Muse

I say, I say, what up, dog? Let the fun begin. That's a tuna, bro! This comes out to all the coffee lovers of the world. I just love hot Cheetos! That's my wife. Ooh la la! Go Browns! Jalapeña! Ba-ding! Uh-uh! Get off my call! Don't miss the Slashes Fest.

Go Browns, uh-uh. TVTL!

If we wanted to, we could have our own business. No, I agree. If we really wanted to, we could. It's just that, do we want to do that? Do we want to have a website and a blog and be like, this is what we did today? No, it's too much work. Yeah, and too expensive.

Wow, you're really good at puzzles.

I did them all the time as a kid. As my mom used to say, when you're doing a puzzle, it's like having a thousand friends.

and friends no johnny i just don't know how you do it do what a four-hour show every morning just

uh talking to the mic and your voice goes out through the wires and once a week whether you need it or not somebody comes in here and gives you a check for 38 dollars have a good show dummy

it's what you do is so important well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a thursday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live are you sure that's what they said on ask chiefs my name is luke burbank i'm your host as lords machine says the dog days are over coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where it is a dry so far anyway fall day where you can really really and truly as i was retrieving the garbage can early this morning you can really feel the weather is turning it is it is cozy time my friend let's snuggle up there ain't nothing like soup let's snuggle up with an episode of tbtl here it's episode 4587 in a collector series let the fun begin let's snuggle up and talk about a bunk journalism report i'd like to point out to anybody watching this is really bunk journalism It's the story of an interview with a guy named Bill de Blasio, who may or may not be the Bill de Blasio that was once the mayor of New York City and all of the confusion surrounding it. We will talk about that. Also, it's a Thursday, meaning it's time for the Blur's Days as well. We'll celebrate all of the folks in the TVTL world of listeners who were born in the recent times of this week. Oh, and we're going to talk to this guy. Okay, he's the longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. In some certain quarters, though, when he walks into a room, they call him Mr. Unlimited. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Is this one of those quarters? It sure is. Great. Hey, it's Mr. Unlimited. Hey, I love that. Thank you. Sometimes I'll elbow a guy next to me at the bar. I'll go, be careful, though. He's spicy. That's right. I just want everyone to know that Mr. Unlimited is here, and he's spicy.

I love that. For me, thank you very much. Absolutely. Just realized that I did not bring my water bottle in with me today. That's going to be some rough stuff. I just got to make it to the halfway.

I wish I could send you some of this carbonated water down the line. By the way, are you mildly surprised that I'm actually doing this, that this project has actually worked? Because I'm mildly surprised.

Mildly as well, yes. Not to undercut you. I do want to talk about something that is close to your heart, though, and close to your mouth today. My lungs? Well, I want to talk about your esophagus today. Okay, sure. I want to talk about your esophagus. By the way, nothing rhymes with esophagus, right? Maybe there's a dinosaur or something.

that maybe yeah gus how about how about our friend p fletch's son gus yeah if you just elongate it by the way gus i got a i got a dm from gus the other day i'm sorry i know we want to talk about my things close to my heart and i got a dm from gus of of our friend phyllis fletcher well literally of our friend phyllis fletcher i believe gus emerged from the body of our friend p fletch it's just a photo from one of gus's high school classes where he goes dude they're playing a video of you in my marketing class oh really it was some cbs sunday morning piece and then i said oh man did you tell the teacher that like that person has forced you to be on their podcast multiple times and he said no maybe tomorrow yeah that's the night i love that casual approach

it's like i mean you'd be jumping out of your seat right you'd be like i know him i know him

Exactly, I'd be like Will Ferrell in Elf

I know

him. I know him. Gus was like, I don't know, maybe tomorrow. He's got a lot going on. He's a celebrity in his own right. Something that is near and dear to my heart. I want to talk to you about blueberries, Luke. You eat a lot of blueberries lately. I sure do. I often will have blueberries around, especially during the summertime because I always have some sort of a fruit salad going at all times. I've described this to you before. Usually I'm cutting up a pineapple. I get strawberries. I get blueberries in there, other berries, whatever. I'm afraid I just blew myself i have a bunch of those in the fridge um that i kind of cycle through but lately i would say for the past two or three weeks i have been eating grape nuts almost every day not every day but i've really i'm not usually a breakfast person at all but it was our friend actually matt becker i should give a shout out to matt's uh newsletter he writes a um he's a listener and a former colleague of ours i think he's a listener i don't actually know former uh colleague of ours Matt, are you listening? I consider him a friend and writes a newsletter you can sign up for. It's a review of books that is so beautiful. And he's such an amazing writer called the Eleanor Avenue Review of Books. And I'll be honest with you, I read this every time it comes out. I've never followed up and read any of the books because I'm not good at reading. But I love the newsletter.

Well, also, who needs to if you've read an interesting review? I do that sometimes with the New York Times Review of Books. I'll read a review of a book that I have no intention of reading, but I like to read the review of it.

Yeah, and he's such a great writer. So anyway, he mentioned at some point, as an aside in one of his short little vignettes, something about how he eats grape nuts and Greek yogurt every day for breakfast.

Interesting move.

Now, I don't do Greek yogurt. I don't even like to be on the same airplane when somebody's eating Greek yogurt. I think this stuff stinks.

Because of your longtime antipathy towards Greeks.

Well, and Greek culture, generally speaking. Yes, at large, yes. No, I don't go in for that kind of stuff, but that kind of— Democracy, souvlaki, these are all things you don't have time for. That's right. What is the honey pastry, though? Everybody loves that. Oh, baklava. Baklava. Baklava. I hate baklava, by the way. I legit do not like baklava. It's very hard to eat. It's too almond-y. Yeah, I agree with you. Now we really are going after Greek culture, which is not my point. I just don't like Greek yogurt because I don't like dairy things, and I think it stinks. It stinks, but the idea of grape nuts got in my head. I love grape nuts. Well, I shouldn't say I love grape nuts. I love the idea of grape nuts. I will buy a box every, like, five years when somebody reminds me of grape nuts, and then I buy one box.

And you'll have it for about four and a half. That's the good news.

Well, the thing is I usually eat the box, and then I'm like, well, I just don't go back for it for a long time. But, like, I'm on my second box or third box maybe of grape nuts. Probably second. They're pretty dense. But they're the event horizon of breakfast food. What does that mean?

I think an event horizon is something where it basically like it's an incredibly dense part of the universe where maybe black holes are actually being eaten by something that's somehow more dense than a black hole. I think that's what an event horizon is.

