Muse

Quarter to the four. I'm gonna take a nap or something. I don't like to take naps. I don't like to wake up more than once a day. Because when I first wake up, I get that shock of who I am and everything. I really don't like to do that more than once a day.

Yeah.

TBTL!

This is a show for dogs.

About dogs.

Starring one dog.

And one dirty dog. it's called the internet and it's a fresh new way to check out sites buy clothing and surf music hey

you either get it or you don't i don't but i am so excited to be a part of it you're not over sharing you are not over sharing boring people came up with that boring people made that up they made up over sharing because they're too boring to handle an interesting conversation you're not over sharing keep sharing i want to hear everything i want to hear it all and then then I want to hear a little bit more. Make the boring people uncomfortable. Share. Keep up the

good work, everybody. All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. What a fun, sexy time for you. My name's Luke Burbank. I'm your host. You're still doing a podcast? Coming to you from midtown manhattan in new york city where it is an absolutely splendid uh november day it's

november the 4th my friends and it's oh ma pa it's just beautiful it is just beautiful here as we

arrive at episode 4590 in a collector series let the fun begin was being very new york last night

and i went to a jazz show at birdland there's nothing classier than boring jazz music i am here

to tell you and um i've got a new awareness of a and i think you should leave sketch a new and real awareness of that which i'll tell you about also uh speaking of new yorkers in the news pete davidson and colin jost of saturday night live fame they have bought a decommissioned staten island ferry and it's not going super great i wish i hadn't done that they're really giving me a run for my money in terms of questionable maritime decisions and i like to see that makes me feel better about myself also the security at the Louvre obviously wasn't super great nor was their cyber security it turns out it's your lucky day you just found a USB flash drive in the parking lot the password for the security cameras at the Louvre was not the most creative password we'll talk about that and then speaking of people who are in fact very creative let's tell you about longest-running cobro of the show he might be best known for his depictions of the tall ships i was

cyber bullied within an inch of my life last night he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now

good morning my friend good morning luke i'll put my ballot away for a moment i'll finish filling that out later happy election day and may i say and i say this with love and celebration you sound like a man who spent last night at a jazz club were you there late i wasn't there late but where

Where I was later than that was a karaoke bar called Sing Sing. Where I did not actually sign up for any songs, but what I did do was scream sing along with every song that was being put in, particularly by the people in my group. And I'm getting to this age where, honestly, first of all, if I'm out past 11, and if I'm talking loudly at all, and if I have even one to four drinks, this is now what it sounds like. I do not bounce back the way I once did.

Well, I don't say that to put you on the spot. You are traveling for fun. You're allowed to have fun. So I hope that didn't sound finger waggy. It's just a sound I hadn't I hadn't heard heard in a minute. But it sounds like you're having fun out there. And also Sing Sing is a wonderful name for New York Carriarchi Bar.

good it is a real and i believe it closed down for a while maybe it was during the pandemic i remember coming here on other trips and um and going oh is sing sing still there and then it wasn't and then um it's now back and better than ever baby yeah it was a fun night i went to that place once with hollywood power player win rosenfeld and uh jordan peele was not i remember you guys the famous jordan peele yet i think i've told the story many times on the show but like you know he was a guy who had been on mad tv and had not yet made get out or done any of the stuff that we now i don't think key and peel key and peel certainly was not out and um and we had a great time we got a a karaoke room and we you know sang our hearts out and at some point at the towards the end of the night he said i really like hanging out with you because you just treat me like a regular person and i thought it's not that hard jordan you're on mad tv for two seasons i'm able to contain my myself but um yeah it's it's it's back open it was a um

it was a fun night it started off at birdland at this kind of legendary new york jazz club and uh the band that was playing was called vince giordano and the night hawks and their whole sort of musical styling the the era that they focus on is like sort of 19 i think 1920s and 30s kind of swing jazz and the guy vince giordano was great he's a sort of older guy as you might imagine He played all these different instruments But he also would kind of set every song up and talk about the history of the song who wrote it things like that And I leaned over to Becca at some point as he was in like he was introducing like the seventh song and talking about how This was like Marcus the worm Hicks had played this song Or tiny boo shorter Lee or whatever every person he was naming could have been from the I think you should leave Charades sketch and like I've always loved that sketch I always thought it was funny, but what I realize is whoever wrote that clearly had probably been at Birdland. Probably listening to Vince Giordano name all of these old-time jazzy guys and thought, wouldn't it be funny if somebody was obsessed with these guys?

Well, I don't think that Vince Giordano is the first one to do it either. I think that whoever wrote that sketch is just familiar with those kind of people who do that. I mean, that is a very jazzy thing. Did you enjoy the music?

I loved it. It was really great. it was in the downstairs of Birdland which I haven't been to before and they had this big band and one guy was playing something that was like a violin with a horn on it like it was like some kind of odd sort of Frankenstein's monster of instruments but it was um it was great like the music was awesome it was it was a really wonderful night but uh but yeah I I was um I was I was really waiting for him to say Roy Donk I would have been and in fact that would be fun because I don't know what the venn diagram overlap is of people who go to those shows um and who also watch i think you should leave but you could throw a little you could throw a little roy donk in there just for

the people like me i wonder if he knows uh who roy donk is or who tim robinson is that might who the idea of roy donk is who the idea of roy donk is exactly other notable things that have

now happened to me since i've been in new york city andrew one of them just happened at the diner um becca and i went to get some lunch and it's a new york city diner which you've probably been to before uh the things about new york city diners that i love one so many headshots of anyone even marginally famous who has ever even possibly dined at the place we love to see it i love that most of them absolutely sun faded from the you know there's just nothing like a headshot of Sipowitz that's just been getting beaten down on by the sun for the last 27 years. A good Dennis Franz headshot in the diner. We love to see it. It could have been a butt shot

with Dennis Franz and NYPD Blue. Absolutely.

So you've got all these headshots, signed headshots everywhere. You have a menu that has roughly 40,000 items on it.

And is it like heavily laminated?

