Muse

Dad, the rice, you have really outdone yourself. The rice is great. Oh, thanks, man. You know what? That means a lot to me. Dad, the rice is perfect. I mean, it's moist. It's perfectly cooked. You timed it right. Uh-huh. Yeah, so tender, but it's not mushy. You know, it yields to the bite, but not without a little struggle, you know? I mean, you've got to still open your mouth and chew it. It's not that it just goes right in. Well, it's not going to bite itself. Yeah, I know what you're saying. Yeah. And, you know, I've noticed lately that you've been drinking more than usual. You know, I'm wondering if that's a problem. I think the problem is you've been noticing it more.

TBTL!

I feel so full of... What's the opposite of shame? Pride? No, not that far from shame.

Le shame?

Yeah.

Tell me an opinion that you have about something. Just one opinion that you have about anything at all. Just share an opinion. Anything. Share an opinion. Share an opinion. Share an opinion. Share an opinion. Right now. Just off the top of your head. Share an opinion. Anything.

Try everything once. Except celery is pretty much bulls**t. Don't even bother with it. Big waste of time. You sound like I might be a little bit jealous, babe. No, and I know a little something about being jealous because people have been jealous of me my entire life.

Were you just using a synthesizer? Nope. So you mean to tell me that all of those sounds were coming from your body? Yup. I'm the president of rap music, and I need to work with you right away.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Wednesday edition of TVTL, a show that just might be too beautiful to live.

This is so boring and forever taking.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. And I'm going to get all anecdotal on you. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where we are getting a break in the torrential rain.

Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful.

Thank goodness. It has been rough the last few days. Today, though, looking pretty nice. We're going to take advantage of it, but not before bringing you episode 4,401 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. By the way, this is also taking advantage of the nice weather. I didn't mean, like, I've got to just get through this before I can get out to, you know, doing yard work or something. This is my primary job, is co-hosting this show, and I want everyone to understand that. I take this very seriously, my friends. I also take it very seriously when an American YouTuber decides to find a very, very infrequently contacted tribe of folks on an island near India.

You've got to be kidding me.

and leave them a Diet Coke can. He's in jail somewhere near there. We'll talk about that. Also, I have bad news, folks. I've been reading the Seattle Times Rants and Raves column again today. Gotta do it again right now. And I've got thoughts. I know we did this on the show yesterday, but we're going to do it again on the show today. And we're going to talk to this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships.

Oh, my God! He unmuted!

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

Good morning, Luke. I just remembered something that I've been wanting to tell you about. I'm going to start with a question. Do you ever have a conversation that seems generally okay in the moment, but the more you think about it over hours and days, it bothers you more and more, and you're kind of offended a little bit by that conversation or something the other person said?

I really want to be yes and here but I have to be honest and say for all of the things about my brain that are out of my control ruminating on conversations is not one of them maybe I should do it more it probably would make me a more likable person but I don't tend to go back and I mean that's not true I'm nursing something I can talk about with you I'm nursing an email that I sent on the later side last night to somebody that was going to do some work here at my house that I maybe think I could have handled better. But does that count?

Sort of. That sounds like you're a little bit concerned about what you wrote. Yes. You're talking about the opposite. You're more annoyed at the person you were dealing with. Yeah. So the reason I bring it up is... Is the person me? You said something yesterday that pissed me off so bad. No. Vives and I, Genevieve has my partner in life and all things, are getting new flooring in our basement. We knew this was going to happen at some point, and we finally started. We've been talking about it almost as soon as we moved in here. They put down, whoever sold the house put down new carpeting wall-to-wall in the basement here when we first moved in. And it's not very quality carpeting, so in all the high-traffic areas, it's already showing its age, and it's only three years.

old and it just has sort of a cheap feel to it so it is a basement we're not gonna be able to get really expensive flooring or anything I think we're gonna get something that is kind of vinyl but hopefully doesn't look too bad and then we're gonna get some big area rugs but you know it's a big project we've been saying it's one of the things on our big project list for a while Genevieve says the other day hey you know what I just want to get the ball rolling on this a little bit let's just get our first quote so on Saturday she calls a company which I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but maybe that's kind of good. I don't have to get into all the details, but it's like a, it's an actual company. It's not like, I believe it's kind of a chain type of thing. They have corporate offices. Let me put it that way, right? But it was not some flooring company that I was familiar with or that I see a lot of advertisements for or anything. It wasn't Empire, was it?

865 Empire You know what? It might have been, actually. Then the cartoon of the guy, he He basically takes the edge of the floor and he rings it like he's like he's running out a rug, but it puts a whole new floor down. It's a very effective commercial.

It's very interesting when Genevieve, I think it might have been Empire because because I remember Genevieve saying the name of the company to me and me thinking of that jingle. But for some reason, not thinking it was the same place. I don't know why this is so dumb, but you're just you're just sort of shaking that realization from me that, yeah, that is the same place with the jingle. I think that might be the place. But considering what I'm about to say here, let's just say it's not the place. Who needs slander? Who needs people to think I'm talking about it?

It's Inland Empire flooring, which is a much.

Exactly right.

It's dark.

I'm still thinking about it years after seeing it. So anyway, Genevieve says, you know, let's just begin to kick the tires on this thing. Right. Let's just have somebody come out, show us some samples, get a ballpark estimate of what it would take to get everything tiled. And like, or not tiled, but everything floored. And then like we had the idea. I was like, well, it would be maybe this was Genevieve's idea. To actually put maybe some nicer flooring in my bathroom, like maybe actual tile. Do we do the stairs? Do we not? These are questions. And again, for two, three years now, we've been knowing this is a project we've wanted to do. Genevieve's like, well, let's just start the ball rolling somewhere. So on Saturday. So, again, this is one of those things where it's been several days. A fella comes out and he's a salesperson and he is all of the essence of every Stephen Tobolowski character ever created.

you know what I mean he's like he's all rolled into one he's just like Ned Needlenose Ryerson

meets Stanley Jenkins meets the the the um the corporate guy in uh oh in Silicon Valley Silicon Valley um and like he's like he's he's got that embodiment so you can sort of picture him if I just say a Stephen Tobolowsky type of guy glasses whatever and just so nice and so nerdy and coming in here but immediately like kind of saying that we just were straight shooters I love my job I love my company and just like really laying on the almost almost to yeah no i wouldn't even say almost but like to a degree of like cringiness sort of but it's a charming cringiness it's you know he's definitely a salesman but he's kind of like yep i just i love this cut just a lot of how

much he loves his work loves this kind of uh you know do what you love you'll never work a day you

know i can't believe they pay me for this kind of that and also just kind of like and that's why i love working with this company is we're not going to like mess around with you we're just you know like we're going to tell this to you straight and that and like and here's how the process works a cartoon shows up grabs the edge of your floor we have the best installers they sometimes people confuse them with the general sometimes during peak season you see a diminutive general with shack that's a different company but sometimes they do collaborate during the peak season so anyway um he's kind of got that whole thing he's bringing in samples he's giving us a quote for the whole job he's doing everything he should honestly the samples i mean what we're looking

at but but let me ask you andrew yeah are you in luck because right now they're running a special

on something yes of course there's some sort of no way are you kidding me that happened for you well you uh obviously have been doing a lot of you know remodeling so you're that's the only way you could have known that i guess because you realize that it's yeah it's early april so it's the special deal time and and again like i gotta say i tend as opposed to somebody who would have come in and maybe maybe been more reticent although i guess that person would have been a bad salesperson like i'm kind of i i appreciate it and i i'm kind of believing it i believe that he maybe not that hey this deal only lasts for this period of time shtick but like the whole kind of like we asked him about like well what if we want to get tile in the bathroom he says you can do that more affordably somewhere else honestly tile is not exactly what we're going to do the best for you that's a nice bit of honesty exactly we said what about the stairs he's like that's going to add like just the stairs alone is going to be a grand because stairs are just more complicated to do if i were you i would like so he's definitely not upselling you know what i mean he's saying what we're gonna do and so like and i'm buying that and again the interaction was good he's bringing in flooring samples honestly out of the whatever two dozen or

So that we look at only I told these, I'm like, really, there's only one of these that I think I could live with. The rest are just a little bit too cheapy looking and of the of the era, cheap looking. And you're not going with something gray, right? Well, that's exactly it. So many of them are that like fake gray wood or whatever.

