Muse

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? TBTL! I know I come on strong, all right? I radiate power. I can't help that.

The employees at Trader Joe's, heaven sent, they are saints. They were made in a lab. The manners. And when they say, how are you, I act, I'm like, I'm not well. And they're like, we have biscottis.

Trees. They're all around us, but who gives a s**t? 56 pounds of beef, that corresponds to, I don't know what, five or six year old kid.

What podcast are you talking about?

the tbtl tbtl well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live it's called the danger witch and it's dangerously good my name is luke burbank i am your host i'll do it until it stops will you Please stop. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia where it is rainy and primarily the issue is windy. The wind is whipping up here. We're just blowing through nap time, aren't we? I mean, I've got outdoor, not even like much lawn furniture out there, but it's like whatever is out there has been distributed in my neighbor Bob's yard. It's a whole situation up here. You know what, I'm going to ignore all of that, what's happening outside, and I'm going to focus on what's happening inside the Madrona Hill studio. And that, of course, is episode 4,440 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

TVTL, the collectible podcast series. Trade with your friends. The Rants and Raves column. Column? I don't know. The Rants and Raves forum is out in the Seattle Times, as it often is.

I've got something to say.

And I was reading it this morning, and I was struck by the fact that I may have been unintentionally involved in something that had somebody ranting in the pages of the Seattle Times. We'll talk about that. Also, an American YouTuber. It's very rare that you start a sentence with an American YouTuber, and then the rest of the sentence is cures cancer. an american youtuber is in trouble is actually in jail right now for sailing out to a very very isolated island far away from the nation of india and trying to make contact with a local tribe by leaving a can of soda on the beach gotta have that root beer so we'll talk about that oh and we're gonna talk to this guy the longest running co-bro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ship isn't he the best i hired him about a million years ago he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke i read the rants and

raves today too it's one of my favorite i do jump right in man i do think it's a column i like that

term okay but does a column need to be written by somebody as opposed to just compiled or assembled

from listeners um you know i i'm not sure i guess you wouldn't call the letters to the editor a column that's just its own section of a newspaper but when you're i mean you could call it a feature i suppose you know i don't know if we have any ink stained wretches out there well i forgot about that those days yeah i love the idea i believe that is the term the current president is using

for anybody who writes anything in the media he doesn't enjoy yeah although i mean it as a compliment i love the uh where did that come from who coined that i don't know but uh anyway hl

menken kind of thing we can call it a feature here's the deal though today's rants and raves column i just call it that and i will continue to probably out of habit um contains you know it's not a uh it's not the the most paltry i've ever seen of a rants and raves column because there are three very uh three individual submissions sometimes it's just one but you know it's not super beefy we have a rave a rant and then supposedly a rave yes i don't know if the one zeroed in on an exact issue is the one that but one of them you also think might be if it might be directed towards you or people like you i'm dying to know if it's the same one that i just find literally incomprehensible and i need to be careful here because some of our listeners some of our favorite listeners yeah are frequent famous for sending in rants and raves and this might be their work and i don't want to throw anybody mary under the bus but something happened I don't know.

Throw any Mary under the bus.

No, but something happened to one of these.

I don't know if it happened in the editing room or what. Throw Mary bus under. I'm going to keep trying to make a version of that joke. F. Murray Abraham, F. Murray Kill was the greatest joke of my entire life on this program. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. I'm going to keep trying to return to that. Okay, quickly. So, yeah, you're right. It goes rave, rant, rave. The confusing thing is the final thing that's described as a rave is not a rave. It's some real Scott Hoy territory. Please stop. Tony Scott Hoy, please stop. It kind of, I don't know if it's video games or what. The fact that somebody would say that the backseat, I have it right here, I believe. It's so unfair to, after something like this, blame people in the backseat. It's so unfair to, after something like this, call this a rave. Because here's the rave. Okay, a rave means something you want to celebrate. You're excited about this. You're raving. Yes. Rave to all those who get dressed and head for the gym for a healthier life. Okay, I guess. To be honest with you, it's a bit of an odd rave because I feel like, well, again, I don't want to snowflake out too hard, but I just feel like raving people that go to the gym is also raving people that have the bodily autonomy to do it and the mental health to do it and a bunch of things. It feels weird to me to be raving people that go to the gym because I could say good for you, But I also don't think everyone who's not going to the gym, they don't deserve a rant. You know what I mean?

Yeah, that doesn't bother me too much. But what we're seeing here is somebody, and again, spoiler on this two-sentence rave slash rant, is what we're seeing here is somebody who has gone to management school and has been told, well, when you need to give feedback to somebody, you make it a compliment sandwich or something along the line. I'll be honest with you. I didn't go to management school. So I might have gotten some small details of that wrong.

I went to Sandwich University and I studied with them. It's called Danger Witch, and it's dangerously good.

All of my managerial advice will come in the form of sandwiches. So if you think about your employees like a Thunderbird red hot sandwich that you can get at Tubbs, right? Okay. But you don't – you want to – I can't go anywhere with that. Listen, here's the deal. I don't have a problem with somebody saying, hey, just rave to all the – Like, for example, if this said, rave to everybody I see early in the morning walking and jogging or even slowly going around Green Lake, it's just nice that everybody is kind of out there getting a healthier life. I don't think that is necessarily – that's not off-putting to me in any way.

I have figured out, though, what happened here and how this whole thing got so off the rails. And I'm not talking about TBTL right now. I'm talking about this column. And you've clarified this for me. This is exactly what happened. What this person was trying to say is, hey, good for you if you're getting out to the gym. But. But. But there's no but in here. This has been edited or something. And what happened was the person who organizes these, heretofore referred to as columnist, just read the all those who get dressed and head for the gym for a healthier life. And they were like, well, this goes in the rave department. But they did not read the rest of the message because this person is ultimately annoyed. annoyed. They're basically saying, good for you if you go to the gym for a healthier life, but, except they omit the but, you are sharing with paying members who shouldn't have to wait to exercise because you have messages to read or find the need to talk or text without working out. It's rude and frustrating to those waiting. Okay, so the rant is, this should not be characterized as a rave, it is a rant about people who are on their phones at the gym but are using the equipment and therefore creating a line because they are not moving expeditiously through the process it is so bananas because they by specifically saying

getting dressed i reread this thing probably seven times possibly on the toilet i was like wait you're are people getting dressed on the machines like what is about the getting like are people clogging up the locker room i was so focused on the getting dressed and then i was like oh no this isn't again i'm i'm really hoping here this isn't one of our one of our celebrity ranters but if if so they need to hear this they need to hear this exactly with much love they need to hear it on the podcast streets it's just that first sentence is just to soften the blow of the rave that is to come and if you're going to do that if you're going to do it it has to say rave to all those who get dressed and head for the gym for a healthier life but rant to those who are holding up the lines by reading your messages or finding the need to talk or text without working out you are sharing with paying members this is rude and frustrating like at least there's a turn there I rearranged the sentences there I don't even think you know my one regret in this segment that I'm doing with you Luke right now is number one that I'm not fully awake and number two that we didn't really lean into. how bad this is as it is on the page you and i have already done so much to improve the reputation