Triple laminated for safety. Yes. Like, just, I mean it is a it's a huge tome trying to read through this menu and the because we did have a little fun last night we are moving a little slow today i took great joy in just narrating things from the

menu that would make becca almost lose her breakfast one of my greatest like honey uh what

are you doing all right you've barely touched your mexican burger with munster um and then the other thing at the diner that was really amazing to me was these a couple of um gals came in and sat down uh the waiter came over to uh take their order and the woman asked do you have coffee you're in a new york city 24-hour diner the applejack diner and you're curious if they have coffee what was the answer uh the person said of course that's what actually sort of tipped me off it was this i wasn't really listening to the conversation but the shock and the voice of the waiter caused me to do this thing that i didn't even know my brain was capable of which is to actually go back and rewind in my own brain what i just heard and didn't pay

attention to the first time you know were the clientele who asked this did they seem like stereotypically not from the area like did they have the sort no they didn't okay no so no they

seemed they definitely seemed like you know did not sound like english was like not their first language it didn't seem like they were necessarily from out of town i meant yeah i didn't even i

meant almost sort of like were they like kind of like in from and i you know in from the midwest They weren't wearing, like, Iowa sweatshirts or something, and, you know, like,

they didn't seem like they had just gotten off the last turnip truck or whatever. It was, and then the other thing, along with that mystifying coffee order, was we just had here in the hotel room, I would say, one of the friendliest, but you might even say over-friendliest housekeeping folks I've ever experienced. So I had hung the sign that, like, we don't need housekeeping. today sign because i knew i was going to be in here doing the show and i'm also i'm going to be honest with you and we have cameras off today because the internet is a little slow and i am actually in a very embarrassing state of affairs as i do this show there's not really a good desk in this hotel room or a good place for me to set up my thing so i'm sitting on the bed let's be honest i'm reclining on the bed right now and i've got this microphone in my laptop and so i had put the sign out that said you know we don't need the room made up please i guess did it fall off the door or something so we did fallen off the door so we get a knock at the door and i'm a little confused because i put the sign out no thank you to housekeeping and then becca goes and answers the door and this person from housekeeping she says uh do you need housekeeping we said no we're fine she goes do you need the garbage taken out we said no we're okay so do you need the towels changed we're like and at some point i was like i just want to give this person something to do Like, yeah, okay, I'll take another towel. And she goes to Becca, she goes, let me show you something. And she does this very long demonstration of if the sign falls off the door or gets turned around, then the management makes her come and ring the doorbell because they don't know if we actually want the room made up or not. This, by the way, is the opposite problem of what seems to have happened in the industry that we've talked about, Andrew, which is nobody makes up the rooms anymore.

I heard all of this, by the way. I think you know you are hearing this too right you can verify I could also hear the just knowing you really well like I could hear the restraint in your voice like you guys each said thank you like a hundred times and I don't think either one of you meant it in fact the more you said it the more I thought you just want this person out of your life I heard her say and I couldn't tell what was going on but I was very curious so I'm glad this came up I heard her say let me show you something about the sign and I was like how is she explaining how a do not disturb sign worked I thought it might have been like, I didn't tell you this, Luke, but I've been dipping my toes into some, just a tiny bit of Dungeons and Dragons play on my computer the last couple of days. We'll talk more about this later.

I remember when the seed of an idea was born.

Do you? Because I've been kind of curious for a long, long time. I've never played, but then somebody got me to download this game, which we got to talk about it at some point because it is so unlike anything that you would associate with me, at least that I would associate with me. Maybe you have other ideas of what I get up to when I'm playing video games, but I do not play this kind of video game. But all of that is to say, I am now quasi, quasi familiar with the idea of a 20-sided die. And I was wondering, is there something going on with this sign that is hanging on the door outside of your hotel room that it's like not just simply no thank you on one side and thank you on the other, but maybe it's a 20-sided sign. and you have to have it turned exactly the right way to say, yes, I want towel, no, I don't want the garbage emptied, and please don't knock too loudly because I have a headache because we were out at a karaoke bar late last night.

It's a four-sided sign, so it has each one of those possibilities. Okay, good. It's a pretty standard little hanging sign that I don't think Becca needed a full tutorial on, but what you heard in my voice really, Andrew, was mortification because it's embarrassing for me to have anyone observe me doing this show at all, even under normal circumstances, let alone I'm lying down on the bed holding this microphone, talking into my computer because you and I were about to start doing the sound check. So like, I'm not only doing the show, which is embarrassing, I'm doing it in the most embarrassing way possible. And now this housekeeper, again, I mean, credit to her, I guess, takes her job very seriously uh is dedicated to the task but would not leave us alone she goes she she comes i already ran through it she's like do you want more towels and i'm like i guess we'll take another towel so then she comes back with three towels she goes i got you three towels but you need four towels you should really have four towels so she puts down the three towels disappears for what felt like about 10 minutes to go back to get the fourth towel comes back in puts down the fourth towel asks us again if the garbage needs to go out at this point becca is honestly just looking for something for this woman to do in the hotel she gives her a fidget spinner i mean honestly i think this woman might have been stimming a little bit she just was very like had a lot of it again this is all good this is a person who is really trying to be helpful she was actually very nice and and really dedicated to the job which is such a cool thing it was just like the timing was not ideal and we finally we finally uh basically and then she said she's like all right well you guys have a great day i'll see you tomorrow is that a threat or a promise it felt ominous it's like that's the part of the horror movie where you realize this housekeeper is actually evil

Thank you.

She says, I'll see you tomorrow with a look in her eye that tells you things are not going to be okay. But I'm going to do everything I can to avoid being here when she shows up tomorrow. Although, based on a recording schedule, it's very likely I'll be in here trying to do the show with the 20-sided sign set up wrong somehow on the door. And we will get to, once again, spend some quality time with this gal.

Do you remember, it was probably only about a year ago, in somewhat heavy rotation, maybe a couple of years ago, the commercial for, and this is the problem with commercials. If you can't remember what the product was, I want to say it was insurance and I want to say it was progressive, although I'm not 100 percent on that. But they were playing around with a bunch of puns like, hey, we just got our new home and everything is great. The only problem is we have clogging issues. And then it turns out there's like literally people who clog dance upstairs or something. Yes. Well, I know someone who was in one of those commercials. Oh, really? Was it the ant one? Because that's what this woman is giving me the vibes of. It's like we have a problem. Oh, the ants. We have ants. And you have all these very helpful, but Budinsky style ants at the end. And one of them says, this is a lot of house. Hope you can keep it clean. And I love that line so much. We say it all the time.