That's a real heartbreak in the in the apartment rental market.

Yes, there's something so I think maybe I'm reacting to it because that's what's currently in my bathroom in this tiny little kitchenette area, both of which are kind of like. you know they're both basement properties let's just put it that way there there's something about the one of my favorite hgt shows there's something about the flooring in my bathroom that i just sort of find find deeply depressing and then i went to my cheap barber shop the other day and i saw that they had the same flooring and i was like yeah there's just something it's like the equivalent of fluorescent lighting or something i i can't explain it's a little soul

crushing yeah it was this thing that felt like you were doing something that was a little bit elevated like it was a little bit it had a moment and then everybody unknowingly embraced it that is this kind of gray engineered flooring and everybody put it in everywhere and everybody flipping homes put it in yeah and now we're all going to be it's like a microplastic we're all going to live with it it's going to be in our body for the next generation and now the thing is again because of

the because of the considerations that we're in a basement anyway like we can't put down really good flooring anyway you need something that's going to be waterproof we've already had a flood here we need something that is going to be you know high traction like we have to make and and we're not billionaires right so we're going to have to make some concessions about like what we need what we can afford and what we're going to do so we are still looking at sort of that that material of flooring sort of something that looks a little bit of engineered stuff that's totally

fine it's just i would just go away from gray which i don't think you need convincing on that

and i didn't even know that i don't think i'd had this conversation with you or anybody before with maybe the exception of genevieve and now i feel bad if people are like looking down at their floors and being like i like my gray flooring like that's yes that's fine absolutely love it but for me i'm just like i just don't if we're gonna do this whole project i just i'm kind of like well i i don't want to be looking down at this a year or two years from now and just being like oh i feel the way about this flooring as i do now in 2025 you know which is that it's just sort of generic or whatever so all that is to say uh there's one sample that i like it's a just a you know it's not too dark it's not too gray it's like a wood colored um and views like yeah i mean if we can definitely get that one and then it's a little bit of a question of like okay as long as we can you know we should make sure to get this project rolling sooner rather than later so that we make sure that we can keep that in stock um like okay the guy is really friendly keeps going out to his truck bringing him back more samples he's just so friendly in every way and he keeps going out to his truck when he comes back in he smells vaguely of weed he's just he's he's more like kind of he's got a lot more energy when he comes back from his truck he's got all this little energy i got this deal for you and anyway no he's uh he's great and then at the end he's like okay and he's still like doing his whole character thing but he keeps saying like okay now i'm not i'm not a car salesman here i'm not trying to be a car salesman just so you know we do have this you know we got to get this in for this uh this deal that's happening right now or whatever and so what we would need is that if i can just get you guys to sign today and all we need is half of the quote up front right now which is you know like a few grand or whatever and we're like oh no sorry like and I'm kind of to be honest with you this is where I'm such a bad partner like I'm in the basement and I'm like going out and having conversations with them but I'm also coming into my studio and hooking up my new audio board or my temporary audio so you're kind of dipping in I'm kind of dipping in and dipping out I'm listening to the whole thing and the but it's kind of Genevieve's you know Genevieve's the boss on this kind of stuff in a good way I'm supportive and I have opinions but I'm also you know just kind of like kind of keeping an ear on things and all of a sudden I hear him saying about you know talking about getting a signature today and putting half up and Genevieve's like oh well that wasn't what we're kind of planning on doing you know this is just our first quote and then he's kind of like well then he starts like saying he says several times like I'm not trying to be a car salesman here not trying to be a used car salesman here but then like continues this like well he says what's

it going to take to get you into this Toyota Tercel yeah he keeps saying like well you know

you sign now if it doesn't work out you have a month we can tear up the contract whatever and we're just like well we have a month like we don't and eventually i come out of my office and i'm just kind of like you know and i'm talking and engaging and i don't like leap out of my office and say jacuz but i'm kind of like you know this isn't was there chest bumping and there was some chest bumping i was like you know this just isn't where we are in the process right now like we had absolutely no intention of locking into anything today or certainly you know you know signing any money over and he's like yeah no totally fair totally fair it's just that and it's always like he just constantly has this it's just that thing yeah and in the moment i'm trained

to not leave your house without the signature without that and half that signature and in the

moment i'm kind of like wow this is stranger than i expected it to be this i'm sort of

just experiencing it like wow this is really strange and or or somewhat strange maybe is how I'm feeling in the moment but I'm like yeah I mean I guess what he's saying is making sense but then I'm like well no no we're not handing money over like we've seen one guy's samples we've gotten one quote and then and I just kind of said listen that's not where we are and then he gives this excuse like well you know I could come back with the Genevieve says I'm like but isn't the quote you just gave us good for 30 days or something and I do think that Genevieve was a little bit more open to just signing something I could be wrong about that she's not here but I think that she was more open to it and I kind of came out and I'm like what's going on here and not in a way that made anybody feel awkward or that like I'm the you know like I'm swinging in like to regulate or anything but I was just kind of like what and she's like isn't the quote good for 30 days he's like yeah the quote is good for 30 days but you know I'm out in Woodinville that means I'd have to come back in here and Veves was like well couldn't we do an e-signature no we don't have e-signatures and the more i'm thinking about this we're saying you don't do e-signatures so eventually and i just said not something i've talked about on the show a lot i'm like listen we have a cat upstairs who is literally dying that's something the listeners don't know but you know we have a cat who's in her last days turns out she has cancer we don't know if it's going to be weeks or months but we just have a lot on our plate we're living in a house right now where we're keeping one cat downstairs one cat upstairs it's all very you know it's a little bit complicated living situation taking care of her doing all these things also we just have spent so much money on this cat in the past few weeks like let's just say half a flooring's job's worth and we're just like and i just and finally i just pulled the cat card i was just like listen we have a we have a cat that is upstairs like we're just like dealing with a lot right now and we're just not doing this i just sort of said like we're not doing this and again i i didn't have a tone in my voice at all is what is that noise by the way you can actually hear that yeah i know i'm trying to

push through i'm just curious what it was really funny because i i'm always that is walt drilling into the concrete oh i have him that's it's really strange because i always think that the construction noise is very loud and then you're usually like i can't even hear that and this is

the complete opposite i don't know why i'm sorry i really tried to put it's no big deal now that i know i just want to know is it a pot boiling is it something coming from my there are also a couple of pots that are boiling okay you should probably keep an eye on that so all of that is to say he ends up leaving and then Genevieve did get a call from corporate or something he said corporate was going to follow up on the quote or whatever and she said she got a call from them like yesterday or something and she said yeah of course they do e-signature and I'm like yeah of course they do e-signature and it's one of those things where wow that's actually pretty yes that right there is just an actual lie which is pretty uncool yeah exactly and so like I it was one of those things where in the moment I was like huh that conversation ended up being a little bit more of a hard sell than i expected but that's fine we didn't sign anything he's a pleasant enough guy and he left but it's like i'm reliving the conversation you're sort of getting the version now that i've been ruminating on with a little edge in my voice for the past several days because i'm kind of like mother tutor like don't come in here and just like basically lie to us about e-signatures and come up with all these things like well i live in woodenville and i don't want to come back to the city to sign something i start like stacking up all these things that he was saying to get us assigned right now we've been talking a lot about and this is something where my brain is making these connections but we've been talking a lot about phone scams after i got called by some guy who knew my name and phone number and claimed to be with the sheriff's department recently and we talked about that and we've heard from listeners who've been scammed and now i'm just sort of equating in my head this like urgency to be like no don't hang up the phone you can't hang up the phone this has to happen now you need to stay on the phone with me the whole time no i can't leave we can't do e-signatures we got to do this where there's quotes only good we'll tear up the quote if need be but i need to leave with money and the signature and like i am and again i know that this guy isn't going to be the one doing the flooring but we're going to get more quotes of course we're going to look around some more and see what our options are i will not have a problem if we end up going with this company but part of that is because i know he's not going to be doing the

flooring himself but like okay well that was my question was has this now annoyed you to the point where even if it's the best quote if it turns out to be the best quote you will on principle not

no these folks no i if it's the best quote and we can get that flooring um and i again i still believe some of the things i do appreciate him not trying to upsell us i appreciate some of the things that he was saying um and so i don't think that he's a completely dishonest person but man when it came to closing the sale i guess i'm just not you know except for when we bought our one we bought a new car once in our life and that was what in 2017 or 2018 and i think everybody when they go into those negotiations are really geared up because of the reputation of car salesmen like he was using as an example. I'm no car salesman. So aside from that, I don't think I'm usually in a position, even buying a new stove or having it installed or any of the projects we've done around the house, none of them have been to the degree that somebody's like, I

I need to land the Walsh has deal. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so, like, all of a sudden, it's like more, I'm thinking about it in hindsight. That was kind of my point of this is, like, in the moment, it was not that egregious. But the more I think about it, I'm like, you son of a biscuit.

