Muse

if you've got a problem that you can't solve if you're known for your drawings of ships that are tall if you've got grites if you've got dreams if you've got something to say then call the tbtl voicemail line today just dial 206-414-8285 that's 206-414-8285 the voicemail's ready to record you and it's so easy to call Burbank and Waltz in the basic T-T-B-T-L.

He's the handsome devil that came down from heaven to make some great songs and a dance forever.

You don't say much for him, but when you do, it's to the point and I salute you for it. Pants on the ground, pants on the ground, looking like a fool with your pants on the ground, with the gold in your mouth, hat turned sideways, pan hit the ground, call yourself a cool cat, looking like a fool, walking downtown with your pants on the ground, giddy up. This is the real thing. This is the necessary art of our time. This needs respect. So let's keep the drinks full, let's keep the appetizers circulating, but that's not getting anybody's face.

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show it just might be too beautiful to live do it till it stops will you please stop my name is luke burbank i am your host brother who are you what are you doing coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where boy this ain't no los angeles weather it's frigid here for march 19. for me a bathroom is just a library with a cold seat having that moment where actually having trouble operating the laptop computer here uh because my uh fingers are numb because the madrona hill studio is even i don't know two years into this project three years how long have we been here dear god i still have a real legit heating system going in here that's all right i'm actually i may brave the outdoor cold to take my new little e-bike on a spin later today if i if i get a few moments of peace on this wednesday unlikely considering working on this cbs tv story that we were filming uh that goes up on sunday we've got old live wire tomorrow night at the alberta rose theater come through here in portland and critically we've got episode 4 425 in a collector series to present to you right now Let the fun begin. On this very episode of the show. I read an article in the paper today making a pretty strong case that I really should just unplug my Alexa device. Welcome to the Internet. And maybe just hurl it into the mighty Columbia. Although then it'll probably start recording the thoughts of the fish and other wildlife, and they don't need that. Anyway, I tried to, I did something unusual this morning. Well, yeah, trying. That's unusual for me. I tried to change the security settings on my Alexa unsuccessfully. More on that coming up in a moment. Once we've said hello to this guy, longest running Cobra of the show, and of course also...

The man who brought the rock and roll edge to the Eagles.

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

Good morning, Luke. I hate to call you out like this, but I think you forgot to switch hats. You're supposed to put on your TBTL hat now. You're doing TBTL. You're no longer doing your Sunday. You're wearing your CBS Sunday morning hat because you're doing CBS Sunday morning work. But now don't you have another hat you should put on?

Well, you know, let's think about the junior sluggers cap. Oh, boy. We need to get Coach Ben on the show and talk about, you know, the upcoming season and what's going on with all that.

Good point. That is that must be right around the corner. Are we in spring training right now or the sluggers down in Peoria?

Pitchers and catchers reported last week. Most of them had to miss school. They're in sixth grade, but they, you know, it's about priorities. Yeah.

Pictures and catchers had to report to detention last week.

That's right. For sticking bubble gum under the desk. Yeah. Right before we started this recording today, I was running kind of late and I apologize to you. I said, I got to record this thing for CBS. This kind of the voiceover tracks for this story that's going to be on on Sunday. And I didn't realize that I also have this CBS Sunday morning hat on. And then when you and I got on the video link, you said, oh, I see you wear that. You wear that hat when you do CBS things and then zone. Yeah, exactly. And really what it is, is that I am I'm really discombobulated this morning. I got back last night, not super late. It was probably maybe nine or 10 p.m., but I'm having one of those weeks and it's completely self-created.

This is because of decisions that I've made, choices that I've made, where I've got kind of a lot of things colliding. And so, like, I go to sleep and then I woke up at, like, three this morning just with thinking the, like, racing thoughts about stuff that I needed to do, which is unusual for me. I usually, however stressed I am, I usually somehow sleep my way through it. But so then I got up this morning. First of all, I hit snooze uncharacteristically for me. I hit snooze five times. Like, my alarm goes off at 6am And I was probably Pushing 7 By the time that I actually got myself Out of bed And then I had notes from our producer Who I'd been working with on this story That's going on Sunday And I had to go in and try to rewrite parts of the script I had to try to tighten it up, etc That meant I was late on doing my TBTL prep While I'm doing this, I'm also listening to the Book on tape version of one of the three books I have to have read by tomorrow for live wire and in all of this I didn't get my little exercise time in and this explains the hat Andrew you know whereas you if you could you might take three to five showers a day I really like to keep it to one shower a day for some reason I don't know why that's a big deal to me but I try to be it's not that I'm worried about water usage it's not that I don't know I don't understand why it's important to me to try to like schedule my life so that I

only have to do one shower but well you mentioned last time this came up this sort of stuck with me you mentioned um your hair situation is more complicated than mine in that you have some

and um i have some but it's mostly spun sugar it's uh you know it's a comb back and over there's some powders that go in depending on what my on-camera responsibilities are for that day but yeah the hair situation is a little bit of it and it's just one of those weird things like i was i I saw some video online, and again, I don't know if this is really related to somebody who has ADHD, but this person was narrating their thought pattern. They were saying basically, this is how my brain works because I have ADHD, which is they're lying in bed and they think, okay, I should probably exercise today, okay, but then I should probably eat something before I exercise so that I have energy, but then also I should exercise before I do this other thing because I need to be showered before this other thing and i don't want to have to do a shower for that thing and then do a shower afterwards because i've exercised and you start to get really caught up in this chain of events and this idea of what the most efficient series of steps are like the day is full of a hundred things that need to happen but they've got to line up perfectly so there's no wasted energy or

else it's it's all ruined and then does everything lock up because of that does it end up becoming It can be a little overwhelming

Yes, because right now the mode that I'm in is I need to do, it's Wednesday So Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I'm trying to do this wait thing So I need to do this wait thing But I was running out of time It was like 9.30 And I knew that it was going to push Our TBTL start, which I didn't want to do Because we've got a TBTB meeting later today And I've got other appointments And all this other stuff So what you're seeing here is me In like basically, underneath these I'm wearing sweats which is very unprofessional breakaway yep yep they are they say Chicago Bulls on the side and I'm gonna run out to the Alan Parsons probably just rip them off nice I have my running shorts on my exercise shorts on underneath the sweats that I'm wearing and basically here's what's gonna happen there I'll tell you I will probably end up the reason I only shower once a day is because I'm often I'm often sort of what's the word inclined towards fits of sobbing in this shower i can only handle it once a day emotionally i have my exercise clothes on including my shorts on underneath these sweats and probably it won't be till four or five today before i can do this workout meaning i'll be going around i'll be in town doing errands i'll be doing all this stuff like a kid who's wearing their swim trunks under their real clothes like that was my move sometimes as a kid i was so excited about the prospects of swimming or a slip and slide or a sprinkler or whatever like I would sometimes just wear my swim trunks under my clothes just for a good feeling or like because you knew that you'd be at the pool later at some point yeah yeah yeah like maybe it would be also that sometimes I didn't have any clean underwear and there was like a there was a built-in mesh an internet as they say an internetting welcome to the internet but that's what I feel like today like I've got I feel like there's a lot that I have to get done with today. I don't really have, I don't have it mapped out in that way that would kind of calm down my, my, my anxiety around it. Like, because that's the other thing I have every single day. I have this email drafted. It's a to do, and I put the things in, in order. And when those things are all in order, not that I even always accomplish them in that order or in the timeline that I lay out, but there's something about laying out the timeline down to the 15 minute increment.

that kind of calms me down. And then I feel like now this is accomplishable. And today, because I overslept and because I've got the various parts of my job life kind of all kind of clanging into each other, I'm just a man sitting in front of you with extreme bedhead underneath the CBS Sunday morning hat and his swim trunks on, just hoping somebody will take me to the community pool.

I am looking for the perfect drop, which I can't find right now, but I think in the parlance of TBTL, You're slimy, you're grimy, and you need a shower? Is that what it is?

I'm slimy, I'm grimy, I need a shower, and I have a garbage situation.

Really hitting a lot of the high points of the show.

I think that's interesting because that's our friend Gus, right?

