...

Now that's music 2010s. Let's just see what we get here. Now that's what I call a decade, 2010s. I think this is people drafting. I don't think this is... I don't know if you can... Oh, well, you can get something called Now That's What I Call a Decade 2010s with very similar branding. So I can get it for $12 on a CD right now if you want. MP3, a cool...

$7.99. I don't know if you're interested. I mean, we've been talking about vinyl. By the way, my record player gets delivered today, Andrew. Oh, nice. I am freaking psyched. Okay, so back to your lack of tipping. Spare no detail. Where were you? What was happening?

So I'm going to, like, I think I said, but just in case I didn't finish my thought, I'm going to leave the name of the specific restaurant out of this because it's a restaurant that I actually, mostly just because I'm embarrassed, frankly. I don't know if it's anything. It was Spiro's. It was not Spiro's, but it was a pizza. Always in a relationship. That's right. I'm tipping at Spiro's. That's why it's a situationship with me and Spiro's. It's awkward. It's awkward. No, it is a pizza place, though. Kind of a nicer pizza place.

I mean, honestly, I had a 50% chance of being right.

Yeah, well, I mean, well, the funny thing is, is now we're getting too much detail here. I actually don't order pizza that much anymore. I mean, there was a time when I was, it's not that I'm not eating pizza, but like, honestly, I'm just buying shitty frozen pizzas because I kind of got cheap in my old age. Like the delivery apps add so much money and they're also just part of that whole, I don't know, I just have a lot of issues with the delivery apps that from a local level and some sort of legislation around them and their lobbying efforts, I feel like they're not, I don't really like them. And also they're just so expensive and a ripoff and they just keep adding fees. And I was like, you know what? I'll just get out of the habit of having food delivered. I'll go pick up a pizza if I want one. or what that really turned into was me not eating very good pizza anymore and just getting, like, frozen pizza and eating it at midnight.

Do not look into the Red Baron's politics.

Oh, the Red Baron.

I mean, it's right there in the name. Problematic.

Problematic. But, oh, shoot, I'm forgetting. What is friend of the show pizza company? Mike's. Oh, Wild Mike's. Wild Mike's. Wild Mike's is great. I wanted to say Mad Mad Mike's, but no, no, Wild Mike's. I mean, honestly. He had his Wild Mike's.

And I'm wishing the best for him. He's been 51-50'd, but I think he's getting the help he needs.

I wonder if him and the Red Baron ever cut it up.

The Red Baron are being held somewhere.

That's right. So I do get a lot of frozen pizza and pizza-y snacks these days.

I'd like to talk about that at some point as well. I know you're trying to get to the story about tipping, but I'm curious if you have developed some hacks for zhuzhing up your frozen pizzas a little bit, doing anything to or the kind that you buy yeah because there is certainly like you can have a pretty decent frozen pizza experience and you can have a kind of especially not great one and it

comes down to i have some theories on this yeah let's talk about that well i go thin crust personally

because i think the crust is the most difficult problem to be solved with a pizza that is frozen but then i cook it at my house but then it tastes pretty good i feel like the crust is and i'm i haven't had i haven't been buying regular crust frozen pizza for a long time maybe they've greatly improve the technology but i just i've always felt like the thinner the crust the better the chances are that you'll have a good experience because you're mostly eliminating one of the

main pain points that's interesting i think you and i are a little different there i don't i'm with you that a bad super thick crust is no good but i'm not usually going for super thin crust because i like a little bit of a buttery crust and so i'm looking up the brands now because i can picture it but i can't think of it it's freshetta is what i think i get and they have the square pizzas too which is a big appeal to me style right it can be although i do think detroit style does have a much thicker crust i think i could be totally wrong about this no it does it has a thick crust yeah this is not like i wouldn't i wouldn't get that i would not trust a freezer i never trust a freezer feast no crust pizza never trust her big crust and smile there you go that girl is poison appreciate that i'm just gonna stall and throw things up in the air

I pray to God somebody out there who remembers that Bell Biv DeVoe song about that joke, because I was pretty proud of that.

But anyway, yeah, it's not a super thin crust, but it's not a super thick crust, but it is a square-edged pizza. It's a square pizza with square slices.

Do you do any aftermarket modding to it?

Yeah, usually a little bit of oregano, definitely some red pepper flakes or whatever. And then sometimes, I'm trying to think, I might put a little bit of thyme on there. there's like a couple of brown dry spices that i'll hit a little bit on there but what about you you're actually putting ingredients on like olives and stuff right yeah i'm a big black olive

adder now that i have a costco membership i'm i'm the owner of about 40 cans of large extra ripe black olives because that's the amount that you can buy them in so i will usually throw on a little more cheese and some black olives maybe if i've got some basil around i'll do a little zhuzh there um with you mean fresh basil right yeah fresh basil yeah or even if even if i just had some kind of dry stuff i might throw that on but mostly fresh basil yeah no that sounds good but um yeah but so anyway okay so so you're uh generally speaking here's where we are in the story you have you've not been going or ordering pizza to be delivered a whole lot but you did find yourself at a pizza place yeah well here actually i'll back up

a second here so again i don't want to say the name of this place and this is our already probably too much information but let me just say that there is a pizza shop that is a little bit more of a higher end pizza shop that uh specializes in new york style and chicago style pizzas and i've been there a couple of times and i really like it and i went to this gathering on saturday that i mentioned to you on the show last week um a group of friends got together to play some games at the college club and somebody had brought a couple of pizzas from this place and it'd been a while since I had a couple of New York style pizzas and I was like damn this is good it's been a while and I had one piece of pizza but then I thought about it all day and so on Sunday Genevieve and I had um plans to watch the newest episode of Succession on Sunday night and I'm like severance or severance I knew I was gonna get that wrong thank you uh severance and so I was like you know what I have my pop-up to do it was a really rainy day yesterday and so I like I spent my you know morning or early afternoon kind of prepping for my pop-up volunteer thing and then went and i did that for a couple of hours it was actually kind of a it was kind of a weird day there it's kind of ran into some issues almost couldn't open up the shed the lock was broken so almost didn't have pop-up i was panicking carried that panic with me throughout the rest of the day as i like to do the score exactly and so anyway the point is like i had this idea for a really cozy night i had to go to the grocery store but i was like what i'm gonna do is when i'm done with pop up and we get everything put away i'm going to hit the grocery store and then while i'm at the grocery store i'm going to order a pizza from this place get a big ass pizza and um i'll get home with my with my groceries and this pizza and we'll be cozy at home and i'll take a shower and wash the rain off me and then we'll sit down and have a good old-fashioned pizza and tv night love it haven't yeah just just the ultimate coziness and again really looking forward to this pizza and so i order the pizza uh exactly as planned in my car in the parking lot of the grocery store before i go grocery shopping i have this thing planned out timed out right and so i uh order the pizza and it's one of their specialty pizzas like i don't know you know it's a decent amount of toppings it's a large pizza you know so it's pretty big and again it's a quality pizza it's a good place i love this place i want to support them pizza ends up being 41 after tax right and so i'm yeah that's what it costs i guess yeah things are expensive and again this isn't in no offense to my old favorite um you know uh what is it chunkies that i used to go to on the tub brother no not tub brothers chub brothers right no not chub brothers no that sounds wrong it's something like that it's chunky brothers on motorcycles riding next to each other

guinness no it's it is uh it is a weird all the time is it chub brothers it might be chub brothers It's a name that is, if, you know, depending on how you're mentally inclined, it might not be an encouragement to order the pizza. Pudge Brothers.

I knew it wasn't. I'm looking it up online. I'm getting results that we do not want. I'm like, no, no, not that kind of chub, brother. Anyway, no offense to my old favorite Pudge Brothers, but this isn't Pudge Brothers. Although the thing is, things are just expensive these days. And you keep on hearing about restaurants, you know, going out of business because things are really expensive, including the minimum wage. which is, you know, very, I think, generous, if not generous, I think it's fair here in Seattle because of the because of all the legislation that has passed. And I voted for all of those wage increases.

I think the problem, Andrew, is that we have to pay people fifteen dollars an hour, not that one percent of American population has 80 percent of the wealth. Right. I think it's definitely door number one.

And I do think, so something just passed and it was kind of close to, I really shouldn't go in this direction, but like, you know, on the occasions that I was on like KUOW or something, I would advocate vociferously for everybody having to follow this new law. There was some sort of a piece of legislation that small business owners were trying, restaurants in particular, were trying to stonewall from going into effect. It was sort of a delayed piece of legislation for these small businesses. they had a year to get ready for it and then the year came and they're like we don't want to do this anymore and they have a more friendly city council and all this stuff so point is i was pretty dialed in as a casual observer to the minimum wage conversation i believe it is now up to like 19 and 25 cents in seattle and i believe everybody is is paying that to their employees and so that's just sort of background about that because again we're going to be talking about tipping here so i order this pizza it's 41 and then right before the tip screen it's kind of like oh and then we're gonna add and this is so cheap on my part i realize how this sounds but then they say we're gonna add the dollar 50 processing fee for your credit card and i was just kind of like come on like you know like that's one thing we're just seeing more and more maybe it's a seattle thing i'm not sure but as as there are more and more sort of business costs they're itemizing everything so they can say like don't blame us this is the credit card company don't blame us this is the city council don't blame us And so you're like, as you're ordering food these days, you kind of keep on going down this list of this fee and this charge. And this isn't even using the door dashes of the world, you know. So anyway, order the pizza 41. Then it's like, oh, can we get up to 44 bucks or something with this little extra fee? And then it's like, okay, it's time to tip. And I noticed that they had it so that the most expensive was all the way to the left. And then it was like the opposite of how it's usually laid out. And it was like, do you want to tip 35% or something like that? It wasn't quite 35, but it might have been 30 or something like that. and then it was like you know 25 percent 20 and 15 or whatever and as i was sitting there in my car just soaking wet and just thinking okay i gotta get down there i gotta stop i gotta get gas on the way there because i the yellow light was on i've been outside in the rain i'm driving down there i'm paying for the credit card fee they've passed that along to me like we're paying a living wage like i'm not tipping i'm there nobody's delivering it to me yeah nobody's serving me nobody's bringing me a cup i'm going in the rain to park put on my hazards outside their store for two seconds you know i don't like parking illegally luke but i do i ran and i grabbed the pizza and i was gone i was like i don't think i don't think that's a 30 or even 15 tipping situation so i didn't tip but luke did i have problems making eye contact when i went in there to pick up that pizza you went in knowing your sweet ass i did i see so you did all of this kind of payment beforehand i did all the payment i see you weren't standing at the ipad