You mother tutor.

You mother tutor, son of a biscuit.

And I don't care who hears that. I don't care who knows, Andrew. Please stop. Yeah. I don't know if it's video games or what. but um yeah i um one thing that i have started to to do is if it's possible and i know it's a convenience issue i try to go to them because then i can just leave like them in the home environment with their kind of like binder of samples is kind of that that creates an issue

sometimes like i remember seeing the space though i'm really curious about that sorry to interrupt you but we thought that it made sense because we need somebody to come in and not just give measurements but actually see the space it's a basement kind of walk it out feel for like i guess

i guess i mean i i guess i would just i probably would go in with the square footage like i need this but but you know that might be that might be a good reason to have them come by i do remember when uh i was up at the burbank springs house and we were getting basement flooding we called some like we freaked out and we called some kind of like you know dry basement system expert and this guy shows up and he's got all these all these books of different and what what they were basically proposing doing was like trenching around the interior of the basement so digging oh yeah a trench around the in full perimeter of the inside of the basement which is really big and then putting this crazy drainage system and these sump pumps and i mean it was going to be like 25 000 and i swear to god it had me so flummoxed that i was i mean we didn't have the money but i was like you know we'll sign and figure it out you know like and then thankfully we were like we're gonna wait on this and we managed to get him out of there we pretended to have a sick cat when really all we had was a absolutely feral barn cat that was out just messing the neighborhood that's right but um but anyway and then of course that we talked to somebody else we're like no that system is totally insane like that's that's like that's not you know it's not necessary to do that anyway Carrie ended up getting it worked out with some exterior stuff that was so much less expensive than that. But it's like, yeah, that that feeling. And again, you know, it's this it's their job. And so they are they're trained. And over time, they've developed the ability to create this sense of urgency that can really get you get you kind of, you know, off your game or get you considering things that you weren't considering when they walked through that door.

Yeah. Yeah. So I kind of I didn't like it. But we are going to go, you know, there's a flooring place very near us here. You can probably picture it, Luke. It's up on the corner of Aurora, kind of where I live. We're going to walk into there probably on Saturday and, like, poke around a little bit and see what more options are. And I will say, this is where the salesperson maybe should, you know, maybe I'll send him this episode of he, you know, came into my studio.

He e-signature it to him.

He was like, oh, what do you do? Try it. He was, like, you know, excited to see my radio. Just don't put me on the radio, said Tobolowsky at one point. No joke. I mean the irony that he's being very much put on whatever this is as far as radio goes. I did not give him my name. I doubt he would hear this. And even if he cared enough to Google me, knowing that I do a podcast, he definitely didn't make it past Monday and Tuesday's show to hear this on Wednesday. I'll tell you that much. And so anyway, it was one of those things where the more I think about it, it's almost like he talked himself. I mean, I'm not saying he talked himself out of a cell because I don't know exactly where we're going to end up yet. But he definitely, like, everything was good until he needed to do the hard sell. and oh you know what I actually said at one point I said I actually did say to him and I was not confrontational I didn't have an edge in my voice but I think I just said kind of calmly I'm like you know you keep saying you're not a car salesman but I'm starting to feel a lot of pressure here and I don't like that I did say that at some point which saying it now it's hard to hear how that could come out of my mouth without sounding harsh but I swear in the moment I didn't say it with an edge I just was being kind of honest I'm like I'm feeling a lot of pressure here and I don't like that and I think eventually he backed off but like it's almost like he talked himself out of 45 minutes or 40 minutes of goodwill by being this sort of hard-charging guy at the end.

Right, if he would have just ended the conversation the way he started it, he'd probably be in the pole position for getting this contract. We probably have some listeners that work in sales and can relate to this, but that's the finesse of it, right? Is having the self-discipline or something to actually be chill about it, knowing that it will, or hoping it will come back to you as opposed to get half of the money before you walk out so that then you guys are kind of stuck in this deal, et cetera. It takes a tremendous amount of chill. Probably the highest level salespeople that are selling really expensive things.

um that have a huge you know what do you call it commission associated with i would guess that when you get into those levels of sales those people are like very very very light touch with

the whole thing because i'll bet you you know if you get into some real luxury stuff they also they being thirsty is a turn off you know what i mean and so they need to make it seem like they don't

they don't need you well i mean they get there was this art i guess you could say she was an art dealer um she was uh somebody who rich people including like leo dicaprio and stuff would retain her services for her to go out and advise them on what kind of cool art to buy and then also kind of broker the whole thing and what she was really selling was her art knowledge and uh but she was also sort of one of them like she had these beautiful homes and would take everybody out to these fancy meals and i think that's part of the image turned out she was stealing all of their money and now she's going to jail for like 15 years or something oh really yeah it was a story that kept popping up in the new york times of just being like sort of a salesperson essentially but a salesperson who also needed to pass as also rich and chill and i don't even need this because i have all this great stuff except actually it's because i'm taking your money i'm supposed to be buying paintings with and then just using it to pay my mortgage and then not buying the painting

tobolowski guy did say he's going to take us out on his yacht actually he said he was going to take us out on one of those um floating hot tubs in lake uh yes which is basically the same thing to

Can you see a shirtless Tobolowsky in a yacht tub?

Just me and this sales guy is going to...

Genevieve's traveling for work, so it's just you and Tobo in the tub.

Is it Lake Union that those things float in? Yes, of course.

Yeah, we've got them down in Portland, too. They float them on the Willamette. Becca has brought it up many times. Oh, really? That's something she would enjoy doing. As you guessed, that's not my scene. I don't see that being your scene. I mean, maybe if it was you and Genevieve and you rented a condo and it had a hot tub that was maybe just for you two, I could see that. But I don't see you being both in a hot tub.

Yes, and there's a promise that everybody in a half-mile radius has fully Oedipus-ed their eyes out. Wow. Okay.

Well, I'm going to give you credit for the historical reference. Although, is that really history? It didn't happen. But the idea of you in a hot tub that's somehow more in public than a normal hot tub is pretty funny to me. Like, you're just floating past boat after boat of just, like, co-eds, people out there, like, you in the yacht tub.

Yeah, I'm just waving at everybody who goes by.

Okay, now, the interesting thing, you started this by asking me if I've ever sort of relitigated these conversations or thought about them, and I gave you my little story from last night. And it's funny because it also involves a kind of good or service in the home environment. And what it was, was I, you know, this property that I live on is kind of it's it's on a hill and it means that there's lots of different levels. The area where you park, you have to go down some steps to get down to where the house is and stuff. And the people who ever had this house before me was really into rockeries. I don't know if they had some kind of a deal on different sizes of rock, but it's everywhere here. And the problem with these rockeries is they get these weeds and thistles that want to grow up between the rocks. And they're just a giant pain in the ass to deal with I spent like half of last summer Bent over just pulling thistles and things out From between these rocks in the hot sun So I decided to hire a lawn care company To come by like once a month And kind of just like Once I got all the weeds out Which I did myself Because it was going to be prohibitively expensive To have someone else do it Then they were going to come through and spray something Which they promised me was not What's the What's the weed killer that's supposed to be Roundup that's supposed to be really bad for you They were using something else allegedly that was like Not quite as toxic and anyway So they were doing that Toms of Maine It's a lavender It's a lavender verbena Weed killer that is Not doing shit That's such a funny idea So anyway I hired them Last summer to come out because I realized that Like once I got on top of this problem, if I could just maintain it, if I could just have it not come back, that would be great. And it would be worth, you know, paying a little bit of money to just stay on top of this. And so I hired them in like, I don't even remember when it was, maybe June or July. And they came out and they sprayed. And then the thing that happened was everything stopped growing because it was the summer, right? Like that's kind of how the growing season works. I don't really need to explain that for people.