Well, anyway, we all know about grape nuts. What I've been doing is I also because of my quasi aversion to dairy, I use almond milk. So I've been getting almond milk. I got my grape nuts. And I realized I was eating them just like that for a while, but then one day I dropped a couple of blueberries in there, and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, game changer. Like, talk about elevating a bowl of grape nuts. Blueberries, maybe some strawberries cut up very small in there. Huge improvement on the entire experience, which I already liked the experience, so now I've just been really into this thing. And because of that, I have been looking for blueberries just like as their own thing. In other words, not just like kind of buying a thing of mixed fruit that has some blueberries in it or maybe buying it alongside some other things for a fruit salad. Like I want to have access to blueberries so that I can have my breakfast.

You don't have to be picking through all the rest of this stuff.

And so a couple of days ago, I was at SARS, which don't forget, SARS, the full name, which I like to use, full government name is SARS Super Saver, right? It's a discount grocery store. But what I'm realizing in all of this, I'm not somebody who usually pays tons of attention to prices in the grocery store anyway because I'm both privileged and a lunkhead. But lately, I've been sort of noticing a little bit more. I know. It's great. Anybody want a loan? Anybody want a loan?

Privileged lunkhead coming through.

Because it's called Super Saver, I think I'm more aware of prices there in a weird, almost perverse way. And what I've realized is, oh, some things might be super cheap, but other things are going to be expensive. In other words, and I don't know why I would know this, but I was doing some research, and a bottle of Jim Beam is almost twice as much there than it is somewhere else.

I really was picturing you when you said... Doing some research, I was like, I swear to God, I had this picture of you, like, looking at a computer screen. For some reason, you had that, like, green visor kind of on, and you were doing research. And that was, I legitimately thought that something had happened where you were doing some cross-referencing of prices. And then I heard the words, Jim Beam, and then I understood that what had been said previously was a joke.

Well, so I consider it research. Yeah, it is.

It's boots on the ground, shoe leather research.

I need to get back to blueberries here. So I'm there the other day, and I'm like, oh, I'll pick up some blueberries. But the SARS produce is not my favorite part of that story. I think the produce is a little bit hit or miss there. And so I'm like, well, I'll just see what they have for blueberries. And they had a very shallow, one of those very shallow plastic things of blueberries, not like a nice deep tub or something like you get at the farmer's market, shallow one. It was like $10 for very few, and they didn't look that good either. And I was like, ugh, no thanks. I got some strawberries or something. Then I think I found some really good blueberries at a grocery store after that, probably QFC. Didn't pay much attention to it. But then yesterday I realized I'm out of blueberries again. And I find myself in the Asian grocery store. I think it's called Asian Family Market. It's kind of where you would know where the Kmart used to be off of Aurora in Seattle. And then after it was the Kmart, it was a Sprouts, right? Well, okay. Well, see, this is the same shopping center as the Sprouts, essentially. The Sprouts is kind of anchored over on the corner. Then you have this huge Asian grocery store kind of more in the middle of this entire complex. And I was making some stock yesterday. I wanted to boil down. I told you I used up all my chicken stock. So I was boiling down my stock bag, but I realized I needed probably some more chicken bone. So I ran to the Asian market to get some chicken feet, which are pretty upsetting things to put into a pot, by the way.

Does that improve the stock enough to counteract how kind of gross that is?

I got to say, I really had to talk to myself. I'm like, listen, you eat chicken.

like either what if you just put a little a little cube of bullion in there i mean for that umami i feel like there's something less feet related they were pretty upsetting they were pretty upsetting

putting them in and i was like well they'll be pretty broken down when i take them out they were upsetting going in and out stock looks good though stock looks really good i'm gonna give it one more skim this afternoon if possible but um but i did i just needed you know i had a little bit of chicken in there is mostly vegetable stuff and i was like i just think i need a little bit more chicken so i'm like i'll go grab some i thought well whatever i thought i'd get some bones or like a piece of a carcass which you can sometimes buy all of that is to say i'm in this supermarket and while i'm in there which i don't usually do kind of my regular shopping in there but i'm like oh i'll just buy some fruit that i need and i buy a thing of strawberries like eight dollars for your usual size i buy a a pineapple which is a really good price i think like three or four bucks and then i see the thing of blueberries and they look okay they were 12.99 for a tiny thing of blueberries 12.99 my friend i said well i'm not getting those here i'm going to go across to sprouts where the produce tends to be very good and yeah they have good prices on it again i think stores are just choosing what their loss leaders are going to be so i'm like well i'll go to sprouts they have the best produce in in the city and it's right next door practically so i go over there. I had to buy some cheesecloth anyway to strain my soup. Oh, were you making tofu? No, I was making stock. And anyway, I see that they have blueberries. They're down to like $8.99 or something here. And I'm like, well, based on everything else I've seen, I'll grab these. And I know I can trust them because they're from sprouts. And sprouts have good produce. Luke, I brought these things home. They taste like they're already fermenting. I just had some in my cereal and it ruined. Instead of raising up my cereal, It worsened my cereal, and I guess we're just out of the blue.

On the club side, you're drunk, though.

I'm getting drunk as we speak. Free alcohol. They're continuing to ferment in my stomach. I wash them down with some of that Jim Beam that I'm just doing research. But anyway, so I know that we're at the end of summer fruit season, so that must have something to do with it. But does it also have to do, are there other global forces? Are we talking tariffs? Are we talking something going on in the world? These were terrible blueberries.

I have, Andrew, so many thoughts on this I'm so glad you brought this up My first thought is, I don't like putting these Or any of these kinds of things into grape nuts Because to me, grape nuts are only to be consumed one way And this is the way I was raised Which is, you put the milk in It takes forever to break the grape nuts down To where you could actually chomp on them And while they're kind of softening up You hit them with a ton of honey and then grape nuts and honey which i bet you people out there listening to this think that's so weird and it probably is it's just one of those things because we had a lot of grape nuts growing up that was how my mom i guess showed me how to have grape nuts when i was probably five years old and so till the day i die that will

be the only way that I think grape nuts can be

consumed. I will say though, in my defense on the box of grape nuts, they do show it being served with blueberries and strawberries. I think

you're probably on the right side of this and well within the majority. I'm just I guess my point in that is it's so weird how just like you get started on something and there's no rhyme or reason to it other than it's what your parents were started on or what they decided and then it just becomes a lifelong way of doing it.