of this rant and rave the ramp rant putation i don't know um i'm trying to match your energy bro um well exactly and what it raised i'm so petty and i'm so petty on your behalf and then the whole topic of this column andrew because when i read a mess like this i think this got in But Andrew's great garbage-related rant plus rave plus useful information did not make these ink-stained digital pages. So in other words, they must really be, I feel like they're scraping the bottom of the barrel with these if they included this poorly written one. Also, are they allowed to rewrite these, as they say in the New York Times, edited for time and clarity can they can they edit these for clarity could they add a butt in there if they know what the if they can divine what the person's likely intention is here's the

deal and i could be totally wrong about that my assumption is that the blame most likely lies or possibly lays with well with the editorial staff something okay so lies okay that is true I guess it's the wrong time for me to be like just sort of like messing around with that, like playing with playing with fireworks around a campfire. But, yeah, I always get that one wrong. I can never tell if it's lay or lie. But anyway, what if this isn't the writer's fault? And this isn't just because I'm really scared of Mary's job. What if it's no, not a cut and paste job, but a hack job? What if what if the one that came in originally was clearer but much longer as somebody? I mean, I consider myself sort of an amateur rant and rave editor myself because I, of course, am the author, let's say, columnist behind the ever popular or the growingly popular segment, TBTL's yays and nays in the newsletter. By the way, got some more yays and nays in the inbox that we'll be sharing pretty soon in an upcoming newsletter. Email me, Andrew, at TBTL.net with your yays and nays. Seattle Times really got the idea from us. But also as somebody who sometimes often has to edit down like Blur's Day messages, like a good Blur's Day message is exactly the length of one of these rants and raves. And, you know, I just sort of have a sort of a timer in my head on these things. And so there is a chance that somebody sent in a decent rant slash rave here about the gym, but it was much too long. And the person who was trying to cut it for time sort of didn't really care about their job. So that could be what happened here.

Well, again, that would be so disappointing because, first of all, we love the Rants and Raves column. And I bet you – my guess would be it is actually one of the more red items, if you will, one of the more red columns in the paper just because it's relatable. And we like to see what people are complaining about and what they're excited about. So I would hope that in this fractured media environment where democracy is dying in darkness left and right, I would hope that the Seattle Times would put some of their best people on the case of rants and raves, you know, not not leaving it to someone who's just being sort of cavalier with this, because I think this is an important column in the paper.

It could be. I mean, I really threw that out there as an assumption. I mean, what do you think about my assumption? Do you think that it's off? Maybe a reader just sent this in And they just copied and pasted it directly as it was Do you think that the fault

It starts with raving for the people That are getting up and going to the gym It detours into eugenics And then it comes back It returns to the Waiting in line at the elliptical And they decided to leave out the eugenics

You should have seen the original headline One of the things

Maybe it veers into newgenics The Frank Thomas male enhancement By the way I just realized this. Naming that thing neugenics really relies on us forgetting about the term eugenics.

I've always been confused about that. I've never thought about that product without wondering about its connection to eugenics. It's always seemed like

a bad idea to me. You've kept that very very dark period of human history closer to the front of your brain than I have because it never even until I was literally just saying that I didn't realize how close those words are together and what a bad name that is for a thing that Doug Flutie and frank thomas are taking to to keep their ladies happy what is frank thomas's nickname the big hurt

yeah what my favorite thing is because i started to see those new genics commercials before i watched any baseball or no maybe it was when i first started watching baseball you know back when i first moved to seattle and so i had no context for anything i still don't know that i would recognize frank thomas if i saw him he'd probably be the tallest man in the room i'm guessing. But I remember just seeing these commercials, these low budget commercials of women.

a grocery store stopping and being like, isn't that the big hurt? And I'm like, why do these women know who this guy is? And I have no idea. And then they go up to him and make awkward conversation with him.

But isn't that noted new Genesis, the big hurt? Yeah, right.

Isn't he problematic? Isn't he mad about the line at the gym for the equipment? But wait, hold on, though. We're pretty far afield. So I went to pedantic town with this. And I did want to say I do love the headline. That's my favorite thing of the Rants and Raves sometimes is just the headline they gave it. That's what drew me in because it is maybe the most.

Yes. It's almost like it's out of the onion.

Rants and Rave, colon. Reader enjoyed jazz concert. And then the first rave is a rave of a spectacular gathering of high school jazz bands. That literally made me click on it because I was like, trees, they're all around us, but who gives a bleep? Right. Now, but you set this up. Now, I took it into like the writing aspect of this. It's a place that a person who once taught writing at Kent State University would take it, okay? A peer writing assistant. But what are you seeing? How are you seeing yourself in this?

It's not the rave, which was Reader and Joy's jazz concert, which somebody loved the Hot Java Cool Jazz Show at the Paramount. Nice. Shout out to any folks who were performing there. It's the middle one. It's the rant. And it is a rant. To commuter lanes. Now, I could dissect this as well, but I'm just going to read it first. rant to commuter lanes why do we bother to paint lines hang signs and pretend we have hov lanes question mark driving from renton to factoria i saw one car in the hov lane with two people in it dozens of cars passed me with only the driver now when i was driving back from whidbey island uh the other day back down here to southern washington i uh the the mapping software took me along 405 so i was coming down south on i5 and then where i5 and 405 split off there at alderwood in the video only district oh yes alderwood mall yes yes and so i silver platters shut up yeah the silver platters district the corner of silver platters and uh tony romano's macaroni grill so i uh it told me that uh i405 would be the faster way to get down you know back to the greater portland area uh and as i was driving on that traffic was very packed i mentioned this the other day on the show that this is when i learned that i am no longer capable of living in a nine to five rush hour type of world like i there have been periods of my life where i did do that i don't remember it being the worst but i have i've been so spoiled now by my kind of odd schedule and the fact that i'm not part of that and the fact that i live in the middle of nowhere where there's rarely traffic sitting in traffic on i-405 was brutal like i felt like i was gonna i need to crawl out of my own skin there was something there wasn't enough local sports radio in seattle to be a balm for the anger i was feeling that was just stop and go stop and go stop and sometimes go just sit just locked locked in traffic on 405 but before that so that was from let's just say maybe the Bellevue area down south all the way to, like, the VMAC, if not further. This is a very specific 405 reference for those who know. But anyway, when I first got onto I-405 heading south, I realized they had those, I think they're called, what, like, hot lanes? Is that what they're called?

They're, like, really, like, high-priced HOV lanes that you pay extra for?

Yes, but I was under the impression that you could drive in these hot lanes. You could be in one of three categories. One, you are transit. You're a bus. Two, you're a carpool. You're a group of folks with, I guess, maybe two-plus people in the vehicle. It kind of goes between two and three in different places, but let's just go two-plus. And then I thought the third was people like me who are willing to pay any price to not be in traffic. And they just take a picture of your license plate And then you get a bill From good to go That was what I thought was happening Up there and I think still might be Happening I'm not sure But what I know is I was breezing along in that lane And for miles and miles And miles and feeling great And being like I don't whatever this cost Then I looked at my good to go My like account When I got home I was just curious I was like was that $20 Was that $5 or a hundred dollars what is that what is that costing me and what's weird is that my good to go account it appeared to have only charged me a dollar 25 in tolls for the whole thing which seemed very low yeah from like alderwood to bellevue and then i was telling my dad about this i was like i don't know this is crazy that it was like a dollar 25 and he goes are you allowed to be in that lane if it's just one person i said i thought that's what the hot thing is i thought Thank you. you're allowed to be in there if by yourself if you're willing to pay more money but i actually don't know i actually don't know that i think i just assumed that and uh so i don't i mean this person actually was going the other direction so it's unlikely they were looking specifically at me but i'm wondering if people saw me just driving in the hov lane by myself without a care in the world thinking that i was paying my way to a faster commute when maybe i wasn't even allowed

to do that well let me ask you this luke because a lot of people have referred to you right after elvis mitchell as being the bad boy of public radio and you're you're a known rule breaker however you're also somebody who does not like feeling shame in public or society so i'm wondering how strongly you feel about just putting aside the confusion about hot lanes and hot zips and zip drives and all of that how strongly do you feel you would not use the hov lane i'm asking you to be like vulnerable and honest here you know what i mean like on a scale of one to ten ten being like well i had to murder somebody for a parking spot and it got dark and zero being like i will follow i will stop at a stop sign i will stop at a red light in the middle of a cornfield Even if it doesn't change for 10 hours Somewhere between there Where are you on It's pretty traffic-y I'll just hop in this HOV lane by myself for a second And no harm no foul