No. No. No, that is, this is Andrew's kid, who's now, I'm grimy, I'm slimy, I need a shower,

and I've got a garbage situation. And I believe that was originally a garbage situation.

Yes, and I think it all started with a quote from me one day because I think I was in kind of a similar situation as you. Probably sans the to-do list, but I think I joined the show one day pre-shower, and I felt like I had, I just had to, it's kind of like, you know, when people start smoking weed for the first time, and they have to tell everybody how high they are. I mean, you don't hang around in those circles, and I don't think you did back in the day, but, you know, like, if you're somebody who's pretty, you know, like, kind of comfortable with and used to the idea of smoking marijuana, but then you are, and I'm thinking, like, college era days or whatever, and then there's somebody who, like, doesn't do it.

You no longer feel the need to report your level of high net at all times.

Yeah, and then there's somebody who doesn't do it that much, and they're just like, you guys, you guys. Right. And it's like there's this impulse, this compulsion. Compulsion? Electricity. Yeah, what am I saying? Compulsion. I think it has to do with certain S sounds. I guess so. Yeah, boy, I just heard that in real life. I'm on the record.

I love how you say electricity. Compulsion?

I don't think we're going to do that.

I won't accept any criticism of you on that.

But anyway, to tell everybody, oh, I'm so high, man. I'm so high. And I sort of feel like that is me when I haven't taken a shower. I got to kind of tell everybody, listen, I'm just like, I haven't taken a shower because it's so front of mind to me.

Yeah, the thing about that clip of tape, can you play it again if you still have it there? Yes. Of that young person quoting me, quoting you.

I'm slimy, I'm grimy, I need a shower, and I have a garbage situation.

I misspoke. Andrew is the speaker there, by the way.

This young person, who's probably not that young anymore, is probably welcoming their first child. Let's hope not.

Bruce, that's not true Everything's fine

That sounds like a kid who grew up in a house Where they say That needs recycled That needs washed That needs showered And I grew up in a house where it was That needs to be recycled Have you noticed this division In how people talk about things So let's imagine you've got a couple of piles of things Like in the garage You either had a dad who says Oh yeah, that needs to be sorted

or you had a dad who said that needs sorted i had not noticed this listen for it i have issues with this but you're saying this is a new phenomenon or this goes i don't think it's new it's just a

division it's just a it's yet another way that they try to divide us andrew no i i just have like i had friends and i'll just i've always heard this in speech patterns that there are people and i think it just has to do with how it was in your house you grew up in so for instance can you play

the clip one more time yes okay but you're gearing up i'm waiting for you to finish because then i

want the rest of the show to respond i'm slimy i'm grimy i need shower and i have a garbage situation

now this could have just been a simple slip of the tongue but i need shower as opposed to i need to shower the the the word to is left out and that's in my experience part of a larger vocal pattern that a lot of people have where they say that needs recycled that that needs sorted that needs but they don't say to be recycled to be sorted to shower it's like the and this is where i'm getting up at the end to the edge of my knowledge of grammar i guess it would be the verb yeah it

sounds like they're they're taking the verb out which is or or turning a noun into a verb which is a huge pet peeve of mine shower but shower isn't shower of no you're right shower is a verb Showers of a I guess recycle is a verb, too. That needs. So give me the examples again.

OK, so I walk. So you're you're you're visiting the Madrona Hill studio and I've got a bunch of stuff that's kind of cluttered. In fact, I sort of literally do over on the what will someday be the kitchen island. Yes, friends. Yes, listener. That's still not done. And there's just some different.

piles of things and let's say it's some audio cables and uh other you know jurassic technology it's a there's a mini disc player etc you are visiting and i look over and i go oh yeah uh that no no if i'm talking like myself to you andrew i would look over and go oh yeah all that stuff needs to be sorted all that stuff needs to be sorted out or sorted now if i grew up in a different kind of family structure that my theory is this young person did and by family structure i just mean conversationally the words we use i would say You don't mean broken home. No, no, no. Everything I know about that home. Is that Bruce in Lake Stevens' kid? Yes.

I'm so embarrassed for fumbling that Andrew is the speaker there. Bruce is his father.

I believe, is Andrew the prom baby? I think so. I think that that child was conceived after the TV show.

That's why I was really trying to back you off of the Andrew is now having children. I don't need to give anybody that household a heart attack.

Well, I mean, 17 was early enough for me.

Andrew, stop listening. Go to church. Is it possible? I mean, Andrew might be the way to. Andrew, go to church right now.

Andrew needs church.

Andrew, pray. This needs praying.

This needs pray. This needs prayer. No, actually, that might actually work. But here's my point. The way I always heard it and the way we always said it in my family was like, this needs to be sorted. And there is a different version of that that is the way a lot of Americans speak, which is this needs sorted. To be is dropped. This needs sorted. I don't think that's proper.

I think sorting might work there. I don't think it's proper either, but it's what people do. because here's my thing do you remember when you were in england i do okay and do you remember that you recorded a hey dummies video there with our friend i did with our friend bean oh man i

got baxter and i've got i just got a i just got a ping from whatsapp what's what's are you guys

doing over on whatsapp oh is it from being okay we'll figure that out later um you guys recorded a video talking about sort of verbal pet peeves that you hear other people do and the question was like is it you know whether it's sort of a a grammatical thing or an expression and i answered the same question for hey dummies a couple of weeks later because i had a lot of feelings about this stuff as you know and um i talked about two words or kind of phrases that i don't like their words really um that sort of came into existence during my lifetime that i don't like the old one being the word party as a verb and i said this and i think it was maybe last week's hey dummies or two weeks ago that like i don't feel like our parents generation grew up saying hey let's party i was partying last night right they would just say i was drinking or whatever i like to party and then when i like to party and then when i was in college uh people would be like oh yes partying last night i was just always like oh that this hits my ear wrong and then also i didn't like the fact that like partying was just a it didn't actually even mean going to a party it just meant like you could have been at home just getting drunk on a six-pack like oh i partied too hard last night like oh really who were you partying with like nobody i was just watching reruns i'm like that's not party like anyway and then the other one was adulting which is a much more modern one like that idea and again both of them fall into this category of taking a noun though i went to a party and turning into a verb I partied I am acting like an adult acting being the verb there to adulting like and so that is like an irritation of mine but you've sort of blown my mind here because if you say that needs sorted you're just skipping the you're skipping the verb altogether because it needs to be to be there however every example you gave the word is kind of a verb like sort can be used as a verb as you said recycle can be used rinse so wash that needs all of these that needs washed it's wrong i do wonder though and this might just be my connection to like kind of having family in appalachia and like west virginia and stuff like i feel like i could hear a chacha saying something like that needs washing that needs washing or that needs rinsing or something like that which is that also that also must be wrong right also i do want to play this for you i am grimy i am slimy i need a shower and i'm in the middle of a garbage situation that's the original cut from episode 2995 found via the new search engine called hey gurgle that was built from the ground up by executive producer lynn i want to i want to first of all

I want to apologize to Lynn and to you that you know that you guys were going a little bit back and forth on this. And I was absent because of being in transit and things like that. But can you explain this, what Hey Gurgle is?

I can't because it is deeply complicated. No, it was complicated in the back end. And Lynn walked us through how it worked out for him. And it was so fascinating and so over my head. But basically, we all know Lynn, who's been running Marsupial Gurgle for a long, long time and then kind of took a hiatus.

for a while of pulling clips from every episode of tbtl and sorting it and organizing it and tagging it and uploading it he didn't need it sorted there was a huge huge database that lin had created but apparently the search function on that marsupial gurgle.com the search engine didn't work all that well but then lin recently just said i'm going to revisit this it's just been bugging him he's i'm just going to revisit this and create a good search engine and since we say hey gorgle all the time on the show. Lynn's calling this hey gurgle, which I just think is really fascinating. That's really clever. And so if you want a quick, fast way, and this was really quick. I typed in slimy, and the second result was me saying this. I am grimy. I am slimy. I need a shower, and I'm in the middle of a garbage situation. I found that in seconds by going to search.marsupialgurgle.com. Hey gurgle. Hey gurgle. It's hey gurgle.