no there no because that's the other one where i that's a good point that's a tough one too yeah to go zero and then just like spin it around thankfully i was a poker player for many years so i've developed the internal fortitude to just absolutely bluff someone just like zero and then

just turn it around your move yeah and so anyway negranu i assume that maybe this i just here's the deal i feel like i was in my rights to do this bought a 45 dollar pizza or whatever ended up being after after it was a great pizza and again i love this place good and i will continue to support them and i have nothing bad to say about them but i was just like i don't want you to give away where it is but have they ever been out pizzaed um they have they have they have this place has been out pizza this place has been out pizza so it is not the is not the small pizza concern that you are thinking of all right then however you do get a a free small pizza when you read 20 books oh okay dials it in yes absolutely here's the deal though let me just say one more thing about this is i feel like totally justified when i came home i told genevieve this story i said forgive me forgive me sister for i have sinned like i just like she was like this is legit also that's half a fubo oh my god yeah that's you know you and kevin have made me have have made me a jerk because genevieve uh went to get her hair done this weekend and she's like that ended up being a lot more than i thought and i said how many months of fubo did your hair cost

well i told you i was working on her uh that one night when you were out with your other friend and it was she and camaro kevin and i um out at uh and neil out at the shorties i it is my goal in life if i have to start donating 80 a month to you it's my goal to get you on fubo no i mean here's the deal like i don't i know you don't care the matter is i got as much as i do you had

told me that you were kind of teasing Genevieve about not letting me get Fubo or whatever which is an $80 a month cable package or whatever and I was joking because she I had originally told her I was interested in doing that and she was so sanguine about it and I was just like oh my god and then it turns out she wasn't listening closely she thought it was $80 a year or something like that because we are both living in 1990 apparently but anyway did she

did she back you on your decision to forego the tip based on the overall price

I will say though when you were giving me a hard time about that you did not tell me kind of your specific tactics and I was ran into Camaro Kev last weekend he's like oh yeah we were sort of asking Genevieve well how many fubos is this in your life how many fubos is that it's a unit of measure now everything it's half a fubo and so I was after our little get-together on Saturday Genevieve and I went to get some drinks together and she was like mentioned her hair and again I don't I don't care I don't police any kind of spending it's fine but she said oh it's more than i thought i was like how many fubos and i don't i don't know if this is okay for me to say in the words of culio it's working she said it was seven months of fubo well you can get fubo and i was like that's okay i was like i just wanted you to say it that's all you wanted you to say it anyway all of that is to say genevieve was on board with this thing but here's the deal like this place where i get pizza i know that like kind of a mutual friend of ours kind of knows the people who are who run this place that we have people who are in the industry and you

know my sister and her husband own a restaurant here in Portland it's tough out there it's really

tough out there I know that the struggle is real and I also just think about the really generous people in our lives I'm talking about the listeners of this show who could easily not pay

you know, easily not quote unquote tip us or people who've gone just so over and above even what we asked for during thons. And I think about the generosity in the world out there. And I was like, oh, I couldn't put down another ten dollars on this pizza. Like, I could also just argue for like not being not being cheap. Like, if I have the money, just spend it on people like that's a good argument. And I can see that. But I was also kind of like, I don't know. There was something about going through the ordering process and sort of seeing, oh, and by the way, we're adding this fee and this fee. And by the way, we've rearranged the tipping buttons just to like a little bit like on the gas station pump where they kind of put the most expensive one first.

Or like pop-up ads where it's like timed to pop up right when you're trying to click something else. And it's like – I don't know if you've ever seen those, but like they get real shifty sometimes where – like my theory is that they know roughly how much time it takes you to become aware of something that's now populating your screen. And that the natural human reaction would be to go over to a certain point of the screen and do something. Yeah. And conveniently, the pop-up ad, which is one giant button, has now populated that part of the screen, and then suddenly you're at like a Nutrafol hair ad or some shit. Anyway, I tend to agree with you on this. One thing, it has to do with that you went and got the pizza. Obviously, if you ordered the pizza to be delivered and somebody comes up to your porch in the rain with this pizza, maybe in the warming bag, I mean, that's a no-brainer. um but i i do think that if we are paying folks um and and by the way even at 20 an hour it's like see how far that goes you know at the end of the month in seattle but that's a that's a macro issue if we are paying people again i don't even necessarily agree that 19 an hour is a living wage but let's just say for the sake of argument it is somebody is able to support themselves with that if we as a society if we as a city of seattle or a county of king or whatever it is say uh we people need to be paid a living wage and then we enforce a minimum wage and those people are being paid that and the cost is being passed on to us as the consumer i then i don't think then that we are um also obligated to continue with the kind of tipping strategy that's popped up in so many places where owners of businesses were basically offloading some of the wages pressure onto us into the form of a tip as the customer if we're going to pay folks 20 an hour i don't think that we have to then tip on every little thing i mean i think we know food service as far as like the restaurant experience you're still going to generally tip etc but i don't i don't think you're wildly out of line considering that that pizza was forty dollars because presumably those folks are all making more money as well they should yeah that was my thought process on it so like i said is there any kind of a for people that are working in the restaurant industry like servers is there is there any kind of a you know in the olden days they didn't have to pay even the minimum wage to those folks it used to be the case that that you would get uh less than the minimum wage because you were getting all these tips well that was what

was sort of forestalled that now i believe everybody is making the the minimum wage and so

they're pretty significant change if everyone's still tipping 20 if i go into a restaurant and i because my standard tip would be 20 anywhere i go and all of the folks working in the restaurant are making that $20 an hour and getting those $20. Because, you know, also my first ex-wife, and yes, I have to specify which ex-wife I'm talking about, was a server for many who worked in the restaurant industry. And, I mean, it was all the tips. I used to walk with, like, significant tips every night, which is great. I think people should make money for working hard. But it's interesting because if you're getting $20 an hour and you're still getting all those tips, that is not a bad – that does not seem like a bad gig.

I had some of the numbers wrong, actually. So, yeah, and this is what I was talking about before. some of the smaller restaurants pushed back to not have this implemented but it was implemented with the expiration of the tip credit restaurants now must pay their employees at least twenty dollars and seventy six cents per hour um so in other words they're getting rid of that tip credit thing where you can like pay them less because they're making tips so therefore the minimum wage of twenty dollars and seventy six cents is guaranteed which is again one of the reasons why that's that's where i got into that argument before when it was like oh well we have this tip credit we can pay our we can pay our employees less in our small restaurant but we need your tips to subsidize their pay and then i got into wait who are we tipping the the restaurant owners so that they can pay their employees less like who are we it just became very very complicated i prefer this system let's keep on voting for fair wages and increasing because i still think minimum wage when this is bananas to think about but when i first entered the workforce as a kid like as a teenager something five dollars an hour for my minimum wage that i think i made from my dad and i believe at kow so actually i would have been maybe 18 or 19 i believe not kow sorry wks the public radio station in Kent, I believe it was $4.25 because- You made nothing at KUOW. That's right. Years later, after having been- You made your pay cut for WKSU. After being an executive producer in New Hampshire, KUOW offered me the really handsome offer of nothing and also suddenly looked at me like, do we know you?

But you did get tips. You were allowed to keep tips.

That's right. I sold a lot of books to Half-Pirce Books.

Oh, that was my move.

No, but anyway, yeah. So it was $4.25 when I was in college. The minimum wage was $4.25. Having said that, I don't think this 2076 actually even keeps up with inflation on that. I can't do the math right here. So I'm not – I am not arguing at all that like, oh, these restaurant workers have it so good.

But I mean just – here's the thing though. The whole subject of tipping is so fraught. I really would be fine with a system where everything costs more and there was no tipping. like it's just you pay and that is a little bit more how I think it is in Europe certainly there is some tipping but it doesn't seem to be as prevalent I would I would just it's it's such a gray area it's such a weird thing to have a system where it's like you can legally pay zero or you could legally pay 30 percent it's totally up to you it is a hundred percent voluntary and then you can just leave the restaurant um you know and that's going to be some part of how this person's you know uh salary or the the money that they get is going to be generated like it's such a strange system and i just feel like it's it's rife with problems it would just be better if we paid everybody enough money at their jobs that they could support themselves and then we paid for you know one of the things i like about home depot zero expectation of tipping yeah right i just go in there i buy some plywood and i walk out i'm never like well was the person nice to me were they do i you know how like are they down on their luck am i did we were they rude was the plywood cold when it got to the table like i just it's just the fact that you have to factor so much of that in when you go out for an experience um and again because back in the day folks in the food service industry were making you know less than minimum wage so obviously those tips were necessary and again i want to be very clear my my sister and her husband own a restaurant um in portland pollo bravo which is you know it is challenging as a small business owner they could tell you to make payroll and to sell your your your stuff at you know with obviously the cost of everything going up i mean it is really really tough out there so i don't want to i don't want to low-key that but i just the fact that now we've got this minimum wage enforced which is good but then we also still have tipping but then it's like i don't know the whole thing is complicated to me i'd rather just know what i'm paying going in and just pay it i would like to correct myself

I'm a little embarrassed on my math. I guess $4.25 in 1995 dollars would be the equivalent of about $9 in 2025 dollars. So I had that as being up to $20, which is way, way off. But nonetheless, minimum wage is not what it used to be, even in cities like Seattle that have a pretty high minimum wage.