It's like then you enter a relationship and they do something different. I'm just having this memory now of you know I loved eating fruit growing up and I clearly I still do but I am now just remembering when I first started dating Genevieve I think we got some strawberries and she was I don't want to throw her under the bus this might not have been her but somebody said well don't you want to dip that in sugar and so I remember dipping a strawberry in sugar which I mean it's sugar so I guess it was good but like I this is going back a ways I'm trying to remember and I feel like maybe I did that for a little bit but it's like you don't need to dip sugar in

sugar yeah no that seems like that would be extra extra sweetening to something that's already pretty sweet yeah okay let's talk blueberries please because first of all i yes i buy a lot of blueberries now and in fact i've got a i've got a you know container of them in my fridge actually i probably have one here in the madrona hill fridge that they're probably past their prime they're probably almost turned into jim beam and then i've got some in the fridge in the main house And what I've noticed is that blueberries are one of the most volatile, they're one of the most erratically priced products that you can get in the grocery store. And it is totally just based on, I think, like you said, what this particular store has decided to charge for this based on maybe their supply chain. So, weirdly, a place where I have found them to be very reasonably priced is Trader Joe's. I know you're not a TJ guy. But in the other place, of course, and this is where this place really comes through, Costco. And what you could do is this could be something that, you know, something that I know that Genevieve loves is going to Costco and also getting deals on things. You could say, hey, next time you're at Costco, could you grab us some blueberries? Because, you know, that's definitely one of the things that they come through on is like stuff like that. Now, it would be a lot of blueberries.

Is it a lot of blueberries? I wasn't sure. It being Costco, yes, it's going to be a lot. Because, I mean, Costco, you can buy some produce there that isn't, like, a swimming pool of lettuce, you know?

Yes. This is, if I remember right, definitely going to be—this would be the kind of thing where you'd either want to maybe freeze some of them or just enlist Genevieve on the project of getting through the blueberries.

Yeah.

But I would say that, like, I would—again, I don't think you're probably going to go to Trader Joe's just for this, but I've noticed that they seem to be— I mean, and it's weird because, yeah, some places a small little container will be $10. And then you go to another place, and it'll be what looks like three times that amount of blueberries. It'll be $6. And, again, there's no – and then –

And I got to be careful about quality, though, now, too, because I was at SARS where I was already skeptical of some of their produce. So I took a good look, and I'm like, no, these aren't the blueberries for me, especially at that price. But then, I mean, I really trust – this is why I'm so shocked. like I really it's in the name Sprouts I know and tell you we're the place for this kind of organic material and I don't think that I just fell for their marketing like I remember I was only going in there every now and then for something very specific I can't can't remember what it was I can tell you it wasn't Jim Beam because I don't think they sell it there but the little by little I was like well I'm here I'll pick up this I'll pick up that and I remember this was maybe last summer or something coming home with a bunch of fruit or some sort of produce from sprouts and being like oh this is markedly better this is markedly better and then i remember thinking well i'll bet you we're paying out the nose and then it turns out that's not the case either like they have really leaned into this idea of of good of good quality produce that is affordable but i've never brought home blueberries from the store that tasted so bad right out of the

canister well what's funny is first of all again i just think it's totally hit and miss even within in the same store like you could go to you know blueberries andrew at a store it's like a river you go and you you put your hand into it for a few hours your hand into the into the blueberries into the speaking a witch of by the way which is a joke that becca and i say to each other except we made the joke too much and so now sometimes i say speaking which of which is we know someone who says that like they don't know that it's speaking of which yeah and so we say that kind of jokingly except you you you wear the mask too long and then you forget that it's not speaking with joe like supposedly supposedly um espresso uh but anyway like i so what i've noticed now from getting the blueberries at trader joe's that i've been um getting is they have the opposite problem they're too tart it's like i think maybe to try to counteract what you're dealing with which which is that they're sort of almost like rotting.

when you get them, these ones are, like, they're so tart that you bite into them and you kind of pucker. Are they tiny? Are they small and tart? No, they're big. Really? Oh, I thought the bigger, the sweeter. These are pretty large and pretty tart blueberries to where, like, when I got them home and took a handful and threw them in, it was like, you know that feeling you get kind of right at both of your jaw? Yeah. Like, your mandible attaches to your skull? A bunch of saliva's release. Yes, precisely. Fire hoses. and so then it took like i don't know it took three or four days before these blueberries calmed down and were like tasted like they were in they were in the right range of doneness i guess so all of this is to say and and and yes i don't think we're probably in the in the prime season for local blueberries at this point so any that any blueberries you see in the store are going to have been shipped here from mars and it might be time to just say like uh you might be time to retire from blueberries uh until uh you know basically late spring rolls around yeah i might

have to do that and then i don't know what i'm putting in my um cereal because the strawberries well strawberries are going to be around the same seasonal and i cut up some strawberries yesterday which they're not like the blueberries where i think they've gone bad but they don't seem very ripe i feel like we're just going to be in a pretty rough spot for any kind of fruits that aren't like oranges and apples you know for the next little bit and uh and i don't know like i like i said i will still eat grape nuts without fruit um and strawberries will still be there for me. And I assume we'll still keep shipping

them in. What about a banana? Do you ever throw a banana into cereal? That was a thing we did when I was a kid. When I was a kid

we did that. There are a few things in my life that I did eat as a kid but I won't eat as an adult. Usually it's the opposite. Usually it's stuff I wouldn't eat for most of my life but as I've gotten older and just somewhat lazier about ordering food I'm just like leave the mayonnaise on. Who cares? But bananas is one thing that I remember the sensation of having them in cereal when I say the sensation like I remember the mouth feel of it and everything and now there's nothing that well there are things that turn my stomach more but the idea of eating a banana or a banana in cereal actually kind of makes my stomach turn it was a weird kind of mushy thing