I Do not ever use the HOV lanes Intentionally If there's less than The number of people that should be In the car I've never done that because That to me is like the accessible parking The disabled parking Closer to the store It's like, I feel like as our society crumbles, I feel like we have a few things that we have to protect because it's what separates us from the apes. Love to hear it. And it's like the HOV lane is one of those things. Because if everybody, it's obvious, if everybody went and used it with just being by themselves in their car, then it would ruin it. So I don't think that's one of those like, eh, no harm, no foul. I would probably run a red light in a cornfield. First, I would ask, how did this red light get in this cornfield?

Yeah, well, how did I get in this cornfield?

Is this a field of dreams, but related to traffic? Right. If you build it, they will come. It's a red light.

Why is there an old blues man playing right in the crossroads underneath this flashing red light? How did this happen?

But as far as the HOV lane, I would not intentionally, but I'm now reading, I'm reading this, and I think I may have been very much just violating the rules. I think, like, I'm looking at the website, the Washington State Department of Transportation, I-405 Express Toll Lanes. The Express Toll Lanes provide drivers a faster trip from Linwood to Bellevue and back. With the I-405 Express Toll Lanes, you have the choice to pay a toll for a faster trip when you need it. The Express Toll Lanes, so that's how to pay, good to go, I've got that, toll rates. um now but here's the thing that i don't understand if you're a carpool how is the carpool uh driver not charged so what i'm driving in this hot lane i'm driving in this toll lane it's just me and my car i'm getting charged but now let's say i'm in that same i'm driving that same stretch of roadway but i've got you and i've got jenna even i got becca in the car and just to

be just to be safe we also have a crash test dummy we have a mannequin that you stole from

your job with a wig on an apartment store yes exactly precisely um we let's just say that we've got enough folks in the car that we qualify for the carpool lane but i'm still driving my same car how are they not sending me the bill for all of the tolls that i'm yeah i don't know accruing how do they know that i'm in carpool mode and not in just luke mode that leads me to believe i should have never been in luke mode yes i'm looking at this too this is very

confusing and also when you're driving and you're going that um you're going that fast sometimes it's kind of difficult to figure out the details of a pay-for-play system yeah i i just think i

might have misfiled this entire thing like years ago i'm talking about the uh what is the the uh 167 what's the other what's the other name i used to be a traffic reporter andrew there used to be a name for the 167 highway down south, down in the, you know, kind of, like, you know, Kent sort of Auburn area. I'm sorry, I'm unfamiliar, yeah. But the Valley Freeway, maybe? I don't know. Anyway, the freeway down there, that's 167, which is south of South Center, that was the first place I remember, the first roadway where they were bringing in these basically dynamic toll pricing lanes. So the worse the traffic, the more expensive the toll becomes, and that was supposed to fund projects and give people an option if they were willing to pay to get where they were going faster somehow in all that I assumed that that then removed the carpool component like

Because if you're in a carpool situation, well, of course, you're allowed to use the lane. That's the point of the lane. So I'm still – it's not very clear on this website if I was breaking the law. By the way, maximum fine is like $500 and something, I think, maybe even more. I could have been in big trouble out there.

That's way more than you were willing to pay, by the way. What were you willing to pay? Yeah.

I would pay anything for this commute, but I wouldn't pay that.

Exactly. So there is a line. We know that. No, I'm just as confused as you are here. I do, you know, like I it's so rare that I'm doing highway driving these days, go to the airport and back. That's mostly it. But there are times that these and I are on any kind of an extended drive where she has to remind me that there are two of us in the car and that I can use the HOV lane because I kind of tend to like I just stick to the rivers and the streams that I'm used to.

Well, Andrew, I'm sorry. I want some clarity. I was just filling time. The problem is it's coming from AI. So I typed in, can you drive solo in toll express lane 405? And AI Overview said, yes, you can drive solo in the i405 express toll lanes and the SR-167 hot lanes, but you will be charged a bill. this though it still doesn't explain how it would be that if i had you know you veeves becca the crash test dummy and also the band crash test dummies right yeah so now it's a it's a van situation definitely yeah we're some kind of a it's a big tent maybe it's a small bus it's we

have a lot of people now in this vehicle i like it it's kind of like it's kind of like painted on

the outside yeah it's a kind of muppet sort of a situation um what i still don't understand and someone will probably explain this to me, is how I go about not getting charged these special tolls if I, in fact, have enough people in the vehicle to qualify under the carpool clause.

Could it be the same cameras that are capturing the license plates or also clocking, like...

The number of people? That just seems... Yeah. That seems technically... I mean, honestly, it both seems very doable and also kind of hard to pull off.

It feels like the type of thing... I don't have these kinds of issues with, like, law enforcement or even toll enforcement or any kind of enforcement being aided by cameras. I know that you and I used to talk about this maybe even on the radio side of things on the Dave Ross show or whatever, Ross and Burbank. Sorry for the erasure there. Back in the day. This Ross racer would not stand. I was erasing you, unfortunately. But I don't ever have an issue with, like, red light cameras or anything. I'm just like, whatever. It doesn't matter to me if a robot is catching me or a cop. And honestly, I'd rather deal with robots than cops. so like i've always been kind of fine with that stuff but it usually this type of technology is not installed without somebody like kind of you know raising cane over privacy issues and i could sort of i i do not recall any big headlines about like washington state uses cameras to count people in cars i feel like that would be a headline i would have seen yeah i'm still sorry i'm now deep

i'm listening to you but i'm also now deep in a reddit r seattle are you allowed to be in the express toll lane by yourself and the consensus seems to be you're absolutely allowed to drive in the toll lane by yourself except you're going to have to pay for it and if you are doing a carpool situation you don't have to pay for it and no one can explain how the system knows if you've got multiple people in the car or not. Now back to the question of like you know government surveillance I am I'll say the thing that I was always saying on Burbank and Burbank see what I did there? I got rid of Ross because he was getting top billing and the solo billing recently and now I need to get solo billing what I used to always say which I kind of stand by some of that was just time filling because we had to do three hours of commercial radio a day but some of it truly held thoughts of mine which is the thing about the cameras and all the stuff is if we really as a society if we wanted really to have 100% 100% participation in the rules such as speeding and coming to a complete stop we could absolutely do that we could set up cameras all along the freeway that would time exactly how fast you were going take a picture of your license plate and immediately issue a speeding ticket if you went one mile over the speed limit we could we have the ability to do that we have the ability to police so much more stuff than we do because we all kind of low-key understand that it would suck if you got a ticket every time you went 71 miles an hour so i don't know what my sort of power out is on that other than it's interesting to me where our our abilities because of technology um are actually further they're they're much greater than the amount that we actually apply those things to regular life in a lot of ways because i just don't think we really want regular life to actually be totally the the rules being followed to that letter of the law yeah