She looked exactly like the women, the actors who are portraying those ants. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah.

She looked exactly like also a little bit of Miss Featherbottom vibes too. Is that, is that who Tobias, is that what Tobias called himself?

His Mrs. Doubtfire character.

If I'm right about that, by the way, I'm going to be proud because that just came, that just came out of me fully formed which sounds like something Tobias would say but is it Mrs. Featherbottom let me see here it seems like that might be it although I'm not good at um yeah I think it was Mrs. Featherbottom I would give you a ding if I had my little bell

here I'll ding myself nice you should another thing another thing Tobias would definitely say

Yes, exactly. Yeah. Thank you, baby.

All right, let's thank some donors. These wonderful, amazing people are making TBTL happen with their donations. This is 100% listener-supported podcasting. Thanks to Dan Nicholson out there in Seattle, Washington. So this is a dumb question, Andrew, but the mayoral election in Seattle is also today, right?

Yes, it is. Yes, it is. So I usually I'm just filling out my ballot now. You know, we have mail in. I can always just like fill this out in advance and send it via the postal service. But I never do that. And now it's just sort of become a tradition for me just to fill it out last minute on Election Day. And then I like to take a little walk. The ballot box is about, I don't know, a quarter of a mile or three quarters of a mile or something. And it just seems like a good day when you're just, like, thinking about the state of the world to sort of walk and drop your ballot in there and feel like you've done something.

Why did they get rid of the, you know, go down to the school and talk to some nice older volunteers and do the voting in person? That's just not a thing anymore?

I don't, yeah, I assume that they, they haven't had that since I moved out here in 2008 or 2009 because they had mail-in voting, I think, since I've been here. We used to do that in New Hampshire, but we didn't have the option of mailing it in, though. So, you know, that's a huge disruption in people's days. It must suppress voter turnout, right, if you can't drop it in the mail?

Yeah, I guess it does make sense. I like that tradition. I remember being a kid and going to school, and they were like, the gym is closed today because people are voting in there. We just thought it was kind of a nice little tradition.

Yeah, yeah. The little booths with the red, white, and blue little curtains that hang.

How do you get an I Voted sticker if you mail it in? Do they give you one in the ballot?

Yep, it's right here. I just threw mine away, but I have one here. I could sell this. Actually, instead of throwing it away, I could sell this to somebody who didn't vote. Make a little scratch. Sure.

Absolutely. So you guys have also in Seattle, kind of like here in New York with Zoran Mamdani, you have a pretty progressive candidate, right? And is she leading Bruce Harrell?

Yeah, she really kind of trounced him in the primary, but it's a top two kind of system. So they both made it to the general election. But it was a very – Katie Wilson had a very surprise showing during the primary, whatever that was, four months ago or whatever. But now we'll see because there's a lot of money in this campaign. I hadn't checked my mailbox in maybe, I don't know, a week or something. We get those little emails that tell you what's in your inbox or what's waiting for you in your mailbox. And if I don't see anything important, I just get out of the habit of actually going out and checking my mail. And yesterday I opened it up and it was chock full of flyers for all kinds of candidates and all kinds of issues on all kinds of sides. And it was bananas to see just like how much. And of course, one side, well, I don't have to totally get into it, but some of those flyers get pretty, pretty nasty. But I don't know. I'm hoping that Katie Wilson is a hell of a candidate. So I'm hoping that she has another good showing today.

And she was a labor organizer before this.

Yeah, yeah. So the ding on her is that she doesn't have governmental experience, but I would say the ding on Bruce Harrell, the incumbent, is that he does. He does. And we've seen what it is.

Hey, you know who else is in Seattle? It's our friend and supporter of the show, Kevin Swantek.

Ah, of Seattle, Washington. That's right. Wow. You know, we have a lot of voters in our thank you list today.

and we know that these people all voted because these people they you know what they stand behind the things they believe in including tbtl they're donating their money to this which tells me that they're also the kind of people who carefully research the issues and the candidates and then go out and vote folks like britta abramson who's also in seattle thank you britta thank you britta and then i don't know what the uh if they're having an election in dauphin alabama but i know Lydia Scarvey is down there in Dauphin and is supporting the show. Thanks, Lydia.

Oh, Lydia. Lydia. Thank you, Lydia.

Now, I think we have multiple listeners in Dauphin, Alabama, by the way, which is crazy.

Do we actually? Because this is not the Lydia whom we met in Florida. I might be confusing my Lydia's here. But I did want to see if Dauphin, Alabama has elections. And if so, we can maybe help Lydia here by maybe helping inform her vote. I'm looking here. the election date is well there's resolution oh shoot you've been following this resolution number 2025190 right? Oh yeah of course

it's been all the news

Chris did his entire A block on it last night I was taping it Luke I don't like spoilers anyway thank you very much Britta or I'm sorry Lydia sorry and Britta

I am sorry about this noise in the background Andrew it is

how I know that you're really I have a feeling you're just playing that off your computers to give it that gritty

new york sound did i tell you i can't remember if it was on air or off air about our first night here in the hotel in our first hotel room no it was something out of like um a jack lemon movie the out of towners you know where he's going around with his pad of paper and he's writing down everyone's name because he's so angry about stuff that he can't really fix no i don't think

i've ever actually seen it but go ahead don't let that get in the way it's a great movie would