Well, yeah, because if you're making $20 an hour and that's $160 a day times $500 a week, roughly $1,600, $3,200 a month, that's very back of the napkin math. I could be wrong on that. Let's just say you're making $3,000 a month and then taxes come out of that. Let's say you're walking with $2,300. I mean, rent in Seattle anywhere is going to be a couple grand at a minimum. So there's all the money you made.

it's just now that was just rent do you know i bought i was so mad at myself see i've said on the show a lot in fact i was texting with your brother the other day about those little cookies that i said i like they're like little cream sandwich cookies that are like really cheap they're like chocolate on one side and vanilla on the other i hadn't had them in years and then i had them at a little get together and they reminded me of having like little pizza parties when i was a kid or whatever and i loved them and i was texting with your brother about them he likes them too and he's like also and he said i know you don't like usually look at the prices of things in the grocery store but for for the rest of us these are a great deal you know there are like two dollars a pack or something like that a buck 99 and him saying he's got a growing family to think of now david burbank no i mean honestly though it really they're only feeding

jemma cookies too that's a lot of worse things um i uh that baby is so unbelievably cute i have to

tell you yeah my niece jemma adorable um but i i gotta say david's words sort of stuck in my head kind of like i know you don't think about these things and the thing is as i get first of all that really makes me sound like a what a dilettante or something like i don't like that idea of me just like throwing money around without like thinking about it jorge hw bush oh at the grocery store not famously get dinged for that well i think his thing was he didn't recognize the scanner robits that were scanning his groceries right but um anyway so i think i am paying a little bit more attention. because it's in the news the price of eggs whatever like I just like pay a little bit more attention to things now but I wish I didn't because it's just making me mad like kind of mad I mean in the in the in the mental health way mad because like it is what it is I mean you can you can look for bargains I know we have friends who are like big bargain hunters and like the thing is I don't go around making an effort to save money all it's done for me is like kind of taking the scales off of my eyes about how expensive things are and I was telling you that My favorite kind of orange is the one that are called Sumo's, and I like the big, nice ones, and they have a little lump on one side of them. It makes them easy to peel. Make them easy to peel, and they're really, really sweet, and sometimes you can buy little bags of those that are kind of smaller in size, and they're a less regal orange, but if you buy them sort of loose and you buy the really nice kinds, I guess they're – I've always known that they're more expensive, but I saw them in my Safeway the other day, and it said something like, oh these are on some great these are on some like great markdown when you use your digital coupon if you download this app or whatever i'm big on that are you well maybe i need to get into no well here's the deal here's the deal so i buy i think four of these things i'm like oh i'll buy four of these things i'm like i don't have this i'm not gonna download an app right now like i'm sure that whatever i don't know why i thought this it was just like in the back of my mind i'm just It's like, whatever. Like, I'm sure when I get up to the register, if I type in my phone number, it'll give me the same discount. I just figure it's the same thing.

I've been on the same journey.

And you know what a folly it was. And I did exactly the same thing. Because my dude, I go up and I buy these oranges. And again, I wouldn't even usually pay attention to the price of oranges because I'm a dilettante. But I'm like, I don't know if I'm using that word right. But anyway, I buy the oranges. I scan them or whatever. and then i look at like what is taken off and i get no discount at all from typing in my phone number and i realize i just paid 20 for four oranges for the actual sumo restaurant yes they peeled themselves yeah that's in a very human being tantalizing sexy way wow and then i went home did you ask like was were you at self-checkout later did you ask the person no i was in self

Did you ask the monitor, hey, could you run this for me?

No, I was a self-checkout, and I was like, oh, my God, I've made a terrible mistake.

You didn't want to delay anyone behind you? I know that's one of your number one fears at self-checkout.

Here's the funniest thing. So I'm like, oh, that's too much money, but whatever. I already scanned. I'm not going to make a big deal of this. I'm going to go home and eat my $20 of four oranges. Then Genevieve used one to make orange juice, and I didn't say anything, but I was like, my God, that's an expensive glass of orange juice. Because you squeeze one orange, like you do not get much of orange. That's a tenth of a fubo. That's a tenth of a fubo you're drinking right there, my sweetie. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, I had a similar – this is probably why I have that silly app now on my phone because, you know, here's my basic relationship with getting a deal in places is I don't want it to run my life. I don't want it to be the main thing that's animating all my behaviors or like I don't buy something, you know, a grocery item that I really want to have because it's too much money or something. I grew up in a family where we would drive to a specific gas station to buy milk because it was 20 cents cheaper. Raising the question, how much gas did we spend to go to that gas station on Lake City Way or whatever? But that being said, so I've kind of the pendulum of my life has swung much farther in the Andrew and his $20 oranges direction. but that being said if i am presented with a deal i'm not mad at that like for instance i was in the local safe way the other day and they had once again one of these crazy things where you can buy like an 18 pack of soda and it's like buy two get two free it's like how are you even i think previously around thanksgiving the deal was buy one get three free i was some i mean it was had

made no sense from i won and you're the chairman of the board of soda incorporated yeah but you

know what they had there it was a coca-cola product which i guess includes fresca and you know i've been on a real fresca kick so so anyway so like that's the kind of thing where i didn't go into that store being like i need i need what is that seven how about what is 18 times four i think that would be easier to do 72 to 70 i didn't need 72 cans of soda but like i'm also like well two of these are free but uh but all that is to say did you buy all fresca though did you get seven no i did one coke zero i'm kind of here's the thing um i probably even fresca is not great for me i'm trying to not consume as much of like the diet coke and the coke zero and the stuff like that that's like uh... you know it it has just allegedly it has sort of zero calories but i think it's got a lot of other chemically stuff in there that i can't imagine is like does a body good so i'm trying to now i don't know if frescas it just seems better because it's vaguely citrus flavored so i got three frescas and one coke zero is was the actual breakdown do you know that i'm going the opposite direction

of you when it comes to these sodas now i'm still not overboard but like i just like soda in my life was just like oh if i'm out at a diner yeah i'll get a coke or or something along those lines but like I never have it like at home it's just not a big thing for me and so because of that I never drink diet soda because on the occasion I'm going to drink it then I might as well just drink a regular coke I don't really like the taste of diet soda and and so you know whatever of all the things in my life like drinking too much soda has not really been a huge issue for me I don't think but I've always liked fresca and I told you this on the show recently that I never realized that fresca was in any way supposed to be like no sugar or a healthy healthier is the wrong word there but let's just say healthier alternative i never thought about it in that way i always confused fresca and squirt a mistake that i would never make now because now i'm sure if i drank a squirt it would seem so sweet to me but in my head i was like oh i just like those um what are they grapefruit flavored sodas or whatever yeah and so i was drinking fresca and i even bought like a 12 pack maybe sometime this summer and i was kind of going through them and generally was like yeah you know the zero sugar or somebody pointed out to me that they're like a diet they were early diet alternative to soda I'm like I had no idea then I started saying to Genevieve I'm just like wait zero sugar and she's like yeah and I don't know how she framed it but I was like you mean it's basically like drinking water which is not true by the way but somehow I got in my head that like I don't know I could drink some water I could drink some fresca I had a morning fresca the other day a morning fresca I've never had soda in them I've not made a habit of that but I was kind of like oh whatever like there's no sugar in this and i'm like i cannot become somebody who's drinking diet soda i mean i'm sure people do it but like that's just i don't need to add that to my list of things that are not super healthy in my life you know here are the ingredients in a

fresca carbonated water okay good it's mostly water that's a start great it's great it's good that that's the number one ingredient because if it wasn't we'd have a real situation on our hands carbonated water citric acid natural flavors potassium citrate concentrated grapefruit juice aspartame potassium sorbate to protect taste they say um a sulfame potassium acacia gum potassium benzoate to protect taste wow they've got two different things in there to protect the taste that's why the taste is so protected when you have a fresca i always i take a big slug that's some protected flavor glycerol ester of rose of rosin calcium and andrew wait for it Calcium, disodium, E-D-T-A. What do you think that's for? To protect taste. And then carob bean gum. Just like mom used to make it, Andrew.

Yeah, right. Hey, you know what? I'm going to start making my own Fresca.

We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle-dazzle. On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody razzle-dazzle. Everybody razzle-dazzle.

Let's thank some dazzling donors. These generous, wonderful people are donating a dazzling amount of dough every month. They're donating, I don't even want to know how many sumo oranges. But it's very, very much appreciated. After all this talk today of living wages and tipping and people trying to make a living in this world, we appreciate that these folks are being so generous with our show and allowing this to be our job. Talking, of course, about Cinder Conlon out there in Traverse City, Michigan.

Now, did you find yourself in Traverse City recently, Luke, or in that general area? I don't think so.

I'm going out that way, though. In June, Becca and I are going to somewhere called the Milkweed Inn.

Maybe that's what I'm thinking of.