Yeah, I I I just don't worry about that. Like, honestly, if somebody said, yeah, if you go 71, you're going to be flagged. Everybody like if we all I don't I kind of don't really feel like having this debate because it suddenly not even not even about like just like literally I'm sort of like boring myself here with it just sort of sounds like hot talk sort of like debate radio. Oh, no one's and I'm not going to confuse this with and I don't want to like, you know, try to win here. You are boring me to death and I am already dead. You're boring me back to death. But like I have such a childish like sort of interpretation of that, which is like, yeah, that's fine. Like if we all agree that there are certain speed that like driving in cars is incredibly dangerous and it's so much more dangerous than we actually treat it. And if there is some sort of technology that says like we might have to like, you know, we're still electing officials who are like, you know, creating these laws. So there still has to be general buy in from the society. But if at some point society is kind of like, yeah, I'm going to elect officials who say, listen, it's really dangerous to go 75. So we're going to raise the speed limit to 70. But literally, you're always driving on some sort of an electrical mechanism that makes sure you don't go faster than 70. And everybody is way safer than that. And whether that is just like cameras that are tattletaling or some sort of mechanism that literally puts your car on a track and maintains it at 70. I'm kind of like, whatever, that's fine.

yeah i mean i i'm actually a very slow driver generally speaking i'm i'm fairly i'm not trying to you know preserve my right to go fast and furious um i just like i said i just think it's like we have there's this weird there's this kind of i always i think when we did radio stuff i used to call it i don't know some sort of like the lubricant that allows the gears of society to move or the fact that you have the rules and then you have most people abiding generally within the rules occasionally running a yellow light maybe that's getting a little bit towards red things

like that i thought you were talking about crevasse a this whole time the lubricant that

allows society to move that's the lubricant that allows you to play darts i was really now it took

me 12 years and now now i hear it okay rave to my friend andrew who just realized i wasn't talking about Crevasseier.

I don't know why that's the only liqueur I can think of.

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.

Sorry, I'm a little late jumping back into the fray here, Andrew. I'm just pounding these frescas, and it's, you know, causing me a... But here's, I don't want to be gross, but what's happening is I feel like I need to burp, but I can't, or I have not, and I was hoping that if I had my mic paused a little bit longer, I could kind of force the issue, but it didn't work, so now I'm just dealing with it. I just have a low-level feeling that I need to burp, but I can't, so we're just going to have to go with it.

Do you know what I'm just now realizing? Genevieve did something very uncharacteristic the other day. I had the hiccups I had it for about maybe three or four hiccups good job and then I said to Veeves oh I have the hiccups and she just turned to me and jumped out of her chair and like kind of grabbed my arm and said boo or something like that this is not part of our usual you know rapport

was she wearing the horse mask

she was wearing the horse mask and she startled me so I'm like what the hell are you doing she's like I'm trying to scare the hiccups out of you did it work and I was like I was so taken aback by that that we had a conversation about how That was very unusual for her, and it did startle me, and it didn't even occur to me until this very moment, yeah, the hiccups did go away. I was so distracted I'd never even stopped to think like, oh, that actually worked.

But it was less the scaring than it was the post-mort.

Well, it must have been just – I think the post-mort got in the way of me realizing how effectual it was.

Good for – I mean, how fun that 20-plus years in, your partner can still surprise you, Andrew.

I'm still finding new ways to make me lose my breath.

Right. When they say you take my breath away, it's usually in a more of a, you know, Berlin. And I mean the band, not the city. Although that could also happen in this. Is that who did take my breath away?

I don't know, but I just had to realize that we have to get to the Dazzling Donors. I'm sorry, but I just realized something.

It's the only way this thing is being paid for.

Do you remember the huge trend? We might still be living in it now. I'm not sure, but definitely like five years ago, every five years ago, they probably weren't making movie trailers because of the pandemic, whatever. In recent cinema history, every trailer for a movie took some sort of popular song and slowed it down. Like they did a new version of it that slowed it down to like a quarter of a speed and it became very kind of ominous or whatever. How did they not use take my breath away for some sort of a murder?

kind of scary movie like yeah that version of take my you know that interpretation of take my

breath away yeah yeah i mean it is it is it is a little slow as is but it is very much a love song you're right to decontextualize it yeah walking in slow motion something something take my breath away i don't know any of the lyrics of that song but yeah i could see it well it's not too late when we make our horror film uh we've already got we already know the music for the trailer

We're going to pay for that, and it was by Berlin. Is that what you said?

Yes, I did. Congratulations. Not the city, although it could happen in the city. Yeah. We are at the part of the show where we thank dazzling donors. These folks are taking our breath away with their donation of a dazzling amount of dough. It's how this thing can happen. We have a business boys meeting tomorrow where we're going to be talking about lots of things, including probably the thon. We will have a TBTL-a-thon this summer. It's going to be a whole thing. that's right the whole situation and we can't wait to tell you about ever closer i'm starting

to get some you know it's happening because i'm starting it's starting to seep into my dreams a

tiny bit so it's real now i was telling becca about a stress dream i had the other night and it was that i was at uh i was at a hotel but i couldn't find my room and i needed to send you the file i needed to send you my audio file from my side of our conversation but i couldn't find my hotel room and also i had a flight that was leaving in two hours and if i didn't get on that flight i was gonna not get to some other city in time for a television shoot and she goes i have no idea why that would be your stress dream i just described my actual life many days did i i had a

stress dream so it's not unusual for me to have stress dreams related to work one that is very common and this usually has to do with when i'm doing one of those live radio hits is i i just had this the other day um is like i'm filling in for somebody's music show at an actual radio station and i'm like i put on a song the song is always ending i finally have those and then i run and i get a new cd but it's like the cds are out of order there's always some reason you're running back and you're always late and there's always dead air and then you got to do a top of the hour

and you don't know what to say and i don't even think i get to i used to get to dead air i would just be perpetually in that oh f there's like there's 10 seconds left on this song it's all

and then it's like oh but this record isn't open something like now i got vinyl in there and i was i remember specifically anyway so i'll have dreams like that i'll have tbtl stress dreams they usually manifest and you and i are on the road somewhere usually doing a live show or an event and so it might take place on stage sometimes it's like we just got done with a big thing and we realized we didn't plan the next day's show and i'm we're hunting around for each other it's Just like general stress stuff, usually not toxic or anything like that. But then the other day, I just had a work dream where you and I were just like, yeah, we'll take care of it. Like it's every now and then. Oh, nice. I just have dreams that are just very practical and fine. And I don't remember the details of it. And the listeners are probably happy of that. But I remember like we were in an Airbnb. You were in the other room. We were talking through an open door and just be like, you want to do that? Yeah, that sounds fun. All right, great. Let's do that. And I was kind of like, you know, every now and then you should be able to have a work dream where you're just, like, getting shit done, you know?

That's really nice to hear. Well, maybe that means we're in good shape for this upcoming THON, or at least we're thinking about it early. And we're, of course, very, very thankful for the people that answered the call during the last THON. Folks like Danny Crawford. Danny. Of television's FBI, Andrew. Is this the Danny Crawford?