recommend it's basically like jack lemon and his wife are visiting new york city but everything that can go wrong is going wrong for him just like the reservations are messed up just everything is and he's got this little pad and he's just writing down everyone's name because he's going to write a strongly worded letter just becomes his own the only thing that he can do to feel like he has some controls just keep writing names down in this book very relatable but um we get here and oh you know was talking about this with chris uh yesterday chris hayes off air he was saying it is just absolutely shocking what new york city hotels can get away with just because they're in new york city so first of all everything is super expensive the rooms are generally super tiny and also unless you're staying at the ritz carlton or something they're often just like beat up like you know just you'll go in the bathroom and like the faucet you know the handle on the fossil just come off in your hand or like the the the outlets like in the first room we were in the outlet that was like covering the you know electrical plug and just smashed just totally destroyed and just like everywhere you look there's just things are just really really run down and they for some reason they don't have to fix it because it's new york city and people always come here and people need to stay somewhere and they just like i said to chris it would never happen in phoenix if you went into like an ac hotel in phoenix or like a uh you know a even a Holiday Inn everything would be fixed and it would work and it would be probably pretty nice but um the first room that we get in uh the window was broken so that it was closed but the frame of the window was broken so effectively it was as if the window was open it was like so all of the noise of Broadway and Midtown Manhattan all night and it was a Saturday night too so it was just like people were out all night long was just it was just like we had fully opened a window out to 55th and broadway and the noise was insane and then also the building had some kind of crazy lighting feature on it i think that is supposed to make the building look cool if you are walking by the building but what it meant was there was this huge crazy industrial white light that was underneath our window and even with the shade pulled the shade could not block out the light so about every 30 seconds the entire room would light up like like it was the middle of the day this is literally

out of a movie what about the weather you're talking about the noise and you you said you effectively had the window open i don't quite understand does it mean like it would be the equivalent of having the window open like a crack or like the window wide open and what about the

weather there what's is it was a cold no the wind it's there was the weather's actually been pretty nice it wasn't that the window was was open it was at

when the window was closed it did not in any way stop the sound okay but it did it did it did

effectively close as far as if it were cold outside it was fine it was mostly the sound okay

yes it was mostly sound related but then light related it was and it was like something that they would do to try to break you down if you were like a prisoner or something like every time you start to fall asleep someone would scream something as they were walking down broadway and then and then the light the entire room would light up to like it was like the middle of the day and then it would go off and then you'd have like between 25 and 30 seconds of rest and then it would go back on it was absolutely miserable

I can't believe that I did not ever have the experience in my life that I just thought was going to be what it was like when I was an adult which was I would live in an apartment somewhere in a junky old high rise and there would be a neon sign that would buzz and flash on and off outside my window there'd be empty whiskey bottles on the ground and there'd always be a bottle i was working on and i would sort of sit in this in this little kitchenette area just looking out the window while that sign just buzzed and flashed all night long that was what

i thought my future held what part of you is sad that that isn't how it turned out for you i feel like i could have used a year of you would have been good with that life i feel like i could

have used at least a year of it really just sort of kick the tires on that how about the stains how about the stains on the t-shirt you're wearing oh yeah the stains i still think i'd i still think i'd put a shirt on over it but it'd probably be open in front you know what i mean it would be a short sleeve button down but i would have the white stained shirt on and i would not have buttoned the button down now what if a dame with a problem came by honestly you got dragged into a whole world you weren't expecting that that actually sounds more ambitious than what i was even picturing to be honest with you that that implies some sort of uh income and skill set right right and also like a business card a working phone yeah right exactly all things that you're not you're not planning for your life as you know luke when i need to make a phone call i have to go all the way down to street level and use the phone booth down on the sidewalk and then when it inevitably ends up uh ending on the sour note that it must end on the conversation i will then take the phone and then bang it into the cradle three times before hanging up that's how i communicate

but don't forget about the fact that you have to go down the stairs because you're three months

late on your rent you have to avoid the landlord that's absolutely right if you take the elevator

it'll let you out the elevator's always broken and you're ducking the landlord because there's just like every time you open your door there's a new notice on your door about late rent

that's right but maybe hopefully the guy with the saxophone will be out tonight just playing a little bit of blues under the moonlight

we gotta thank Mike Brehm who's in Turlock, California I believe, I'm guessing that what we just described is maybe the exact opposite of Mike Brehm's life there in Turlock

yeah I would hope so, I hope that Mike's doing very well

for himself. I think things are, to paraphrase the drop, things are going extremely well for

Mike Brehm. Hey can I ask you a question really quickly so this i i'm sorry that turlock made me think of this that's a bad connotation i apologize to mike but just forget why i'm bringing this up right now or why turlock made me think of this but let me ask you a question what is the first thing you think of when you hear the word hemlock the society really what is the hemlock society

well andrew i know this is what carmen cespedes in brooklyn new york hey carmen what up this is what carmen was hoping would be the lead-in to us thanking carmen uh i believe the hemlock society pushes for people to be able to choose end of life for themselves okay see i didn't know that

was a society but i do think of it as like hemlock like going back to even like even shakespearean times right hemlock was sort of a it was known as a poison plant right like hemlock the first the reason i ask is because i was somewhere in seattle very near i believe i think i was like in my neighborhood although i can't remember exactly where i was yesterday or the day before with Genevieve and I saw a sign for some I think newish apartments that were they had a little sign out advertising you know get your apartment at Hemlock Apartments. Whoa. And I was like why are we naming our you know like it's kind of a nice word and I said to Veves I'm like why would you name it Hemlock? She's like well it's a plant. I'm like I know it's a plant but so is Poison Ivy. I wouldn't name my new apartment building Poison Ivy. Why is there a Hemlock Apartments? I don't understand why you would choose that. It seems ominous. Yeah I 100% think of it as being

a poison that you could take yeah and clearly whoever named that apartment building was not aware of that connotation i wonder if that's an age thing maybe or something like you know how old

you oh you mean like young you mean like you're so young oh interesting i'm looking it up i'm trying to see where the hemlock apartments are you know i think the sign maybe i saw a sign in our

neighborhood but maybe they're more in the greenwood neighborhood i'm exactly sure but they actually look you know they look nice the nice modern looking apartments at least on their website of course putting their best foot forward but i'm just very confused how they chose that

yeah i would 100 think of the uh think of the hemlock the way you do and would not name my apartment building that nor would i name my apartment building what would be some of the other what are the other things that people famously what do they what do they put in is Is it like somebody put something in Romeo or Juliet's ear?

Oh, yeah. I'm looking it up. Now, I'm also seeing that they have a little rumpus room with some air hockey tables. Maybe we should. Luke, will you move into the hemlock apartments with me? This really turned around very quickly, I'll say. I'll say if it had a normal name, I wouldn't have looked it up, and I wouldn't be considering upending my life. I'm looking up the poison now. It's a potion, but I don't know if it says what kind it is. I apologize.

I wonder how many people, when they see the Hemlock Apartments, have the thought that you and I have. I bet you it's a lot.