Well, actually, though, I am curious. So how does it turn water into sugar in food? How do plants do that?

Okay. So when a mommy plant loves a daddy plant very much, Andrew. So what happened was like after, I don't know, maybe two months of this or three months of this, I was looking around and I realized these guys are just coming out and there's kind of nothing for them to do. because everything has now stopped growing and also I mow the lawn this is not a lawn mowing service and so like I emailed the guy and I was like hey I thanks so much I'm ready to wrap this up I don't really need this and he was I could tell he he was like uh we don't do e-signatures um no he was like he I could tell that he was kind of like he was trying to talk me into he was like well okay but just so you know uh the chemicals that we use the toms of maine that we use if the price goes up on that i'm gonna have to charge you more next i was like we'll pick this up in like april or may and he goes if you if you um i just have to let you know that if the price of the chemical goes up we'll have to charge you more next year and as if like if i just continue to retain them in what like january yeah denuary did you have genual did you yeah and that's kind of interesting it's not

like you had knowledge of being locked in with a contract like it was no i hadn't signed any contract it was all handshake probably go up anyway honestly yeah like but he was like it was

like just so you know if the price of the chemical goes up then i'm gonna have to charge you more and i was like well well let's cross that bridge when we come to it so sure enough we're now it's it's april things are starting to grow again i'm starting to notice those weeds i was out last weekend pulling them out and i had i called my guy and i said hey would you want to come by and um and take a look and we'll get this thing going again and he's like okay i need to come look at it first he didn't have my name in his context he's like who is this i reminded him so he came out yesterday i guess the thing this is with that kind of like thing that you're sitting with but you're kind of like re going over it in your mind and going like did he really think i was going to just hire them to come out in the snow and just like look at my yard for two hundred dollars a month or something you know um so he comes out it's a nice enough guy and he looks around and he's like okay um he goes well first we're gonna do the clean out and i'm like well what's the clean out because i have the i mow the lawn again there are no weeds currently i've pulled all of the weeds we're in we are starting from a good spot and he's like yeah we'll have to do the clean out we've got to come through and and weed whack oh and by the way the cost of the chemical went up now it's going to be i was paying i'll just use the real numbers i was good i was paying 200 a month before he's like now it's 250 or no so he said now it's 280 and i was like ouch and he goes yeah but um and then it was some weird thing where he was like but if you keep it going next year through november then i'll only charge you 250 and and the clean out which i still was I don't understand what the clean-out is. Everything is fine in my yard. I just want it to look like it looks right now. I just want your guys to come once a month and make sure that there are not weeds growing and they're going to spray something on there that's hopefully non-toxic but actually works that will make this not happen. And he was like, yeah, the clean-out's going to be like $700. And I was just like, I don't... But again, it was one of these things where I'd hired him last year. I was like, well, maybe there's something I don't understand about this. I don't know why I got into my head that like this was a reasonable thing to charge like whatever the clean out is i will do that sir like i should have just said don't do whatever you're calling the clean out don't do that i'm not paying you 700 to weed whack parts of my yard i don't even i'm still unclear on what was going

on can i ask you a question when you first hooked up with this guy yes that was about a year ago did you say or more than that maybe or less than that because i think i had already was getting into in well into the spring at that point um did he do you think you paid for a clean out the first time but you were just less dubious about it because it you hadn't been maintaining your yard as much and now this time you're like wait what are you talking about no i don't think you don't even pay for it no because again he's no i don't even punishing you for break for not breaking but

he's punishing you yes i think that's what was going on because he then he was saying something it was kind of difficult to figure out what he was trying to say there's a bit of a language barrier not an extreme one but like he was trying to say something about next year and like it'll be 250 a month but if i go until november and then the clean out and then we'll just do the clean out like i i felt like he was in some way trying to financially punish me for like not wanting his guys to come here in the dead of winter there was no reason for it and so anyway he says i say yes to this for some dumb reason i don't know i don't know what was going on but i i said okay well kind

of similar situation right like you're just kind of like somebody's talking at you telling you what

needs to be well and i i found you know he seemed pretty nice and i think i got him recommended well the other thing that happened jeez this is getting so much in the weeds literally and figuratively i'd had some other lawn care company come out last year and give me a quote and the quote they gave me was was really crazy was like a lot and more than this guy was quoting me so i kind of held him in this position in my mind like this guy's a straight shooter but i also just felt weird about this like if you do it for this amount of time it's this but then also this clean out and whatever so then he said i said well when are you going to be out here to do this and he said well i'm really busy so it's going to be probably in three weeks that'll be the first we can do it and then I'll just send you the invoice before we come and that's the other thing I've noticed about this guy He's crazy with the invoices like like he kept sent he would like send me every month He would be sending me an invoice and then he'd be like text me Did you get the invoice and I'd be like I got it five minutes ago, bro And then it'd be like that like four hours later. I just want to double-check you the invoice it's like and it would be like i've had to pay him before he comes out and does anything like it was just like energy was kind of weird so the idea was i i in my mind thought i had 30 days to think about this i thought well when i'm going to think about this and whenever he emails me with the invoice which will be about about when he's going to do the work hey i'll see like what's my budget looking like right now like am i feeling financially like it's tax season etc am i feeling like this is a good use of money so i was in the back of my mind kind of reserving the right to call this deal off and also his what he said to me was i will send you the invoice like right before we come do the work he sends me the invoice an hour like like two hours after we part company so last night i get the invoice i.e he's like teddy kgb voice pay the man his money like um

that's my matt damon impression i don't know teddy oh okay oh rounders i haven't seen that's

John Malkovich playing a Russian dude named Teddy KGB who loses poker to Matt Damon. Anyway, so not only is he not, like, he's asking for the money right now. He's told me he's super booked. He's not going to be here for three weeks. He wants the money right now. And I look at the bill, and he's charging me $750 for the cleanout. And I'm like, I'm like, I was like, I was incensed. I was incensed. I was like, who do you, like, by the way, I sent the email from my other computer, so I don't have it in front of me. But I basically just responded. I just said, dude, we had agreed on 700 for the clean out. And I don't understand any of this stuff about the 250 month through November. This is not going to work for me. Good luck with everything. I was pretty terse with him. But I felt like he literally just thought this guy's not going to notice I tacked $50 on this. And that made me now retroactively really mad about all of the goods, not the goods, But all the services I've received from this guy Because I now have him in the category of Kind of shady I think That he just thought This guy is not going to be tracking this The number 700 was burned in my brain Because it seemed ridiculously expensive In the first place You know how that is when there's something that's kind of shocking to you You have a strong memory of it Because by the very nature that it is shocking It burns in your brain So I knew exactly what we had talked about And he just thought he could throw 50 bucks on there Then plus tax. So the invoice I was getting for was for like $811 now. And it's just like, I was so mad at him. And then again, I was just like retroactively mad. I was like, how many times was he overcharging me for other things or just like, you know, trying to trick me into retaining his services for things that didn't need to be done or whatever, or maybe not even spraying things or diluting the chemicals that are allegedly going up. anyway so i don't know if i regret the email i could have maybe been a little nicer about it because he and i did have a friendly like kind of interaction like it was like hey what's up man and stuff i would occasionally throw out a little bit of my spanish but um i this was really i was where the 50 bucks came from that's fair that's fair um listen to english espanol man that'll get

you everywhere in this world but um yeah so anyway though to go back to my original question maybe the answer is yes i sort of feel like you had a similar experience one of those things were in the actual moment where you're talking to this now it is true you were hit with a bill that kind of said something that you didn't agree to so that or an invoice i should say but like it is one of those things where in the moment you're talking to the guy you're like this doesn't seem totally right but it's you know but whatever i'm in the moment but the more you sort of kind of ruminate on it and think about it you kind of get more and more torqued yes i'm sorry i was i thought i was on a fresca break i was on my 15 i was wondering if i was using torqued the right way yes i think

you're using it exactly right i was getting multiple meetings torqued up last night not just because of the mariners but because of uh this email i got from this guy so now i've i guess what what this really comes down to is i am going to be spraying my own rockery this summer or or

you're back on the market and you're going to see like you know was he a good deal or not if you

poke around that actually might be kind of fun it could be fun or could be like oh shit i see what

he was trying to do here he charges so little on the monthly thing that he's trying to make it up on like trying to maintain the contract or the the upfront it's almost your description there is almost like joining a gym sort of only a lot more expensive my gym costs nine dollars a month My gym costs $9 a month.