It is. I love that. Now, I'm assuming that Danny put that in his note from television's FBI. There's a chance John put that in there. Oh, I didn't need him, Joe. But no, we would remember anyway. But I do love that. I think that Danny should go around, if he's not already doing this, always introducing himself as Danny Crawford from television's FBI.

I would totally support that. I got a chance to see, when we were in Philly, I got to see Danny and his wife Diana. And they were, I believe, in the family way with twins. And I think that we're going to get an update on that story. Hey, friendos, 2024 was a wild year for yours truly. Capped off with the introduction of two new identical fives. You know, you put them in a trench coat, you've got a 10. That's right. Danny, just so you know.

And 10s donate.

That's exactly right. I'm trying to get out of this with them being fives, okay? Two fives together as a 10. They've got to donate, Andrew. It's like calico-cut pants. yeah um ash short for ashley and cameron ah ash and cameron born december 23rd pregnancy was a wild ride for us and by us i mean my wife diana thank you danny for thank you for clarifying i mean i have mixed feelings about that which by the way i don't need to have feelings about this because it's not my life but on the one hand i do think it's nice when the non-pregnant person says we're pregnant because

Thank you.

i think it's a way of saying this is we're in this together sure but if i were the pregnant partner i might also be like we're we're in this together in the way uh a chicken donating an egg to a breakfast is different than a pig donating bacon to the breakfast uh i'm not i don't like

whatever just happened i don't like it whatever comparing the eggs and meat and everything i

don't know all i just mean the level of commitment from the person who has got the babies inside them is different than the person who doesn't have the babies inside them so i can see it both ways when i meet someone and they say we're pregnant and they're not the person who's pregnant in the relationship i see it as kind of a nice thing because it's a way of saying we're in it together but also it's a little like danny's pointing out here is this was a heavier lift for diana

well the truly weird thing is i when i am you know introducing a pregnant friend of mine to somebody i say we are pregnant i'm inserting myself into this situation all the time in

grossly inappropriate ways yes um and that's why you were not allowed at the after party in philadelphia where i hung out with danny and diana that's right uh so check this out check this journey for the family um by us i mean my wife diana whose list of due dates went from february 9th to january 21st to december 31st to being told tomorrow on december this is like a list of how my emotions, when I officially give up on the Mariners. First I'm told it's September 25th, and then I find out it's July 11th, and then I find out it's June, and then I find out it's almost yesterday, if not for one hit by

Polanco. Yes. So the

due date, original due date, February 9th, and then we end up all the way back at December 23rd to 5 o'clock tonight, as in, get in here.

So literally they hear tomorrow, Okay, on 23rd, like, come in tomorrow. And then it was like, nope, get in here tonight.

Yes, well, yeah, exactly. So on December 23rd, they were being told the 24th. They were like, it could be tomorrow. And then it was like actually 5 o'clock tonight. The boys were born at 33 weeks and had a stint in the NICU to put on some weight before coming home. So I real quick want to shout out NICU nurses who are amazing caregivers and teachers and any parents of preemies should consider themselves lucky if your baby gets a layover in their care. absolutely true i mean i think all nurses and medical staff are sort of underappreciated and they so many of them have such incredibly challenging jobs and uh the nicu has got to be right up there at the top dealing with you know little babies that are that are um needing medical attention must be a really intense thing to do so thanks to the folks that do that professionally now we're back to danny it's all about danny again andrew from television's fbi That's the one I'm talking about. Professionally, I also had the best gig of my life this past year, working as Jude Law's stand-in. Nice. Hell yes, from April through September on a new Netflix show named Black Rabbit, which I highly recommend or encourage everyone to check out when it premieres this spring. I can't say much more until it airs, but stay tuned. Wow, I wonder if that means, is Danny friends with Jude Law, and does that mean I am no longer even in the top five of Danny's most famous friends? Have I been knocked out of the top five by Jude Law? I mean, Jude Law would be number one, presumably, unless we're talking about the star of FBI.

Yeah, I mean, he must have a lot of famous friends just from his work on that network show, right?

I feel like when I went on a little jag with watching FBI a while ago, a couple of years ago, I really enjoyed it in that. And I think Danny would be OK with me saying this in that kind of like it's very comforting to watch a procedural like that. Like, I understand why they're popular, because there's a very clear set of, like, plot points and the sort of good guys and bad guys, and it's pretty satisfying at the end. And Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy spoke on the pod today. There's a guy who's the star. When I was watching FBI, the guy who's got, like, the main investigator, Jeremy Sisko, I think is his name.

I was, like, going to start throwing out, I was, like, irons, and then I didn't have anything else after that. Piven, how you live in J. Piven. That's right, of course.

No, I think it's Jeremy either, I think it's Sisto, maybe. And he was one of the first famous people that I saw. I think he was the boyfriend on Six Feet Under. And I was watching a lot of Six Feet Under when I moved to L.A., or maybe shortly before. and i remember going into a bathroom at the bar there on sunset called akbar which i think is very cool again it's weird to see bars that i used to go to that were sort of dive bars for me and my friends and then see the young people on tiktok talking about how they went to say akbar or one of these places and it's like you can't get in it's a line out the door or whatever but anyway I remember going into a bathroom and seeing Jeremy sister You're right about Sisto, by the way.

Can I make you more confident in there? Like, it is Sisto. I've looked it up. Okay. Sisto Morris. Ooh, la, la. Ooh, la, la. But anyway, I remember going into a bathroom at that bar and seeing him coming out and being like, oh, my God, it's happening. I'm seeing Hollywood. I'm seeing Hollywood types. They're just like me. They also use this restroom at this bar. But anyway, point in all this is to say it probably goes Jude Law. Then it goes Jeremy Sisto. Then it goes the singer, Sisko. Yes. Then it goes, maybe me, maybe I'm still in the top four. I mean, there's still got to be a lot of other people just in the television work that Danny knows that are more famous than me. I'll just have to live with it.

I'm trying to read. I don't know if I knew you were a six feet under head. Were you a six feet under head? I have heavily into it. Multiple autographed Alan Ball pieces of memorabilia, Andrew. Vives and I were very much into it And I wasn't sure to what degree you were I loved this show I don't know how it would hold up Because this was kind of on the early edge Of that sort of like premium television Prestige television And I'm looking at like old photos of Jeremy Sisto From 1600 and I'm like oh yeah He was, I'm having trouble Like my brain is really struggling To put it into context of the plot of the TV show But he was He was in like a very like kind of tempestuous relationship with a woman, right? But I can't remember what the...

I think he was maybe the boyfriend of the daughter.

I don't think it was the daughter, though. It wasn't the daughter. Maybe there was an age difference. Yeah.

I got into Six Feet Under the first wave of Netflix. So, like, I didn't have, you know, I don't think I had HBO at that time, but what I did have was a Netflix account. Yeah. And I was getting those DVDs, those autographed Alan Ball DVDs delivered to home and really, as they would say, binging on stuff like The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. If there was any cool HBO show that I could get my hands on, I would. I do not think that I got all the way to the end of the show, which was not because of anything about the program. I just, you know, my life changed. I was busy or something. But I did have a funny—listen, I don't want to scare the listeners. Everything is A-okay. Everything is great. But I was on a jog with Becca on Sunday, and I started to feel a little bit of—like my left arm started feeling kind of like it was going numb. and the first thing I thought of was Narm.