Search.marsupialgurgle.com. And Gurgle is G-U-R-G-L-E dot com. Okay, I just want to check this out, too.

I don't know if the search engines have found it yet, but if I type in, hey, Gurgle, what do I get? Yes, you know what? Just type in, hey, Gurgle, and I think you might get there.

This is great. Yeah, right? Oh, my gosh. Yes, this is incredible. Search.marsupialgurgle.com. It says, hey, Gurgle, at the top. like uh yeah let's i'm trying to think uh you can also just go to marsupial gurgle.com by the way

and hit search i now realize that's the easiest way to get people there sorry for being so clumsy about this lynn but yeah if you just go to marsupial gurgle.com let the robot do what the

robot do that's a great drop this is really helpful to me andrew because like i don't have enough drops about robots i mean really i have does this sound like a musical robot but like this is i mean it would it does involve us playing more drops of ourselves i guess which i don't know how the listeners feel about that but this is remarkable good job lynn just felt

shame buying pre-boiled eggs i felt shame i have no recollection of saying that of course this is a wonderland i'm looking for more here here oh here's i typed in eggs by the way i found

myself in that condition before where i'm like deep deep in the bowels of someone's twitter and and I'm reading things and responding and fighting, and I realize I'm mostly fighting with eggs.

Oh, that kind of egg. Yeah, right. I remember those. I would figure out what we're getting at there.

What a simpler time, Andrew. Was it? When the worst thing happening on Twitter was just bot accounts and eggs and just the occasional right-wing nutjob who was being shadow banned or whatever. What a time that was.

It was just foreplay, Luke. who's just setting us up for the future, I think. So where were we? So yeah, the grammatical thing, I don't know. I don't think, I don't want to be judging That also could have just been an omission.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm sorry, I'll let you finish.

No, I was just kidding. I just don't, I guess I sincerely feel that while I love being a pedant and I love talking about grammar, I also feel like I don't want to police the way other people speak as well. And that's something that's new-ish to me, like in adulthood i think like i had no problem like kind of like you've started adulting now exactly right i think when i was a younger person and more strident i'd be like you know say it right or whatever yeah except for the things that i say wrong like Reese's Pieces then you just got to give me uh leeway on that because it's cute when i say it you know yeah exactly so well yeah so it's like i can't live in both worlds and it's like no i i like exploring these these you know experiences and the way people talk but i don't want to be over here being like you're wrong or whatever or be too finger-pointing if you're going around saying that you're adulting.

I mean, I think the thing about adulting is I think it's a very self-aware kind of slight misuse of the word or whatever. I mean, I think that's part of the joke of adulting, which is, again, kind of one of those, you know, I can't even adult today, Andrew. I can't even, yeah. That's probably not for me. But as far as how I started this whole thing, I'm not even I'm not critical at all of people who say this needs sorted It's like it's just a is it technically accurate or technically is it grammatically correct Maybe not or whatever I don't care at all I just think it's something that I have noticed in my life is a way that a lot of people talk And I find it great it's you know variety is the spice of life Like I'm not here to I'm not here to correct anyone on that I'm just here to note it and see Andrew if you now start noticing it occasionally And you also may need to travel to You may need to travel outside of your liberal bubble You may need to get out with the real people With real Americans Because I also Bees, we're going to Federal Way I feel like this is a pattern of speech That Camaro Kev heard a good amount of Growing up in Lake Stevens

Yeah, maybe Lake Stevens would have been better Than Federal Way Too close to the... God, those tossed salad and scrambled eggs. Sorry, you want me to close the tab? Still on the eggs page.

You want me to close the tab? Yeah, sure.

Hey, I'm very excited about my new e-bike, Andrew.

Oh, I'm very excited about your new e-bike, too.

I got it on Friday, so like last Friday, but then I kind of almost immediately went out of town. I basically had a lot to do on that Friday. We wrapped TBTL. I had all the stuff I should be doing, and then i immediately set about assembling the bicycle just because i was so excited i texted you a picture i was like i'm like a nine-year-old kid on christmas morning like i was so and i was also proud of myself because it it came together the assembly of this e-bike was was pretty pretty straightforward it's kind of annoying because the way this is almost like an ikea type of a thing which is they didn't want to have instructions that were language specific yeah because they probably sell these things all over the world. And so it was just a video of a guy wordlessly doing this thing, which is great, except I had to keep rewinding the video. Because think about it. It's like you start the video, it's got this little music playing. He's setting this part up, and then he's doing this. But then it's like, okay, wait, is that cable going over that thing or under that thing? And then you've got to stop and rewind it and then pause it and then kind of get it going. And then you're holding the phone. you're like propping the phone up somewhere and trying to rewind it and you know it it would have been a little easier if there was just like you know instructions starting with this is the first thing you do they had a qr code it's you know 2025 so of course it's like a qr code with the stuff you scan it and it takes you to the video of the guy wordlessly assembling the bicycle but it'd be

funny if he did it wordlessly with no music just a low level ground hum there was a little there

was a little peppy music underneath him but that would have also been very eerie some kind of a hostage video he's in a basement there's a light that's just kind of yeah yeah it just sort of flickers while you hear a loud refrigerator you have to put this bike together in one hour or somebody dies um i was i was proud of this though uh it's such a small thing but well first of all what was in my head was that we'd had a listener who had reached out when she heard that this was the kind of bicycle that i was going to buy and uh she had mentioned that i think her husband had bought this kind of bike and she uh found it to be uh they found it to be a little bit okay it was listener susan who had reached out and said that uh basically she bought this bike and then i think she might have tasked her husband with assembling and then it was pretty frustrating to assemble so i was kind of bracing for that i think we bought different kinds of bikes from this company but uh so it was coming together pretty straightforward and then i get to the pedals and that should be very easy because you just screw them into the you know the two i don't know the word for it andrew but there were no words in the video unfortunately that's right so whatever you call the thing that your pedal on your bicycle goes into that then drives the the uh the gears or the crank the other thing the thing that goes into the other thing yeah and uh i i'm sitting there and i go to put the pedal in and just screw it in it's a pretty straightforward process i think and it's like it's not quite seating and then and going in there and then i'm i got one of them kind of mostly in and the other one kind of doesn't want to go and i'm like i get it all i get to start threading but then and i want to really start reefing on it but i'm also worried that if i like yeah if i reef on it and the threads get damaged

you know like game over right i'm so scared of stripping things out these days like so scared and that's an you can't do it there that you're putting so much pressure on those pedals that has to be seated properly otherwise in no time it's just gonna wear itself out and i thought the irony

of this was like at this point literally the entire bike is assembled yeah this shouldn't be the easy part and and i thought boy wouldn't it be crazy if like they had just when they machined this they just didn't thread the pedals quite right or one of them was kind of off or the you know like this whole thing is put together but without pedals it can't I was like can I Gilligan's Island this can I Gilligan's Island this can I like can I lash a couple of sticks onto there for the pedals like it's so funny to have this you know it's cheap as e-bikes go but still not it'd be the most probably most expensive bicycle I've ever purchased and it's totally functional except the most critical arguably one of the most critical parts which is the pedals and i'm sitting there and i'm just like i'm kind of going online i'm not finding much and then i finally decide let me just see if somewhere in this pamphlet because there's a qr code but i like there must be some directions and sure enough there was kind of like minimal directions it wasn't like a step by step but it was just like occasionally chirping it of like this and it was like as i was getting close to just like jamming these pedals and just trying to get them in there once and for all but i could see little silver shavings starting and i was like oh i hate that we can't we can't

We can't, you know, because, like, if Walt was here, well, first of all, I would just, I'm a 48-year-old, soon-to-be 49-year-old man who thought, I wish I could ask my dad how to do this.

Yeah.

Because he just, he has a mechanically inclined brain, and he would just figure it out. He would just go, well, it's probably this, and he'd be right. I literally thought, God, I wish Walt was here. He'd help me with this, but he wasn't here.