I would hope. Well, I guess I would hope because I want people to know. But anyway, they look very, very nice. So sorry for disparaging them.

Thank you so much to all of our donors for supporting TBTL. We could not do this show without you.

They have Papa Shot, too. Sorry. No, no, that was important. No, no, just let it roll. I was going to say, they have air hockey on one side of the room, but then I just saw another view. they have pop a shot which seems like something that would appeal to you can you see me playing

air hockey and you pop it a shot over here absolutely no i totally would i don't see here's the thing i don't know if i see you how do i say this without i'm not trying to paint you as like a recluse but i do think there would be a certain amount of socializing in that game room that i don't know if that totally connects with like your favorite way to spend an evening you

think there's a lot of socializing i've been in i feel like whenever you're staying at a place that has like a game room like this it's usually a ghost town don't you think yeah generally and i

i don't generally you know mess with that stuff i was very into air hockey as a kid and foosball i think i've told you this story before but like my buddy peter williams had a like a legit foosball table and we would play these these games where it would be you know you'd play to whatever the you know the little scoring thing that you can kind of keep track of the score that's the best part the slider the little slider things so we would play a game which would be you know you had to score up to whatever the slider would let you 10 points let's say that would be one game and then it'd be best out of seven but then that would be one set and then it'd be best out of seven sets so this would be just go on all night i mean hours like we'd be playing like foosball for seven eight hours and the stakes were if i won it meant jesus christ was real and if you won it meant mayor baba was real which was this like that's a lot sort of this guru that his dad is a is a sort of follower of and the funny thing was if i was right and christianity was the real thing it meant that peter and his whole family were going into eternal hell and if he won and he was right and mayor baba was actually truly the one who was divine i was fine anyway because he was a very

chill guy you know what i mean so that never occurred to your friend that he was really getting the short end i think he pointed it out at some point he was like you know

if i win we all win and if you win i'm really screwed yeah that's pretty that's that's that's

pretty rough i gotta say i've never never thought i'd say this before but i'm i'm glad you just

gamble for money now yes no the stakes were far too high for a couple of 12 year olds hello and welcome to top story so i have seen this story andrew um like perched atop the most read list of the new york times articles for the longest time and i never actually clicked on it but it just it sort of uh it outlasted me so here i am the headline colin jost and pete davidson and the staten island ferry fiasco this is a really well written piece by steven curutz in the new york times it explains why this has been one of the most read pieces of the times for a long time had you seen this had you heard anything about this i don't think so

i saw it in the show sheet today and i i think that's the first time i saw it and i started reading it i didn't get it done before we started talking but well you go i'll just tell you later what my favorite little joke of this whole thing is.

I bet you I already know what it is.

I mean, it's pretty obvious it's right there in the name. I just like what they named their company. Oh, no, I was thinking of something else. Yeah, I don't think I probably, I didn't make it that far to the piece, so you go ahead and set it up.

Well, so Pete Davidson and Colin Jost are both from Staten Island, and they both grew up taking the Staten Island Ferry, which, by the way, I cannot recommend highly enough if you ever come here to New York. It's free. You get to see the Statue of Liberty. You get to see Lower Manhattan.

you you know come take the satellite ferry go over have lunch on staten island come back it's a really really fun thing to do i know they grew up free it used to be anyway no i i mean no i'm

not questioning you i'm just that's interesting i mean there's so much i'm seriously not trying to get political here but there's so much talk about free public transportation specifically in the new york mayoral election that is going on today that i didn't i didn't know that this famous ferry that people take for entertainment purposes as well is free so i guess we do have some free public transportation. I think that's awesome.

So Pete Davidson and Colin Jost grew up taking this thing, you know, all the time as kids to come into the city, et cetera. So they've, you know, they're both kind of interested in it. And I guess, you know, whichever, I don't know if it's the city of, city of New York or, or the state of New York, but basically this, this ferry, the, the John F. Kennedy is what it was named had reached the end of its useful life. I guess it's the department of citywide administrative service. offices they're in charge of of basically getting rid of stuff and so they think that usually the scrap value of a staten island ferry is somewhere between 60 000 and 100 000 so the guy who's in charge the city employee who's in charge of basically putting this thing up for auction his name's larry siegel he thought well you know this is a staten island ferry it's kind of iconic i'm going to just put it out at 250 250 000 and just see if anyone bites but he also very wisely started kind of putting out feelers i guess he was like tweeting at nbc or he was trying to maybe somebody was tweeting on his behalf to nbc people were trying to somehow get this fairy auction on the radar of pete davidson and colin jost and somehow amazingly it sort of worked because when the uh fairy was coming up for uh for auction when it was the day of the auction all of a sudden there were like a bunch of bids on it in a way that was not the normal thing i think the guy said the guy who was running the auction said something to the effect of like basically uh we had what did he say i'm trying to find the i'm trying to find the exact quote from him basically like oh yeah he said we have breached the scrap metal industry was what mr siegel noticed when there was a flurry of bids from new accounts he said oh i thought oh this is different we have breached the scrap metal industry now the name that was attached to these bids was a guy named paul italia and he is the owner of a manhattan comedy club the stand and so this guy siegel who was putting this thing up for for sale when he discovered that mr italia was a co-owner of a manhattan comedy club he worried the whole thing might be a practical joke but the purchase was neither practical nor a joke that's a good line that's my favorite part of the piece this guy mr italia he's part of this this group that includes uh colin jost and pete davidson and some guy named ron castellano who's a new york architect and they bought this thing i think they paid like 250 000 for this staten island ferry which does not have a working engine which costs i think way more than ten thousand dollars a month to just like sort of where it's currently docked because it's they can't find anyone to work on it their plan is they want to turn it into like a like a venue like you know like a performance space where you could have concerts and a couple

of bars or whatever sounds cool yeah they said like uh six bars uh a performance space i don't know if there's more than one performance space on there but like a whole like just a whole floating venue which actually it sounds awesome if if not practical it's apparently not practical at all

because they can't find anyone to fix it it's costing them now they think that they've spent like six hundred thousand dollars on store on docking it so they've now far outspent the cost of the thing they also right now can't even sell it for scrap because the price of scrap metal has dropped so much and the only place that you can get this thing scrapped is in mobile alabama and to tow it to Mobile, Alabama costs more than it's worth in scrap. They're going to have to potentially pay somebody $50,000. They're going to lose $50,000 on getting this thing scrapped if they decide to scrap it. And every interview they've done, they have basically said, this was the stupidest idea. It seems to be the only thing they're getting asked about now, anywhere they go, Pete Davidson and Colin Jost. And also, Colin Jost is married to Scarlett Johansson. She's now getting asked about it in interviews. She is totally, she's totally mystified by the whole thing. So it seems like this was a very, very, A, this is the kind of thing I would do if I had any money.