Yes, I think of Narm all the time. I think of Narm a lot, Andrew. I think of Narm way too much, my dude. You know, you were saying before that Peeves and I, after so many years, still find new things to commune about. Yes, I did not know that you, if I said Narm to you, I had had no confidence you'd ever have any idea what I'm talking about. I think of Narm way too often and probably more and more as I get older.

I hadn't thought of it in a long time until that happened I told Becca I'm going to walk for a couple blocks because I didn't say I'm having NARM, but I was like, this is how it starts. NARM, NARM. Anyway, congratulations for about a million reasons to Danny and Diana and to Ash and Cameron and to Jude Law and to the whole gang.

Okay, here's what I think it is, by the way. I think that, I can't remember his name, but I think Peter Krause's character had a very tempestuous relationship with this woman named Brenda, right? and is there a chance that Billy was Brenda's brother? I know it's a lot of bees do because I'm looking it up there's Billy Chenoweth and Brenda Chenoweth oh yeah yeah and she was played

by Rachel something she's that Aussie that was in a bunch of stuff for a while right? Let me see here Rachel Griffiths yes she was

in a lot of stuff but yes I

could see that being the case

they both have the same last name and so I'm guessing that they might have been brother's sister while she had this sort of off-again, on-again, hot-but-troubled relationship with Krause's character. Krause, what a hottie. Where is he these days? But it's Krause, right? Oh, I always thought it was Krause. I don't know why. I think Genevieve says Krause, and I just say what she says. Yeah, I don't know. You can surprise her by saying Krause to see what happens. She'll stop hiccuping almost immediately. She'll be terrified. All hiccups.

I don't know the last time I got the hiccups. I do think maybe because of a reduction in my drinking.

Yeah, I was drinking at the time, by the way. I think I was drinking whiskey, in fact.

I think that that's one of the things about living a slightly less lushy life that I didn't expect to go away was the hiccups. I kind of miss them. I don't think I've had the hiccups in a while.

Now, I want to be clear here, and it doesn't matter. I'm allowed to be drunk. I'm an adult, but I wasn't drunk. It wasn't like late at night and I was messy or anything. We were just, pardon me

What I heard was you were a cartoon mouse And you hiccuped a bubble that enveloped you And floated you off Well the weird thing is I ended up in the bottle

I was drinking out of, which was very strange.

I can picture that. All right, thanks so much, Danny and Diana. Maestro?

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

Look who it is. It's Tyler Strange in Monroe, Louisiana.

Like Strange, the master of the mystical arts in the, I want to say. That's Marvel, right? Marvel universe? I believe so.

That's a Benedict Cumberbatch, right?

I believe so, yes

Me and my dad I want to be clear I am so grateful that both of my parents Are still alive and healthy And that's a real gift And one that I would never take for granted And I love my parents so much They are pretty insane Or at least I do end up in these conversations with them Particularly when my dad's here working Or my mom and dad were here I told you the story of the time where my mom, we spent a good half hour to hour trying to figure out the, as she described it, gay actor who's really good and was in the movie called Guilt and is dead now. And we figured out that it was Philip Seymour Hoffman who is not gay, as far as we knew, and in the movie Doubt, I believe.

Oh, that's right, Guilt and Doubt.

Guilt and Doubt and his sexual identity, as far as we understand. But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, you nailed it. But then yesterday, the whole dinner conversation as I was making, by the way, this amazing rice, this recipe that Becca turned me on to, which is just basically rice, but you chop up a bunch of cilantro and throw it in at the end. And it just ends up, it's basmati rice, but then, you know, you put a few little things in there. You toast it before you cook it. So this was my first time making rice not in the rice, you know, not in the Instapot. So that was a little, that was nerve wracking for me, but it turned out really, really good. and then you just chop up all this cilantro and put it in there. And you've got basically like this rice that tastes a lot like the rice you'd get at Chipotle. Did you say you toast the rice? A little bit before you actually put the water in. So you put a little EVO, extra virgin olive oil, or even regular virgin. I don't know, six months pregnant, olive oil, whatever you got. Throw that in the pan. I was using a Dutch oven. And then put the rice in, you know, wash the rice and then dry it off a little bit then put it in and then toast it like get a little crisp going not too much but just and then you put your water in and then you throw in the seasonings and like a little a pinch of salt and a pat of butter and then you just let it cook for like 15-20 minutes and then you fluff it up with a fork and then you put in all of this chopped cilantro that's just on standby and then you stir it together oh my gosh I like want to go inside and start eating this rice again it was really good

I've never even heard of that before uh I know I want to try it yeah and I also We're having it with enchiladas. I love Chipotle rice so much. I haven't been to Chipotle in a really long time. But, yeah, there's something about that. It sounds like it's pretty basic, but I've never tried to recreate it at home.

Absolutely. I mean, it's mostly the cilantro going in at the end, which hadn't occurred to me. But it just really zhuzhes it up. But as I'm making all this and my dad's sitting over there on his iPad, we're trying to figure out what we're going to watch. By the way, I'm dying here because I really want to watch the final episode of The White Lotus. but I have this guy, I have this 73-year-old guy who lives with me who is not watching The White Lotus. So it's like, I'm just, I'm like, can I, I need to, am I going to hide in my bedroom and watch it on my laptop or something?

Wait, does he care about it being spoiled?

No, but it's a little fresh, probably, for watching with Walt.

I think I can give you an all clear on that. On that for the finale. Yeah, I don't think you're going to be sitting through any explicitly sexual scenes or anything like that.

Oh, thank you. You know what, Andrew? This is a very useful service. I appreciate it.

I'm just racking my brain because I watched it a couple of nights ago. It's a long one. It's 90 minutes, I think.

We were watching some British thing last night that had a pretty unexpected sex scene happening in it. On par with anything the White Lotus has. But all that is to say, last night I'm making the rice. The rice, dad. It yields. I basically realized I'm reenacting the Jonathan Katz show with my actual father. Anyway, the whole time I'm going, hey, Dad, well, what about, he goes, well, we could watch this one show, and it's some, like, old BBC thing from 20 years ago or something, mystery, whatever, crime show. I was like, well, what about that prestige show that I feel like has, like, I go, it's got, I think it's got David Tennant and somebody else in it. And then we just spent 45 minutes naming somebody else's that weren't the people and getting no closer to figure, and then at the end I was like, I don't know, maybe it's Benedict Cumberbatch. I'm not sure, and then he's just like I don't have any information, and he's Googling around, but he's not finding anything And I don't feel like he's looking for it in the right manner And then at the end we just agree that We'll just never know the answer to that That is what happens in this house now at night It's just trying to figure out a show that I think

Maybe David Tennant is in with some other heavy hitter of like British television.

I am the wrong person to ask about this. But David Tennant, he's not the guy who's in Broadchurch, is he? Because that would be. He is, but it was in Broadchurch. He was also a doctor in Doctor Who. Okay, because that's also Olivia. I'm blanking on her name, but she would also be another notable person. Yeah, Olivia Colman. That show. Absolutely. Did you watch that show? That first season is amazing.