Which is in, like, I don't know where it is related to Traverse City. What I do know is it is out there. I was emailing with Lane Regan, who's the chef who owns this operation, and they were explaining the process of getting there, and it's like, oh, my God. Like, it's like fly to Detroit, fly to this other place, rent a Wells Fargo wagon train, take it to the forge of two rivers and then stop at the trailhead. And then Lane is going to show up in some kind of four wheel drive vehicle that we get it and then we drive out to the place. Nice. Yeah. But anyway, Cinder is a longtime supporter of the show and friend of the program. And Cinder says, howdy, friendos. I can't believe it's that time of year again. And I think I said that last year at this time This year I'd like to use my platform To tell Luke and my mom To tell Luke that my mom was a huge fan Of Bruce Williams while I was growing up Oh Cinder this makes so much sense This probably Cinder was getting a healthy dose of Bruce Williams You know because Of Cinder's mom listening to TalkNet with Bruce Williams. So every time Bruce is discussed on the show, it brings back great memories of my mom and her love of late night radio. I do think that's kind of a... I think if you're the kind of person who enjoys TBTL, or at least tolerates it, you either had a connection to AM radio, or like, you know, that kind of radio as a kid, or maybe just... I don't know. It's the kind of thing that speaks to you. But I feel like we are somehow a weird outgrowth of things like TalkNet. I was watching listening on Friday night, Andrew, to My Art Bell radio I'm all on that now because of that Art Bell movie They're making with Paul Giamatti It's called I Could Really Use a Win here It is And It's called I Could Really Use a Remote Viewing here So I was listening to Art Bell R.I.P And I was making some scrambled eggs Oh that's my new thing Andrew Low and slow Are you a scrambled egg head Do you make the scrambled eggs

I am and I will tell you this I met a friend's relatively new girlfriend but they're in a serious relationship I met her for the first time this summer and she talked about how she likes to make her scrambled eggs and it is completely opposite of the way I make my scrambled eggs and now every time I think of scrambled eggs I think of her and I think about how wrong she is about liking eggs her way and it worries me that this could put a schism in our relationship if you and I like our eggs differently. I like them fluffier. I like them to not be like overly cooked so that they're kind of flat like an omelet. You know how you can make them and they're like kind of a little bit brown or whatever? It sounded like this woman prefers them that way. I like the opposite. Unless it's an omelet itself, I want them to be very fluffy. I want them to be like yellow clouds. Yes, and I have... Oh, thank you.

Yes. I grew up in a fairly unsophisticated scrambled egg environment Which was just dump a bunch of eggs in there And once they're brown and kind of in curds And by the way, I grew up loving those kinds of eggs But on Friday night, as I was listening to Dreamland Radio I thought, there has to be a better way Actually, Friday afternoon, I thought, there has to be a better way And so I did a little sleuthing And I mean, this is not anything particularly crazy But I mean, you just if you cook it at the if you basically have the pan on the lowest of the stove on like the lowest setting or one of the lower settings as far as heat. And the pan is cold when you put the eggs in. And then you just very, very carefully watch them. And then and you move them off the heat sometimes. You just really want to make sure that they're like setting up, but they're not getting overly hard. And then at the end, you throw in some like they didn't the grocery store by my house is not fancy enough to have creme fraiche. so I just use a little ricotta but you throw in a little bit of ricotta and you stir that in and then some little diced up some chives on that oh my gosh I did that with fondant potatoes on Friday night it was delicious

I have a question though you mentioned the pan is cold you mean relatively you've still melted butter down there right you're not putting them in a cold pan with no butter

you're putting them in a cold pan with I must have sprayed it with maybe a little bit of like canola oil or something I actually don't even remember because I got to look at the recipe again. I definitely know that there was, I don't think there was melted butter in the pan. Maybe so. I mean, you know what? Maybe. Yeah, I did. I think I started with a little bit of butter, but it wasn't like typically, you know, usually my, how I cook everything is like, I get this pan really hot. I throw some butter and it's like immediately melting. This was a different thing because it was like not warm enough. I think the key, and they said this in the instructions, like make sure you're also taking it off of the burner sometimes because the pan is going to stay hot and you're just really working to make sure that it doesn't heat up to the point where these turn into sort of rubber or whatever but like it was so good speaking of the cost of things though andrew i went into the grocery store this shows you you want to you think you're out of touch with your oranges i i don't buy that many eggs like a a dozen eggs will last me for a decent amount of time generally speaking because i live alone i don't have little kids it's like it's not a big part of what i'm cooking with every day but i was like i'm gonna make these scrambles i'm gonna make sure i have enough eggs and i literally walked in going like are they going to even have eggs is there a run on eggs do we and then i got like you know pasture raised i don't know what all that terminology really means honestly vital farm pasture raised eggs i'm always trying to go if i can with the like most whatever seems like it might be the most humane and um and uh it was uh seven dollars i thought it was going to be thirty dollars the way everybody's been talking about it yeah yeah like the price of eggs we got to put a nazi in the presidential uh whatever because the price of eggs was like i don't know seven dollars i called becca i was like is this what eggs question goes well they used to be like four i was like okay but i don't know seven dollars for a dozen eggs it just i didn't know what to expect walking in but i was

pleasantly surprised that that's what this has all been about interestingly i bought eggs yesterday the the cheapest ones i could find which were also like you know cage free and what have you uh 7.99 so there's eight dollars which is like becca says like it is a pretty significant increase over than probably even what six months ago or something like that um but yeah affordable it's weird that you and i are really going through our egg phases i said this to veeves too because i got like 40 eggs my boy says he can buy 40 eggs my boy can buy 40 eggs uh we've been making a lot of hard boiled eggs recently for salads and whatnot can i just tell you and i think that cinder would

appreciate this before we get back to her this is part of cinder's dazzling donor request that

we talk a lot about eggs this is not going to be for everybody and it might not even be for you luke but i'm just i need to tell the world about my my andrew walsh soon to be world famous egg sandwich you ready for this okay yeah brioche bun love it you know love a brioche bun um this is egg salad right no no this is i don't do egg salad this is an egg sandwich this is a breakfast sandwich okay okay it's very very simple but it's just like i i fry two eggs and i make them solidly over medium almost cook them through so that they're over hard but i don't break the yolks And I thought of this because you were talking about like sort of turning the heat off of the pan. Like I'll even let these eggs, once they're getting very close to the right consistency, I'll just turn the heat off of the pan and let them cook the rest of the way. So the yolks are almost solid all the way through, not too runny, but you have some flexibility there. I put two eggs on a brioche bun, and then if I have it, some kielbasa that I fried in the same pan, but I split it open, you know, so it'll fit on a sandwich. Or I've also been using Morningstar grillers, which I don't think you really go for that kind of processed. But those are veggie. Those are tasty. Yeah, yeah. So if I have a griller, I'll grill one griller. And this is for people who don't know. It's like a Morningstar kind of burger replacement, but very generic, like a perfect little circle. They're all just like very kind of processed, non-meat little burgers.

There's a lot of things in there protecting for flavor.

Exactly. Mostly protected for flavor. Yes, I think they spray it with hairspray to protect it for flavor. But I like them. But anyway, one of those, or like I say, the sausage, two eggs. I put one egg on the bottom, one egg on the top, and then whatever the other protein is in the middle. And then I adorn it with, and this is where people are probably going to shake their heads or wag their fingers at me, a little bit of hoisin sauce and sriracha to add a little bit of sweetness. And then, you know, especially if you have like the kielbasa or something on there, which also has a little bit of sweetness anyway. that is the sandwich pretty simple just a couple of eggs sandwiching a piece of meat but it's really the hoisin and sriracha combination that i think really pulls the room together that sounds

delicious that sounds very very good um do you would you like you say that's a breakfast sandwich would you get up on like uh like a today like a monday and make that in the morning before we do the show or would that be more like you might do it for lunch but it's kind of breakfast inspired That would be a weekend breakfast sandwich.

So when we're talking weekend breakfast, we're talking noonish probably. You know, like wake up late and let's kind of like put one of those things together as like kind of a poor man's brunch.

Well, I'll tell you, now that I have unlocked the secret on really, really good scrambled eggs, this is practically all I'm going to eat going forward. That and something called Huel, which is this protein thing I bought. I can't, it's supposed to be, they call it a complete food. It's supposed to be really, you know, a lot of protein and not a lot of stuff that's bad for you. But the fact that when you buy a bag of this stuff, it says, they have a note in there that says, you're now a huligan, has been a real barrier to entry for me. I can't bring myself to become a huligan. And the fact that it's people. It's people. That's right. Continuing with Cinder's message, I get a lot of warm fuzzies from TBTL, which is one of the myriad reasons why I keep listening to it and supporting the show. So thanks, you guys, John and all of the 10s, for creating a space that makes me happy. The next four years promise to be pretty harrowing, and I'm glad we all have each other. Have a great show, dummies. What you do is so important. Aw, Cinder, right back at you. What you've been doing is so important. Being a part of the show and helping support it in the various ways that you have, that's huge. That's how this thing can keep going. So thank you. And yes, importantly, we all have each other for the next, I'm going to focus on the positive and say three years and eight months. The countdown begins, my friends. Egg, exactly.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle.

Well, look who it is. i mean speak of the sun and you see its rays we were talking about my actual brother david from the basement and he is our second dazzling my actual brother my actual kin aka the last burbank uh dazzling us he's dazzling he's got a kid now can he i know honestly i'll listen we'll talk about it offline david if this is a this makes sense for you or not this seems like the donation

of a man who donated before he realized his family was growing yes i don't know we can find out the

exact timing on that but let's just say david i want you to do what makes sense for you and your family yes uh this is my beloved brother david says day one listener first time dazzler it's been quite the year for me my wife and i my wife has been pregnant for the majority of 2024 and to begin 2025 we welcomed our five gemma rose burbank to the world i mean come on she is perfect and precious and i can't wait for her to be old enough to ask what the heck tbtl is she'll never have to

ask that because she'll just it'll have always been there it'll be instinctive she's a part of

a long line be from her uncle to her father a long line of seattle radio producers and broadcasters that'll be totally inherent.

The question you'll have to answer is, why did they replace Jen? Which, I mean, that...

That'll be an innate piece of knowledge that Gemma has been born with. She's never even heard Jen on the show, but she'll go, what happened to Jen? Are you guys still doing cooking with Sean DeTorey?

I liked it better when Jen was there.