So can I guess the solution here? Yes. You need to take a toothpick and clean out your charging port. Was that it?

i was halfway to the apple store andrew with this bike i was halfway to the genius bar with this bike um i was like i i again this is such a low such a low bar but i went through a whole range of emotions first was they sent me the wrong pedals this is that's why this bike is cheap because it's just run by morons and they just like they they sent the wrong thing or they didn't the reason this bike was was relatively cheap by e-bike standards was because they don't care about details they don't care about things like machining the threads on the pedals so that they're you know and uh and then i was like uh you know like i'm gonna have to go through customer service and then i just thought i bet there is a solution to this like i just had this moment of being like i bet you if i dig a little deeper there is a there's a reasonable explanation i'm just doing something wrong here i don't know what that something is but let's not just throw you know let's not just throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's also not like reef on this thing so that you do. Cause that's the other thing that I tend to do. Generally speaking, when I come up against a problem, when I'm doing any kind of a construction project or an assembly project is a lot of times I assume that the directions are wrong or they sent the wrong thing, not okay. This is probably designed to fit together. And if it's not fitting together, it means I'm doing something wrong and I need to step back and take a moment and assess that's not in my personality. I'm a very just kind of like, And then I usually end up doing more harm than good.

I'm coming up with another theory, but I don't want to interrupt your story. Before you give the reveal, I have a real theory now. Okay, I want to hear your real theory. Because I'm really interested in this. I'm on the edge of my seat as somebody who completely understands these feelings that you're having. Like you're already writing the note into the company in your head before you figured it out. Usually my troubleshooting is more an electronic kind of thing, computer-y things or whatever. But I totally want to validate what you're saying about that feeling. But I'm also somebody who does slow down a little bit and also is filled with self-doubt in a lot of ways, so it goes through the troubleshooting process. And I want to guess this. Is there any chance it is specific left-right pedals, and you were trying to put the left and the right and the right and the left?

Yes, and. Yes, and. Because that's the rule of podcasting. Yes, and. Absolutely. All right. So here was the trick. First of all, they were left and right pedals Which it did not tell you in the wordless video The wordless video, a guy who looks like the breakout star Other than the woman who won the Academy Award for Anora Obviously is the breakout star of Anora But there's this other guy who plays her sort of taciturn Russian love interest Who is also the breakout star of Anora, I think The guy in the video looked exactly like the dude from Enora But he did not There was no writing on the screen It did not say on the video left and right pedal I don't know how you would ever know that And so I had put one of the pedals on And it kind of started to work In fact it did It screwed in okay But I had no idea if it was in the right thing or not But this was the other And luckily in the instructions Which again were not comprehensive But this was in there They said the pedals are left and right And here's the other thing They turn in different directions when you're screwing them in. One of the pedals is counterclockwise, and one of them is clockwise. Now, that's strange. I think it has to do probably with the way that the pressure from your feet and the gears and the crank, so it's going to be self-tightening instead of self-loose.

Yes, okay, that's really brilliant then. That makes sense. It's smart.

Like everything with this bike, Andrew, this thing is so flippin' sweet. So I also, there was...

E equals MC squared, smart bike. How smart is that? Yes.

oh my gosh so like i i um i i so i i figured out and the other thing was that the there was the tiniest of like very subtle indication of a little l and a little r and i am now too old to read this kind of stuff without my glasses and a bright light yeah yeah you know what i mean yeah like 20 years ago i would have just looked and been like oh this one has has r etched in it in the absolute smallest size, but instead I was like, well, let's get the flashlight out on the old iPhone.

Yeah, that was the Luke Burbank who could drink a cup of coffee before he went to bed. I remember that guy.

I should stop now. He was a party animal.

Honestly, this is real.

And so anyway, I figured out which was the left, which was the right, and then had to remind myself.

of what clockwise and counterclockwise was, but with a little finessing, I got them in there. They worked great, and then I had to charge up the battery on the bike, which took a few hours, which was, again, like, it was torture to me, because I was so excited to get out there. And then I did, I rode it up and down my street, which is on a hill, as you might imagine, and it was so cool. It's the coolest, I mean, literally, I was on the bike for 10 minutes. So maybe the issues that people have sort of flagged with it will come into play once I'm actually doing longer rides and I've used it more and whatever. But as far as the short term goes, like I've only ridden an e-bike maybe once or twice in my life. And it's so cool. Like this thing has, you know, it has a little clicker that puts you into like eco mode or sport mode. There's all these different little things. And like I would just flew up that hill. It was so great. now here's the weird thing and this just goes to some i don't know core insecurity i have i don't know why i felt embarrassed by my neighbors seeing me riding this bike like why i don't know why that would be a feeling i would have but like i i rode by a couple of neighbors who happened to be out doing things and like they waved and i waved and like there's not most of my neighbors around here i have had like maybe three conversations with briefly like roll the the window on the car how's the day going nice weather we're having everyone is cool out here i don't know why somehow the idea of them seeing me riding a bike up and down the street made me

feel kind of foolish i i can't explain that feeling but i had it i think i understand how you might feel about that especially because you're not on bikes much so you i'm not on bikes much you felt you felt ostentatious is the wrong word but i felt childlike and somewhat awkward

maybe yeah i felt like yeah nobody right i've never seen anyone riding a bike on this road is the first thing probably there are people around here who are cyclists but probably do that thing where they like have a rack on the back of their truck and they throw their cycles their bikes on and they go down to some place and ride them or whatever you don't see people it's like a very hilly neighborhood without sidewalks and you just don't see people generally riding their bikes there's not young kids you don't have a culture of like little kids bike riding actually that's not true if you go a few blocks from me there is that but like i don't know why i was like i felt when my neighbors were observing i drove by someone who was coming down in a car and they waved and i kind of waved i felt like they're like this is a

guy going through a crisis this is a guy that they were just like neighbor got a new bike maybe or not even that they just saw your face and waved i understand this intellectually i can i'm just

emotionally what it felt like to me was they were like oh this guy got an e-bike because he's trying to somehow change his life and he just put it together and he's all excited and and this is this is a very immature behavior from a guy who's going to be 50 pretty soon that was and i was like i got to get over this because i do want to start riding this bike and i don't want to be i and also by the way when i get out of my neighborhood i think that feeling will go down it's not like i'm embarrassed to be seen riding a bike out on the larger neighborhood road past cars that of people who I will never meet, who's something about my immediate circle of neighbors. I also have, you've been to my house. I am at the dead end of this road and I'm kind of, I feel like in a little bit of a fishbowl because my little house, my little cottage was the first thing built out here. And then the rest of the, of the area got subdivided and developed. So it's like, if I have a delivery coming down, if Walt is here, if I'm home or not home, I feel like I've got neighbors that are kind of their their houses are up kind of above my house and they can very easily by looking out their window observe me at all times and the view you would like the the natural

view of that area is the river and you are between them and the river yeah right so if they're sitting

out on their porch you know uh at night watching the sunset or just having a relaxing time it's kind of like you've got the river which is like you said that's what we're all looking at but then you've got this house that's down there at the end of the street so i'm kind of that has a fifth year

old guy putting baseball cards in his spokes for some reason and trying to make sure that it's not

a valuable card. That's also, I think, if I'm being honest, why I felt a little bit childlike when I was making vroom vroom sounds as I was riding this bike. But actually, this is the other thing that I'm pretty excited about, Andrew, and this is a more, like, I want to be, well, how do I get into this? I'm really excited about where helmet technology has gone. Yeah. Because, and this is, I want to be careful because I think that we should be wearing helmets when we ride bikes. Well, I'll say this

Oh my god I love how much you're equivocating on one of the most I would think like Universally agreed upon ideas here

But I think I'm on the record on this show as saying I never wore a helmet when I was a kid And quote unquote, I was fine And I was a big bike riding kid Like it was a big part of my life A, getting places And B, like doing jumps and shit with my friends like we were really into riding our bikes everywhere and doing a lot of like frankly dangerous stuff and it was it was unheard of for any of us to wear helmets and in adult life the couple of times I've been on a bike I probably haven't been wearing a helmet I don't want to put you on the spot but like when you get like a city bike or something are you helmeting no I'm not I

know that I should but like for me the city bike is never a planned out thing in fact I don't believe I have a helmet anymore but I'm with you I didn't have a bike helmet until I was an adult I I wasn't doing kind of daredevil-y things on my bicycle, but I grew up in the country where there were no sidewalks or anything, and my parents were very strict about keeping us off the roads because you would hear a lot of, I mean, these were like very country-ish, very hilly, very curvy roads where idiots with mullets and thunderbirds would like to speed around and throw beer cans out the window.