I didn't, but I'm very familiar. I would like to watch it. Yeah. And I'm very familiar with the idea of Broadchurch. And if I was trying to name Broadchurch, I would have said, you know what I mean? So I was mildly offended when my dad was like, you're thinking of Broadchurch. I was like, Dad, I'm not thinking of Broadchurch. Dad, the hair, it's dirty. Just kept saying to him over and over again. Anyway, back to Tyler Strange. Oh, yeah, Tyler. Like the master of mystical arts, like the Benedict Cumberbatch that he is. Like the David Tennant that he is. That's right. Says, always, great job, you guys. I listen daily. Thanks for the video message on my birthday. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Happy blurs, Tyler. I don't have anything to promote or any shout-outs. I guess the only thing I wonder about is the status of Sean DeTori, Japan's number one mixer. What is he up to these days? We heard from Jen fairly recently when Andrew was on vacay, and that was awesome. Took me back to the old days. No offense, Andrew. You go with integral or integral?

I would say integral. I think it's easier for me to say integral, but I like integral better. I think integral is correct, though. You're integral, vital, handsome, and smart. Well, thank you. I got to say, that's not enough, though. I still remain offended. I feel like, let's see, you've given us super dazzling donor donations, if you got the video message as well. That's an even more dazzling amount of dough. You've called me integral, vital, handsome, and smart. That's all good, but that's what we call a start. That's what we call a start in winning me back. That's the starting point of the negotiation. In winning me back over. No, I appreciate Tyler.

Anyway, could we get Jen back occasionally and maybe Sean? That is a great idea, Tyler. We love both of them. They're both welcome on the show anytime. And we should, yeah, I should be more intentional about that. I will say that I have a kind of now a parasocial relationship with Japan's number one mixer because he voices many of the radio spots that play during the Mariners. And I feel like he recently branched down into acting. Have you heard this new one where he's doing a lot of acting? It's pretty good. Which one? Because I can't remember anything about the product or service or government program or whatever it is. But what I remember was driving and listening to the game and and thinking, oh, this is this is like Sean being a character, not just being the voice of Sean, you know, but this is like Sean being a character. And he did a really good job with it.

Well, I don't want to sound condescending here because Sean started doing like on air voice work for promos and commercials. I'm going to say, you know, more than five years ago. It's been quite quite a while now. And it is really cool. And again, this might sound condescending, but I don't mean it that way because I don't have that skill. We've heard me try to portray a goldfish on the radio. Acting is not. Wait, did I do that? I can't remember. Anyway, acting is not a skill of mine at all. And it's been really, really interesting to hear Sean, because every time I hear his voice, I perk up a little bit, right? And I hear so many of – I listen to that station constantly. And so it went from being pretty straightforward radio reads to, yes, I'm hearing him more and more. I started to hear him on other stations because he's doing the mesothelioma – I think I messed that up – ad, like lawsuit ads or whatever. And so those are produced in-house at one station, but then also they do air on other stations. and um and like i have just heard him grow as a broadcaster so much over the time and again he was already starting from a strong position it's just that his his you know his talents have grown as they put more and more on him and i could be wrong about this i am very in tune to people's voices if i'm right about this this would be bananas and tyler should compliment me even more i think i heard sean's voice as part of a chorus in one of these jingles and luke i'm not kidding i almost reached out to him i haven't talked to him in a long time he might be a voice in the you'll be sorry you'll be sorry i swear there's some jingle where it all comes back to video on where i think i hear him in the background of some of some you know it's like several voices all sort of singing something at once and it might be the video only you'll be sorry little I don't know if that's a jingle or what you would call it but I need to get to the bottom of that that's

wow okay I'm gonna you've now given me a reason to really lock in on those video only ads yes because that if you if you are right about that that would be an incredible pull most of Sean's and then I know of it.

is his cover of the dancing song Mother. Oh, does he do that interior thing? Which he really crushes, really crushes that song. But anyway, yes, to answer your question, Tyler, we love Jen and Sean, and you know, they're welcome here anytime. We'll try to come up with something to get the gang back together. So, thank you so much for the support. We could not do this show without you.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man, it's not from a female.

All right, maybe tomorrow, Andrew, if we have time, we'll talk about this story of this guy going to this island, which is actually kind of interesting, kind of has some implications. Not for us. I don't think we're going to the island, but we can maybe talk about that tomorrow. In the meantime, do we have any emails or V-mails that are of interest?

Yeah. Do we have any update on your bike? Have you ridden your bike yet?

Andrew, I have not been. I know this sounds like an excuse You don't answer to anybody, I'm just asking I do know how to ride a bike, first of all For those of you that think that this is You know, I'm just covering for the fact that I can't ride a bike, I theoretically can

It's one of those bikes where your feet touch the ground

Yeah, it's a Strider But it's an e-bike An e-strider I'm not kidding, I have not been At home On a day that has not Been raining torrentially and freezing since i got the bike since day one day one i got the bike i put it together it wasn't even a nice day it just wasn't actively raining and then i rode up and down the hill and came back and then i was like first nice day can't wait to take this thing out i have not been here on a this i'm really i'm really mad at the weather i know being mad at the weather is not a personality or it shouldn't be and i know that this is not this doesn't loom as large in your life but i felt I felt an emotional anger at the weather today As I was trying to do some stuff in the yard And pick up stuff that was blowing around And I had, of course I had taken the cover off the barbecue one day When I was barbecuing and my parents were here So that had blown practically over in the other yard I had to go get it and put it on in this whipping wind What I feel like we normally get in the northwest And maybe I was just out of town when this happened There's usually a week Of gorgeous pre-spring weather Yeah, we did have that

You were in England, I think.

Oh.

Okay. Well, that makes more sense. Because I was just like, I feel like.

Because I was mad at everybody. They were pre-complaining about fall, spring. Instead of people just being like, wow, we're getting a week of incredibly beautiful weather in the winter. Everybody was like, don't fall for it. It's fake. I'm like, it's not fake. It's outside my window right now.

Like, just go outside. Okay. Well, you know what? Then I retract the balance of my time. Like, as long as it happened. It did happen, yeah. I wish I could have been here for it. But I was just walking around today, like, literally emotionally angry at the weather for what it's been doing. All that is to say, I have yet to ride the bike.

And I know that you're busy. You might not have been at home, but you did get good weather this weekend, right? That wasn't just up here in Seattle. Friday and Saturday here were incredible.

I guess Friday was pretty nice, but my parents were here, so in fairness.

And again, I'm not trying to put you on the spot about the bike thing. I feel like I set this up the wrong way.

I don't feel on the spot. Okay. I'm so freaking excited about this bike. I am like I am I cannot wait I think about it like when I'm lying in bed I'm like imagining a nice sunny day when my exactly oh I did get that chain too but um but uh yeah Friday was was nice but my parents were here and so well first of all I was getting my eye worked on oh yeah right then and then my parents were here so I could have if I would have been solo that would have been maybe a nice day to take the bike out but my parents were here and now it's been terrible since then will be the rest of this week also my dad is here sometime next week when i'm back home hopefully there'll be a nice day and i will um get out there for a ride and i'll tell you i will tell

you all about i will spare no detailing okay anyway the reason i bring this up is we were talking about you assembling your new bike and uh how you have a a spiffy new bike helmet that you like and that's important to you because liking the look and shape and feel of a bike helmet is important because you didn't grow up wearing bike helmets and we got a voicemail from

listener chris in new york city hey dummies it's your friend chris hayes i was listening to your helmet conversation and i just got to say you absolutely have to wear a helmet if you're riding an e-bike it's like really non-negotiable but i also wanted to just give a little helmet psa which is um sorry i'm walking outside um i have an electric scooter that i take my 10 year old son to school on every day he goes to school about 1.2 miles from our house it's the easiest way to get him there he sort of stands in front of me i stand behind him and the beginning we wouldn't get a helmet because it's not going that fast also we're standing up so it kind of feels like you know if you need to hop off and my wife was like correctly we should always have helmets which we operationalized and we always have helmets and then lo and behold

I was taking him to school one morning, hit a patch of black ice during the winter, and absolutely wiped out. And I saw him in front of me, and I saw his helmeted head bounce off the curb.