I love it. What a flex. This show has been the soundtrack of my life for the last 17 years, and I look forward to having it for the next 17. Thanks, Luke and Andrew and John, for humoring my voicemails and intro tapes and general notes on the show. makes my day to feel like a tiny part of the crew. Could you please direct people towards the radio show that I produce? Seattle's Morning News on Cairo News Radio, 97.3 FM, weekdays from 6 to 9. I can't vouch for every other show on the station, but I am working my tail off to make my show something special. Hear me out. Hear me and my host, Charlie Harger, bring you the news of the day, along with Chris Sullivan, every morning. Powah out. Listen, I can attest that the other day, When I was in Portland, or excuse me, when I was in Seattle, we'd gone up to Seattle, do that thing with Chris Hayes, and the next morning, I got up in Seattle, and it was snowy, and I was going to be driving back down here to the Portland area to do the show, our show, and I popped on Seattle's Morning News on 97.3 FM, and it was amazing. It was exactly what I love in local news radio. First of all, they had actually a pretty robust set of reporters out reporting on the snow. They had someone at the Tom Thumb Market in Lake Stevens, Washington, reporting in on the snow up there. They had folks kind of all over the Puget Sound. Charlie Harger was doing a really nice job of kind of running things. Chris Sullivan handling the traffic. It was just like it exactly scratched the itch that I like to get from morning commercial news radio. So good job, David. And good job, everybody over there. Like, I wish we had a version of that. Maybe there is a version of that in Portland that I just haven't tapped into, but I love that kind of radio, and I'm glad that it's still happening on Cairo.

And I'll just say, I can't remember the details of it, but just so that David knows you're not just saying that because you feel compelled to based on the Dazzling Donor message.

He's paying right now for this to happen. It was off. He's a paid message.

That's right. Here's an unpaid message. It was off air the other day that you and I were just talking about listening to the radio, And I'm pretty sure you mentioned very specifically because we were talking about, of course, we worked with Charlie's predecessor, Dave Ross, and I think you maybe were sampling the wares recently. And you were saying to me privately that Charlie had just done something kind of like just a small little thing on the radio, but it pleased you so much just to hear that sort of just like sort of instinctive little bit of radio hosting.

Yes, absolutely. As the snow was falling, I think he was checking with his family down in the kind of maybe like Auburn Federal Way area. And he was noting that the school district where his kids go is still in session. I think he said something like, we're just built different down in Auburn.

Oh, that's right. I like this. This is a bit of humanity injected into this whole thing. We're built different in Auburn.

I'm digging it, you know. Like, yeah, it was, again, it really made me happy. And look, I don't want to I don't want to besmirch my beloved public radio because, you know, I do love it. And I even kind of work there in a way. But like it's been it's been tough. I've been reintegrating with Oregon OPB, which is kind of my station down here. I've been reintegrating. But it is it is difficult at times because I think that public radio feels the responsibility to report on each and every thing that the current administration does. And that can be a really tough listen, as everybody knows. And so there was something nice about just hearing a guy at Tom Thumb Market. and being like, it's really coming down. Yeah. And I was like, no mention of Pete Hegseth during this snow report? Bundle up. You know, pack your patience. Sometimes I just need a good pack your patience. Anyway, thanks, David. Love you, brother. And thank you also to Cinder for supporting TVTL today. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. The other thing I wanted to tell you about my weekend, Andrew, Which I don't know if this really was ever your move Or would ever be your move Probably wouldn't be your move going forward Because you're self-described as an antsy TV watcher now You kind of get up and down a lot and do different things I am probably also that way now Mostly what I watch on TV is just live sports and MSNBC And other than that, I don't sit down and watch long stretches of television But I was kind of a little bit sick this weekend And I had a rolling series of symptoms of some nausea, some other things going on. What? That, yeah, I don't know what's been happening. I'm a little better today, thankfully.

Just a little bit, though. You're still, you're powering through a little bit?

No, I think Saturday was the worst of it. Sunday was coming out of it. And I think I'm fairly, I'm 80% today.

I haven't had a lot of like serious stomach bug related things in my life. they sound terrible you do think this was a bug not something that you ate it was weird on on

Thursday I was I thought the eggs were gonna heal me I thought it might be something kind of soft and and like you're not too challenging for my stomach on Friday so on Thursday night right before we started Livewire I was upstairs at the Alberto Rose Theater getting ready and I had the kind of some waves of nausea and I was like uh-oh like and I was I was okay once the show was going you're kind of locked in on that but then i went for a run on friday and at the end of my jog i was doing it down at the lake i literally thought i was going to throw up at the end of the jog it was weird that's not a i'm not saying i'm loving the experience of exercising but i don't usually

feel like i might vomit from it and that was before we recorded on friday right no that was

after oh okay i thought you jogged before the show um so um but i uh but then saturday i was I was kind of, it was a little not feeling great. And then Sunday, like I said, I was coming out of it, but this is what happened on Saturday because, um, I was just home kind of hanging out, just kind of nursing, nursing, my, nursing, my wounds, nursing, my not feeling great. And I don't usually like, I don't like lock in on a marathon TV session on a Saturday. Like that used to be a thing that I would do years and years ago, there would be the occasional Saturday. This is like when maybe i first had cable tv so like i'm out of college but i like you know i probably married at this point because i did that pretty young but i'm probably like living with someone i'm married we've got cable tv and occasionally it would just be fun on a saturday to like veg out for like a top chef marathon like i'm talking about you're changing the channels there's no dvr-ing at this point and you just get or like a real world some kind of a thing where it's a saturday and this this particular station has decided to just play 20 hours of some kind of show and you just get into it and just becomes your whole day which on the one hand sounds like a total waste of an afternoon but i that's exactly what happened to me on saturday and i felt like i had an excuse for it because i was sick so i was like under the blanket being cozy this can't be a coincidence oh yeah definitely like i but but yeah it's the kind of thing that i probably wouldn't have engaged with outside of uh feeling under the weather but um i started watching this show on i guess you know it's weird because i have all these apps i don't have a regular cable anymore but i did find something actually that's very helpful now which is there is a channel guide on fubo tv just to bring this back to a fubo ad so you can kind of check the channels i didn't know you could do that if that makes any sense because it's such a weird world of this streaming stuff i didn't know if that there was literally like you go to channel guide and you're like it's like it's kind of like a traditional tv like i can see all the local portland stations i can see so in the scrolling of these channels because otherwise i've been interacting with everything as an on-demand kind of product like oh i want to watch this football game i want to whatever so i found myself feeling kind of sick under a blanket like flipping through the channels effectively and one of the things i saw was this show i guess it's on what used to be msnbc but isn't called that anymore i don't even know what the network is called now but it's lock up which is just basically people who are incarcerated being interviewed their lives being observed and i have to say it was a really compelling show like it's the kind of thing that could could go really sideways really fast if it was some sort of apology for like in the way that the show cops is probably kind of an apology for the behavior of cops, you know, they're not going to show cops overstepping or treating people poorly. They're going to show it when the criminals are acting up. And

it really reinforces this idea of criminals just being, you know, like

wild and out. You think that the song Bad Boys, Bad Boys, What You Gonna Do sets a tone? Right, exactly. Listen, the guys from Inner Circle gotta eat, so good for them on that. That's really... Can you imagine seeing Inner Circle play at the Emerald Queen Casino and they don't play Bad Boys, Bad Boys? We're just playing our new stuff. Oh, they're playing new stuff. We're playing It's Complicated Boys, and there's a lot of structural racism that plays into this boys. So anyway, this show, Lockup, it could have been, it could be an apology for the carceral system, but it somehow wasn't or isn't. It was, I thought, a pretty even-handed sort of view into what life is like for people who are incarcerated. This was at a Louisville, like, excuse me, yeah, that basically the downtown jail in Louisville, Kentucky. So it's people who are being, uh, either they, they've been accused of crimes, but, but they haven't had their trial yet, or they have been convicted and they are soon to be transferred out to a prison, like a state prison or something. But I have to say it was pretty compelling. And I was, I was impressed with the people behind the show, not making it like people in jail are awful humans who should be locked up and the key should be thrown away it was re i honestly i don't know exactly why the people in charge of the louisville jail agreed to it because it's not an expose don't get me wrong it's not like they're blowing the lid off the thing but they're also not sugarcoating it they're showing the actual lives of incarcerated people in a way that i found very compelling there was a scene there's a guy who was um about to uh he was there but he was about to he had been convicted of a crime that the sentence was 30 years in the state prison and he was let's say this guy's in his maybe mid late 30s and his son was also incarcerated in that jail and was about to have a trial for a murder charge and they had had a very very very estranged relationship because the father had been in and out of prison as is often the case and they had this moment where before the father was shipped off uh to do his time at the state uh prison he and the son were sitting down talking and it was some of the most compelling television i've ever seen because you had these two men who had had a very complicated relationship who were not maybe had not been equipped with all the language to express their

emotions can you give me a vague like age range here is the dad was probably mid late 30s oh okay

And the son was probably 20. Okay. So, you know, and they were, you could tell, the son going in said to the people interviewing him, basically, like, this guy has never apologized over the fact that he was an absent father, and that really, really haunts me, and I don't want anything to do with him. And the father had said to the, you know, cameras, like, you know, this is when they weren't together. He was like, you know, I know he kind of blames me for the fact that he's in here as well. and uh you know i should have been a better father to him and like through the grapevine of either the prison or the tv show the son hears that the father is willing to apologize to him and the change in the the the son says i've never heard him say anything like that and that immediately changes my thoughts around our relationship so they get them they're sitting down and they're talking it starts off kind of tough because the father's like in a little bit of a sort of defensive mode about things that he thought he did try to do right during his son's life but they eventually sort of get down to where the father does he said you know he's basically admitting like i was a pretty lousy father and i resented your mother because she entered a relationship with someone else and i took that out on you and i was distant and like these two guys like it was a moment of real emotion that i swear to god like i don't know the last time i saw an unscripted tv show where this kind of thing happened and the dad said like i know you think i'm saying this because these cameras are here that's not why i'm doing this and i totally bought it as a viewer like it was it was really kind of an emotional thing to watch and i was like so i spent i want to say six to seven hours watching lock up louisville extended stay on saturday as i was like and then i was just kind of puttering around my house and trying to figure out stuff that i could eat that wouldn't make me feel more sick and i landed on some like i i cooked up some rice in the instapot that also seemed kind of gentle on my stomach and then i like went through my veggie drawer and just like took out everything that could be stir fried and kind of like cooked that up and threw some peanuts in at the end and it was so good you know what it was reminiscent of the kung pao chicken we used to get at goldies um like minus the chicken obviously but like i just had this saturday of just like hanging out in my house and kind of just basically nesting, just cozying up and watching way too much television that I had not set out to watch on that day. And it was, again, it was kind of a delight. It reminded me of being 24 again and just getting locked into a Top Chef marathon and watching that for six or seven hours on a Saturday.