I was going to say they probably a couple of Miller lights in while they're doing it.

And so it's not unheard of. So I mostly wasn't a lot on the roads. But then when I was, I think, maybe about 14 or something, my folks started letting me ride to my friend Tony's house. And when Tony moved away, I would still go there and mow his dad's lawn and hang out with Tony's dad. He was a really cool guy. But I remember it was like a five-mile bike ride. And I had a 10-speed, and it was five miles on the shoulder of country roads, and I never wore a helmet. So, yeah, the culture has changed around that.

The reason I think I'm equivocating so much, too, is because I've probably, in a maybe, I guess you could say, a kind of regrettable moment on the show, more than once I've probably equated, like, the bubble wrapping of American children and the fact that it's like, you know, you know peyton put your helmet on on while you're riding on your strider on the sidewalk which like if you don't know a strider is kind of like now one of these it's early bike development it doesn't actually have a crank on it it's just like it was almost what you were going to be doing until you figured out the yeah exactly i was going to have my own version but like it's a little thing that like little kids ride on to get used to being on two wheels but they don't pedal they just kind of like hop along and then move it and everything and like if i see a kid on a strider and with a helmet, some part of me is like, how far is the kid going to fall from the strider that's going under 0.05 miles per hour? Anyway, I think being 49, soon to be, has me in a different frame of mind, which is like, and maybe I'm just more fearful about the world now in a good way, certainly in this way, in a good way, which is like, when I got this bike, the next thought I had was, I got to figure out some kind of helmet situation. I can't be out there putting in miles along these also kind of rural roads with no shoulder at my age without a helmet and risking going over the handlebars or somebody clipping me or who knows what and then just being you know in uh in some kind of an altered state for the rest of my life and i'm happy to say i got this helmet andrew like these new helmets first of all check this out i don't really know how to operate it yet but like check out uh this like it's got like a it's got a light on the back of it yeah

it's almost it's almost a knight rider-esque light for folks who can't see it yes and so if

you're riding and it's dark that's that's adding some and then look at the front you can't really tell because it's bright here is it reflective it's no it's it's a light it's a light as well

that little thing is a light and like hold on what about a camera does it have any cameras on it

and they probably would upsell me on that i don't think i got the one this doesn't have a camera Hold on a sec. Let's see here. Crazy hair alert. All right. Now. Sound backwards, Luke. I'm not here to tell you I look cool, Andrew, because I don't. But I look I think less dorky than what I imagined a helmet would do because the last time I even looked at a bike helmet was 20 years ago.

And they had those like, they almost looked like for a while there, all bike helmets looked like those Nerf footballs that were twisty sort of. You know what I'm talking about? when we were kids they all had these like yeah they had like the bike helmets were really ugly

for a while they were they were not something that the designers were thinking about the look of which is fine because they were thinking about the preserving someone's brain function of them also look at this visor it's it's a magnetic oh wow he just popped that thing off he yeah just like sticks on breakaway clothes like i just i'm amazed at how at how designing things are these days and for all the things about 2025 that just manifestly suck i do feel like helmet technology again i gotta get gotta quickly get your quickly repulsed back on oh yeah the world's not ready to see what's underneath those hats no it's troubling but anyway it would be awesome if

they combine that with the the laser baldness helmet technology like how cool would it be if you were riding your bike at night and people could see your red glowing face like coming do

you understand that's literally a thought i had at three in the morning this morning i literally woke up and I thought I should pitch this to Andrew. or I should pitch this to the Sharks. Hey, Sharks, I need $500,000 to perfect my helmet technology. It's a bike helmet that also regrows your hair.

I am surprised that you didn't go for a camera. I thought for sure you were going to tell me that you got a camera on your helmet because it seems like you like documenting things.

This actually, I have to be honest with you, there's a bunch of this helmet that I bought from some company called Unit One. it I took the base model like it had all these like you can get some kind of a remote control dealie that sits on your bike but it remote controls the helmet and it does left and right turns on that light turn signal that's an upsell

I wonder if I was a driver if I would clock that you know what I mean as opposed to the old fashioned

but there was like three or four other things that I could have and you know they they know exactly the price point to get me they're all like 30 more dollars like oh do you want the remote for your turn signal on your thing and it's like 30 more bucks just throw it in the shopping cart you know it's you know it's one banana michael yeah but then you do three of those and now it's another hundred dollars of stuff and i figured let me if i find myself riding this bike so much and wearing this helmet so much and i find using the traditional bike turn signals so odious then i will spend the 30 to get the thing that turns the helmet into like a blinker system i i am trying to in the smallest way kind of like there's another example of this uh oh you know i would on monday when i was at the hotel i was uh working out in the gym and you know because of this weight thing i'm trying to do which i have not done today i was using the uh dumbbells in the gym in the hotel you know a lot of times most gyms now in hotels just have like a a rack of those different um dumbbells what i have is this kooky adjustable system that's kind of like this big bulky cumbersome thing that you can make each each um dumbbell like up to 50 pounds each or down to like 15 pounds each you're saying it's cumbersome but

it takes up less space than having a whole bunch of them so it takes up less space it does take up

less space not it's not as space efficient as efficient as i thought it was going to be but like of course what's happened is now that i've put in all of three to four weeks on this thing and then i went to the hotel and i used their their system and that's so easy you don't have to adjust everything it's just it's a tree of these different weights and you do one way and then you get done you take your break you grab the next one i was like this is so great and then like of course i texted becca and i was like okay this these dumbbell like the the the dumbbell like rack is the way to go and then she was like don't buy one yeah you're like no no they have special

ones that are made of gold now that's why they're so heavy you know me the reason she was saying

don't buy one is because you can buy them at the there's like a nike employee store that we get to go to yeah where everything is like half off and so i was like no no good good call but but i what i was really thinking was okay i have now clocked that i like using this dumbbell rack better than my weird system here. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to max out my weird system. I'm going to use my weird system because I paid for it until it actually becomes obsolete for me. Either I'm lifting enough weight that there no longer is enough weight in these adjustable things, or let's just say six months or a year from now, this is something that I've really made a regular practice of. And I can really say to myself, honestly, yes, you are going to get use out of this dumbbell set if you buy a new set with a rack and everything but old me would have just that morning just bought a rack on amazon or something and just been like now this is my new reality but i'm like i'm i'm trying to the same thing with this bike helmet it's like i'm trying to see if i'm going to use it enough before i go buy the cadillac of bike helmets here's what i

need you to do and i'm being serious here i need you to really stick with the bike thing because i need you to continue to live vicariously well sort of but like i've been very e-bike curious for a while there, and I was getting pretty close to, I was getting close to thinking seriously about it, and that is true. I was not yet thinking seriously about it, but I was getting close to thinking about it seriously, and these are my steps. That's on my to-do list. Number one, start to consider thinking seriously about something.

You and I couldn't be wired more differently when it comes to major purchases.