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.

All right, let's thank some dazzling donors. These folks are donating their money voluntarily to TBTL to keep this thing going. and we are so appreciative. um of that generosity uh and it's coming today from folks like max mcdaniel pronounced targets targets that is what he wrote in his right pronouncer that's right and max is max is in seattle washington and says good day fellas i added the accent you'll know when i'm doing the accent andrew and it was right there you'll know when you're speaking i'll know when you're speaking in spanish i knew i shouldn't have shared that with you literally what i will say sometimes is K-Tall. That's about the extent of what I'll try. Which I hope is a friendly thing and not seen as some kind of terrible gringo behavior. But again, maybe that's why I was getting up charged. G'day, fellas. I've been a listener for over 10 years now, and I'm proud to be a first-time dazzler this donation season. Thanks, Max. Max says, a little over a year ago, I lost my job when the startup I worked for went under. Sorry about that. Being unemployed, I found myself eagerly awaiting the early afternoon push notifications, letting me know my friendos were ready to talk at me. The daily banter about all things from the minutia of garbage day protocol to vast topics in the political zeitgeist was something I truly relied on as a means of normalcy amidst what was an otherwise chaotic and overwhelming time in my life. As I write this one year to the day since I started my new job, I consider it a privilege to be able to donate a dazzling level in hopes that I can support the boys in helping others who may have fallen on hard times. Thanks for being here. Keep up the good work. And remember, what you do is so important. Well, Max, I'm really, really glad to hear that you landed on your feet, as they say, and that you've got a new job. I hope that's treating you well. And what a nice thought from Max that if he's in the position where he's able to support the show, he's sort of doing it on behalf of folks who might not be in that position. I know that times are tough out there and getting tougher for a lot of folks. And so if somebody like Max sees that they're in the position to help out and they're kind of doing it in lieu of some other people who aren't in the position, I think that's a pretty nice thing to do.

Absolutely. And Max. Now, this is Max in Seattle. I'm pretty sure this is the Max who sometimes refers to himself as other Max because we do have a lot of Maxes. And I think this is the same Max who's a Cleveland Guardians fan and had that sweet, what do they call the home, the new City Connect hat, you know, whatever. But anyway, Max, I'm not going to get into detail. I dropped the ball on something I told Max I would do for him. Max, you know what I'm talking about. Email me and let's get the ball rolling on that again. How about that?

And, Max, anything that I have dropped the ball on, I'm probably going to continue dropping the ball on. So just get at Andrew. Just say work it out with Andrew.

Yeah, right. Thank you, Max. Maestro? I have your drugs. On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattles down.

Look who it is. It's Katie Broussard. Hey, Katie. In Salt Lake City, Utah. Hey there to John, Andrew, and Luke. This is my second year as a D donor. I'm trying to be brief. Thank you, Katie. You've saved time by not writing Dazzler, but you've eaten up time by writing something funny that's going to cause me to then expand on the topic of how much time are we really saving by just using the D?

Could be a DD. We'd save even more time with that, I suppose.

Yeah, although, you know, in the... I don't know if we're talking this way anymore, but back in the day when you had two Ds next to each other when I was a teen, that had its own kind of connotation. I feel like that could be, you know, dangerous Anyway, I'm happy to be here, is what Katie writes I wrote a long thing, and then I got tired of trying to be quippy So I'll just say, I love the TBTL community now more than ever And I appreciate every tiny thing that goes into making the show on a daily basis That's hard work, thank you Sometimes when I'm writing my chart notes, I listen to the boys And try to use their friendly tone when describing my patients I actually find it helpful I'm a naturopath with a practice here in Salt Lake City but also all over Utah and Washington via telemedicine. I've got my own supplement line. You can visit my website at drkatiebroussard.com. And by the way, Katie is with a K, K-A-T-I-E, and then Broussard is B-R-U-S-S-A-R-D. Drkatiebroussard.com to learn more. As an old French professor of mine used to say, chapeau, instead of cheers or thanks. So, chapeau. Chapeau. I thought chapeau was hat. Is chapeau spelled differently?

Chapeau means boy. No, I have no idea.

Chapeau. I always thought that was hat in French. Anyway, listen, if you're looking for a naturopath and you're in Utah, it's got to be Dr. Katie Bruchard. It does look like a cap.

It is. When you type in chapeau, I am getting a lot of photos of... of hats chapeau yeah like i would uh i would i would think that uh so that means that katie's french teacher was saying hat to everybody i'm trying to figure this out so i'm writing like

chapeau cheers is that a thing there's gonna be a hat on the tv show cheers um let's see here chapeau in the context of cheers or congratulations is a french word meaning hat well this is this This is AI going, this is AI going just super AI here.

Thank you, Dr. Katie, and hat to you.

You wear many chapeaus.

Hello and welcome to Top Story. Okay, I'll try to keep this relatively brief, Andrew, because we spent probably way too much time on the rants and raves yesterday. Impossible. But I did the Seattle Times rants and raves, that is. But the the the yesterday, I think the headline was. What was it?

The actual headline. Yeah.

Enjoy. Reader enjoyed jazz concert.

Exactly. Yeah, that was great.

The today's was rant and rave. Reader appreciates fix it fairs. But that wasn't the one that captured my attention. That was just somebody saying these fix it fairs are really cool, which they are.

We went to these and I went to one one time. I can't remember what she's trying to get fixed, but I think they helped her.

Yeah, they'll get a bunch of people together that are good at fixing like toasters and this and that. And then those of us who are not inclined towards that, people like me, can bring their stuff in and see if somebody there can kind of fix it. I vibed very much with a rant. And I also was unhappy about the second rant in this. So rant number one in this today's column, if you will, rant to the electric dirt bikes that kids are riding all over the place around North Bend. Do they really think it's OK since they are electric to go places where they are not allowed? This is such a problem in Portland right now. Becca and I were walking over this pedestrian only bridge called the Tilikum. It's got it's got public transit. It's got the max line goes through the middle of it and you can walk and you can ride your bike. what you should not do is have like 13 teenage boys on motorcycles riding wheelies in the pedestrian area as happened to us yesterday or not yesterday but whatever this weekend as we were walking across the bridge and we're like we were in the middle of mad max fury road and yes these motorcycles were technically electric but that was the only thing that made them difference and just like a rogue gang of young motorcyclists wheelying past and around us and seriously almost bumping into me at like 45 miles an hour. I was not happy about it. So I agree with that rant. Now, here's the next one, though, that I don't fully understand. I hope this didn't come from our good friend who's a, you know, elite-level ranter or raver with the Seattle Times. Rant to TV news reporters who can't cover a simple news story without using their hands to speak.

Without using their hands to speak, okay.