I've never been drawn towards the more like kind of reality style TV show, whether it's like the documentary style of the prison show, which, by the way, my connection to that, I don't have a connection to it, But the one like sort of touch point I have is you mentioned that show. I don't know if it originated on MSNBC, but it was aired on MSNBC. Right. And I remember like I never I don't think I've heard a word of dialogue from that show, but it used to be on, I think, for the last hour of the radio show that I hosted at Cairo Radio, like from maybe it was on maybe from nine to ten on MSNBC. And the TVs in the studio would all switch over. And it was such, I know I've said this to you before, like also Parts Unknown, isn't that the Bourdain show? I think that was on on Friday nights maybe from the 9 to 10 hour or something like that. And so I had this weird relationship with those shows where I can't possibly explain with words the relationship you have to a show that is kind of constantly on. And while you're talking, you can see me right now, Luke, when I'm telling a story or talking, I'm usually not even looking right at you. on the screen here I'm sort of like my eyes are wandering around as I'm looking for the next word or whatever and your eyes just sort of are gravity your eyes gravitate towards the tvs and then like at the end of like a year of doing that you're like I have seen so much Anthony Bourdain I have seen so much lockup I can't tell you one thing about that show but like certain parts of it

just seep in your brain lockup was a that was an amazing crossover episode that actually was

probably early in his career. He got into some trouble in his life, right?

Yeah, he had to get a slightly checkered past. I know what you mean. I had, when I worked at KUOW, we had all these TVs running that were muted, and there was a show back then called Passions, which was a soap opera. I believe

I stayed at Passions when I was on vacation one time. You sure did.

And the premise of Passions, if I understand right, because I've still never heard it with the sound, was it was a It was a soap opera But one of the main characters was a witch Who had a doll that would come to life And the doll When the doll had come to life It would be played by an actor A person, maybe I think the term we might use Is a person of short stature Or a little person And it was If you just like Google passions Oh I am Just imagine for like Two years of your professional life you're trying to book guests for the conversation hosted by ross reynolds or you're a producer on the show rewind but every day monday through friday for an hour without any audio you're watching this witch and her doll come to life do all manner of crazy shit because it was just on

king five right or whatever the channel i'm looking at clips of it now it is so low budget i mean it really does feel like an it says 1999 but it feels like an 80s soap opera kind of quality maybe even less production value than that it's the and we used to just be like we'd be working and then

we'd look up and we'd be like what in the hell and again it was on that station because it was played on a local seattle station where they also would have the news at the top of the hour or if there was breaking news the idea was you want to have some of the tvs on local stations because there might be local news we need to know about and then their cnn was on one of the tvs you know But, like, I have watched so much Passions, considering I've never heard any of the dialogue.

I have a new obsession. Ask your dad if he can download these for me. I want to watch them in order. This is probably a terrible idea, but I see a woman. She's in the woods on a bicycle. Is there any chance this was locally produced? No, no.

I believe this was a network production. Let's see here. Passions.

It just sort of looked like the sound behind her a little bit.

It looks like it was an American television soap opera originally aired on NBC from 1999 to 2007. It had a good run.

Jeez, yeah.

The storyline center on the interactions among members of this multiracial core family, the African-American wrestlers. I don't know why they need to describe this in the Wikipedia page. What everyone's race is. Let's see. I was just trying to find what's actually going on in the show. In the early days of the show, Passion's heroine is Sheridan Crane and identified as a blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I was trying to find what's going on with the witch and the doll come to life. This ran exactly concurrently with The Sopranos, which is just amazing to me.

99 to 2007.

Woke up this morning, got myself a doll. So this woman is on a bike.

It looks like she's trying to carry a kitchen chair on this bicycle. Actually, it's a tricycle. It's like an adult tricycle, and she's in the woods somewhere. There's a big fake rock, and it looks like this doll is now actually alive and trying to hide from her. I can't tell what's going on here. We're going to give this a shot. This is going to be a terrible idea, but let's just try this. Is that the doll? Terrible. The doll was making noise. I'm sorry. The doll was making some sort of grunting noise to the woman. It looked like she just discovered him. I couldn't tell if they knew each other or not. And the woman is whispering, look, look, somebody's coming or something. She's gesturing off camera. Oh, there's another woman here, a blonde woman.

What do you mean? Go get up.

Yeah!

so the woman on the bike said go get her and now the little kid attacks this woman in the woods and now it's a doll again and the blonde woman is just whipping this doll all over this is the craziest shit i've ever seen in my life this woman is beating the hell out of a doll

Hang on to her, Timmy, don't let her go.

Timmy, that's the doll's name.

Yes. Could have thought such a wispy girl was such a spitfire. Oh, oh.

Oh, my God. She's slamming him into the rock.

But he's still a doll, right? He's a doll. She's kicking him on the ground.

I'm beating up a doll. Are you all right? Yes, it's so weird. I thought I was being attacked by the Karate Kid or something. Or she says the cruddy kid

It sounded like cruddy I was going a tad too fast on my tricycle And I stopped And it flew out of the basket Are you sure you're alright? I'm fine

I don't know what led up to this This was a set up I guess that's the witch She was telling the doll to go attack This young blonde woman in the woods I believe this is the

Passion's theme song opening It's a song called Breathe I'm just imagining if this was like. Now imagine Tony Soprano is driving in New Jersey to this music.

Big Stogie. Well, I'm happy that buff witches escape my radar. I have no idea.

I can't believe this hasn't come up because it was a, I mean, ask anybody from that era of KUOW, whether it's Radke or probably Jeannie Yandel, like, maybe even, I don't know if P. Fletch was in on this. Maybe she was. But, like, we had so many conversations about what the hell was going on with Passions. So great. I actually would think it would be a fun project for you to embark on watching some of it. I mean, it might be, too. You and I both aren't into watching bad stuff for the sake of it.

It might end up getting a little odd. I don't know.

I mean, it probably comes down to how many gummies you've had. There might be a right amount of gummies and then too many gummies.

Yeah, maybe. I'm not sure. That's not quite my move either.

Well, I don't know what would help. What would predispose you to this?

I'm a little distracted here. Does any of this take place on a beach as well? Because I'm getting some Baywatch-y vibes from another episode that I'm scanning through, but it's episode one, which means they might not have found their footing yet. Or Passion. Is it Passions?

It's Passions.

Yeah, so it might just be that there's two, are there two shows called Passions, potentially?

I mean, it seems like, it sounds like a name of a soap opera. You know what I mean? Like, but I'm Googling. You know what?

You know, we were in a good closing place on that conversation. I opened it. I'm just, I'm like trying to figure out if I can watch episode one of this thing, but it seems like a very, very different vibe. I think I'm, I've stumbled on something else.

Okay, good. It's got everything on Fubo.

I'll tell Veeves.

here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man

it's not from a female all right emails or females yes i have a um uh a very interesting story i want to share with you from a listener who would like to remain anonymous okay um that is just slightly adult in nature because it involves prophylactics now this was inspired by I want to make this very clear. This was inspired by a story I was telling you where I was tripping on some over-the-counter drugs in college, and I was out of my mind.

Oh, but you don't do gummies.

No, I do gummies, but I'm usually not going to sit there and watch bad TV. I got it. But anyway, at this time, I was just out of my gourd. a young woman who apparently maybe had some interest in me who was a friend

of mine at the time gave me a condom but because i was so out of my brain i didn't know what it was i think i thought it was a sticker or something i'm just giving this detail and i cringe i don't want this story to come up anymore but there seems to be some confusion about whether or not i didn't realize it was a condom because my of my inexperience uh in romance or what but i promise you or your complete refusal to use protection or because i was the swordsman of kent state no I was just like I was on some pretty heavy drugs and I just was out of my mind. And then the next day I realized that this young woman had given it to me and was probably an invitation of sorts that was lost on me because I was a druggie. Anyway, this is another condom related story from a listener who would like to remain anonymous, who says, hello, fellows. I listened to the episode with Andrew's story. It reminded me of my own tale of long ago. valentine's day 1990 my college safe sex club is selling condom grams as a fundraiser a friend sends me a condom gram huh it's a cute valentine's themed card with a gold circle condom

okay now let me just i you only know what's in the email but it's an interesting first of all that was an maybe this is still the case in college i feel like you and i came up And this is going to maybe be a little adult I feel like you and I came up in the absolute peak of the safe sex movement Like I feel like everywhere on the college campus It was like, you know, condoms, dental dams Like, we're going to be, like, there was just It seemed like it was a real thing I don't, maybe that's still what happens on colleges Maybe there's like a lot of, you know, groups and things That are all dedicated to trying to promote safe sex Some part of me feels like the messaging has kind of ebbed a little bit in the, again, I'm not in college, I don't know what they're telling the kids, but the idea of sending a condom gram to someone, I guess as long as there's a it's pretty forward, let me tell you this if somebody sends you a condom, it seems like a pretty clear indication I guess that they're interested in you in that way, right?