Especially major purchases, exactly, and you've really tapped into something. you saying well let's see how much i use this and then maybe i can build upon it i i do live like that i think because i never trust myself especially if it's something that betters me in some way like going on more bike rides like i'm just like yeah we'll see or is it going to be like bart simpson's closet i remember a joke early on in the simpsons of homer just saying just throw it in the closet with your skis and your skateboard and everything and then i think he's got a very fabulous quote about like if

you try something and it doesn't work just throw it back in the closet it wasn't meant to be but anyway i am if this bike experience with you works out well i might be interested in also i know that you had some listeners warning you against that particular model of bike but if it turns out that it's a good model for you that would work for me because i will also say that like these bikes you've mentioned this on the show before there's a spectrum obviously in the prices and you did not go to the top of the top of the market on these things they can be so so expensive and of course i would i live in a neighborhood where if i had a really really expensive bike i'd be too nervous to drive it any or to lock it up anywhere if i rode it somewhere the fact that i call it driving

a bike really means i'm not ready well honestly the line's blurry because some of the more expensive ones we saw i was in the um alberta arts district uh this weekend with becca and a guy came down the street on what was fully a moped yeah i think technically you would have called it an e-bike

like it had pedals but it was like mostly it's like thumb operated that's what i wonder about some of these things it's like well if the power comes from a switch at your thumb and the tires are the size of a motorcycle yeah it's still better than driving a car around absolutely but

like yeah yeah yeah so um so yeah to some degree some of these things are kind of maybe more drivable than rideable but but um uh yeah i'm gonna see how this goes and and and i'll report back because i'm i'm excited about this and now i just need the weather to cooperate because like it's uh it's frigid that was the other thing that happened the other day it was also cold when i rode and immediately my eyes started watering not because of an emotional reaction to the bike

because it was just cold that's why you're embarrassed you're like you're just crying

on the bike my neighbors drive by this is me just weeping as i ride up the hill on sport mode

on the bike you know just occurred to me i am i take back everything i just said about you needing to ride the bike a lot so that you can tell me whether or not it's worth buying i need you to lose absolute all interest so you can buy it on the burbank aftermarket real cheap off of you for a song i was gonna say give it to me but sure i'll i'll throw 20 bucks your way what do you think for the effort for the effort 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.

Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors. These folks are donating a dazzling amount of dough. They're keeping TBTL rolling. And I got it.

I got a bicycle joke. No, actually,

you know, I had a different intrusive thought. I had a dream last night. Oh, yes. That just came back to me and it was that for some reason and this is i should have known it was a dream right away because it's hyper unrealistic i had a dream that somehow i got a dream catcher came to life i'll allow it i the dream was that i somehow got an email to me sent to me each day of everyone who was stopping donating to the show oh my gosh like and it didn't seem like a bad thing it wasn't like hundreds of people who just like a person here or there i think it's because of an offline conversation we've been having at tbt headquarters but i'm just just coming back to me right now the dream was that somehow i got i would get this little like report sent to me and it would be like this person this person is no longer donating and this is why and i remember in the dream i don't remember having a particularly strong reaction to it just being like well this is useful information or something but i i forgot i had that dream last night i forgot that i had it and then i remembered it when I was looking at the first name on our dazzling

donor list. You know me, you gotta be careful with dream talk with me because I could go on forever but I was putting silverware away in the drawer I believe yesterday or the day before and suddenly like a ton of bricks a memory hit me from a dream either the previous night or maybe even two nights prior that I was going around the house and I found a whole cache of forks and silverware because here's the deal the real life situation is sometimes like I don't really use the dishwasher Genevieve does and sometimes also Genevieve will like eat in a different room and leave dishes in there and so it's not uncommon for me to open up the drawer and find I don't have a fork and like if I want a fork then I gotta take a dirty ass fork out of the dirty ass dishwasher and wash it. You gotta fork and wash one. It's just like it's not a nice way to start a meal right like cleaning off crud that has been baking onto a or you know clinging to a fork for a few days in the dishwasher the whole thing turns me off big time. plus the smell of the dishwasher when you open it and then you gotta pull something like oh great i gotta use this thing like yeah the dishwasher i describe it not as a dishwasher but a closet where genevieve puts dirty dishes where crud can get hard until i need it um but having said all of that um i had this dream that i was finding

silverware all over the house like oh we're in great shape with silverware just okay and i did i totally forgot about this dream never thought about it again until two days later potentially where i'm putting away forks and all of a sudden like that's right we found all those forks in the attic wait that's right we don't have an attic that was a dream well that's what just happened

to me and thank goodness that list that i dreamed up of people who decided to not donate anymore Does not include Nancy Rahr of Tacoma, Washington Nancy says Hi, Andrew and Luke I can't believe I've been listening for 17 years Wow, Nance That's pretty much That's the entirety of the show That's probably like Yeah, that's gotta be day one If not month one, maybe You've been by my side Through so many changes in my life And even though I have often wanted to throw my phone out the window Short People is a song about prejudice for instance you can easily look that up my husband says that you guys say things wrong just to keep us engaged would that we were that calculating nancy okay so nancy's point there is that when we go off on the randy newman song short people we're missing the meta commentary that it's the song is is is making fun of people who who are are prejudiced in some way or or

dismissive of people of short stature yes it was an examination of prejudice by like kind of picking another group of people and saying wouldn't look how silly it is when we when we say it like this

i i believe that and i don't believe you know i've got my randy newman story which randy newman will always i'll always have a soft spot for him because i once watched him play a concert to a totally disinterested group of morning show radio producers and hosts and then he left the ballroom he went into the kitchen only to realize there wasn't an exit from the kitchen so we had to wait in the kitchen until everybody left so i've got a soft spot for randy newman i guess i didn't know the meta the meta statement of that song uh nancy says you are radio pros after all uh you've always been a comfort the tens are a big bonus i wouldn't even say a bonus i would say we are a big bonus the tens the community of tens is the show is really the it's the thing it's the attraction And then you've got us over here also doing our thing. Thank you for being my secret sort of not really family. Love you all.

Ooh, I've always wanted to be part of a secret family. I know. I never get to be a secret family. I find that hard to believe. I believe you have probably many. No, I have a secret family, but I don't get to be.

Those are totally different things, Andrew. I'm riding my bike over to visit my secret family.

You don't want to start your own secret family. You have that. You want to be part of somebody else's secret family. Yes, I just wouldn't mind being part of it.

like just getting a call one day saying, hi, I'm your brother that you've never heard of and we're part of a secret family across town. That would be spicy and dramatic. Anyway, Nancy, thank you for the support. Thanks for listening for all these years. And we will continue kind of weaving in annoying errors so that you will grab your phone so as to throw it and then stay engaged with what we're doing. That's right. Maestro?

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. This song is by Lil Uzi Vert, by the way. Look it up. It's surreal. It's a real fact. Where's Lil Uzi Vert been? I feel like we haven't been hearing about him in a while. I can't name one song.

The last I heard of him, he was having a, I think he had a diamond installed in the area between his eyebrows.

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

I think that was the last move that we heard from him.

I don't think, though, I mean, I threw that out there. I was just trying to think of a random performer. but like i don't think i could name a song i couldn't either um yeah i couldn't either i mean

i just there was a time where we were talking about him a lot he was doing a lot of stuff and then and then uh and then yeah he was he was and i if i remember right i think that the initially the diamond looked like it had been kind of misplaced and i want to say he was saying it was just swelling so everyone calm down this is going to settle in to be because like you know That's a pretty intense body mod.

It is. For it to be slightly off. Let me ask you a question. I am so sorry. This is just, the next Dazzling Donor message is pretty short. Sorry, Danny. I'll keep this long. No, for a second I got Lil Uzi Vert confused with, who was the rapper that you were briefly obsessed with, I'm going to say about more than maybe five years ago now, who had two songs I can think of, Broccoli and Cash Machine. Lil Yachty. Lil Yachty. So there was a Lil in there. That's why I was thinking of that.

It was a wild time. A lot of Lil's. 2015. It's a lot of Lil's. Yeah. I'm now looking up a GQ Australia story. The headline, whatever happened to Lil Uzi Vert's diamond? Lil Uzi Vert says, fans pulled his 30 million diamond out of his forehead at Rolling Loud. Did we talk about this too? No. God damn. This is a while ago.

by the way this is uh this is four years ago that this article was written lil uzi vert has been having a rough time with his forehead diamond after making headlines in february by implanting a giant pink diamond into his forehead and telling the and then pulling a magic trick by making it disappear in june rapper lil uzi vert has said the fans tried to rip it out of his forehead at rolling loud in miami now uh yeah right uh let's see after four months of sporting his new implant uh uzi has moved on eagle-eyed fans were quick to notice this week the rapper's head was diamondless yeah eagle-eyed fans eagle-eyed hey you'd be a real detail-oriented person yeah right um and uh it raised a question uh can uzi take the diamond out at will after sharing the diamond at the start of the year um blah blah blah whatever the rapper told tmz i had a show at rolling loud and i jumped into the crowd and they kind of ripped it out he continued on to say that he still has the diamond can you imagine andrew if the diamond went missing in the crowd at rolling god 30 million dollars also listen i guess i don't understand the economics of music because it's changing and you know with streamers etc like i i find it amazing that little uzi vert had 30 million extra dollars for this time

Yeah, me too. I would actually...