I remember being a kid and we would get now the reason we ate a lot of grape nuts and I've mentioned this plenty of times but we were on something called wick which is like women infants and children. We were on a thing, Andrew, that's probably going away for a lot of people this weekend, uh, which is, I mean, just horrific to think about, um, as a product of a lot of those systems, uh, you know, I'm, I'm here today to some degree because of the social safety net. And it just absolutely shatters my heart to think about that being reduced for people that need it. But so all the cereals that we would get had to be like kind of quote unquote healthy. They had been deemed healthy by, I guess like the state of Washington or something. So we couldn't get any sugary cereal so a lot of grape nuts i think some i don't even know if corn i think probably we're allowed to do cornflakes although i don't think we're really a big cornflake family i just remember mike putting like my mom being like oh put some bananas in it'll be better and even as a kid being like i don't think this texture works it's like a mushy thing that's next to another thing that is going to be turning to mush too quickly which is like a cornflake or maybe a bran flake or something and like you'd occasionally you'd see that on the box of cereal right would be bananas cut up and put in there i feel like that was a holdover from a time when we didn't have as good of stuff like to put in things yeah we didn't have as we didn't probably you couldn't get blueberries year-round or maybe not as cheaply or whatever like i feel like bananas and i'm i'm saying i know this is controversial i know we probably have some people out there who really really love bananas and i don't you know i'll have one now and then but i feel like bananas are this they were a big treat when we didn't have as good of stuff to eat is my personal take on bananas don't at me people well it's funny because i don't think of them as

a treat i think of them as people who love them love them because of how both sturdy and nutritious they are you know like bananas really like yeah potassium they're very very healthy and also they're so easy you throw them in your bag you know like it's just like it provides they're not like

sugary like they're going out of style I'm sure

yeah what's going on they're not like they're not as much of a sugar based fruit like everything that I've described so far right but I just I don't like them I'd probably be a better person if I did I want to I mean let me be back

away banana breath what the hell did you just eat a banana i want to be clear i actually will eat a banana now and then like it's not that i don't enjoy the experience but i don't i feel like it was a we were misguided putting them in cereal i think that was i think that was a mistake i think we all look back on that with some amount

of regret as a nation i would like to know and there's no way for me to sort of google this on the fly i don't think maybe chat gpt could help i um

You mentioned that on the Grape Nuts box, you see the bowl of cereal is presented with blueberries and strawberries. Interestingly, I was just looking, kind of all pushed to one side, which I think is sort of interesting. And I think a lot of cereal boxes. Do you think that Kellogg's Corn Flakes, what do you think is on that box? Do they show the – more often than not, they're probably showing fruit in cereal, right? And I'm wondering to what degree they're showing bananas. And I'm doubting these days at all. It looks like cornflakes do maybe show strawberries in the modern box.

I mean, the thing also is strawberries probably photograph better, right? Yes, that's a good point. It's kind of a nice contrast. A banana doesn't really stand out in the... Cheerios box?

Cheerios would be the next thing that I buy. Actually, more often the grape nuts. Strawberries in the photo on the box.

Do you put fruit in your Cheerios? I feel like Cheerios, for me, were very bland. Like, I would put sugar on them, or then occasionally we would get Honey Nut Cheerios, which I freaking loved. But regular Cheerios, to me, in the bowl, unless you're augmenting it, always seemed kind of like it didn't taste very... It tasted kind of bland to me.

Yeah, Cheerios are not an exciting cereal, but they're my banana of cereals. They're just like... They never let me down, and if I have... But do you put something in them? It's not necessary, but if I... It's kind of the same rule as grape nuts. Like, if I have it, I will throw it in there. Now I've kind of gotten obsessed with putting blueberries on my grape nuts, although today might turn me off of that for a while. They were truly bad. They were truly bad. I know. That sucks. Like, it ruined my bowl of cereal. It tasted like fermentation. But, by the way, Crispex. Crispex. Raspberries. Crispy times, too. Raspberries on their box. I love that. Do you remember the Crispex jingle? I don't think so, but I'm interested. This is one of my favorite cereals, so I'm interested in hearing it. Let me see.

Kellogg's Crispix is crispy times two.

Here we go. I got it right here. No need to sing.

I'll never understand how they did this. Kellogg's Crispix is crispy times two. Maybe. Then again, no. Crispix is crispy times two. Only Crispix cereal holds the crunch of corn on one side, the crackle of rice on the other. Oh, my God, they're so good. In some wonderful way, Kellogg's doubled what crisp used to be. Very clever, those Kellogg's. Only Crispex is crispy times, too.

I was pretty close, by the way. Yeah, very good on the jingle. I don't remember that jingle. I love Crispex. But now Crispex, that stuff you've got to be on top of because that will start getting soft very, very quickly. Maybe the top of the list of things that turn soft in milk.

Yeah, definitely. You've got to ride herd on that one. All right, let's thank some donors. These folks, Andrew, they may be, depending on when they're listening to this episode, they could be sitting at the breakfast table. They could be enjoying some kind of a breakfast cereal even right now. I hope those blueberries are good. That's the kind of highly relevant content that we provide on this show to everybody, to all of our listeners, including the people who are donating to the show. That's how this thing can happen five days a week. This is listener-supported podcasting. And we had a nice TBTB meeting yesterday with our friend and colleague, John Sklaroff, where we're cooking up some fun stuff coming up for the tens of listeners. So watch this space for that. And we also want to thank Bonnie D. Padua today of Garden Grove, California. Oh, beautiful Garden Grove. Sounds lush.

Population of 171,949 people off the top of the dome, I'm guessing

Wow! Garden Grove, huh? A growing little area. I was going to say Metropolis, but I don't know what the cutoff for Metropolis is. I don't know either

I don't know, but boy

When I think of Garden Grove, California I think of Bougainville

Oh my goodness, yes

The whole place is just bursting with and covered in Bougainville Which is one of the best things to be bursting with

and covered in. It certainly is. It's at the top of my list.

Thanks also to Anne-Marie Kugelman who's in Seattle, Washington. Beautiful Seattle, Washington. I know where that is. Can you grow bougainvillea in Seattle, Washington? I feel like this has come up on the show before. I have. Because of my Star Jasmine thing. What growing zone? This is what I need to know. What growing zone does bougainvillea

thrive in? how close did you get to spelling bougainvillea correctly by the way uh not even a little bit

close i i just i let go and i let god i just put a b and a v in there and hit go actually you know what i might have just actually spelled it right really well No, no, no, I was wrong. Sorry. I spelled it B-O-U-G-A-N-V-I-L-L-A. I think I actually was.

You came very close.

I was kind of close. I was missing an I, and then at the end I needed an E.

But you got the B-O-U. You started with B-O-U. I did not, so good for you.

9 through 11. Okay, I'm an 8 1⁄2 here, Andrew, so I could. Oh, man. This is a new winter project for me, which is researching Bougainville. I've got that star jasmine going, which I'm very, very pleased with. It's still actually, I'm looking, it's still got flowers on it, Andrew.

Oh, nice. Yeah, that's a fab. I was thinking about that the other day because I was thinking about my favorite smells. And I was like, I don't think that star jasmine is an underrated smell. I think that is a properly rated smell.