Yeah, I think so, although in this case it does seem like, I'm just going for the context of this one, it seems like a platonic sort of thing, maybe a way of doing a platonic condom, it said only because the listener here says that it was sent by a friend specifically i'm not sure if this friend was interested or not um but anyway uh the the listener goes on to say like andrew i didn't have a use for a condom then and also like andrew reflecting on all these years later i wonder if the condom gram was meant as an invitation i guess we'll never know okay there you go uh here's the good part of the story okay and this is this is what the listener says the good part that wasn't me editorializing at the end of the semester i hadn't used the condom so i tossed it in my big purse and headed to oregon where i spent the summer with my parents i worked at a pizza parlor in corvallis and one day after eating a bajillion pizzas with my employee discount i decided to mix things up and drove to wendy's on my lunch break standing at the counter in wendy's i placed my order and i reached into my purse for my wallet the foil wrapping on the gold circle condom think of it It was like two pieces of foil packaging on a chocolate coin. They had come apart after being smushed in the bottom of my purse for several months, and the condom itself was stuck to the corner of my wallet. As I removed my wallet from my purse, the open condom flew into the air and landed on the stack of Wendy's signature red trays next to the register. The teen who took my order and I were both very surprised at the sight of an open condom sitting in the middle of the bright red tray on top of the stack. I quickly stuffed the condom into my purse, paid for my food, and sat to wait for my to-go order. A different person would have fled Wendy's immediately, but not me. I really wanted that Frosty. After several minutes, I approached the counter and received my bag of food from the same teen who had witnessed the flight of my condom. I drove off and ate my food in the car. That's Rimsky-Korsakov, right? What's that? The flight of the condom? I believe so. i didn't grow up in oregon so i wasn't worried about any peers hearing about my most embarrassing wendy's encounter but that didn't stop me from being truly mortified needless to say i never darkened the door of that wendy's again power out anonymous listener that reminds me of

one of my favorite simon rich pieces uh which i guess they adapted as a shouts and murmur it's also in one of his books i forget which one it's called unprotected and it's all written from the perspective of a condom that's in his wallet that's never getting used i born in factory they put me in wrapper they seal me in box three of us in box in early days they move us around from factory to warehouse from warehouse to truck from truck to store one day in store boy human sees us on shelf he grabs us hides under shirt he rushes outside anyway if you're uh i would highly recommend i'd highly recommend anything that simon rich writes but um that one in particular it was pretty funny, unprotected. I thought that that story was going to be- even racier andrew like it was what were you writing in your head and don't rush through it

um well i thought maybe that the listener was going to say that they found themselves after see i so they said after eating like a million pizzas what they meant was they were tired of eating pizza so they were changing up there i thought the story was going to be after eating a million pizzas in one day they then they then had a moment they had a tryst with someone and they were very grateful that they had this condom with them because it was allowed for them to have a safe experience but it was just that they were tired of eating pizza and they went to the wendy's and it fell out of there also at that point you can probably throw it in the garbage yes probably back into the wallet back into the purse or where i think it was probably the quickest thing to do

yes exactly to disappear it from view just disappear it exactly anyway thank you anonymous

for sending that thanks anonymous i remember because you know we went to um like the public health type of folks when I was a little kid, and even a teenager. We didn't ever have a regular family physician or anything, and of course, because it was public health, they were very keen on very, very judgment-free distribution of any kind of condom type of thing that you could imagine. There was just jars of it everywhere, and ironically, I did have a kid when I was 17, so it didn't sink in, but I just remember one time, I think I was there for like a-

Imagine how many kids you'd have if they didn't. Exactly. This message.

I just remember, I think I was maybe there getting a physical for like football or something. But like there was nobody in the waiting room with me or in the examination room. And there was just like a candy jar of condoms. I remember just like taking two or three of them and putting them in my pocket. No use for them. Nobody was interested in me in that way. But I identified them with sexual activity. Like I don't even, like, I mean I understood what, I kind of understood what they were. But they appealed to me Was these are sex adjacent Like I'm fascinated with these Because I know that they're in the neighborhood Of something called sex And that's something I want to really find out more about And maybe do more of And these are getting me one step closer I remember just like stealing them and having absolutely no use for them ever

And then Dr. Left Eye Lopez Came out and said we're ready for you now I mean I was so embarrassed I don't know what age do you think that was

Oh I must have been probably like 13, 14 or something

I remember how embarrassed I was buying my first can of shaving cream just to shave. Like, I remember being mortified.

Well, you were going to shave down there.

It's also sexy, Jason. I was manscaping. No, like, I was like, you know, it's the 90s. Like, I was as nervous buying my first can of shaving cream almost as if I were buying a Playboy magazine. Wow. Like, I just remember being, because, like, I don't know why. i'm just i was just so uptight and i grew up in a pretty you know i don't know if repressive is the right word or not but a repressed or whatever but like i just i didn't like i didn't have the conversation with like my dad or anything he didn't show me how to shave i just remember getting to a point where it's like well other kids are shaving other guy my my other guys in my class are shaving and maybe i feel a tiny bit of peach fuzz but then also people say well once you start shaving it kind of encourages growth you're like well at what point am i going to start doing this and so I went and I believe I was I think this was around the time that my dad got remarried and I think maybe he and my stepmom were like out of town maybe on a honeymoon type of situation so I was staying with my grandparents I remember I was staying with my grandparents for a short period of time and so maybe that offered me a more of a sense of anonymity or something and so I walked in Fairview Park Ohio for you Cleveland heads out there I remember walking to like a really old school style small drug store because it sort of sounds like the kind that you worked in luke when you were when you were a kid although it sounds like yours which is not the purple store on on aurora that's right yes um actually is that purple store still oh no it's

a church now isn't it i think it's like kind of one of those cool church where they play electric

guitar cool no that sounds so cool um but anyway i remember and then i was so nervous and then you talk yourself into it like you're just gonna and i for some reason i didn't buy razors i think maybe i was just gonna use my dad's or something but then i buy it and then the woman of course does call me out she's probably a middle-aged woman and now i look back she's probably younger than me now um but like a middle-aged woman and she teased me when i was buying it and she said oh looks like you're gonna be up to no good and she insisted that i was like you were gonna shaving cream some windows exactly or a locker or something like that i'm like no no it's for me And I just remember, I would look, well, no, I would not like to revisit that. But part of me is interested in knowing what that whole exchange looked like. I remember just wanting to get out of there so quickly. Why was I embarrassed about shaving cream? It was just something about puberty. And, like, I was just mortified of everything.

I never, I did not need shaving cream. To this day, I probably don't need shaving cream, sadly. But I do remember, I don't think it was in a store. Sure. But I think that that's, I think adults love joking around. Well, I guess the nature of this joke from that adult was that you were going to go do something nefarious with it. I was going to say, I think adults also like joking with men going through puberty about shaving. Because I remember somebody, some adult saying to me, like, you know, when I was, you know, I don't know, probably 15, 16, something about shaving and saying, oh, you don't need a razor. Just put some milk on your face and let the cat lick it off. Like, and that that would take it. I think that was just like a statement of saying, like, you don't have very much facial hair, which, by the way, would prove to be a permanent condition for me. This is me, Andrew. This is two days of no shaving.

Oh, yeah. I'm looking in the camera here. I don't see any evidence of anything.

It's weird. If you got a really close look, there's a little bit of hair on my neck, but, you know, it's snow white.

Oh, yeah. You can probably see I'm getting a lot more white in my beard these days, especially if I grow it out a little bit.

Yeah, it's like I don't think of myself. If I have gray hair on the sides, the top of my hair is pretty dark. I don't think of myself as, I mean, I guess I do have gray hair, so I don't know why it's shocking, but there's something about when, if I were to, like, leave, if I were to not shave for, like, two weeks, you would start to see the tiniest bit of evidence, and it would all be gray and white neck hair, which is, I don't identify with that part of myself yet.

It only, yeah, the whitening of it, yeah. And it would only grow sort of, like, below your chin, sort of.

Yeah, a tiny bit, and then, I mean, I haven't tried a mustache since we did the, whatever that was, contest in the early days. Not contest, but like, was it like a fundraiser?

Was it that Movember thing way back in the day?

Maybe. It might have been Movember. It was one of those, like, yeah, it was one of those things that was big at the time of, like, don't shave for a month. I don't remember it was actually raising money for anything, but I think it was just as an experiment. And it was so, so disappointing, my body's inability to grow even the most scant of mustachios. I eventually had to dye, after a month of not shaving my upper lip, I had to dye the blonde little baby hairs with like a Just for Men, just for it to even be slightly visible. Noticeable. And I've told this story on the show many times, but leading up to that, I just had this like little tiny fuzz on my lip, and I used to go to this place, The Hideaway, and play cards. I was just the other week on the show I was just saying how my routine would be Finish TBTL at Cairo Go up to the hideaway Play cards till way too late at night And then hit the McDonald's on the way home So I was living my best life And I remember And these were some real There were some normal people there But there were also some real D-gens At this card room Like you know And this is poker So you're sitting around a circular table Or an oval table with other people And many of them are You know Have been through it in life And I remember This was about the time i started playing there was the same time i'm trying to grow this mustache out and i wasn't talking about it with anyone but then finally when we finished it and i shaved it and i went into this place the hideaway which i think i've described on the show as ma's eisley space court esque some guy looked at me goes i'm really glad you shaved that mustache that was really upsetting

that was really upsetting that was upsetting that looked really weird or something like i was like

listen buddy you know like i don't know i don't want to say anything too stereotypical but i was Like, I can't believe this is what was upsetting the people at the hideaway card room was my bad mustache.

Well, it would be interesting if that was actually an advantage for you if you're playing poker with these folks and they're so distracted by his. I saw something. Can I tell you something about? Yes. There are certain things I see on TV that just kind of give me the bad feeling is the wrong word, but this is like really turned me off. And that's one of the reasons I don't like reality TV and stuff. It's like even the good reality TV contest, like I hear such good things about the great British Bake Off and all of the, you know, Genevieve Watch is one that is related, I believe, to crafting. I think that is also, you know, I know that these things and also put the Kardashians in there. Any kind of reality TV, whatever you think of it, high quality, low quality, it's all like sort of this brightly lit. It all feels like daytime television to me. And I just don't like that. And, like, I'm somebody who likes to have, like, maybe a TV or some sort of video thing going on in the background if I'm just hanging out in the rumpus room. But that means I'll put on something more vintage or some weird animation or whatever. I just don't like in the background a TV playing something that has that kind of look to it. And one of the main ones is those poker shows, you know, the live poker contest or whatever. And now there are so many of them. And, you know, there was one that I was watching. I wasn't trying to watch it the other day. I told you on Friday that I went to this, our friends, like a little boat club called the College Club to have a game night. And I wasn't participating in one of the games they were playing. I was just playing shuffleboard by myself and keeping score, by the way. And shuffleboard. And there was a and there was a big TV on and there was one employee there who was just sort of keeping an eye on things. And I remember there was some sort of sports programming. I think basketball was on. and i was like oh that's kind of a bummer i'm not really into basketball but i wish there was some better visual spackle going on in the background basketball game ends and she picks up the remote and i'm like put on something good let's go matlock let's go matlock let's go matlock no whammies no whammies no man murder she wrote anything that's cozy and she ends up landing on some sort of it's not the world series of poker something called poker after dark or some shit party poker i think is what it was called like spawn and you know i'm looking you know and And everybody's like, the one guy's got on the wraparound mirrored glasses. I just look at everybody on there. And I'm just like, I'm making some pretty major judgments about all of them. I'm not even paying that much of attention.