You wonder if maybe this wasn't a little bit of theatricality.

Yeah, where do these numbers come from? Are they inflated? When you said, I don't know much about the business of music, I thought you were going to say, I don't know much about the business of diamonds. I'm not saying that there aren't diamonds.

That's the only thing I know less about than the business of music. And you've watched Uncut Gems at least four times, I believe. Honestly, it's my happy place. One of the most stressful movies made in the last 15 years is what I watched to unwind.

Well, yeah, that does not seem like an unwinder to me. That's a movie that I enjoyed but plan on only watching once in my life. But I like Gummo, so, you know, there's no...

I think of it as a happy ending movie. Not to spoil the end of Uncut Joms, but I would just say that, you know, the last... Well, whatever, I'll spoil it. the idea that adam sandler's character the literally the last thought that goes through his mind is oh my god it worked and then his life is over and you know i you know people can interpret that however they want but like that as far as last thoughts i'll take that i hope my

last thought is oh my god that worked i mean yeah i guess depending on context certainly yeah well anyway like if you're trying to blow up my car i don't want to get on board with your last thought

being like oh great it worked well oh i see so you you're worried that the thing that worked for me

might be at your expense yeah what are you cooking up that is oh yeah i painted i painted the side of

that that that brick wall to look like it had a tunnel going into it and then i went through it and then andrew ran right smack dab into the wall oh great that worked did you see somebody on tiktok

was like running experiments with that with I think was it like the test some sort of self-driving car and I believe it was I think it was Musk related but basically painting like did the Wile E. Coyote thing or maybe I guess it's the Roadrunner thing who came up with that first I

don't know if I think Roadrunner is usually painting okay Wile E. Coyote no that's an

important that's an important point but anyway if what I saw was was correct the cars fell for the painted tunnel in a brick wall which would be a problem that seems like a big issue hey you

know who our second dazzling donor is today is our friend danny koontz who's out there in little rock arkansas now i don't want to put danny on front street but um you know danny and i share uh we we share an appreciation for the games of chance and in fact danny and i will often debrief i'll see him at some sort of a get-together that's very far from little rock arkansas i'll go How was the trip out here? And he'll give me an update on the various casinos he visited on the way out. Stopped there, stopped there, had some fun there, had less fun there. It's a kind of if-you-know-you-know thing. It's a shared language amongst us.

This is a random thought I could keep to myself, but I won't. It sort of reminds me of a thought that I had yesterday. I was listening to some sort of sports radio, and people were just sort of like casually nerding out to what their favorite holes on various golf courses are. oh yeah i've never watched a golf i guess it's called a match what would you like i've never watched a golfing event in my life yeah i have no real interest in it but just he and nobody was flexing they were just it was like it was like the ultimate podcasting experience right like i was listening to them just sort of nerd out about this hole and this hole and pebble beach and whatever and i know i can't even picture these things even pebble beach the famous one like i can't picture because i never watch it but i loved it and And I just loved hearing them have like, you know, strong, pleasant opinions about all the different golf, not even courses, but holes.

Yeah, I, there would be like maybe a couple of golf courses that I could have at one point in my life done that with. One would have been West Seattle, the public golf course in West Seattle, and the other would be maybe Jefferson on Beacon Hill. I played those a lot in my 20s. And I totally love that conversation of like, oh, yeah, the 16th and the dog legs or I always try to do this.

Yes. Yes. You know, hearing them talk about it relaxed me.

I'm thinking of, you know, right after I burn out on my cycling phase, I'm thinking about there's a there's like a very affordable public golf course not far from me. And it could be a really nice little thing to go do some days just as a way of unwinding to go hit some balls. and I'm thinking about trying to make that a thing.

I've never done that except for when I was a little kid.

It's really fun. Addie and I went and did it a while ago, and again, I'm not qualified to be going to a fancy golf course and Pebble Beach and hitting balls, but I could go to whatever the local one is here. By the way, Danny, our friend, says, Thanks for continuing to entertain me every day. I look forward to the show to help take my mind off of whatever the orange a-hole has done.

I'm going to say, you cleaned that up a little bit. Are we talking about Chester Cheetah?

It's not easy being cheesy, Andrew. Seriously not. Daddy says, shout out to all the other tens. Danny, we are very, very happy to be a distraction from what Chester Cheetah is doing, and we could not do this without your help. So thanks, man. Really do appreciate you.

Far Guild? Far Guild?

Takes a drag of a cigarette. It's been a long time since I heard that name.

I have a quick voice. I don't know if you just want to get out of here on that. Let's do that. Why don't you hit the sounder?

Let's do that. Okay. I've got the drop here.

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. We'll try to talk about Alexa tomorrow, and I will actually – that will give me time to try to do this change in my settings, Andrew, that I tried to do this morning and then I got too frustrated because Bezos outwitted me.

Yeah, I was doing a little reading about that this weekend, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

It's never good news. But anyway, maybe we'll get to that tomorrow. In the meantime, do we have any emails or V-mails?

Yeah, let me play this voicemail from our friend Stephanie, who wanted to weigh in on our conversation about checking the receipts at grocery stores. Oh, yeah. I think Costco is sort of its own thing. We got some emails from folks about that who have more information about Costco and what's going on when they're checking your receipts there. And sometimes they really are looking out for you, I guess, and making sure that you got all of your stuff.

I don't want to take us on a toll. One of the emails I saw about that I thought kind of Basically the story was I don't have it right in front of me But the story was This person's daughter I believe Works at Costco And has for some time And was once sent out to receipt duty And basically found that Somebody hadn't been charged for something Not that somebody was stealing something But that something had been undercharged And then she realized she was also the cashier Like she was checking people out And then there was like an emergency call that was like, go down to the receipt place and check receipts. And when the person, so she somehow checked these people out and then got ahead of them, these customers, to go get her, to go check receipts and realize that a checker had not been thorough enough with the stuff. And that checker was her.

Oh, I don't know if I saw that story. I know I'd heard from some friends, I think,

who were also texting me

and said that they had worked there and a big part of it was making sure that people were like there are certain things you buy at costco that you just you pick up like a cardboard thing out on the floor somewhere and like i did this with mariners tickets once like you there aren't actual tickets out on the costco floor you pick up this cardboard thing that represents the tickets and then you're supposed to go to the cashier and they talk to somebody else and they bring you the actual tickets or whatever supposedly like kind of making sure customers have that that might be a part of it as well that's what i've heard anyway i would that's kind of a distraction because i don't think stephanie is talking about costco here she's just talking about something that like i've experienced in the grocery store i've been going to for a long time they've recently instituted a new policy where they have security at uh the exits and they just quickly look at your receipts and often they wave me through too did i did i already tell you the story on this show i know i told several people that the other day i was i'm sure i told you this story because it's grocery store related i was leaving and the guy checks and he was very very friendly and we're having we you know pleasantries while he checks my receipt, and then he says as I walk away, he's like, where where are all your groceries? And I'm like, oh, I left them back at the thing. Like he's doing the opposite of his job. He's supposed to be loss prevention, but instead he's preventing me from losing my groceries, which I left back at the cashier. But anyway, Stephanie just wanted to weigh in on that kind of conversation that we've been having.

Oh, wow. That beep was so loud. Sorry. Hey, it's Stephanie in Portland with super cute baby August.

Oh yes.