Yes.

And it's turning out about how it would if I bought a Staten Island Ferry.

Except.

You wouldn't tell Scarlett Johansson. That would be a fun surprise for her. It would be a surprise for later. I didn't know that these, this is going to sound absolutely crazy, but I kind of didn't know that these guys were buddies. I always remember that weekend update with John Mulaney and Pete Davidson, and so I always think of those two as paling around. But I kind of, this is a very uninteresting observation about this story, but I just kind of like knowing that they're friends and that they just decided to do this as a couple of rich guys.

yeah literally i believe it was pete davidson texting colin jost going hey should we do this and then when pete davidson was asked about it later he was like look we got stoned we bought a boat it's fine and then colin jost had to clarify that he was and he said this is more embarrassing he was completely sober when he decided to buy the boat he didn't like pete davidson telling everyone that he was high when he bought the boat because he was not high but

that's more embarrassing than being high and buying the boat right have you ever claimed to be under the influence of alcohol when you actually weren't just a cover for your actions. I don't think I have, but I feel like I've gotten close.

Quite the opposite. The other thing, as you alluded to, is that they named their company, the company that owns this boat is called Titanic 2.

Which is just, I really think it's funny. They're like, oh, well, what should we name it? Titanic 2. This is when they think it's going to be a successful business venture, right? We'll buy a boat. We'll make it this huge floating venue that can host like 3,000 people at a time. And what should we name the company? Oh, I know, Titanic 2. And now they're being sued by their own law firm for apparently or for allegedly not paying their bills, their legal fees. And so they're being sued by their own law firm. And who's being sued? But the company, Titanic 2. And when you read that in like legalese, it's quite funny.

It's great. nobody ever sue too beautiful to biz please but it's a similar situation sir we are uh suing too beautiful to biz uh what is that exactly it's a podcast um speaking of titanic 2 uh colin jost told seth meyers that apparently it was impossible to get the boat and get the project insured it was very difficult because the company is named titanic 2 oh yeah sure like their insurance companies were like it's called titanic 2 we're gonna pass on this one yeah so anyway um i i like this story because well first of all i'm with you i like them being friends and i like knowing that other people are out there making incredibly irresponsible decisions around boats the way that i so famously have done in my own life yes the other story that you actually sent me that i thought was pretty interesting uh involved this louvre robbery of late which by the way not that i was exactly like going out on a limb but i'm kind of proud that when we talked about the story the first time i said they're gonna catch these guys because there's too much dna around and then like i feel like two days later they were like they've caught five of the guys because there was too much dna around oh did they actually get the dna i did not know yes i feel like a real modern day dennis franz i feel like a real modern day sipowitz just trying to work in as many sipowitz references as i can today um yeah they they they got some dna and they were able to link them link the dna to some of these folks who they it's like europe so they haven't identified any of them by name but they've talked about the group and that none of them had none of them like worked at the louvre as they can tell they weren't part of organized crime you know one of the other thing that's kind of weird to me or surprising was you know who called 911 on the whole thing was a cyclist who was just riding by the Louvre saw these people in these construction outfits on this big lift like ladder thing which by the way they stole that through like a craigslist ad did you hear

that part of the story no no i really have not been following this story very closely at all i don't know why i did see this one dazzling deet that we'll get to that i sent you yesterday but no this is all fascinating to me so i i didn't know that his cyclist was the one that had the cyclist saw something that was amiss when he saw these people in yellow vests going down the

staircase you're gonna get some hop on style i guess so because it wasn't the this is pointed out as one of the many security failings at the louvre it wasn't the louvre that called 9-1-1 first it was a cyclist who saw these people coming out of the louvre with stuff and thought that doesn't really look like that should be happening yeah did we already talk about the

fact though i feel like maybe we did and again this is sort of the obvious probably the obvious joke from like two or three weeks ago but it really does sort of make you think so if i just get one of those yellow vests i can it really unlocks a lot of doors for you like those bright yellow can you know whether it's like you associate with construction workers but you just like you can just i mean it's like the classic heist scene from any kind of a heist movie you just like well let's get in this van and i'll come out and pretend we're painters right but the modern equivalent of that is wearing one of these please. fluorescent vests i mean i'm mildly surprised that a cyclist thought something was amiss me too i wouldn't i feel like i would have just gone by and i would have been like they have vests on

yeah they're allowed to do whatever they're doing exactly who am i to question that apparently they

stole the like ladder truck thingy they they found like it's not craigslist but whatever they have in france they went and acted like they were going to buy this thing someone was selling and then they stole it and they drove it to the Louvre, which is also pretty kind of genius for me a

little bit. I can't, I can't get arrested development out of my head today as I'm picturing this thing. Yeah, exactly. So they went to the Louvre with this thing, obviously. And then

they, they like broke their way in and got all this stuff. And, um, and now there's all this, you know, there's basically a big inquiry into like, why was the Louvre not more protected? i mean to be honest with you it seemed like it was okay it was somewhat protected to me like here's what i mean they did have to break through the windows and then they had to break into these cases like it isn't like they just left the front door unlocked and all these jewels and and whatever tiaras and things were just sitting out on like on someone's desk to be stolen like i don't know how much more secure like the windows are supposed to be but it seems to me like what you had was some people who very brazenly physically broke into the building physically broke into the the the displays physically took the stuff i mean maybe the displays could have been like under more bulletproof glass or something but it's weird to me that this is a story of like the security is so bad they're like are you should you have armed guards there in case a heist crew breaks in and then what you shoot them or something like i don't really know what more they were supposed to do but as part of this inquiry they've been looking at the cyber security if you will of this place and one of the things that they just pointed out in this recent study was the password to log into the louv's security cameras was louv

not even not even with an exclamation point or one two three yeah or like yeah one two three question mark anything like the the how come i can't even maintain my like mlb at bat subscription without them updating my password or forcing me to update my password every three months. That literally just happened to me. How did they get away with just calling it Louvre and not like every three months being like, you need to update this now?