It's distracting, unnecessary, and does nothing to convey the actual news. perhaps you are better suited for radio or print media this is such a weird complaint i you know

i glanced at this earlier when you said you want to talk about the rants and raves and i read it quickly and i and the first time i read it i thought it said who used their hands to like i interpreted it as people who gesticulate too much when they're you know kind of presenting the news in whatever fashion whether they're a reporter or or a um anchor but this is like oh people who don't use their hands to speak that's such a weird thing to really like kind of latch on to no no i

think there's i think they were saying who use their hands to speak ran to how did i get this

so wrong ranted tv news reporters who can't cover a simple news story without using oh okay it's a double negative wait but what so they are saying they're using their hands too much like that's literally part of the job and it also belies your last sentence perhaps you're better suited to radio or print i would say the people who aren't using their hands to present maybe are better just sitting behind a um a typewriter they still use typewriters or a microphone i think that their

theory is if you're in the radio or print media we can't see you so we don't care what you're

doing with those hands but you need if you're on tv what are you supposed to just keep them down by

your sides i don't know there's like what a weird thing for this person to be bothered by but again i also just think it's interesting that they're like you need to go be in one of the medias where

we can't see you in your dumb hands yeah i just can't um i mean there might be a couple of people out here out there who are just like wildly gesticulating in a distracting way but i think i would find it more distracting if a reporter like was like just yeah i mean i guess if you're out in the field you're holding a microphone that's something maybe but if you're just standing

there if you're like it's more unsettling if you're not moving your hands at all exactly i

mean that's kind of a way of presenting do you stand in front of a group full of people and never like move your that's a natural

spiritual human thing to do when you're talking that's right and i was also had me wondering do we use our hands much when we're talking to each other on this show i often am making like really

rude gestures i try to keep it off of the the camera out of the frame well this is i mean and i kind of didn't want to go here specifically because this is so not about me and this is much closer to the work that you do uh you know doing tv news stories but i will say that i immediately started thinking like well when i do a hey dummies video i'm usually doing them in this exact setup in my studio talking into this computer that i'm talking to coffee mugs right two coffee mugs i don't know what to do with my hands no i don't know if you know this but like when i'm done producing the video i have to find a screen cap to use that is kind of like the the main picture for the youtube video and i don't like it i don't like the computer just to choose one i do this for both you and I and I'm always looking for an interesting shot you know now if you're out in front of a Chipotle in Times Square I can get a good shot of you with the Chipotle sign behind you but when I'm always sitting behind this microphone I'm I'm scrolling through I'm like do something Andrew do something and then I'll find a shot where I finally am gesticulating with my hands or something and I'm like okay well this makes it seem like there's some something going on in this video like i'm looking for the moments where it looks like i'm trying to explain something with

my hands we have a version of this that's become a problem i actually sent i tried to make it really nice but i actually sent a note to the folks at live wire at the radio show that i do to say can we maybe low-key the photos of me yelling with my hands out to the crowd when they're so at the beginning of the show we say uh you know from prx it's and then the crowd yells live wire and there's always a and so when that happens i'm always kind of encouraging the crowd as is elena passarello and it's an active moment that the problem is we're doing a radio show so it's mostly inactive it's me sitting at a desk i have a computer i'm talking into a microphone so it's the one thing where there's like activity what it means is there are like about 400 pictures on the website of me like screaming and making a weird face because it's the only thing they can find that seems like it's activated and every email that goes out every social posting everything where my face and my, I guess, torso are being presented to the wider public as an enticement to Livewire is me going. Yeah, like, why is this

guy so angry all the time? Yeah, exactly. Why is this guy

always yelling and pointing, and why is he being so weird? And I was like, could we, I don't know what the other photos would be, but could we just, like, kind of be aware of how much this is the photo? This is the kind of photo we're putting out, because it's becoming a little bit kind of one note. So, did John Mulaney get a jaw job? by the way well andrew that was a there were people on tiktok were speculating about that

i would be really caught wind of this i heard it on my podcast not my podcast the podcast i listened to this morning and they're all talking about john malaney's jaw i'm i know that seemed like a weird left turn but you're just talking about how you're presenting on the live wire page and so i'm thinking about like kind of i guess i guess i'm thinking about show business and then i don't know hearing the them i don't know a couple of hours ago on the podcast talking about John Mulaney's jaw I realize that that is sticking with me for some reason because of maybe various things because I don't think of this might be short-sighted of me um I'll try to choose my words carefully but I don't think of it as usually comedians who are going out and having a lot of body modification or cosmetic surgery done um for the you know to look a little bit hunkier um I don't I guess he is he's a good looking man huh I guess as as a straight guy I never really stopped to consider that, but he is, I guess he's a hunky guy and he wanted to be a little bit more hunky. I still think he could cut the hair a little bit. Has he confirmed he did that though? I don't know. There's just a lot of, there's a lot of speculation and I want to hear.

Should I call into everybody's live and ask him? No, that would be really rude. Today we're talking about jaw surgeries. Today our theme is jaw surgery. What do you think? John Waters, have you ever had a jaw surgery? What do you think? I don't think, here's what I think. I don't think he had a jaw surgery. He does have now a very, his jaw is fairly pronounced and very, I guess we could say classically masculine appearing or whatever. It's a nice, he has a nice jawline. I just think his body is changing in the way that our bodies all change as we get older. And I don't think that John Mulaney, when he was, you know, 25 years old, was feeling his comedy career was being held back by a lack of a huge mandible. Like, I just, I don't understand why. I think what's happened is maybe he's in different physical shape. I mean, he's sober, and maybe he's exercising more. Maybe he's just getting a little bit more, I don't know, muscular, and then that's kind of showing up in his face. Also, again, our faces just change over time. I just think his body and face changed a little bit, and it seemed noticeable to people, but the explanation of he went and secretly had a jaw...

enlargement surgery so he could continue to just tell jokes about cocaine use it just doesn't

make sense to me okay i'm gonna just keep on throwing new topics at you that we have not approved ahead of time were you did you have the sound up on the mariners game yesterday when day valley was talking about it is valley right i was confused by the way it's spelled yes did you hear him going on and on about uh intermittent fasting and actually fasting for days on and he was talking about it with goldsmith and it made the i felt like it made the broadcast very awkward because suddenly we got at first goldsmith is just asking him some follow-up questions about his fasting tendencies which starts off like sort of jokey but then at the end you just have dave valley who i don't know i i asked you the other day off air like i don't have a great read on that guy but i get a little spidey sense for some reason but we get this like real like kind of You know, a guy that I see as sort of a muscular, meathead-y, you know, former catcher, and I don't know if he was a beloved player for the Mariners or not. He was a beloved catcher back in the day. He was beloved. Like, okay, and so I guess people, I didn't watch that era of the Mariners, so I don't have that, like, halo effect with him, and so I'm always a little skeptical of him. And all of a sudden the broadcast just becomes him saying some, I would say, kind of dubious health stuff for quite some time talking about like how I think he couldn't think of the word ketosis. He was trying to think of what happens after like he literally was like singing the praises of not eating for four days. And, like, it started casual, but then Goldsmith asks a couple of follow-ups, and I think Goldsmith starts to realize, oh, shit, I can't stop what's happening now. And I don't know if he was trying to get out of it or not, but Dave Valley, I'm just like, I don't know if you should be just saying this on a, just giving out this kind of health advice on this casual baseball broadcast. It was kind of on the edge.

This is what happens when you don't have anyone that can hit. Yeah, right. There's a nature abhors a vacuum. all that time donovan solano's fault all that time when other announcers are talking about what just happened on the diamond when their team got a hit the mariners announcers have nothing to talk about and now they're getting into questionable dietary claims i'm going to

see if i type in dave valley fasting did anybody on like reddit or anybody did this start a conversation reddit is like my like my go-to place for yeah no you really did hear that or you really did see that and we want to have a conversation about it i'm not seeing anything here but i thought it was a very very bizarre part of the broadcast that i think might have honestly potentially made some people nervous about why are we letting this guy give out this advice he wasn't like saying everybody should do it but i was starting to think like i don't know this is

getting into some kooky territory well the thing is the way they've used dave valley in seasons past is he's just been part of the post game show uh-huh but that's pretty straightforward that's reporting on what happened in the game that's kind of analyzing the highlights etc it doesn't have this kind of like long stretches of downtime where you could really kind of you could just go off the rails i don't think he's historically been i mean he's probably done it a few times but i don't he wasn't always like one of the color commentators if i remember right so this is

maybe slightly a new world for him i don't i don't even know that he's necessarily doing a bad job yeah like i do i'm not as obsessed with having former players in there i know that's usually the thing the former players the color person they can give and I will say like there were moments yesterday or maybe it was the day before where he was literally talking about like oh man when you get a wild pitch like that you need to do this like the perspective that he can bring as somebody who is who spent so much time literally behind the plate like you know there's you know and he's a good talker so I'm not trying to like say I'm not trying to turn this into like Dave Valley shouldn't be there I'm actually trying to figure out how I feel about him as a color commentator and it's not all negative and it's not all positive i love angie angie so far is is my favorite even more than um hyphen but anyway we don't have to get into all of that hey tbtl listeners did you want me to rank all the color commentators on my new root sports streaming app um but uh anyway i just thought it was kind of strange that they were just letting him just giving him more and more rope on this stuff that sounded like kind of like i don't know if we should be encouraging everybody to do this stuff that you're apparently doing speaking of eating i posted this on instagram last night