And I don't know if bougainvillea has a smell. I just love it. It's got those beautiful red, you know, flowers on it. And again, it's, I mean, where I lived in LA, I think I've told this story before, but um our there was this back alley you know that was obviously sort of you know the part of la that i was living in let's just say was in transition and uh and and so the alley was really nothing to write home about a lot of graffiti a lot of just kind of like people would just dump couches and stuff all the time just random stuff but also just a ton of bougainvillea and the bougainvillea would eventually just like overtake the graffiti if you left a couch there long enough it would grow and it kind of became this beautiful this beautiful thing it was like a it was just like a cover all it was just like you know david it was like putting uh what is what does chrissy heinz say in the i'm not in love it's like i hang a picture on the wall it it covers an ugly space that's lying there or something like it's just kind of a nice little cover all oh she's saying i hang your picture on the wall to cover up something that's there it's not because she's in love with him i always thought that was such a i always thought that was such a great line

so bougainville at the risk of being insulting to anybody i think that i like bougainville in la because of its la-ness and this is going to be a little bit rude you don't need to grow it here in southern no i think you're you can do whatever you want but it does like star jasmine has an appeal to me here because i love the smell of it and what have you but like and this is where like i am not a huge fan of the of the flora generally speaking of the desert like it you know like when we would go on the very occasional day hike or something like that it did not fulfill me the way the very occasional day hike here in seattle if we go to wallace falls or something lush and evergreen guy or just green you know and like kind of the the dusty landscape of the desert didn't do a lot for me in bougainville you would see it all over the place and to me like it would represent like kind of like it was one of the things that seemed a little bit lush in a place where very few things were lush and so I loved it because of that but I don't feel like I need that in Seattle because of all the other lushness that goes on that's a good I mean I can I understand

that take I think what I I think my weirdness and this probably started at the Burbank Springs Broadcast Center in Bellingham Washington which was an attempt to basically recreate Palm Springs About 30 miles from the Canadian border

North of Seattle

Well north, practically Canada

Two hours north of Seattle

A traditional home for Xeroscape And the desert southwest landscaping But it was like Carrie and I really loved Palm Springs And the house happened to have a swimming pool And so we kind of got off on this whole thing Of having Red hot flaming poker plants That were growing and a lot of other, like, sort of pompous grass. What's your opinion on pompous grass, by the way?

I don't know pompous grass. I bet you if you put it in— But it sounds like it's a little bit big on itself, to be honest with you. I can tell you right now I don't like it. I think it needs to be taken down a level.

But, like, we had a lot of stuff like that growing. That was—you know, to your point, it was not—I mean, it grew in the Northwest, but it was probably—it wasn't the kind of thing that was going to naturally grow everywhere if you let things kind of go to seed. It kind of represented an attempt to create one kind of a green environment inside of a larger context of a green environment.

Oh, I see. It's like a big fluffy kind of almost like a field grass almost.

It grows like crazy around here. I really like it. I think it's a cool-looking plant, and it's almost an invasive species out here where I am in southern Washington, but I am also thinking of planting some of it next year

Oh, your neighbor's going to love that. What's the other stuff? Tandy?

Tansy, but I think I've kind of like... Listen, first of all, I've got to say thanks to Julie Tasnady, who's in Salem, Oregon. Thank you, Julie. Thank you, Julie. Appreciate you. And also Stacey Bryant, who's in Madison, Wisconsin. We love Madison. And Stacey. And Stacey. Those are two things we love. I think that I... might have worn my neighbor down on that whole tansy thing i think that i think that that whole story andrew which came years ago on the show which is i wasn't even living up here i remember i remember pretty clearly i was at my place in portland and i think we were about to dial up for this or we had dialed up we were about to start recording and i believe you said to me i think there's a voicemail on the tbtl line from your neighbor i played that other house line yeah Yeah. And I think he was like, and that was, of course, what he said, like, you have your hill is a fire hazard. And also you have Tandy, Tansy or whatever it's called growing, which is which is prohibited or something illegal. And so I, you know, and I think I'm going to I'll beep.

I'm not going to play the whole way. Do you actually have the female thing I throw anything away? Yeah. Message for Luke Burbank. He's going to say his name here.

likely, Luke, I will beat this. Will you believe this? Yeah, yeah. Please do. This is your next

door neighbor. Say your property is growing a fire hazard in the neighborhood and it needs to be mowed down. Additionally, there are pansy growings that are ready to go to seed. Those are yellow flowers out on your property and the wind will blow them over onto mine and sprout Out there, Cowlitz County requires landowners to take care of Tansy and make sure it doesn't grow.

If you want to get back to me. Quoting local law is a move. You have not even said, you've never said hello to this person at this point. You've never met him. At that point.

Yes. At that point, I had not. But, I mean, the good news is, for whatever reason, my response to this was not to do my usual thing, which would be to feel criticized and be offended. I actually like called him right back. I was like, Hey, I'm really sorry about that. Why don't I come up to the property? We can kind of walk around and you can kind of let me know what you're talking about. And we did, and we had a really nice time. And now I'm actually good pals with, with them. But I think also that was coming because at that time I mostly was in Portland. This house was up here, but it was kind of uninhabited. And I think he probably was, I think that was coming from a place of fear because I can tell you,

you're tripping about like,

A little future tripping about like, oh, this guy, oh, this hotshot podcaster bought this little cabin and is now just letting the place just kind of go great gardens. And because this last year, Andrew, I didn't even brush hog the hill. I didn't even mow the hill, nor did I even pull. There actually isn't very much tansy. I might have pulled a little bit of it, but I didn't hear a peep. in other words i i i really wonder if my hill was being a fire hazard and or if the tansy was really that you know he just sort of kind of dangerous yeah just sort of thinking like okay

yeah what's we have a we have an absentee exactly basically that's kind of where i think that was

coming from because now that i'm here all the time and and they see me out you know day and night doing crap on the property um i think that it's i think now every the good news is i have a really great relationship with all of my neighbors who who I feel really lucky they are my neighbors because they're all chill awesome people but I think they needed I think he needed to see that I was actually serious about the the maintenance of this place and then once that was established I think everyone's anxiety went went down a bit I know that Noah Orner's anxiety went way down all the way from Bethesda Maryland and Noah was out there in Bethesda going like god how much tansy is actually growing there and I know it's a ragwort I know that it's toxic to livestock but also how much livestock is on Luke's Hill? And the answer, Noah, as you now know, is zero.