That is what I am that's what I'm really fascinated by in this whole story is, how in the world were they not how is it not like Louvre one, two, three, exclamation point I hate you, the A is the

at symbol. Yeah, exactly. Because you keep adding to it, you add to it you add to it every time it forces you to update it I have this one online bank that is

where like my CBS paychecks go for some reason and I set this up years and years ago it was a huge mistake but I don't really know how to log back into CBS and get them to send my direct deposit to a different bank account so I've maintained this bank account for this one thing And what it means is I have to go and every week I have to go in. Do you hear that horn in the background?

Yeah, is that just one? I don't know if our listeners are going to be able to hear because I'm listening with headphones right now. But is that just one angry driver just leaning on the horn for like 15, 20 seconds?

That is one Jack Lemmon writing names down in a book.

I just, again, I don't know if our listeners, if you rewind and blast it, you might be able to hear it in the background. But, yeah, I just heard an uninterrupted horn from a car going on for a long time, like enough to be like probably worth, I don't know, four million dollars in ad space during the Super Bowl.

And doing absolutely no good like that is, you know, in Princess Bride, when they're able to find Wesley because he is being tortured, but he's screaming. And I think it's like, uh, Inigo Montoya says, what does he say, hon? It's like, that is the sound of a man who's lost his true love or something. Like, there's just something about the way he screams that is like, it's a different sort of property or quality.

That's right. That's how they find his location. Cause they can hear that bellow coming from underground into the, into the woods. Yes.

And that person laying on their horn, that was the sound of a person who's truly lost it because there's no way it wasn't notifying anybody of anything. It wasn't like, hey, I'm trying to get through this intersection. That was just, that was somebody who's, as the kids say, crashing out.

That was somebody who was cut off in traffic and was like, well, you know what? I'm going to make your life as uncomfortable as possible by just laying out. I don't know this from any experience. I'm just saying that I can imagine maybe that's what's going through that person's head.

100%. Speaking of crashing out, so this is what's going on with me in this bank every week. And by the way, I'll mention them because I want people to not use them. They're called Axos. and for some reason everyone

Every single time I try to log in, it tells me that I have the wrong password. And the only way to fix this is to set up a new password. Like I have to go through the I forgot my password function. Every single week, 52 weeks out of the year, because what I do is I get paid weekly from CBS. I go into this account and then I transfer the money out of this account into my regular bank account. But every week I have to go in and act like I forgot my password and establish a new password So I can go in, so I can transfer this little money out of my account. But it's also one of those things that's like you can't use the same password. You can't use a password that you've used before. So I'm running out of passwords. And the other thing is you have to be able to remember it. You can't just like punch it in and then hit go. You punch it in, hit go, it accepts it. Then you have to re-login and use that password. So it has to be something that I can kind of remember. and what it basically involves is me writing the most hateful things about this bank into password form it's the most creative permutations of the f word of the fu fu axos bank i hate you x axos bank it's like i don't know if these are being stored somewhere and if people can if the bank could decode them but i wouldn't be surprised for the fbi to show up at my house sir you've been threatening real harm to this bank by way of your password that you write because again it can't be something i've used before i have to be able to remember it and i'm

angry at the bank when i'm making the new password i shouldn't there are several reasons why i should not tell the anecdote that i'm about to tell one just for my own internet security and telling people what a password what a password i used was um and also because i don't want to say anything that would embarrass or imperil your brother in any way but remember when your brother was on tbtl a couple of weeks ago telling a really great story about how dan wilson came into the restaurant that he works at yeah uh right before was it was right before game five that's right it was right before game five right of the yes anyway um but we also took a moment and i was pretty outraged just to Like really consider how much your brother works, the insane schedule that he has to have to do that job at the radio station, getting in at two in the morning or whatever it is. But then also to have to have a second job just to make ends meet when he has an incredibly important journalistic job at one of the city's important news and information stations. And that's not enough to, you know, just to live on. And I was so mad. And then later on, literally later on that day, I was trying to use that same company's app to listen to the pregame show, and they would not let me stream live without giving my personal information and setting up an account, which is, like, really ridiculous. Like, it's free, but, like, to listen to my local streaming radio station, I had to, like, sign in and, like, create a password, and I was so mad that I made my password wage theft in honor of your brother. and it's like I don't think they actually have access to that I should have made my first name wage and my second name theft or something like that because they'll never know but it was just like talk about the most impotent little jab at somebody they'll never even know but in the moment I was like what's my password? I'll tell you what my password is wage theft. Let's pay David

That's right. I like that you were going to bat for my brother

I appreciate that. Yeah, in a very effective

way. Here I go once again with the email every week I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

All right, emails or V-mails.

Yeah, I got a voicemail here, a voice memo, actually, that April recorded and emailed to me. Andrew at tbtl.net, or you can call our voicemail line at 206-414-8285. That's 206-414-TBTL. Speaking of frustrating technology, Luke, this is not password related, but you and I have been talking about, as has everybody, AI a lot lately. My whole thing about AI is that it's being forced upon us, yet it has not proven its value. I think it's proven its value in some behind-the-scenes applications. But my God, this push to get all of us to force AI into our life is so frustrating, especially because it don't work, Luke. And you know who learned that recently? Listener April.

Hello. This is April in the Arby's district of Edmonds. I just couldn't help but share my incredulity at what AI can and cannot do. I work for an education nonprofit and I do development. So I do a ton of grant writing and grant applications are super, super annoying in that they all have different word limits, character count limits, things like that. So I'm always trying to like tailor text to exactly what that funder needs. So I was like, okay, look, I have, you know, whatever, 900 words to answer this.

question. I need it to be 500 words. What a perfect use for AI, right? We're always getting pushed at work to use AI more, even though I hate it. So I was like, great. AI can absolutely do that. It's counting words or characters. How hard can that be? Couldn't do it. I put it in there, asked it to shorten it, was like, here you go. This is 497 words. I put it back in Google Docs. I was like, oh, that seems long. Count it. It's 700. I got into an Andrew-like argument where I kept saying, this is actually this many words. And it would be like, oh, I'm so sorry. How embarrassing. Here, I'll do it again. Did it again. Still wrong. I went back and forth with, I think I was using Gemini, an embarrassing number of times trying to get it to figure it out. I don't know. How can AI not be able to count words or characters? I just, I do not understand. It finally was like, I guess I can't do this. I'll have to try again next time or something. I mean, something ridiculous. And I basically stomped out a little bit like you, Andrew. So anyway, power out.