And my dad is on such a bizarre eating schedule. So as I've talked about on the show, when my dad's out here working, I end up, and as the Dr. Katz tape, although I realize I'm doing a reverse Dr. Katz because in that tape, the dad has made the rice and the son is enjoying the rice. In my case, the son is making the rice and the dad is hopefully enjoying the rice. So I always cook for us. And I try to make something that's kind of healthy Or at least, you know, again I'm trying to stay away from the super processed stuff And I made something last night I was very proud of It was a real winner I had all this asparagus that I had

bought that i needed to get through and i thought i had some pasta but i i didn't have any i don't know typical pasta but i did have some orzo and so i made this um asparagus orzo thing where i cooked up the orzo and then i sort of threw the asparagus asparagus in at the last minute and then i made this other thing that had like some grated actually finely chopped parmesan and oil and some other flavors and then you throw that in the mix and you stir it all up and and uh it was delicious And then I put this, like, salmon, smoked salmon on it. It was really, really good. I was really proud of it. And I'm literally plating this. That means I'm putting the orzo stuff into this bowl, and I'm putting the salmon with it. And he goes, I'm just going to grab a couple of these if this is cool with you. And he's holding a box of white cheddar Cheez-Its. It's like maybe it's like 640 or something. And the table is set for dinner. And he's like, hey, I just want to let you know I'm just going to eat some of these white cheddar cheez-Its. I was like, are you insane? Are you five? Like, who's eating white cheddar Cheez-Its at dinnertime when someone is clearly putting the dinner on the plate to bring over to you?

And was his thing like, I'm not ready to sit down for dinner right now. I'm going to be out in the backyard, like, smoking my cigar and eating these Cheez-Its. He'd already done that and talked to my mom on the phone and the whole ritual. So it was like, the plan was and maybe the reality was that he sat down with you at a sort of like at a dining table and ate a box of Cheez-Its?

I think he was just hungry, which I get But I was like, Dad, I'm putting the food on the plate right now You're going to be eating in two minutes I think he was hungry But my mom did this on Friday night when they were over And I was making this other whole meal My mom goes Again, I'm like grilling up these salmon patties and stuff And my mom goes, oh, those smell great Hey, by the way, I'm just going to have a couple of these And she's holding a bag of Fritos They both just like exist on junk food That they'll eat at any time of the day or night

regardless of what's going on well what happened with your dad though did he sit down at the table with you and you ate the orzo and salmon and he just ate crackers he ate he i strongly reprimanded

him i think he ate like one cheese it because i started yelling at him and then he and then he sat down and he ate this he loved it by way he had seconds it was really good but if i hadn't yelled at him he would have eaten half a box of of uh cheese it's as the as the appetizer to this meal that i made maybe i don't know maybe i'm just maybe i'm sensitive but like i find the fact that my parents who are both thankfully in very good health just walk around eating fritos and cheese at any time of the day or night yeah very bizarre i feel like there was a time no it'll still happen

like sometimes i'm in the mood to cook and often what'll happen is by the time i'm done cooking i'm not even hungry myself anymore are you snacking while you're cooking no i probably had a couple of beers though that takes up some space down there um i don't know and also maybe just like the act of cooking i don't know there's something about it by the time i'm done i just want to start cleaning up sort of so often i'm just sort of like i'm making something thinking i hope this is good i hope genevieve enjoys this you know and so but then this hasn't happened a while but like you know the meal will maybe be like 15 minutes away from being done and then genevieve will sort of like meander in the kitchen grab a couple of cheese like you know i see her grabbing a plate for something i'm just kind of like what do you what are you doing here like this is but on the other hand if i'm cooking and i'm not even that interested in eating it's not like i'm going to

force her to eat what i'm what i'm making i mean i think it's the stuff they eat too like it's because i'll i'll usually make an appetizer too not even i won't make an appetizer but i'll like get a little cheese plate with some olives and stuff and some crackers like i try to like something about eating fritos before the meal as the appetizer just feels wrong to me yeah right like or you know whereas like i will usually put something out that they can snack on while i'm making the food it's something about the and then the other thing is that it's just like uh for a good week or two after my dad leaves from helping me out here i am going through the refrigerator and the cabinets and getting rid of the bizarre food products that he's that he's brought over the bizarre off-brand you know sweets and uh you know woohoo uh the other day when i was gone over the weekend but my dad was here and i was like hey i was texting i was like is there anything for you to eat in the house i was like there are these trader joe's frozen indian meals that he could make and he goes oh man i took my taquitos home with me last time he had brought a box of like taquitos and then eaten like frozen taquitos probably from like walmart or something and then he had eaten let's say there's 10 of them in there he had eaten six of them there's four left and then he had taken them down to this down to the beach with my mom so they could eat the taquitos down there. I was like, who's transporting frozen taquitos across state lines?

And is it legal? And should it be legal?

Speaking of illegal activity, I'll just throw this out so we can clear it off the list because I've been promoting the last two days in a row. An American YouTuber is in prison

right now in jail in India for going to this island called North Sentinel Island which is part of India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands to try to meet the Sentinelese tribe who are considered some of the least contacted people on planet Earth this guy is from Scottsdale Arizona his name is Mikhailo Polyakov and apparently he is in jail for the next 14 days until they figure out that what they're going to do with him. He went out to this island. First of all, he had to study the tides and all of this different maritime stuff to get to this island because it's actually, as you might imagine, in the middle of nowhere. And he went out to the island and he made apparently a YouTube video and he was standing on the beach blowing a whistle trying to get this tribe to come out. Nobody came out, luckily for this guy. And then he left a can of Diet Coke and a coconut as an offering. I don't know what grows on this island. I feel like a coconut is probably not blowing their mind i don't want to buy into island stereotypes leave them an ipad like what's the coconut seems like a thing that might already be possible there might even be a big part of the diet but anyway he left this can of diet coke and a coconut and then he left and as he was leaving apparently a couple of fishermen saw him and so then they called the police and uh and then he got arrested when he got back to whatever the mainland of india was what i thought was interesting about this story in reading it is that you know these uh this tribe that's on north sentinel they apparently will just kill anybody who shows up on the beach and they have some fishermen uh showed up uh they they got lost and ended up on the beach and the tribe killed them um there was another person who went there to try to make contact with them that the tribe killed what i think is interesting is it seems completely fine like for this tribe to kill people that go there What I mean is there doesn't seem to be any discussion by the government, any government of saying to the tribe, could you stop killing people when they show up? This seems like one of those things where everyone's like, if you show up on that beach and you get killed, that's on you.

I mean, I haven't read this story, but I guess if there's no I mean, it's our own governing bodies that implement laws. Right. And so, like, does this does this island not fall under the regulation?

I think it's technically India.

Oh, well, then murder is illegal in India.

I mean, they're calling it—I mean, Indian police have arrested a 24-year-old American. So India is—I don't know if this is a territory of India. I don't know what the exact designation is. But, like, this guy is now in trouble with the government of India overdoing this. So they have some sort of a role to play here. But I just thought it was interesting reading about multiple people getting killed for going on this beach. had no conversation about like did we go to the tribe hey stop doing that it really does seem to be the case that you if you get murdered at this place that's going to be on you and i kind of support that i honestly think like oh no you've always been a real stand your ground guy that's me you know it's the castle doctrine and that's something that i've long long held on this show and advocated for but yeah i i think i tend to agree with whoever it is who said uh we're not about prosecuting this like you go on that island and you kind of get what you deserve

i liked what you said i think it was yesterday at the beginning of the show you're like it's never like when the sentence begins a youtuber american youtuber it's never kind of like something good

that follows american youtuber did something really great yeah american youtuber um performs heimlich on mayor and uh you know saves his life or something it's like no it's always bad Like when you get the term YouTuber and American involved They're going to be getting a wombat That they shouldn't be getting They're going to be leaving garbage on a beach somewhere I used to be Very fascinated with this idea of uncontacted Peoples I grew up, there were these I mean this is the absolute worst expression of this I would say probably But it's big in the evangelical movement To try to contact these tribes and make them Christian And there was a book called Through Gates of Splendor That was very big in the and it was about these you know of course white missionaries who go down to somewhere i think in the amazon and like make you know contact with and convert all of these people into quote unquote christians whatever that's supposed to mean i remember growing up and reading these books and thinking like what an amazing thing you've done for these people yeah in the middle

of nowhere yeah and historically how is that i don't feel like it's held up particularly well

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 i have actually an email andrew that uh i think will uh maybe clear up some confusion that we had yesterday on the show that you and i had about the uh the hot lanes i I knew exactly. Okay, good. I wasn't sure if you saw... because we got a lot of emails and stuff on this, some of which were so informed that it left me more confused. But now we continue to get emails that are explaining the difference between the hot lanes and the HOV lanes.