Now 17 whole months and super, super, super cute. I'm going to become a father himself. We were talking about grocery receipts and, like, checking on the way out. And I just wanted to say that they do it at our local Freddy's, too, now, which is owned by Kroger. And I'm kind of not annoyed but kind of annoyed because they don't always check their receipts. Like, I'm down for it. That's fine. It's not, like, that big of a hassle as long as it doesn't create, like, huge backlog getting out of the store. But check everyone's receipts, you know. I was there, um, with my baby and my husband and, you know, the baby was being erratic while my husband was kind of doing something and the security guard or whatever you call him was kind of like entertaining my son a little bit. And, you know, so we had a pretty like good, like rapport going with him. Um, but we did purchase things and on the way out, he just kind of like waved us out. And I was just like, just cause I have a baby doesn't mean I can't steal things you know like you should check everyone's receipt um on that note if you want to get away with crim also known as crime i guess bring a baby with you um but don't do that i don't

support crime i'm so sorry oh god okay bye-bye so that was exactly where my mind went before stephanie clarified i thought well okay get get a step one get a baby get a baby by any means especially a very cute baby like augie and uh distract those uh security folks yeah that's

That is something that I think about like now that because I this grocery store I'm talking about, I go to it almost exactly once a week. I go to it as part of my kind of my Sunday travels, part of my Sunday routine on the way home on Sunday. I always stop at this Roosevelt Safeway and they have, as I mentioned, recently instituted the security policy as well as some like kind of security gates when you first walk through. And, you know, I think that that's all, you know, none of it gets in my way as a shopper. so i'm fine with that and i like i said on the show like i wouldn't particularly want people stealing from me if i had a whole bunch of stuff you know what i mean so it's like yeah okay um but i do always wonder because they often will just wave me through there's a woman there the other day just wave me through i'm like okay well you're kind of like looking me up and down you're assessing me like is part of this institutional racism or class a referendum on your on how they

perceive you it's how i always think about it when i'm approaching that kind of a thing and i mean

And since we're just here anyway, I don't know if this makes the conversation more awkward, but like to a person, every security person that I've seen in this store has been a person of color as well, by the way. And like, you know, and so whether they're checking my receipt or waving me through, I'm always kind of like, well, how are you? How are you making this decision? And it's definitely not like just some white guy looking at me and saying, well, you're a white guy, so you're cool or whatever. So I'm not I don't know if I'm just making the conversation awkward, but these are thoughts that sort of go through my head like they're assessing me in some way. right and what is that assessment and really is it about checking receipts or and i still think this is the thing i think it's just more about the presence of the person there and the policy of checking receipts so that if you do see somebody who's walking out and it looks like they're working wearing jodhpurs it's probably because they have a bottle of a you know a magnum of champagne in each pocket or is it a magnum of champagne yeah um then like it makes sense like oh okay i'm gonna stop you i'm stopping everybody here let's see your receipt and also sir unless you're going horseback riding later i think we're gonna need to see what's in there like i think it's just the presence and the process and they're just making you know i guess kind of decisions based on the fact that it doesn't really look like i got something under my peacoat well yes i'll tell you

thing that i don't particularly enjoy which is thankfully not the case in the couple of safeways that i now go to but when i was living in portland and i lived in an area that was sort of it was kind of hit and miss in terms of the kind of the the economics i guess you could say of the folks in the neighborhood there were some people that lived in nice houses there were some people who were unhoused there were some people who were probably dealing with addiction issues etc so that safeway was pretty locked down and they had that whole inner sanctum where like I just wanted to get some razors yeah and like I have to go to like a store within the store yeah where that where I then have to wait in this weirdly long line and like deodorant was in there too except if I remember right I think razors I might have I don't know if I could even gotten the razors or if I got a picture of some razors yeah I just remember being in this like extra security zone in the interior of the store and just being like

I don't like this because I don't care how much people are stealing razors from Kroger. This is a way of Safeway getting away with making my life as a customer way worse, but blaming it on somebody who they're othering, which is this bogeyman of a person who's stealing. That was my feeling. Now, I guess I can choose to not go to that Safeway. But I mean, we talked about this a lot a while ago when this was really going down with stores not having a lot of stuff on the shelves. like i think it's i think it's still pretty up for debate how bad of a problem theft really is in these stores and i think it's one of these things where they've got this like they have this consequence-free environment where they can just make us do any old bullshit as the customers and they can blame it on crime and we have no way of verifying that like and it it does i'm sure it cuts down on theft i'm sure it absolutely does but could they also absorb a certain amount of shrinkage if you will could they absorb a certain amount of threat and have it so i don't have to go into fort knox to get some gillette mach fives like that's where i and you know me i'm just like i'm inherently and eternally suspicious of companies when they do something that they claim is either for your benefit as the customer or because they have no other choice i think anytime they see an opening where they can just like oh this will reduce theft and yes it will make the customer's lives worse but we've made such a stink about this that we can get away

with it that always gets on my nerves especially if it gets in your way or if it yes if it somehow impacts your convenience and i'm not saying that to be a jerk i'm just saying that that is especially when it strikes you whether it's like towels in a hotel and you know it makes it more inconvenient for you to try to get a fresh towel because they're claiming that it's you know a new green policy and i know that that's not new news now but i hear you and i mean listen we actually got to get out of here i know that you're trying to get out of here and we have a meeting coming up so this is probably not the right time to have the conversation but it is complicated it's also especially complicated when you're talking about grocery stores now you mentioned products within a grocery store that aren't necessarily um you know needed for survival like razor blades i mean it's not literally a life or death thing but it is true that when people are stealing food you think well jesus louise we're living in a society where somebody needs food i don't think people are buying food so that they can sell it on ebay or sell it to somebody else to resell it what did i say you said buying food oh sorry i meant stealing food yeah so i think there's some you know some moral and ethical conversations to have around that but then on the other hand though like i don't leave my doors unlocked like i have a lot of compassion for people who need food and also need things to live and i also in this conversation don't want to downplay the importance of razor blades for somebody who's trying to live a somewhat normal life but is also absolutely poor and may not even have a roof over their head but might want to apply for a job razors could be you know i'm sort of backtracking what i said before but there's a situation where razor blades could be very very important for a certain kind of survival so like i don't want to downplay that or make it sound like i am not sympathetic to that but on the other hand i'm also somebody who says well like if somebody came into my house at night and took all the food out of my refrigerator I would refrigerator microwave I would um have some feelings about that and I would feel uh like invaded obviously as well so anyway so when I say I understand like if a store says we can't be a we can't be a profitable store and we want to stay in this area so we're going to put in some gates and some security guards and it's not really getting my way too much as a shopper I'm like, well, yeah, you're trying to not, you know, not not have stuff stolen from you. I don't think I don't want things stolen from me either.

So I don't get a good feeling if I'm at a store and I've seen it a time or two, not that much. I don't get a good feeling at the idea of people just like grabbing a bunch of things and walking out of the store with impunity. It does feel like some part of the social order is breaking down when that happens. I don't love that experience. I think you're right, though. I think that the larger issue is that we live in a society that is so inequitable. Yes. And there's so much money concentrated with so few people and companies that it should not be the case that people have to shoplift razor blades. And that's not an excuse. You shouldn't steal stuff from the store. But there's a macro issue. And we're just talking about the micro expression of that. And I think that macro issue is huge. And I think we know the answer, Andrew. You and I need to buy a razor blade factory in Germany. We have to. There's got to be a better way. There's got to be a better way, man. Please stop. buy a factory in germany and we'll start selling razors at a reasonable price to everybody so

all right what a what a um what a delightful voicemail that led to a very serious conversation about the woes of the world and the robber yes all right i can't wait to visit woes hollow

um i can't uh until i get done with all my work on live wire I don't know. And the CBS story, but like people are hitting me up like, hey, are you up to speed on White Lotus? Are you up to speed on Severance? I'm like, no, I got work to do. I want to go back to I want to go back to getting to watch, even though I'm kind of annoyed with it. I want to go back to watching Severance and White Lotus, man.

You have not seen. I haven't had a chance to behind on Severance now, right?

Am I too?

I'm not sure. I can't remember.

The last one I saw was Patricia Arquette.

Oh, yeah, you saw that one.

Driving around in her VW rabbit.

Yes. OK, so you're only one behind. But the more I hear about that episode, I guess I'm the only person in America who loved the Salt's Neck episode.

Anyway, looking forward to that very soon. In the meantime, that is going to do it for today's show. But we will be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for all of you. So please do join us. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Power out.