When you're comparing yourself to me twice in a situation like this, things are not going well for you. I hate to say it.

I was wondering how you feel about that being your brand.

Well, I'm worried about both me and April, to be honest with you, in this situation. But yeah, that is infuriating. The only thing that I've learned from my few interactions with AI is AI is good at apologizing for being useless because it's always just like, well, oh, yeah, sorry, I guess I can't do that. Well, yep, sorry, I guess I guess I can't know which players are actually injured and which ones aren't on your fantasy football team, even though those are just facts that should be available to you as you synthesize this information that you're supposedly so good at doing.

I find those stories encouraging because it just means as long as they need someone to count words, I've still got a job. Yeah. potentially you're you're the word counter we got the sniffer i mean like yeah yeah i look for stories where ai is is not up to the task because it feels like it's ever so slightly delaying the the inevitable speaking of by the way ai and things like that did you hear about that waymo that killed a cat no yes like it uh this is a sad story i should have probably given a trigger warning but um there was like i think it was in san francisco there was like a beloved neighborhood cat that was hit by a waymo and like it's honestly that made me so upset that now i i was a big waymo fan i may like i may not use waymos anymore because of that one incident that's really

so this is the first i'm hearing about this and so all i know is what you've told me and so i shouldn't say anything but i won't stop there i guess my question is and you know how much i care about cats and how much i don't care about waymo i mean i would i don't have an opinion on waymo one way or the other one waymo or the other but i mean this also happens with humans behind the wheels of cars a lot too so i don't know the story i don't know if they're i mean obviously it's supposed to have functionality that would prevent that from happening but also as humans we're not supposed to do that either but i do know you know i mean like maybe right cars in general shouldn't be on the roads you know and i'm actually half joking about that yeah it was

in san francisco's mission district and it was a uh a beloved uh like cat that like lived in a deli or something named kit kat oh i know really sad but you are right like in a certain way i don't really understand how the driverless nature of the car it's interesting but i don't know how like relevant it is because like you said unfortunately cars that are operated by humans sometimes hit animals so you know and i i'm assuming again not to defend waymo but it's like i'm assuming that it's everything built into it is supposed to make it as safe as a human driver so it's like yeah there's you know accidents will happen but i don't know they're trying to of course now in san francisco there's a city supervisor that's actually trying to get the rules change around uh sort of driverless vehicles because of this which i guess you know if you're looking for an opening politically this is probably a pretty good one maybe short of a child getting hit this is probably going to tug at the heartstrings yeah again i don't want to

dismiss this that's absolutely heartbreaking and and anything that we can do and advocate for that makes these cars and all cars safer to humans to cats to pets to whatever like we should do that But I would just, without having read this story, I'd be interested in knowing like kind of what the trend lines are and stuff, because I would still assume that even proportionally, there's still a greater chance of a human killing a pet with a car than these, I'm guessing, at least historically.

Yeah, like I don't want to, seriously, I don't want to be like, you know, siding with the tech bros. Me neither. But my sense is that, yeah, these cars, and again, I've ridden in them now a bunch of times. They've got them in L.A. too. They're actually my preferred thing. in la now for getting around um for a bunch of reasons but like they don't strike me as any more unsafe than a car that's being driven by a human being with all of the things that we as humans do imperfectly so anyway when are we gonna get that self-driving e-line is what i want to know

that's what you need buddy i heard as a kicker story at the end of like the um actual newscast on you know i can never remember luke what the new name of like what como radio used to be here it's like northwest news now or whatever but for people who are unfamiliar it's not really a talk station where everybody's like blowhardened with their opinions it's pretty much like your classic am news station with like a news wheel and weather and traffic and all those things and and the problem is though that you always have a kicker story at the end and then people are trying to banter and they're not great at bantering what i it was it was uh your old friend uh jeff pojola and an anchor. Yeah, and honestly, I've heard, whatever, Pojo hosts a political show that is actually not so bad, but I heard some pretty rough banter on Friday night or whatever, and it was around the kicker story, or one of the things was about self-flying, not self-flying, but flying cars. Apparently, Musk is out here now saying that he's going to introduce a flying car by the end of 2026. I don't really have much to say about that, so I don't know why I raised it. I guess I'm just thinking about these autonomous vehicles and whatnot. As long as his name is in the news.

Well, that's one of the things is a lot of the new flying things that are sort of giant drones and personal aircraft, they're also autonomous. And I feel like that's the one I'm going to need to see some, I'm going to see a long track record of that thing not wigging out before I get on one. Can you imagine getting in to something that's going to fly you somewhere and it's also autonomous? That would be like, that's, I feel like the fear factor of that has got to be pretty high for people.

Especially when you think about the jackholes who are behind this stuff and they only care about profit above all else.

One guy's trying to live to be a thousand. The other guy is talking about the Antichrist and trying to, you know, rig American politics. I would trust them with my life. Yeah, right. And they're flying autonomous helicopter. Exactly.

You know what? I'm just going to keep walking to SARS, Luke, the way God intended. There you go.

Keep it simple, buddy. That's right. See, I didn't say keep it simple stupid because you're not stupid, my friend. All right, everybody. That's going to do it for today's episode. But I have incredible news We are going to be right back here tomorrow With more imaginary radio for you So please do join us for that In the meantime have a great Tuesday Get out and vote if you haven't If you're somewhere where voting happens And enjoy the rest of your day With the pride of knowing that you participated In the civic process I was once a skeptic of voting Famously on this show Andrew That's how far I've come in my life

Did you vote before you left?

I don't know if there was anything in Washington and good luck to you all no mountain too tall

and good luck to all i'll talk to you tomorrow enjoy new york power out