Although you do have cows in the river. I saw somebody had a question because sometimes you explain why there are cows in the river and sometimes you don't. And we got a note from somebody yesterday who was confused about why there are cows in the river. So there is an

island near my house. It's yeah, it's an island. There's an island not too far from my house that somebody owns. It's just like in the Columbia River. But it also just happens to have a lot of like grass on it and some trees and stuff and the people who own this island i think also own some cows and what they do i've learned is they bring the cows out like on a boat or something at some point and they just let them live on the island because there's plenty of grass for them to graze but because it's also kind of in this like part of the it's very near the shore so it's the river is it's not like in the middle of the river with like rushing water the cows particularly on summer days but just randomly will just they're just kind of eating grass and then they're just standing in the river like knee deep in the river drinking some water eating some i don't know river river grass or something and it's a thing that i had never seen before in my life because cows are usually out in a pasture in you know like well in the land landlocked area and so when i see the cows are in the river it makes me happy because i feel like they're having a nice time again this is particularly in the warm summer months i just love that these cows can roam around this island and then they can like kind of chill in the river again they're never swimming they're not like up to their you know chest or anything but they'll just be up to their knees and they're just kind of like having a time and like it makes me happy for them so when i'm island cows they're an island time bro it's all about it's all about latitudes and latitudes for these cows but like it seriously makes me happy uh when i see them and so when i say the cows are in the river i mean it's a nice day i mean the cows are just kind of like chilling standing on the beach doing their thing these cows seem like they're having

a hell of a life honestly i mean the irony you know the irony is here what these cows

are not having a cow man they're like so chill no the fertility rates among these cows actually It's troubling. Yeah, that's kind of the sad side. It's plummeting. But no, you're absolutely right. These cows are not having a cow. They're just wandering around this big old island, and they're chomping on grass, and then when they get a little warm or whatever, they're standing in the river, and then they just go... It seems to me to be about as idyllic a life as you could have as a cow, and I'm really happy for them. As am I. And as is Annie Hayward. Annie! It's our pal, Annie Hayward in Seattle, Washington. What up, Annie?

How are you doing, Annie? our dear friend and former colleague, current friend.

A lot of former colleague mentions today between Matt and Annie. It's Old Homes Day here on TBTL. Sure is. Thank you, Annie. Thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL possible. Couldn't do this without you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. This is an interesting top story that is, once again, sent to us by our colleague and TVTL employee numero uno, and now junior producer, John Sklaroff. This is the second story at a couple of days that he forwarded to us and was like, you got to check this out. And he was, in my opinion, absolutely right. I had seen this headline a little bit bouncing around, but I hadn't really dug into the story much until today, until John sent us the link. And basically, okay, in New York, if you don't know, there's a race for mayor. They're voting on it next Tuesday. I'll be in New York City. It'll be kind of interesting to be in New York City on the election day when this big race between Zoran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo, and I guess to some degree, Curtis Sliwa comes to a head. Of course, Zoran Mamdani is seen as a very progressive candidate. And Cuomo is also a Democrat, but a much, much more middle of the road, much more sort of like funded by traditional, I guess, you know, interests, uh, kind of a

candidate and a good guy that we can kind of trust in office and trust with power, right? And it comes from a family of good guys. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a family of unproblematic

New York Democrat guys. Um, and so, you know, they, the story went that basically the way that I found out about the story was that a newspaper, the times of London, which I understand is owned by Rupert Murdoch. So that tells you, I think what you need to know, the times of London had run this article that said bill de blasio bill de blasio former mayor of new york city had basically been critical of zoran mamdani and that was a big story because it was sort of like democrat on democrat violence i guess and so so um that you know made the headlines until bill de blasio former mayor of new york city said i absolutely did not do an interview with the times of London criticizing this guy, Zoran Mamdani. I support him. And, um, and so then the story was, oh wow, the times of London got taken by a Bill de Blasio impersonator. That's, I believe how the New York times, uh, characterized it. But here's the real story. The Bill de Blasio that the, uh, times of London reached out to via email. His name is Bill de Blasio. I think he's like a wine merchant in new york and uh he basically got an email saying what do you think about the mayoral race and he gave his honest opinion which is he thinks that mom donnie's policies are not realistic and um so he wasn't a bill de blasio impersonator he's a guy named bill de blasio who it turns out is kind of butthurt about how many times he's confused with the other bill de blasio and has by his account received many many angry emails over the years to his email account uh people trying to reach out to the former mayor of new york or maybe at the time current mayor of new york other bill de blasio and so this is sort i mean now the thing is we'll call him bill de blasio number two which i'm sure he would love bill de blasio wine merchant basically said i knew that they thought they were reaching out to the other bill de blasio and i did not correct them on this but that's on them to fact check and figure out that i'm not that bill de blasio they asked me bill de blasio my opinion on this guy and i gave them my opinion on this guy and so it's an interesting question of like he's not impersonating bill de blasio but he's knowingly kind of misleading these people as to which bill de blasio he is who do you think who does the responsibility lie with here in your

opinion well i i think there's a lot of kind of finger pointing to go around i mean the major sin here is on the journalists absolutely there's no doubt about it this is as you like to say luke bunk journalism uh actually who says that this is bunk i don't even know where this came from

i'd like to point out to anybody watching this is really bunk journalism oh is that i feel like the origin of that clip is about something that has almost no meaning which is part of why we thought it was funny yeah like some complete nonsense story where the people are calling it

bunk journalism anyway um i you know the the de blasio who is the wine merchant even said like i thought you know after i gave my response via email i thought a bunch of his i think he said a bunch of i thought a bunch of his reporter friends were going to come and make sure i was real or something which is like which is a funny way of putting it but yeah fact checking isn't so important and it's also probably the first thing that goes these days in newsrooms you know like and and again you're talking about the times of london so who knows what goes on in that newsroom they got the quote that they wanted right and so you run with it so i definitely think that the vast majority of fault of the story lies with the times of london and journalism i just so this story that you're kind of quoting from or at least the ones that um i had seen bouncing around and that were in the show sheet today were from this publication called semaphore which i didn't know about apparently you um follow semaphore more closely than i do but an independent uh journalistic entity right and yeah the the first graph here's what got me so i'd seen the story bouncing around but when i finally sit down to read it i read this latest updates from semaphore and the first graph is essentially this i'm going to sort of paraphrase the beginning of it but it It says the man at the heart of this high stakes mix up was neither, quote, falsely claiming to be Mayor Bill de Blasio, as the Times suggested, or nor was he a de Blasio impersonator, as the New York Times wrote. And so it's sort of like the story begins with what feels to me like a sort of like sort of a snarky victory lap for Semaphore saying, oh, look, you know, like, oh, this guy is neither an impersonator or was falsely claiming. And I don't know exactly how you characterized it or what words you should use, but this man knew that there was a mix-up, and he didn't care and leaned into it and, as the article says, used AI to help craft a response. oh right and so to me that's a big part of this too because okay i forgot about that maybe he's not maybe he's not technically an impersonator or and maybe he didn't falsely claim it because they approached him which is his whole point but this fella he's you know how they say sometimes the characteristics and other people that drive you the most crazy are the ones that remind you of yourself maybe this guy being sort of like a little bit snarky but like i can see you doing this right within the the the limits of what truth telling is when you know you're essentially lying and misleading like he knew that this was a mix-up and these people were approaching him and then he said fine and I think there's a quote in here that says like fine if you're going to reach out to me I'm going to give you my opinion so I turned to AI to craft a response now you're like what was in that AI search and I don't know now this is rank speculation on my part but if