Yeah, I just saw the one from Steven, and then I had Gemini summarize the email, and then it was really confusing. Yeah, right. Steven said, anyone can – so this was in reference to a rant yesterday on the show from the Seattle Times about people basically just driving in the car lane even though it's just a single person and uh this person was upset about that and then i talked about how i recently was driving on 405 in the carpool lane thinking that i was allowed to do it because i was willing to pay the toll and uh but then wondering how it was that the little camera knows the difference between me by myself in my car where i should be paying the toll and somebody who's got three people or two people in the car and is allowed to do this because they're carpooling and uh steven said anyone can use the hot lanes and pay the tolls uh be it with a good to go pass or by uh photo mail photo mail i guess they maybe they email you a photo or something but if you invest fifteen dollars for a flex pass it has a slider to indicate hov or carpool and you can use the lane without getting charged so you've got this little thing that you can move over when you're got when you have multiple people in your car um that i guess then tells it not to

bill you and is it the honor system or there because i we got an email from other people who

said there are not cameras on this stuff yet well that's the thing he says um steven says i'm not sure how they necessarily enforce this i may have accidentally left my flex pass on hov mode while being a single driver but it's honestly not something i would ever purposely try to cheat it's dollar it's a dollar 25 for dog's sake by the way i like it for dog's sake because you said

you were not charged that much that's the other thing that's confusing because some of these like this was a big thing they were going to charge a lot for some of these lanes maybe you were just there during a time when it wasn't like peak pricing i mean it was a you know thursday at

5 p.m it wouldn't get a peak year than that yeah but yeah and it was like a dollar 25 it was like it was it was very very cheap yeah affordable yeah for how far that i went in that lane but again this also seems so i guess that answers the question you you sort of if you have this flex pass you can kind of toggle it back and forth between carpool mode and i'm paying for this mode i mean it would be tempting to leave it in carpool mode wouldn't it yeah but again it's a

dollar 25 and if you believe in the system and that your dollars yeah exactly towards more improvements it's a dollar 25 for dog's sake andrew yeah that's that's right i'm glad also I like that Stephen included a photo of this pass because, again, I was getting a lot of emails, a lot of text messages from various people like, again, some were very detailed, some were people just shooting off a quick text message, and I couldn't figure out what they meant, like sliding it back and forth and actually the device, the little special good-to-go pass with the slider is actually kind of slick. I want to slide that back and forth.

It's slick, but it gives me really it's sort of, it triggers me based on pregnancy tests in the 1990s. It really looks like a pregnancy test, which as you probably know

i've had some adventures with yeah well stop peeing on your good to go pass for starters steven for for dog's sake steven stop peeing on your honey we're pregnant is it a boy or a girl it's an hov it's a it's a hot lane yeah um i have some more updates here um we got some i typed dave valley into blue sky i was like am i the only one who heard this and i do have i think they were maybe joking about box breathing at some point somebody oh i did hear him say that

and I liked it. It was in the background as my dad and I were talking, but I heard him say, this is where you got to break out your box breathing. And I do box breathing and I thought that was cool coming from Dave Valley.

I got one person who I follow here who is not a very negative person. In fact, this is the first kind of negative thing that I've seen her write is going to have to start practicing my box breathing to get through the rest of Dave Valley, which wow, shots fired there, Claire. And then to love a Mariner podcast says, I'm not sure I trust Dave Valley or Aaron Goldsmith to give dietary advice I'm telling you this this this section of the thing that went on for what seemed like a long time about like just telling people not to eat for four days and you'll find yourself incredibly focused and energized was really a trip I'm just like again I wasn't looking for somebody to like bury the dude but I'm like I heard this right I just need somebody to be like that was weird and to love a Mariner podcast saw me and I appreciate

Also, this, I mean, you know me, there's nothing like a fad diet, um, that, uh, there's nothing I enjoy more than a fad diet, but, like, I don't know if the intermittent fasting puts you into ketosis. I mean, it might be because you're just eating nothing, but that's usually a low-carb thing, but the thing about being in serious ketosis is it's seriously bad on the breath, because your body is...

breaking down i think okay first of all there's intermittent fasting which started the conversation because i think one of when there's a downtime in a ball game i'm sort of just remembering how this developed now because i think i walked into the room and it was just beginning i think that aaron goldsmith really likes to talk about the soft serve ice cream machine that is available for the press in the mariners uh you know like broadcast booth or whatever or wherever it's kept and i think that that's sort of a a go-to when the when the game is slow like let's let's joke around about how much ice cream my colleagues eat or whatever and so i think that started with day valley and then day valley gave some answer that was like no i'm intermittent fasting right now so i only had like some ice cream and now i won't eat again until tomorrow night or something like that and there's a moment of silence and then goldsmith says wait are you joking and he says no no, no, no, I'm doing intermittent fasting. And so it starts as intermittent, which I'm saying now I'm wrong.

And what about, I've been doing mittent fasting lately.

Mittent, right, yeah. I'm just eating non-stop. But no, but then I don't think going four days without eating is intermittent fasting. That's just fasting. And so then the conversation's kind of, Dave Valley's talking, he's like, yeah, my son got me doing this, so I just got off a four-day fast or whatever. And now they're into it, and I think Goldsmith couldn't get back out of it. And that's where things got, I think, really weird when we just started talking about fasting, fasting and then he did not say ketosis i want you know i want to retract this here he said some word he said some word that he did not have a good handle on which god bless god bless i understand that it was not ketosis it was something that didn't even sound like ketosis i don't think and i was like he's like you you slip into something called and he said some word and i'm like are you talking about ketosis but the word he said he butchered and he said i know i'm getting that wrong people can email in or whatever um and so i'm still trying to figure out in my memory if he was trying to say the word ketosis or if he's talking about something he probably i mean obviously he knows more about this world than i do i've never gone an hour without eating so uh anyway exactly so maybe i'm wrong about that aspect of it but it was just a very weird moment that i

thought got weirder and weirder well i just wanted to say that this is where you can see my vanity and my insecurity colliding and trying to figure out which thing am I more embarrassed about or which thing is driving me more from a vanity standpoint because certainly when you don't eat any carbs, your body does go into something called ketosis, which by the way, you could probably get from not eating for four days because what are you not eating carbs?

That's why I assumed that that's what it was.

So I'm not disagreeing with you. He very well might have been talking about ketosis. But what I was going to say is, you know, at different times in my life when I've been feeling insecure about my weight and things like that and I've been very like well I could just do this you know um low carb stuff and then get into ketosis then you start dropping the weight but one of the things that happens is it can give you a very weird breath because your body is in this state that it's probably not really supposed to be in or not used to being in and then it's a question of do I want to be a drop dead handsome uh thin boy with rocking breath or like a nice pleasantly plump guy who has hopefully normal breath and i i literally decided i will never do that because of the breath implications like i would much rather be a larger person in my body whose breath is not offensive to the people he's around but you've done it before right have you got i have but not into the not to the extreme i mean i have done it before and i've been the whole time worried about the effect on my breath yeah honestly yeah i remember those conversations

I think you were a little bit more into that, or you were more ketosis curious back maybe when we were first hanging out.

I want that to be the show title, and I want curious to be with a K.

Okay, not Mother Toot and Son of a Biscuit. Oh, that's pretty good, too.

Maybe that so we don't come off as like a diet advice show, ketosis curious.

1-800-CATARISIS-CURIOUS for kids. All right. Is that where we're leaving things today? Did you say, is that enough? Is that enough? Please. well the listeners say yes

I think they do alright thanks for listening everybody we will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for all of you so we hope you can join us for that in the meantime have a great Tuesday take care of yourselves hope the Mariners get it together today although I suspect they won't in the meantime we'll see you tomorrow please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all Power out.