Oh, my gosh.

And he was totally fine because he was wearing a helmet. But in case there was any doubt about whether helmets are necessary, very good reminder, they are quite necessary. All right. Power out.

wow that would be traumatic that is chilling yes yikers yeah you know i have become very pro helmet actually and it's because of tiktok so let's give let's give tiktok some credit um i saw a um i guess uh i don't know if he would be a neurologist as some doctor who you know who deals with brain injuries and the like and he was uh being asked by somebody kind of like what uh what's your opinion on people that don't wear helmets when they're riding a bike or whatever? And he said, he goes, I don't want to be cruel, but we just, you know, um, I forget the term he used, but he was like, we call them experiments or something. He was like, so many people come in to the ER and their lives are either over or radically changed because of a head injury, because they were riding a bike or a scooter or a skateboard or something. And they, and they don't have to be going fast and they don't have to be that far off the ground. but basically when they his his point was when you go out you know famously people used to you know people in the medical profession would call motorcyclists donor cyclists which you know is pretty grim and i'm not trying to shade anybody who likes motorcycles but like what this doctor was basically saying was if you choose not to wear a helmet you are greatly increasing the chance that you will become somebody that a med student is studying on in some capacity because it's so bad for your head to hit the pavement and it's so easy for it to happen and anyway in watching various medical professionals weigh in on basically the things they've seen from people not wearing helmets it really did a number on me I also think part of it is that I'm 48 and I'm not 28 I think it because I used to have a whole rant about like we didn't wear helmets and we were fine and like you know I even I mean it's what a weird what a bizarre flex but I remember even thinking at times like well if I had kids I wouldn't make them wear helmets It's like you've got these kids that are wearing helmets on their little back-to-the-strider thing, you know, this little non—there's no pedals on it, just a little thing. And you've got a kid in a helmet, and I think I used to see that and just be like, we're just bubble-wrapping these kids. And now it's like, well, how about the kid starts out early associating riding around on things with wheels with having head protection on? You know, that's probably not a bad idea. And also—and this is sad for me that this is how I arrive at things—the design helps. This helmet that I bought, the design of it is pretty dope. It's got this light built into the back of it. It's got a headlight.

It looks like Knight Rider's helmet.

Yes. It looks, I look like a silver hawk or something.

That's the sound of the light going back and forth. Yeah.

It also regularly kind of makes fun of me. Oh, really? That's the fastest we're going to go, Lou? It's exactly like Kit? That's right. That's what you're wearing for your date, Michael? Wow. Yeah. Kit was real catty. Kit was. Real catty. But anyway, I am now very, very, I've gone from being kind of, I wouldn't say anti-helmet, but thinking, like, what's the fuss about? And also, you know, again, I never wore a helmet and I was fine. I'm very grateful that I was fine. And going forward, like, you won't catch me out on this bike without the helmet.

I make Bingo wear a helmet around the house because sometimes he's jumping down off of tall things.

But it's a small watermelon that you've carved into, like, an old-timey football helmet. Have you seen that meme? There's some picture – it's an old meme of a cat that's wearing – like somebody has cut a watermelon and put it on their head like an old-timey football helmet. No.

Okay. So, you know, I was immediately picturing like Heathcliff comic strips or something because I felt like that's what he did. But you mean this is an actual photo of some project somebody completed. Yeah, there's actually a few of them.

If you Google cat watermelon helmet, you get more results than you'd expect. This is what I was thinking when you were talking about putting a helmet on bingo.

Oh, maybe I had little bangs. Yeah, I like that. They're tiny little, are they watermelons or are they little mini? They've got to be some kind of a smallish thing.

If a regular watermelon works as your cat's helmet, you should probably consider a different food for the cat.

And then if they shake it off, you can say, you're out of your gourd. Oh, that's a pretty good spoof. Oh, no, it's terrible.

Chris, I'm very glad to hear that you're okay and that your kid is okay and that you're, I mean, I would say the only bad outcome of this is that I'm sure Kate found out about it and you have lost all ability to argue any point around child safety for the rest of your natural. Which he probably welcomes, actually, the way this turned out. That's probably a good thing. I love the idea of Kate learning this from, like, what, minute number 79 of TBTL?

I love the idea of Chris telling his son, be cool when we get home. Paying him off with Mr. Softy ice cream and other such enticements so that Kate doesn't find out that they had a really, really scary incident. that they were only saved because of the helmet that she had advocated for?

No joke, though. That's the kind of story that is so evocative that that will stick with me and listeners, I think, like that actual imagery that Chris said up there. That's really powerful stuff. That's actually a really good PSA.

Absolutely, and we are the number one show for helmet PSAs because of that.

Well, and colonoscopy PSAs.

Speaking of which, my friend, see, now I'm in the club of like, I've had a colonoscopy, so now I get to lecture you about it.

I thought you had some update. I have this. Can you see this? I'll hold it up there. Can you see I've got this card on my desk? Yes. The doctor gave it to me. Actually, my doctor has kind of nice handwriting.

It is nice handwriting.

John, don't put this on Insta. It's not worth it. But yeah, I'm just holding up a little card that says appointment colonoscopy, and it's got a phone number that I'm supposed to call. But then I got confused because then they emailed me, and they said answer all these questions like in the MyChart portal. And so then I copy and paste, and I go to respond, And it's like, well, this is way too long. You can't send a note this long. And I'm like, well, what do you want me to do to answer all your questions? I sent them a note saying, how am I supposed to fill this form out? And then I got a notification that that note didn't go through either. And then I said, you know what? I tried. I'm just going to hook it. I'm just going to put a hose up my butt.

Yeah, sure. I mean, that's also. That's where I am. I'm sure there was somebody when we were talking about this that was in the comments that was in my email saying that's the gold standard. Whatever I was saying is apparently wrong.

No, I am going to I am going to sit down and take care of that actually this week. I had this TV tale project that I'm excited about, but also it was a bit of a mental burden for me to begin. I think good job on that. Thank you. We'll talk more about that soon. But it was one of those things where they were like kind of like, well, I got to relearn this and relearn that. And and yesterday I had this moment. I tried to describe it to Genevieve. I don't know if I can describe it better here, but like it was one of those days where I was getting a bunch of stuff done. But it was mostly because there were some big things that I kind of didn't want to get into, but I felt I needed to. You know, one of those, like, I was getting, you know, I called some family members I needed to call. I got my haircut. I did all these things. And then I was, like, down to, like, the last two things on my list, which were start this big project that I find intimidating and finally get this colonoscopy thing taken care of. And I went with the TBTL project. I'll make the colonoscopy tomorrow's to-do list.

If the colonoscopy, if we can use it as a leverage to get you to do all of your TBTL jobs, I'm fine with that. That's terrible medical. No, that's no good. That's no good. All right. Okay. That's going to do it for today's episode. But we are going to be right back here. If I can walk from my house to the studio without getting blown down the road like a tumbleweed, and that remains a real danger. It is so windy out here. If I can get back to the studio tomorrow, we're going to bring you another episode of TBTL. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. Stay dry. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. I hope you're not taking that aluminum box seriously. Power out.