you ask ai to write a opinion not an opinion piece but let's say an opinion that is negative towards mom domi and you put it in the did he ask it to put it in the tone of former mayor bill de blasio because that's something ai can do and we've seen ai do that pretty well like i don't think it says tone no and it doesn't and that's why i said it's ranked speculation but this this newspaper is sort of like this guy was neither an impersonator nor um neither an impersonator nor somebody who is falsely claiming and i would argue that he was sort of falsely misleading i mean maybe you're taking issue with the word claiming because they approached him he didn't reach out to them but he is falsely misleading and using digital tools to craft a response like i would say that he was purposely misleading and maybe it's funny but like you know like don't don't make it sound like this was just like a aw shucks thing it definitely was not an aw shucks thing

right yeah that's a good point i mean it was there was it was more than just a simple mix-up and this guy was pretty complicit i guess what i would say too is it's this guy's interesting to me i'm talking about bill de blasio the

wine merchant because i actually think look i don't know mom i'm not super read in on all of this i mean i think that my my general default would be like let's see how mom donnie does like i definitely like him over cuomo i also don't live in new york city so i feel like my opinion on the mayoral race there is you know not of huge value to people i do like i do wonder about things like a rent freeze like which again i just don't know enough about the economics of the place but But what I think is kind of interesting is Bill de Blasio, number two, the wine merchant guy, in a weird way, it's like I feel like he could have messed with them so much more than he did. Like his basic take, it seems, was and I'm not defending the guy because he is being kind of a little bit he's being kind of a little he's being a little stinker here. But his basic thing, it sounds like, was he goes, I think I'm kind of you can tell me how close I'm getting to what he said. But it's something like he goes, I wouldn't really I just don't know if Mamdani's policies are going to work unless we could see in 10 years how it goes.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what he says. And he does say that, like, the this the response he sent does reflect his own personal views as a New Yorker, which is that that Mamdani's platform is not something he could achieve.

but it wasn't, I guess what I mean is like, he could have also just been so, peace and love to our listeners on Staten Island, he could have been so Staten Island with this, he'd just been like, the guy's a bum, or like, he's a communist, like, I feel like he kind of basically said, I just don't know if these policies are actually if they're going to have the desired effect which is, to me, a weirdly measured thing to say, actually. Well, that's what he said

just to be clear, this is what he said to Semaphore we have no idea, unless you saw it

another piece oh because they pulled down the times of london i don't know what his quotes in

the times of london was it says the very last the very last quote in the semaphore article i believe is a quote from de blasio the wine importer or or wine merchant as you said to semaphore that says to be honest i don't think it's feasible unless you're going to be in office for 10 years that's totally fine but we don't really know what was actually in somebody was a screen captain in fact maybe i should have read that before starting this conversation i don't know what was in the original what fiery potentially fiery quotes were in the original

article yeah i i'm trying to see if i could find a cached version of that article but i don't think me finding that and trying to read it on the fly would be entertaining for anyone the other thing i like about this story is unrelated to the politics of it but there's a photograph of these two bills de blasio together because one time bill de blasio the wine merchant was at a mets game i guess they're both Mets fans or they both attended a Mets game and uh and Bill de Blasio the mayor was there and according to Bill de Blasio the wine merchant some people that were working at the game were so struck by the fact that his name was Bill de Blasio which by the way doesn't seem that crazy to me in New York City there's probably like eight people named Bill de Blasio it's William Italian last name don't you think that's a pretty common last name and a pretty common

thing in new york i was kind of surprised you didn't mention what i thought was the first real dazzling detail of the story clearly wine merchant de blasio is a real cut up because and also he'd been receiving emails you know errant emails to the other de blasio for years and years and he said it was all just like just years of receiving just hate mail basically but he also the the article in semaphore points out that they spell their name slightly differently oh yeah and it It says de Blasio, the wine merchant, spells it capital D-E, capital B-L-A-S-I-O, and the politician is lowercase d with a space between D and Blasio, and it says here, in de Blasio's view, the wine merchant, low-class Italians use the little d.

That's why I figured a guy who's saying that would also just be like so much more scorching the earth, as opposed to like, well, we just don't know, we don't have the benefit of time to understand if these policies will do what they're supposed to do. But this photo of them is kind of funny to me because it seems like de Blasio the wine merchant is getting more of a kick out of it than de Blasio the politician in the photo. And this is the other question that's raised for me is when de Blasio the wine merchant shows up at a Mets game, does he tell everyone his name as he's being seated? When have you ever told an usher your name as you're getting seated at a Mariners game? At the maximum, you show them your ticket, Which, again, I don't remember to have my name on it And they just tell you it's down that way and take a right How was the staff at Shea Stadium Or whatever they call it now Probably Citibank Field or some shit Like, how was the staff at Citibank Parkfield How did they know that this wine merchant's name was Bill de Blasio And then put together that the other Bill de Blasio was there And then coordinate this meet-cute There's parts of that story that make no sense to me

Yeah, I'd like to hear more about that story Did you read directly from the, this is the very. quick description of this from the Semaphore story. De Blasio said he met De Blasio once at a 2016 New York Mets playoff game. He said he was asked by security guards who couldn't believe the coincidence, and they said, quote, hey, do you want to meet the real Bill De Blasio? And then he says, how bad is having the same last name as me, the politician asked him. He responded, dude, you're killing me. So this guy's definitely a bit of a character. Yeah, it's pretty funny, and of course he's smiling very big in the photo in the in that de blasio the wine yes wine wine de blasio smiling huge the politician you know looking game enough here's my one here's my one possibility and i think it's a far-fetched one he might have one of those mets jerseys that has his own last name on the back of it

i'm seeing in this photo such a that that theory has a lot of um validity to his number that would

be how the photo though he's wearing a number 57 mets jersey but i only see the front of it and i don't know baseball or the mets well enough to know mets number 57 if that's like um because if this is a very common jersey johan santana would that make sense if that's the case he's

just wearing a santana jersey and then they found the guy from santana and they put him together

and then they played that song. You're so smooth. Oh, God.