It's a lot of hooligans these days, Andrew.

Yeah, I'm sure that's true.

It's a very red-pilled bro culture coded now.

A lot of guys who probably get their coffee from that place that sells coffee and guns. Black rifle. Stickers of guns. I don't know. Just kind of got that. But one of the dudes, and I don't even know why I'm bringing this up. because he wants me to talk about one of the dudes I was like oh that's interesting is he sitting backwards in his chair or something and then I realized no no he's full-on playing poker while getting a massage oh yeah like he and that's is that a common thing even in person that's something

that you've played with people who are getting full I've gotten a massage really it's a thing in poker rooms particularly bigger poker rooms where there will be massage therapists who are just kind of walking around and they're like hey does anybody want a massage I I think I did it

one time because like let's be honest but then the chair started beeping the quarters yes that's

right i i think i thought well who doesn't want a massage but then i was so i was so mortified

like to be you're the only one at the table getting a massage well no other people do it but

they just look dumb and i and i like basically i think i said okay i think i felt a little bad because someone's walking around a human being is walking around going massage massage massage and let's say it's like a dollar a minute or five dollars a minute i can't remember what it is but then yeah they'll turn you turn the chair around and they just like give you like a shoulder and kind of arm massage back massage while you're sitting there playing i think it seemed like something that was going to be relaxing probably also as many drinks in but then i remember while it was happening being like i don't want to share this experience yeah with a brightly lit room of like a hundred other people like i was like this is embarrassing i feel weird about did it take you out of the game too a little bit i would think i was probably never in the game mentally i was probably in my cups but um but that's a that's a very common thing actually and um yeah it's a whole part of the ecosystem of a like if you were to go to like um like hollywood park in inglewood or the bike in commerce or any of those places like or the commerce casino i should say in commerce like any of those big places will have massage therapists kind of uh wandering around

playing the room this person at first i thought their chair was just turned around but it did look like they were in a special massage chair i said i realized that like it was like one of those things where it really did I've never seen that and I feel like he might have been laying down I never got a great oh my god that's crazy it was definitely one of those black cushiony things with a cutout in like you know half a hole in it while his face and he's leaning in on that he's probably wearing sunglasses too and somebody's like working on him and I think he might have been

laying face down or at least partially that's next level I've never seen that and that is like that's such a weird flex I mean the whole thing is weird but it's extra weird if you're fully in like a full-on massage chair with your face poking through that weird hemorrhoid donut.

It was pretty strange. And also, just like I say, do you know what I mean? I even thought, well, I know the very basics of how to play this. Maybe I could get into it. And then I was just like, I don't like looking at these people. I don't like looking at this lighting.

Imagine one of them had a real sad mustache. Yeah, right.

It would be very, very distracting.

Like a sparse little sad mustache.

Can you imagine if I were in charge of the lighting at a poker game? Oh, man. I don't know how much cheating would be. You and Todd Glass. I was going to say, me and Todd Glass, never, never are we allowed to. It'd be a lot sexier. It certainly would be. We'd be putting little red kerchiefs over the lamps.

Opening all the refrigerators and undoing the light inside the refrigerator, which is his famous move. It's really strange because for somebody who was very, very obsessed with poker for 10 years of my life, I couldn't watch enough of it on television. I couldn't play enough of it in real life. It was a huge part of my personality, I guess. You could not pay me enough to watch people playing poker on TV anymore. I just don't care. It's really weird. I don't know why that's just whiffed out of my brain. I would maybe play a little bit of poker for fun. Like, if there was a home game, that might be kind of fun. But for considering how big of a deal it was in my mind, like, I would play it every single week. My friend Kevin Arnovitz had a home game that was, like, a really big deal. That was every Wednesday night And then it was like on the weekends I'm at Hollywood Park It was a significant part of my life And now there's nothing I find less interesting Than watching poker on television I watch Passions Watching it on TV I don't care that somebody got their aces cracked anymore

don't care that like like there was i just don't care about it like what's happening to any of these people probably some of it too has to do with yeah who the next generation of poker players are like when i got into watching it on tv first of all it had only recently been televised because that was the big breakthrough right was that they had these little cameras they used to try to show the world series of poker but nobody knew what was going on they didn't show the cards they didn't show the cards oh wow because the so the breakthrough was this executive i think maybe at espn this tv executive had this idea like here's what we're going to do we're going to have cameras that are going to be in the uh you know embedded in the table this uh the feed of this is not going to go anywhere other than back to one trailer where you have vince van patten and i forget his name mike something basically the announcers where you're going to have the announcers they will see this on a on a feed a closed circuit feed but no one else will ever see this until we edit it and put it out like months later so the idea was to not spook the players to not spook the players to not stream it live they were like how do we make this a more televisable thing well people need to know what the cards are in real time so they can figure out what the strategy is and the only way to do that was this complex system of tape delaying it and making it so because a lot of the players initially were like camera on my card that seems like a recipe for disaster but they convinced them and of course it was a breakthrough because all of a sudden the popularity of this thing exploded there's more money in the tournaments people are winning but like the guys that were winning um when i was watching it were like greg the fossil man raymer or like a guy literally named chris moneymaker like it really was this kind of like fun weird thing where no people that had normal lives would just liked poker would show up and sometimes win this tournament and it's become so hyper specialized it's all these it's so many people now who got their start playing like high frequency poker where they're like watching four different they're playing four or ten games at all times on their computer screen at home like and they're like they've become the they're like they're like a more of a computer program than a human and they know every single like you know the original guys on this were like doyle brunson known as texas dolly used to sell school office furniture around texas and then he he would play in these poker games on the weekends to make a little extra dough and you know whatever it's like this nostalgia around the past is a dangerous it's a dangerous road generally speaking but i don't know there was something about it that i found kind of fun there's a great book by a writer named m ives called the biggest game in town about the worlds or the the um the world series of poker in like the 1980s in i want to say the binion's horseshoe in old vegas and these were just characters that were in there playing you know and they would just play for days and days and days it'd be like seven or eight guys um i have i have a lot of nostalgia for those days

nowadays it's just like you said it's just a bunch of people in wraparound glasses who are all like absolutely beyond up on the on the on the data of this thing it just doesn't feel quite as as fun as

it used to i thought i had seen something online um over the weekend that i just fact checked and And I see it's not quite what I thought it was. But if I were to find a quiz about the nicknames of professional athletes, how well do you think you would do? Is this worth pursuing? It would depend on the era. So I'd have to find like 1990s.

If you could get it in the 90s, I think I would do okay, 90s.

I might do a little bit. I want to see if we can maybe do a little mid-winter, I guess maybe like end of winter game or something this week. I'd love to see if I could find a 90s sports nickname quiz. Oh, I would love that. Because every time you say so-and-so, the something so-and-so, it just delights me so much.

Yeah. The fossil man. Greg Raymer was the fossil man. Why? He wore, I think he might, I don't know if he was actually into like archaeology or fossils, but what he, his thing was, he wore these glasses. and, like, imagine, like, the kind of wire-rimmed glasses that John Lennon kind of made famous, but now imagine that each one of those lenses has holographic dinosaur eyes in it. Do you remember when they were selling those glasses that had, like, hologram eyes in them?

I mean, a little bit. You mean, like, if you moved your head, I mean, the very, very basic, like, stickers on them? No, I think I'm thinking of something else.

I'm going to send you a picture of these right now. They're so great. They were basically like, yeah, Greg Fossilman Raymer. These were these holographic lizard eyes. And what he would do is when he was thinking about a hand, in order to sort of like make it harder on his opponent to read him, he would put on these holographic lizard eyeglasses. And grow the world's saddest mustache.

And that's how he would distract them.

That was my move. Maybe we have a show pick.

It'll be Greg, the Fossil Man Raymer today. I'll send it to you. Email me that, and I'll take a look at that. I'm now distracted because I'm looking for quizzes here. I see. I do have, yeah, this would not be good for the air, but I got to find this, or maybe a listener can make it for us, or find one for us. I don't know.

That's right. Our version of making something, which would be, could you do that for us, listener?

And then you send it to me. I'll be like, did I talk about this on the show? I have no recollection of what we did on Monday.

All right. I'm sending you this Raymer picture, which means we have the show recorded today. We have the show pic. We're 90% of the way there I hope you feel better I'm doing better today, I'm on the mend

When we were doing the show on Friday Because you said you started to feel bad On Thursday, I don't remember you mentioning this To me on Friday, so good for you for being Very stoic, I guess

I'm the strong silent type, as you know

I know, never a wasted word

Between the two of us A real John Wayne type over here Alright, well thanks for listening Everybody, that's going to do it for today's show but we will be back here tomorrow. Lord willing and the Creeks don't rise. Boy, it's windy and rainy here at the Madrona Hill studio. So hopefully we won't be underwater tomorrow. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Here he comes. Here comes John Wayne. I'm not gonna cry about my pa. I'm gonna build an airport, put my name on it. Why, Michael? So you can fly away from your feelings. You can keep them bottled up, but they will come out, Michael, sometimes in the most unexpected... Hey, where the are my hard-boiled eggs? Power out.