That would be such a flex. Like, okay, that would be the main downside of your last name being de Blasio. And then also there's a mayor of New York that's de Blasio that everyone's got kind of, you know, an axe to grind with. Because if you do want to do a personalized jersey, people are like, are you the world's number one fan of our current mayor? Yeah, right. You know what I mean? Like, it would ruin your ability to do that. I would I don't want to say weird thing people can do whatever they want but that thing of putting your own name on the back of a jersey of the baseball team you like because everyone thinks you're making a political statement you're like what it's my name and if you look closely it's how high class Italians do yeah exactly how low class sounds like something he would do what

do you mean it's my name it's just he's he's just again I don't my I like this guy more than you do I think I don't again I actually I think my biggest issue here is with semaphore and not that they're doing bad reporting but i feel like the top graph is disingenuous the top graph of the follow-up story is kind of like haha he wasn't impersonating and i actually take issue with that i feel like he was impersonating at a certain point he knew that there was a mix-up of identity and he leaned into it and he used a computer program to help him lean into it that feels like impersonating

to me it's your opinion that a person can impersonate another person even if they have the same name as said person yes and if you're you know because of the misunderstanding that

was in play yeah i mean there's a chance there this could have played where somebody really was thinking i when i first saw this headline and the opening graph i really thought the story was going to be like i'm getting lately i've been getting requests to fill out polls and stuff all the time regarding public transportation i'm not kidding i filled out a couple and now They're, like, sending me all the time. I think I'm on something called, like, the Community Transportation Feedback Board or something. So anyway, if you – I thought this story was going to be about a guy who has de Blasio's name but doesn't have this whole history of meeting him, of receiving his emails, of all this stuff, and just receiving some sort of a generic feedback thing that says, oh, what do you think about this candidate? There's tons of this going on in New York right now, obviously. Literally the world's attention is on this mayoral race, right? and so like I could have seen somebody being like oh they want my opinion and then there was a true mix-up but in this case it's immediately clear no this isn't a true mix-up this guy realizes somebody messed up and he's leaning into it and purposely misleading them I'm not saying that I'm not even criticizing him for doing it I'm just saying that the the storyline of of him not being an impersonator is not I've said the same thing a million times I just don't think that that's

genuine I also again I hope that I hope that you take this in the spirit that's intended Andrew I could see you potentially doing something a little bit like this because you'd be like – maybe your thought would be, hey, if they're not going to do their journalism right, I'm not going to make it easy on them.

Yeah, and if it's a publication that I don't like, although in this case it's really de Blasio, the politician, who I didn't realize before reading this had already come out publicly in favor or with support for Mamdami, which is one of the reasons why this was such a bombshell that he had publicly supported him but then supposedly privately in an email said that I don't think that he's going to achieve what he wants to achieve or something. That would be huge if it were coming from somebody who was publicly supporting this politician but then leaking this via email. So I just want to be clear again. I'm not even saying that this guy, this wine merchant, is in the wrong here. I just think the way we tell the story is important.

The right way to rock and the wrong way to roll You can just listen to your soul Just remember that life is number one You can be having so much fun Just remember that life is much fun You can be number one

We have a mere handful of birthdays today, Lou, Blur's Days today. Maybe they're out of season, like blueberries.

Yeah, I've got some Blur's Days that honestly were, some of them were too tart. Yep. Some of them actually a little overripe.

Well, luckily, these are very, very sweet Blur's Days we have. You can send in your Blur's Day. email me andrew at tbtl.net and put blursday in the subject line oh we might have to do blursdays a little bit early next week might have to do them on wednesday or something because my travel plans might mess things up so maybe get your blursdays in early next week andrew at tbtl.net uh and these are some of the blursdays we received recently i got a note that says hey this is dakota calling in a super special blursday shout out to amy her birthday is literally today Thank you. Nice. All right. Happy birthday to Amy. You know, we got a lot of Lloyds who listen to the show, Luke, and I don't know if you remember this, but we dubbed one of them Halloween Lloyd a couple of years ago because Halloween Lloyd celebrates his Blurs Day on Halloween. We got this note from Halloween Lloyd saying, I wish myself a happy 85th Blurs Day. Heck yeah, Lloyd. Happy Blurs Day, Lloyd. We love it. Happy Blurs, man. Absolutely. And finally, our pal Sarah on Bainbridge says, Happy Blur's Day to me. Now, I want to point out here, Sarah spells Blur's Day with a Z, which adds a little sizzle to the whole Blur's Day thing. Don't you think?

Sounds like it's wearing sunglasses and being in a bad boys club.

You know what I realized yesterday? And this is relevant, and I'm sorry I didn't mention it earlier in the show. I finally got back into digitizing a bunch of old commercials that I'm finding, mostly from the 90s on VHS tapes. Went through tons of them yesterday. And one of the commercials was from 1992, Luke, and it was for the Geoprism. Oh, wow. And I didn't realize until I was saving the file that prism was spelled with a Z. Did you know that? I had forgotten that. I did not know that. The computer was like, don't you mean prism? And I was like, no, I don't. It said, yes, you do. And I was like, son of a gun, I guess I do. It really adds some.

He's a prisoner of his own grievances. He's a prisoner of his own grievances.

A little sizzle to it. Anyway, Sarah, this is what happens when we have so few Blur's days. I get to tell stories about geo-prisms. I like it. We get to tap dance. We get to fill. Absolutely. Happy Blur's Day to me. I turned 63 last week, and every stinking year I tell myself, Sarah, just write in. You matter, Mother Superior. Yeah, you do. Mother Superior. I like that. We can call you that. Whoa. Just ask Eric on Bainbridge. No, don't do that. I've spent this year getting three joint replacements, and I hope to act way more like a younger-bodied person next year good luck to all i love it yes hope those joints wow that thing's got a little

chirp to it it's it's um wow i love it it's now it's my favorite sound effect on this board because it's i don't think it's the battery because everything else like everything else works fine it's something about the actual button the thing that it does this whistle sound it's turning into like a little bird chirp or something i love it i love that yeah it's fun all right all right well happy blurs day to our short and very sweet list um all right that's gonna do it today's episode of tbtl but i have incredible news we are going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you please do join us for as we wrap up the week in the meantime y'all have a great thursday take care of yourselves stay safe and And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Power out.